Research questions feelings

Hello guys,

I am doing a research on the quantified self and I would like to ask you 3 questions and answer me if you want with a metaphor and the reason for using this metaphor.

A) What are data to you? ( for example, you could say that they are slavery because it it exhausting to always monitor them)

B) what is illness to you?

C) What is happiness to you?

Please note that I will not use your name in any way and answer truthfully.

Thank you!

What are you researching for and what do you plan to do with the answers?

It’s in the area of cognitive linguistics and I want to see how quantified self movement shape thought. I am specifically interested in how we think of illness, hapinness and data due to quantified self and see if they have altered during the emergence of this movement.

I definitely will not use your personal information. Its just that when you have more answers, you can contrast them and be sure if the result is valid or not.

Oh brilliant, I love cognitive linguistics! (my degree way back in the 1990s was cognitive science - linguistics + comp sci)

Data about me is POWER because it gives me self-knowledge and it gives me the power to prove my statements when I am talking to authorities about the effects of things (I’ve talked about this elsewhere here)

Illness is my constant state (for reference: I’m severely disabled by chronic illness and have been since 1994)

Hapiness is … I’m not sure exactly how to answer that one pithily but it’s mostly about self-actualisation for me. I feel good when I can set goals and achieve them, even if the goals are what most people would think of as very small

Thank you so much for your answer! It was really insightful!!

I wish you the best! Stay safe!

Data is input to my decision making process. Better data means decisions will more likely lead to desired results.

Illness is an undesirable outcome of some health-related decisions, a likely outcome of failing to recognize and/or apply good data.

Happiness is the emotional state of satisfaction at achieving an acceptable rate desired outcomes, especially when those positive outcomes can be attributed to correctly recognizing and applying good data.

Hello Walter,

I really appreciate your answers but I am not sure if you used metaphors in them. You could say for example data is slavery or hapinness is freedom, etc.

“undesirable outcome of some health-related decisions” is pretty much a metaphor here, given that it’s definitely not true that health is completely (or even mostly) within the control of the individual. It doesn’t seem to be intended to be such though :slight_smile:

Thank you for comment Ms. Jeshyr! This reminded me of Sontag’s “illness as a metaphor” in which illness is regarded as a personality trait so I can see some evolution in the perception of illness here, since we can see that the ill person thinks that he /she is not regarded as responsible for their illness

It’s the thing I hate most about the whole kind of “wellness movement”, fuzzily defined as it is, that illness (especially chronic illness) is basically seen as a personal failing. One of the many ways society really craps on disabled people!!

Mr Walter, I thought again about your answers and I think they are fine! Thank for your time! Stay safe

Yeah Ms Ricky, I can see. But it’s a good thing that you know you are not responsible and you can protect yourself!