Hi Jonathan, You wrote: "on your proposal, it seems that if it's harder to 'be happy' than it is to 'be unhappy,' then it should be easier to 'not be happy' than to 'be unhappy' - all it would take is to not have one of the many conditions that happiness requires." I think posing questions about people "being happy" and "not being happy" are bound to mislead. It would be better to talk about being completely or maximally happy, reasonably happy, a least a little happy, and not being happy at all. This is still pretty simplistic but at least it is a step in the right direction. My hypothesis here is that since you stick with 'happy' and 'not happy' the question about strength of agreement ends up tracking "degrees of happiness", not whatever else it is meant to track (degrees of confidence?). The idea is that someone who thinks J is a least a little happy will be reluctant to strongly agree with 'J is not happy'. The truth in your thought that any significant lack of happiness is sufficient for the truth of 'J is not happy' is this: any significant lack of happiness is sufficient for the truth of 'J is not completely happy'. But that does not entail or support 'J is not a little happy' or even 'J is not reasonably happy'.