Friday, May 27, 2011

Happiness as a Multiparametric Optimisation.

Men usually find some degree of happiness in the satisfaction of their desires. The hungry man is a happy when fed, the thirsty man, after a drink, the poor man in the achievement of wealth. Human nature being what it is, is made up of a multitude of desires which are frequently in conflict with one another. For example, our desire for leisure is against our desire for for wealth which we achieve through work. Our desire to look attractive is opposed to our desire to eat lots of sweets, and so on.

Our happiness then can be thought of as the degree to which we have satisfied our desires. Considering the multifaceted nature of our desires, each "facet"being a parameter of happiness, our degree of happiness can be considered as a sort of reflection on the  multiparametric satisfaction of our desires.

As said before, some of our desires are in conflict with each other and therefore satisfaction of parameter X may come at the expense of parameter Y.  Philosophically speaking, the task at hand is similar to that of the engine designer; how do you optimise for happiness given conflicting human desires.

From a systems point of view, system optimisation will occur somewhere between the extremes of the conflicting parameters. In other words, total system optimisation will occur at a point where the individual component parameters may not be completely satisfied. Now this is very important, since it explains a lot of human cognitive pathology and folly.

Consider human sexual satisfaction. The hedonist may argue that sex is the ultimate pleasure and that satisfaction of this one parameter will lead to happiness. (This of course is a simplification, but bear with me). Consider the following "Sexual Happiness Decay curves", for three hypothetical women, a 10, an 8 and a 5 respectively.


We see that sex with a "10" is much better than sex with a "5" but over time, due to factors such as familiarity and habituation, over time  the pleasure from each act tends to diminish. There is nothing like the rush of the new. The natural strategy to then to optimise sexual pleasure is to try and recreate the "rush" of the new.  The following graph illustrates this strategy. (Each new curve is a new partner)
The theory being that by changing the partner a recreation of the initial satisfaction state can be achieved. In reality, the easier the "prey" is to catch the less pleasure that one gets from it. The strategy then for the sexual hedonist is to achieve a steady supply of new lovers to keep his sexual satisfaction at a high state. The problem is though, most humans do not live on sexual satisfaction alone, and need other things such as companionship and love from others. Now true abiding love, seems to be a time dependent phenomenon. A love/satisfaction curve could hypothetically be drawn as below.
(N.B love as opposed to infatuation)


Now consider a man who meets a "10" and sticks with her, a graph of the sexual pleasure/love curves could be visualised as follows:
Now note, his system happiness is greater than his potential sexual happiness after a while. Compare this to the "player approach":

By optimising for one parameter, sexual satisfaction, he has traded this off for deep abiding love. The rapid turnover of partners never lets deep abiding love develop. There is no doubt that he may be sexually more satisfied than than the man above, but his total "system" happiness is less than in the above graph. This is the dark side of "Game"; it's a uniparametric optimisation of the multiparametric human system.

Of course these graphs are simplifications, but they illustrate the logic behind a lot of human folly. The systemically optimised man, at any given point finds that any one of his particular desires remains unsatisfied, if he is unable to see the "big picture view" of his condition, he may be tempted to focus on one parameter at the expense of all the rest.

The thing to realise about earthly happiness is that it is not a satisfaction of every human desire, but a balance of them. A lot of human misery is caused by seeking a uniparametric solution to the problem of unhappiness. In trying to satisfy every one of our desires, or even one fully, happiness eludes us.

8 comments:

Simon Grey said...

While one partner is generally better than multiple partners, it is also true that multiple partners is better than no partners. And some PUAs have faced the choice between multiple partners and no partners (that is, either they learned Game and applied it or they went without "love").

Country Lawyer said...

Love is folly.

It is described thus through the ages by poets, authors, generals, religious men and philosphers.

Helen of Troy and Paris. Lancelot and Guinevere. Anthony and Cleopatra. Romeo and Juliet. Nietcheze and Simone.

I could write couples for hours that had love and not happiness.

