Don't Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in LIfe

Eh, I'm not buying it. What makes me happy isn't necessarily anything close to what their studies would indicate.

Cute on the surface, but in some ways a very depressing book. The schtick is that he wrote this book because the data showed that the most highlighted parts of his previous book were self-help advice bits. Some dating advice: while conventionally attractive people do best on the apps, runners-up have extreme looks: “blue hair, body art, wild glasses, or shaved heads.” They’re only attractive to a subset of people, but those people really find them attractive. Sexy occupations are often sexier to het women than higher salaries: A man in the hospitality industry who earns $200K is as attractive to het women as a male firefighter who earns $60K (male lawyers, police officers, firefighters, soldiers and doctors do best, if you’re interested), though there’s depressing sexism in the differences: a woman’s occupation doesn’t matter once you take her attractiveness into account (though we know from elsewhere that attractiveness influences occupational success).

At the same time, your satisfaction with a partner can be predicted more by your overall life satisfaction, depression status, and affect than by any characteristics you share or don’t share with the partner. Shared demographic characteristics and the conventional attractiveness of one’s partner don’t seem helpful at all in predicting relationship success. So, a good rational actor would seek out “massively undervalued groups in the dating market”: short men, extremely tall women, Asian men, African-American women, men in less desirable fields for men (education, hospitality, science, construction or transportation), and conventionally less attractive men and women. Your best bet for happiness is looking for a person who is satisfied with life, attaches securely, is conscientious, and has a growth mindset.

Likewise, “parents” in the abstract don’t have much effect on life expectancy, overall health, education, religiosity, and adult income (that is, compared to the other things like overall circumstances that surround kids, including wealth). They can modestly affect religious affiliation, drug/alcohol use and sexual behavior—especially of teens—and how kids feel about their parents. But some neighborhoods are really good neighborhoods to raise kids and you should move there. This was the most frustrating/shocking part of the book, where he wrote about neighborhood choice as if it were a … choice for a lot of people.

The same problem emerged in the chapter about how to become a successful artist. The core thesis is one I wholeheartedly believe: The harder you work, the luckier you get. Artists who show at many venues or travel for many gigs in different places are likelier—not likely, but likelier--to hit it big, and they are likelier to be able to sustain themselves as an artist. But not once did he discuss the ways in which “work hard/produce lots of work” is itself something to which not everyone has access. I think he’d say that he’s giving self-help advice, not policy advice; it is the job of policy to change things until “the harder you work, the luckier you get” is equally available to anyone, but it comes off as “if you weren’t able to work hard and make lots of instances of art, you don’t deserve to succeed at art.” Or maybe the similarly depressing, “if you aren’t able to make lots of art, maybe become an accountant.” Instead, he directs us not to “whine” that our art is better than insiders’, because “most of the people inside the club started their lives outside the club. They had to do something to become a vouched-for artist whose career was on cruise control.” Although it was hilarious to read about Bob Dylan forgetting that he’d written a song that he heard sung by Joan Baez.

Further, because “I’m not writing a legal treatise; I am writing a self-help book,” he argues that—whether you want to succeed as a creative or in other businesses—you should look for “local monopolies,” because “having legal protection against competiton is a huge assistance.” This is why car dealerships make so many millionaires—state laws make it hard to open a new dealership. On the flip side, it’s pointless to open a business that competes with an existing monopolist.

In related news, based on happiness studies, it’s helpful to work satisfaction to work with your friends, to work from home, and to work listening to music. But being a fan of a particular sports team tends to make you less happy, because even if your team is a winning one, the joys of winning get familiar while the sting of individual losses never does. “Being a passionate fan of four sports teams … is roughly the equivalent for one’s mood of being sick in bed an extra 2.2 days every year.” Alcohol doesn’t much improve the experience of going to a show, having sex, hanging out with friends, watching TV, or reading—the underlying activities do most of the mood elevation work—but it does improve the experience of traveling/commuting, waiting in line, resting/relaxing (which doesn’t on its own make us as happy as we think it will), smoking, and washing/dressing/grooming.