> Regarding 3: don't you think happiness should be optimized? If happiness is defined as the feeling one gets from winning a bingo game or watching a hilarious

> Regarding 3: don't you think happiness should be optimized? If happiness is defined as the feeling one gets from winning a bingo game or watching a hilarious comedian, then nope, I sure don't. If happiness is defined as behaving in the way that causes the largest possible number to appear in the final cell of the National Happiness Spreadsheet of the Ministry of Happiness, then no, I don't care about that either. If happiness is defined as the vague and general satisfaction of human wants--the economist's "utility"--then yes, or at least much closer to yes. But this definition is too vague to lead to any widely shared ideas on how to measure it or pursue it. It does suggest to me that the measuring and optimizing needs to be done by the person experiencing the wants and the satisfying. But I already know not everyone agrees with this. :) * I watched the Harris lecture. A few thoughts: He really didn't make his claim that science answers moral questions. If we assume the moral premise that humans should not suffer, then some other things logically follow, and perhaps science will later tell us some useful conclusions there that we don't know now. I agree that there is enough hard-wired similarity in human nature that some premises like "people should not suffer" can be widely accepted and used as a starting point. Nevertheless, widely shared assumptions is not the same thing as science having "proved" those assumptions. I don't think we have a lot of problem even today with the widely shared assumptions. It's the ones that aren't shared that lead to the conflict. My feeling is Harris wants to be the guy that gets to tell everyone else what science has told us about morality, and then also get to declare the argument over because it isn't his opinion, instead it is "science". It is manipulative, and dishonest, to claim that science will be able to answer moral questions objectively, and then proceed to "prove" this by using examples of behavior that you know in advance your audience will find offensive and outraging. Any preacher or imam can "prove" the will of God using similar tactics. He hints that brain state will eventually provide the new knowledge that we need to answer questions of right and wrong. If I could, I would suggest that he reread Brave New World. There was very little suffering or unhappiness in that world--but I, and I think most people, wouldn't want to live there.