The Happiness Machine
I just read a book that I loved so much that my heart hurt when I finished the last page. It reminded me of Elan Mastai’s All Our Wrong Todays in the sense that you will feel such an ache as you move through the weirdness. It’s called Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams.
The heart of the book is a hand-held machine called Apricity that can tell you with a simple cheek swab what will make you happy. Not combat depression but move you from ennui to joy. Throughout the book, people either use or reject the device, choosing to know or remain in the dark about what will make them happy.
Because it’s a tricky thing. You don’t have to follow the machine’s advice, but how could you not? How could you discover that doing something as simple as eating tangerines will make you happy and then choose not to eat tangerines? And yet the suggestions range from benign (eat tangerines) to extreme (remove a healthy fingertip or cut yourself off entirely from your identical twin). And it comes with the knowledge that the act itself — no matter how painful it sounds in the moment — will bring you happiness if you trust the machine.
Because you’re told that the machine is 99.97% accurate. And what are the chances that you’ll fall in the .03%?
I think I would want to know. Maybe I would act on all the advice. Maybe I wouldn’t. But I think I would want to know… now. Meaning, I don’t know if I would have sat for the machine at every point in my life. When I was in the throes of infertility, would I have sat for the machine? Would I want to know that kind of secret when I was feeling so fragile? Am I only willing to take the risk right now because the step is lower to get to happiness?
Would you sit for a machine if it could tell you the three things that would make you happy, even if one of those things could be something you wouldn’t want to hear?
3 comments
Yes, I think I would. And I’ve added this book to my queue.
I would want to know, but I’d reserve the right to not take Apricity’s advice.
uhmmm. Wouldn’t it hinge on having blind trust in the machine? I mean, if you make up your own mind about what makes you happy you don’t need the machine anyway.
Maybe I am missing the point, but I don’t believe happiness is a secret, so I don’t believe a machine could tell me my secret.
Also, I think you have the perfect audience to know that 0.03% sounds small, but would make you doubly unhappy if it happens to be you. (Again). Doesn’t sound like it is worth it to move from ennui to joy.
Wishing you many happy springtime moments!
Commenting late because checked out the book from the library and read it to get the context.
Having fallen on the side of statistics that ranged from the less likely outcome to almost impossible outcome has messed – heavily – with my sense of probability. I mean, I can read a statistic and seeing something like 99% (or in this case, 99.97%) chance of x outcome and be reassured/worried depending on the heavily probable outcome. I can understand what that means and how to make a decision based on that – intellectually. But I’ve been that almost vanishing possibility and I’m now very aware that to the 1% or 0.03% these outcomes are real (for good or bad). And…if the recommendations ranged from the largely easy to implement and benign, that’s an easy statistical choice. But with the possibility of cutting off body parts or loved ones (among other hard choices), I’m not sure I’d want to know. Because what if that was the 0.03% wrong advice?