How to be happy

The utterly charming Seth Roberts, best-selling author and paragon of scientific  self-experimentation, visited GMU last week.

Seth told us how to be happy.  "See other people’s faces in the morning."  Faces on TV work as well as real faces.  Conversational distance is ideal.  In his view, seeing faces at night makes people unhappy.

The best way to sleep better is to stand all day.  Also you should stop eating breakfast.  Seth claims we are programmed to wake about three hours before our usual breakfast time.  (Oddly this started happening to me about two weeks before his visit.)

Most college professors have too few skills to be useful teachers and we should reward diverse kinds of achievement.  Given the importance of division of labor in modern economies, there should be many ways get an "A."  Students should receive more individualized attention.

Here is Alex’s earlier post on Seth, and here.  Here is Seth’s blog.

On the bottom of Seth’s home page is some fascinating Powerpoint on economics: "In the beginning, hobbies.  Diversify expertise: procrastination."

Here are three things statistics textbooks don’t tell you.

Seth is a true American original and his work deserves the attention of every thinking person.

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