You cited a Gallup poll that said that 1 in 25 adults said that high school was the “worst period in their life.” You presented this as positive evidence, but this seems to me like a strong point against your thesis.
To illustrate this with a simple model, we can imagine that the average survey respondent is 40 years old and that they split up their life into 10 4-year “periods.” If the quality of people’s lives are about evenly distributed across time, we’d expect high school to be the worst period for 10% of respondents, which is way more than 4%.
More importantly, 54% of respondents to that same survey said that high school was a great period in their life, and 7% said it was the best period. This makes me skeptical of the rest of your argument.
To steelman against this contradictory evidence: it seems reasonably likely that people look back on their past with nostalgia, biasing them towards believing it was better than it was.
That’s true, I didn’t realize that… But I don’t actually think it’s incompatible with the rest of the argument.
even if it’s not the worst for everyone, it could still be one of the worst experiences for a lot of people (the 35% describing it as a so-so time in the Gallup poll). (related)
even if only 1 in 25 had a very bad time in high school, that would mean that their life satisfaction has to be a lot lower than baseline for the average to come out at −0.2. In particular, 0×0.96+x×0.04=−0.2, then x=−5 and we are in an extremely severe territory in terms of EQ5D.
your argument about nostalgia also appears very strong to me
You cited a Gallup poll that said that 1 in 25 adults said that high school was the “worst period in their life.” You presented this as positive evidence, but this seems to me like a strong point against your thesis.
To illustrate this with a simple model, we can imagine that the average survey respondent is 40 years old and that they split up their life into 10 4-year “periods.” If the quality of people’s lives are about evenly distributed across time, we’d expect high school to be the worst period for 10% of respondents, which is way more than 4%.
More importantly, 54% of respondents to that same survey said that high school was a great period in their life, and 7% said it was the best period. This makes me skeptical of the rest of your argument.
To steelman against this contradictory evidence: it seems reasonably likely that people look back on their past with nostalgia, biasing them towards believing it was better than it was.
That’s true, I didn’t realize that… But I don’t actually think it’s incompatible with the rest of the argument.
even if it’s not the worst for everyone, it could still be one of the worst experiences for a lot of people (the 35% describing it as a so-so time in the Gallup poll). (related)
even if only 1 in 25 had a very bad time in high school, that would mean that their life satisfaction has to be a lot lower than baseline for the average to come out at −0.2. In particular, 0×0.96+x×0.04=−0.2, then x=−5 and we are in an extremely severe territory in terms of EQ5D.
your argument about nostalgia also appears very strong to me