Sure, after 8 weeks, their happiness was equalized, but what about after 8 years, or a lifetime?
How many more positive experiences does having money unlock (innumerable) compared to how many positive experiences does being disabled prevent from happening (also innumerable)? Over a longer timescale, the differences between the momentum of good experiences versus the stagnation of having most of human activity inaccessible intuitively add up to be pretty large.
A good study would be to measure the happiness of paraplegics who won the lottery.
The Wikipedia article mentions further study showing that in some important disability cases, yes, indeed, the "happiness baseline" could move.
> In his archival data analysis, Lucas found evidence that it is possible for someone’s subjective well-being set point to change drastically, such as in the case of individuals who acquire a severe, long term disability.[15] However, as Diener, Lucas, and Scollon point out, the amount of fluctuation a person experiences around their set point is largely dependent on the individual’s ability to adapt
But what I find interesting is the overall underlying argument that for most people, we have a happiness baseline that is only slightly moved by external events.
"Happy experiences" is way to subjective for your argument to apply. For example, someone who becomes a paraplegic could actually be happier after becoming a paraplegic because they may appreciate life more, and thus be happier during the same experiences they had before.
You're not considering that the 'positive experiences' for someone who won the lottery vs. someone who is paraplegic are vastly different.
Sure, after 8 weeks, their happiness was equalized, but what about after 8 years, or a lifetime?
How many more positive experiences does having money unlock (innumerable) compared to how many positive experiences does being disabled prevent from happening (also innumerable)? Over a longer timescale, the differences between the momentum of good experiences versus the stagnation of having most of human activity inaccessible intuitively add up to be pretty large.
A good study would be to measure the happiness of paraplegics who won the lottery.