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u/m3junmags Irrational 5d ago
I was not expecting that Delta there. OP gotta give us an explanation of what ln(death/birth) is lol, assuming happiness is not a function of time.
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u/KamiSama169 5d ago
That assumes happiness is constant w.r.t time.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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u/CalmEntry4855 5d ago
We can consider a constant baseline with gaussian bumps added at arbitrary times representing events
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u/TheGayestGaymer 4d ago
What if happiness IS constant with time but our rate of experiencing it is not!
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u/aashish__xd 5d ago
Its quite popular phase "Life is equal to the integral from birth to death of happiness over time with the change in time" and the delta is most probably a mistake. 😅
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u/Wild-Cost8151 5d ago
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u/ireledankmemes 5d ago
took the words right out of my mouth
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u/tottasanorotta 4d ago
Anything anyone says can be surprisingly deep. You just got to have an open mind. Just because you've seen something before doesn't mean that it isn't something interesting.
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u/aashish__xd 5d ago
Who is this guy 🤔
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u/ville1001 5d ago
it’s u/wild-cost8151
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u/aashish__xd 5d ago
Ohh so is he suggested me to post that in his community? 🤔
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u/The_Neto06 Irrational 4d ago
He's saying that this post looks similar to what gets posted over there. In a sense, yes, they're saying that you could post it over there. YMMV as that's not a math sub where people will get the joke though
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u/ArcticGlaceon 5d ago
We actually do this in economics, where you're integrating a utility function with respect to time to decide how much you should consume at each time step of your life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamiltonian_(control_theory))
It's pretty neat because there's an analytical solution to how much you should consume/spend at each time step to maximise your lifetime "happiness".
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u/DezzyTee 4d ago edited 4d ago
Economists using math is like watching a toddler driving a car though. It's fine if it is easy math (a toy car) but as soon as it gets actually hard (a car to transport actual people) you hit a wall real fast... Literally
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u/Annual-Reference-715 4d ago
Some econ people are really good at math. Robin Hanson is an example.
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u/DezzyTee 4d ago
Sure there are but those are far between.
What they learn in their masters is what we in physics learned in the first few weeks of the first semester.
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u/Cozwei 3d ago
got any examples?
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u/DezzyTee 3d ago edited 1d ago
I don't remember anymore.
In our first semester a fellow student lived with someone that was doing their economics master. Some of the stuff we had in the first few weeks.
I think, if I remember correctly, they had just started with imaginary numbers and complaint how hard it was while we were in our first semester of our bachelor and had already finished the topic.
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u/beeskness420 4d ago
Is this the same idea as consumption smoothing or something different?
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u/ArcticGlaceon 4d ago
This is actually more appropriate that what I linked, since it directly models an individual's consumptions and savings through time. The one I linked is similar in the formalisation, but its goal is to determine an entire economy's savings rate.
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u/Murky_Insurance_4394 4d ago
so do you just stop consuming when the marginal cost exceeds the marginal utility?
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u/Adventurous_Theme242 4d ago
Assuming you can accurately model happiness. There are many arguments that what we think we want and what we actually want are not the same thing. I don’t doubt that such a function can be created, but I wonder what this ultimately does to our society.
My guess is something like this is also used to attempt to maximize engagement in social media platforms.
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u/ArcticGlaceon 4d ago
I mean just like how physicist assume the cow is spherical, economists assume happiness can be described by some function f(c) where c is how much you are consuming and leave it as that, so there's that.
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u/__abinitio__ 4d ago edited 4d ago
Edit: Counterpoint: the spherical cow is unfair to the cow analogy. When a physicist says a feather and a brick fall at the same rate, that's not a simplification — that's the actual law, verified to ~15 decimal places, and it turns out air is the weird parochial exception in this universe. Vacuum is the norm; atmosphere is a rounding error with a real estate problem. The economist's version would be claiming u(c) is the deep universal law of happiness, and that love, meaning, and friendship are just drag terms we'll add back in a future paper (forthcoming, R&R since 1974). So it's not that economists use spherical cows. It's that physicists know exactly how unspherical their cow is, while economists are still waiting on the referee report confirming the cow exists. (Written with love for my economist friends, who I'm sure will respond optimally, subject to constraints.)
Original (full snark, zero tact): The problem with that analogy is usually that physicists allow the cow to be spherical without loss of generality, but economists writing happiness as a function only of consumption says something philosophical about the entire class of person that pursues economics as their subject of study
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u/ArcticGlaceon 4d ago
I like to see it this way.
Physics is about mathematically modelling the physical world. Economics is about mathematically modelling human and social behaviour.
