@Westrim: I too was extremely disappointed to find no sign that Fournier-Goldman Happiness Units actually exist.
However, at a risk of sounding geekly (horrors! ok, it's true) there is a wealth of scholarly writing and articles on the Quantification of Happiness.
Including this great summary of the issue at the learning channel
http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/measure-happiness.htmIn short, the most most common methods today are the "Revised Oxford Happiness Scale" (
http://www.meaningandhappiness.com/oxford-happiness-questionnaire/214/) and the "Satisfaction with Life Scale" (
http://tbims.org/combi/swls/)
Except from the learning channel article:
Quantifying happiness most commonly relies on self-reporting. Happiness surveys such as the Revised Oxford Happiness Scale ask a comprehensive set of questions, while the Satisfaction with Life Scale poses only five. Generally, these polls ask people to rate their satisfaction about various aspects of their lives on a scale. For example, one of the most critical questions asked in the World Values Survey is:
"Taking all things together, would you say you are very happy, rather happy, not very happy or not at all happy?"
In any case, I just love the ways this comic shows a mad scientist can show love, of course he has to quantify it, how else would you be able to accurately measure changes of state and take appropriate scaled action to address a deficiency?
Hannelore clearly was suffering from OCD, but she took action and moved to earth in a wonderfully brave and bold move to fix herself. That she succeeded for the most part is a testament to the person she is inside.
That said, imagine how Dr. Ellicott-Chatham must have felt? His only daughter was broken and he couldn't fix her. Aware of his own social limitations, all the AIs he created to always be there for her were likewise unable to help except in the most minor of ways. When he could focus on it, he must have felt quite sad and responsible for it all.
As a parent myself, I know i would feel guilty if i raised my child on a space station surrounded mostly by holographic AI friends who likewise have social interaction problems due to a lack of common human experience and socialization and she turned out to have quantifiable mental illness and social development issues.
oh and I might add both how much really love QC since i've followed it more than a year and that this is my first post here - lol