Unscientific happiness?

I can imagine the rolling eyes of those readers who know me in person... :-). I can be the very personification of a cloudy day, so what could I possibly contribute on the subject of happiness? I have found myself related to and surrounded by people who seem to me as having crossed the boundary into being "inexplicably happy". Similar to how one of those cloudy days also brings welcome rain, I attempt to mysteriously provide smiles through my disdain of excessively happy people :-).

The basis of this post is an article that I received by email about scientific thinking. The scientist (by profession and occasionally by personality) that I am, I have decided to find an explanation for the above phenomenon in a scientific way. My conclusion thus far is summarized in the title.

In what would seem as an example of the above personification, my first hypothesis is that the biggest reason for happiness in this world is ignorance. I propose this hypothesis by contraposition: I abhor being ignorant. Attempting to stay true to my profession, it leads me to long quests of thoroughly unnecessary and self-fortifying information (much like 24-hour news channels) all of which lead to less-than-happy conclusions (also much like 24-hour news channels). Notice how "frustrated" always seems to be linked to artists and scientists, but never to those who are "happy-go-lucky"? What seems to make people happier as they age is that either they or their brain learn to ignore the same facts that made them miserable earlier!

My second hypothesis arises from the reasoning behind my first hypothesis. Another reason for why people seem happy is that they are unscientific. Time and again it has confounded me as to how the same people who spend their money, time and strength to look pretty, young and vivacious also fervently celebrate the day of the year that announces that they are not as young as they used to be! No scientist of any repute could live with such a contradiction! Subjectivity of interpretation, the very bane of scientific thought, seems to be the strange key to happiness

I have to admit testing these hypotheses was tricky: logically arguing how a happy subject was in fact ignorant or illogical tends to invalidate them as subjects for this experiment :-). On the other hand the same test sometimes fortified the second hypothesis: happy people readily admit they could be unscientific and even mysteriously seem to conclude that this precise trait makes them happy!

So my conclusion so far is that happiness is just unscientific. Interestingly, that conclusion makes me happier!