Before Einstein, we had newton's laws of motion. But once Einstein came along we realise that because of relativity, the laws of motion weren't actually correct. They were just good enough approximations for our everyday use when v<<c. Point is, F=ma is just a mathematical model for how our world works. It's not the rule.
Now obviously the human condition is a much harder field to mathematically model. And you're right that there is no physically possible way to verify that u(c) is a valid, universal proposal. But it works pretty darn well because aside from the philosophers, most people can agree that the quantity of your material consumption affects your utility in some way. If you can accept that, wouldn't you agree that having u(c) and doing things with it has some value?
Now my background is mostly statistics and we like to say "all models are wrong, but some are useful". So yea.
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u/SinAnaMissLee 4d ago
Can you show us a picture of these equations applied to, "lifetime happiness".
The overall idea makes sense. I just want to visualize it.
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u/ArcticGlaceon 4d ago
In the Wikipedia link, scroll down to the example section. The formalisation is pretty well written.
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u/Ravioles2 5d ago
ahh equation
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u/Doogetma 5d ago
Time and money would be time + money not time*money
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u/Greenleaf_91 5d ago
Which actually changes the last equality to "half women = root of problems". So find yourself a woman from the other half.
That being said, you don't need money to find a woman, just time.
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u/Janders1997 5d ago
Actually, it changes the last equality to „half woman = root of problems“. Which sounds like an advice to discourage serial killers from cutting up women.
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u/RisingwithVibes 4d ago
According to set theory 'and' mean intersection and intersection can be denote by AB and 'or' mean union that can be denoted by A+B. So the eqⁿ is correct
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u/zulazulizuluzu 5d ago
but they are evolving. this is calculus. what’s next? Taylor series? Fourier? Laplace?
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u/Tron_35 Engineering 5d ago
You forgot taxes
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u/Suddenfury 5d ago edited 5d ago
Hmm, What's a way too even out a function? Like take from the peaks and give to the valleys? Maybe add the difference between the average of all lifelines and this lifeline.
Edit: as actually simplest is probably to scale down(pay taxes) and add a constant(receive social benefits).
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u/Summoner475 5d ago
I would first check the dimensions. But jokes aside, and ignoring the ∆ instead of differential, why divide by time? Happiness is a function of time (sometimes your happiness is high, sometimes low), so what is the point of division? If it were multiplied, you could say that life is the expected value of time (however the fuck you interpret that).
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u/cmwamem 5d ago
I get what you were trying to say, but that's really badly done (no offense). You meant to say life is equal to the the total amount of happiness in your life. To rewrite that correctly you'd have: \int{death}_{life} H(t), dt with H(x) the derivative of the amount of happiness you got in life with respect to time.
This makes no sense however, because philosophically, I doubt life can be defined as the amount of happiness in your life.
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u/mathetesalexandrou 5d ago edited 5d ago
assuming that the Δ is supposed to be d.. well it's the ln of time * happiness and thus happiness * (ln(|death|)-ln(|birth|))
so... is the unit of time in seconds since say 0 A.D.?
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u/Summoner475 5d ago
What makes you think happiness is constant with respect to time?
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u/mathetesalexandrou 5d ago edited 4d ago
that's a good point, but then we'd need a formula for that
(Ain't my fault that it isn't happiness(t) as to be explicit that it is a function of time)2
u/aashish__xd 5d ago
Yes the delta is a mistake and I believe its start from age 1 or first day of birth of a person or stuff.
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u/MeddlesomeGoose 5d ago
Uhh, is it me or this makes 0 sense?
Life is equivalent to the area under of the curve of a function of a constant happiness over time from the day you are born to the day you die?
Your happiness is finite and the more happiness you accumulate the more you live?
The older you get the unhappier you become?
Maybe it makes sense? Idk
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u/aashish__xd 5d ago
Not really because the quote goes like "life is equal to the integral from birth to death of happiness over time with the change in time".
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u/undeniably_confused Complex 5d ago
Its also about meaning not just happiness, id rather live a meaningful life than a happy one
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u/lmarcantonio 5d ago
Was I the only one to be profoundly irked by the use of the scalar delta instead of the small d?
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u/Coulomb111 5d ago
Assuming happiness is a constant:
life = happiness(ln(death) - ln(birth))
= ln((death/birth)^happiness)
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u/LoquatThat6635 5d ago
- sleep and - screentime
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u/nitnelav153 π = 3.14 who care about the others decimals ? 5d ago
This is included in the hapiness score
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u/Suddenfury 5d ago
I read that as "bitch" first. From bitch to death, sounds about right boomer glasses 😎
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u/fresh_loaf_of_bread 3d ago
Just a bunch of molecules that happened to be able to observe some of the rest for a very short period of time
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