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> Is the pursuit of art for art's sake valuable? That's a subjective question. When it comes to public policy the vast majority of what should be questions (an

> Is the pursuit of art for art's sake valuable? That's a subjective question. When it comes to public policy the vast majority of what should be questions (and are often turned into bullet points instead because we don't want to discuss things) are able to be answered, even if we don't like the answers we get. Things like, "Does better education lower jail populations?", or "Do lower taxes stimulate the economy?" and things like that have an answer, somewhere. The real problem is getting people to A: Understand the answer, and B: Be willing to discard previously held notions and move forward with what the data tells them.

mc32 10y ago
I understand, but things can get thorny. Does keeping a population uneducated lead to happier people? Or, is there an optimized ratio of educated vs uneducated that leads to better population stability? Yes, ok, do we enforce that? That said, I lean more towards technocratic solutions [that is solutions and policies driven by data, even if data can shift over time] over gut-feeling or popular solutions.
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  Again though, you're attaching to metrics that are inherently un-knowable. A population being happy boils down to people being happy, and every person has their own subjective definition of happy, which is then filtered through the lens of self-reporting. If you goal is to create a happy society, then the people in that society should be allowed the maximum freedom possible to acquire knowledge, perform work, create art, etc. as makes them happy. To define their own profession, if you will, including "professions" that are not market valuable. Utopia, basically, which I think is actually becoming within reach if we can all manage to not kill each other in the next century or so.
  - mc32 10y ago
    In a sense, yes, it's unknowable, but in a softer sense, it is. You can poll people with doctoral, master's, bachelor's associate's, high school graduates, and people who didn't get past high school, didn't get past elementary and see what the results are and make a determination as to what education level might make people happiest.

mc32 10y ago

I understand, but things can get thorny. Does keeping a population uneducated lead to happier people? Or, is there an optimized ratio of educated vs uneducated that leads to better population stability? Yes, ok, do we enforce that? That said, I lean more towards technocratic solutions [that is solutions and policies driven by data, even if data can shift over time] over gut-feeling or popular solutions.

FussyZeus 10y ago
Again though, you're attaching to metrics that are inherently un-knowable. A population being happy boils down to people being happy, and every person has their own subjective definition of happy, which is then filtered through the lens of self-reporting. If you goal is to create a happy society, then the people in that society should be allowed the maximum freedom possible to acquire knowledge, perform work, create art, etc. as makes them happy. To define their own profession, if you will, including "professions" that are not market valuable. Utopia, basically, which I think is actually becoming within reach if we can all manage to not kill each other in the next century or so.
- mc32 10y ago
  In a sense, yes, it's unknowable, but in a softer sense, it is. You can poll people with doctoral, master's, bachelor's associate's, high school graduates, and people who didn't get past high school, didn't get past elementary and see what the results are and make a determination as to what education level might make people happiest.