In fact I would posit that love often has very little to do with happiness.

There are several problems with your graphs. First you posit the most unlikely of scenarios: Love and sex with a ten and how a person's life satsifaction would be better in that scenario.

More realistic would be a graph with love and sex with a five for life. Versus a player that hits somewhere around the average as well.

Which is better off? I would say the player.

Very different graphs indeed.

Further, love only deepens sometimes, it often dies and ends painfully (even if we had enforced marriage).

And people are not universal in their wants, some are stronger than others. The drive for sex may be greater than the drive for wealth for one man, while the opposite for another.

The Social Pathologist said...

@ Simon

This was not meant to be an anti-game post. I agree, one partner is better than none. If humans were simply sexual beings then ten partners would be better than one and so on.

However our happiness depends satisfying multiple desires, and neglecting these other desires in the pursuit of completely fulfilling one only makes us miserable.

Keoni Galt wrote a very good piece on the same theme, this time with regard to healthy eating. Part of the Obesity problem is due to eating rubbish. One way around this is to eat healthy home cooked meals. But in order home-cook you need to make time for it, in other words you have to work less.

For the average human being in the west, there is a trade off between maximising income and eating well.

A lot of the social pathology in our society comes as a result of maximising one parameter over all the others, resulting in a net system decline.

The Social Pathologist said...

@Country Lawyer.

As I get older, I am more and more of the opinion that love is the greatest thing of all.

However, by love, I don't mean infatuation, rather that deep constant love for the other person.

More realistic would be a graph with love and sex with a five for life. Versus a player that hits somewhere around the average as well.

The graphs are, of course, very simplistic. They are only dealing with two parameters, to appreciate what's going on here fully you have to be able to visualise N-dimensional space, since there are so many conflicting parameters at play all at once.

The unlikely scenarios were presented as a hopeful aid to clarity, not that they would happen in real life.

More realistic would be a graph with love and sex with a five for life. Versus a player that hits somewhere around the average as well.

The player definitely has a more vaired and presumably better sex life. Assuming that good sex is a function of partner count alone, whereas in reality we know that is not the case, other emotional factors are play as well.

I swear I'm not making this up, but yesterday I had a spectacularly successful player sobbing in my rooms. He let "the one" get away. It had been five years since she had left and he still wasn't able to "get over her". He had lots of sex with other women since then, but he still pined for her. What he missed most in her, was not her sexual ability but her personality factors. Human beings aren't easily satisfied.

And people are not universal in their wants, some are stronger than others. The drive for sex may be greater than the drive for wealth for one man, while the opposite for another.

That correct, but as I said to Simon, this was not meant to anti-promiscuity post. Men can destroy their lives just a easily in the excessive pursuit of wealth, sport, fame and so on.

Tom said...

A very wise post, except I have strong doubts as to whether sexual satisfaction correlates particularly well with 'rating'.

(I suspect status gratification does, which might be part of what you were measuring.)

The Social Pathologist said...

I have strong doubts as to whether sexual satisfaction correlates particularly well with 'rating'.

There is some truth to this. But I was trying to keep the graphs simple.

The_King said...

Aristotle said that man has two peaks that are accompanied by intense pleasure: sexual intercourse and thinking.

The human soul is a kind of ellipse and its phenomena are spread between its two foci, hence proves the folly of hedonism.

I have received greater sense of accomplishment or happiness from reaching educational or spiritual goals than satisfying my carnal desires.

The Social Pathologist said...

I have received greater sense of accomplishment or happiness from reaching educational or spiritual goals than satisfying my carnal desires.

I think one of the greatest difficulties with regard to Conservatism is getting across the idea that the virtuous life is the more pleasurable one in toto as compared to the hedonistic life. With cultivation, a man reaches a stage in his life where, while sex is good, some intellectual pursuits/pleasures are far far better. Bovine man simply can't comprehend how art, music and the written word can move so powerfully. More powerfully than sex.