Comments on: Can Drugs Make You Happy?

By: annon

annon — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 19:08:43 +0000

Correlation doesn’t imply causation
http://xkcd.com/552/

By: DDB9000

DDB9000 — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 20:51:41 +0000

I’m a bit late to this, but I also noticed the gaps in the ‘Druggiest’ map, in particular in the northeastern US. Not only is New England not coloured in, but also New York state, with the apparent exception of Long Island. Is someone saying by this graphic that the druggiest part of the Northeast doesn’t include most of NY and all of NYC? I find that a tad hard to believe. But Long Island being druggier than NYC, that’s probably true…

By: Derek

Derek — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:37:50 +0000

I think the correlation is pretty obvious. The happiest people will more likely have some extra money sitting around that they can spend on drugs. It would be pretty hard for starving people in the developing world to afford the luxury of a high now and again. So is happiness an indicator of drug use, or is drug use and indicator of happiness?

By: Alison

Alison — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 21:23:10 +0000

what about me?
i’m happy and i’m straight edged i live in america, what the fuck does this make me??
many of my friends here also don’t do drugs and we’re happier not doing them because it fucked up our lives.

By: Nad

Nad — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 00:34:42 +0000

The color marks are at Burma instead of Thailand on Happiest and Blissed Out graphs but the lists of countries below do not mention Burma.

By: AnotherEndeavor

AnotherEndeavor — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 01:20:25 +0000

correlation implies causation!!!! YAY lets all do drugs!

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:30:13 +0000

very “soft” analysis on this one. good for sparking controversy and debate, but not really useful in terms of driving meaningful conversation.

i mean, you could also do a overlay of happiness with many things… like for instance birthrate or gdp… would the data suggest that countries with lower birthrates or higher gdp tend to be happier? i also like the suggestion above to overlay highest suicide rates…

love the infographics visualization of data space though. fantastic stuff!

By: Michelle

Michelle — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 01:34:36 +0000

Definitely an issue defining where drugs are considered legal/ illegal.
There is certainly a high use of opium in the middle east, south asia that is not represented here – not to say that they will show on the ‘happiness’ map!

Michelle

By: bob

bob — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:31:44 +0000

well, what about alaska, it was blue in the first slide, but not highlighted in the happy slide, and green in the final, does alaska not deserve happiness?

By: Phronemophile

Phronemophile — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:32:55 +0000

I think you may have a definitional problem: Since drug laws vary, “illegal drugs” doesn’t mean the same thing everywhere. This would, incidentally, explain the Netherlands’ low drug-use rating; if you included the use of drugs that are legal there but not, e.g., in the US, I suspect the rating would rise.