4 ms·

What's progress, if not an increase of happiness?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
thundergolfer 9y ago
Even if we take it to be aggregate happiness to be progress, it can make a lot of sense to sacrifice one's own happiness to gain more happiness for others. We could measure a decrease in the happiness of a suddenly very driven and successful engineer alongside the increase in their income, take that surplus income, and then convert it into happiness for others by way of purchasing critical medicines for impoverished people. Summed up, it's possible for it to be good for certain people to decrease their own happiness to increase their outputted value, and then leverage that increase in value to provide much more happiness for many more than 1 other.
- shoo 9y ago
  Depending on how one defines the "objective function" for progress more or less anything we want (or don't want) can be rationalised One perspective might be defining progress to be maximising the expected long-term survival (that is, non-extinction) of our species. This framework could justify any amount of suffering of individuals - what's good for the population isn't necessarily good for individuals, and vice versa. https://nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html https://nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html If happiness is subjective, perhaps some individuals are naturally capable of greater levels of happiness than others -- https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-04-03 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-04-03 Another perspective might be to get a bit carried away with using accounting heuristics when trading off happiness now versus happiness in the future, and decide that a 4% annual happiness discount rate makes sense, so 100 units of happiness now is better than 2 units of happiness in 100 years time (this kind of valuation might be consistent with the human endeavour's response to the threat of climate change).
- a3n 9y ago
  > it can make a lot of sense to sacrifice one's own happiness to gain more happiness for others. If what you're doing would potentially create more "happiness," or "positive outcome" for others. But most of what most of anyone does has no significant or lasting impact. "Merely satisfactory" gets the truck to the dock on time, the Uber customer picked up and delivered, or the HN post replied to. Aiming at excellence is great, but in most cases pushing toward excellence at all personal cost, successful or not, doesn't really move the needle. Take care of yourself first, unless you're an extraordinary individual in extraordinary circumstances. Most of "this" just doesn't matter.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Even if we take it to be aggregate happiness to be progress, it can make a lot of sense to sacrifice one's own happiness to gain more happiness for others. We could measure a decrease in the happiness of a suddenly very driven and successful engineer alongside the increase in their income, take that surplus income, and then convert it into happiness for others by way of purchasing critical medicines for impoverished people. Summed up, it's possible for it to be good for certain people to decrease their own happiness to increase their outputted value, and then leverage that increase in value to provide much more happiness for many more than 1 other.

shoo 9y ago
Depending on how one defines the "objective function" for progress more or less anything we want (or don't want) can be rationalised One perspective might be defining progress to be maximising the expected long-term survival (that is, non-extinction) of our species. This framework could justify any amount of suffering of individuals - what's good for the population isn't necessarily good for individuals, and vice versa. https://nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html https://nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html If happiness is subjective, perhaps some individuals are naturally capable of greater levels of happiness than others -- https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-04-03 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-04-03 Another perspective might be to get a bit carried away with using accounting heuristics when trading off happiness now versus happiness in the future, and decide that a 4% annual happiness discount rate makes sense, so 100 units of happiness now is better than 2 units of happiness in 100 years time (this kind of valuation might be consistent with the human endeavour's response to the threat of climate change).
a3n 9y ago
> it can make a lot of sense to sacrifice one's own happiness to gain more happiness for others. If what you're doing would potentially create more "happiness," or "positive outcome" for others. But most of what most of anyone does has no significant or lasting impact. "Merely satisfactory" gets the truck to the dock on time, the Uber customer picked up and delivered, or the HN post replied to. Aiming at excellence is great, but in most cases pushing toward excellence at all personal cost, successful or not, doesn't really move the needle. Take care of yourself first, unless you're an extraordinary individual in extraordinary circumstances. Most of "this" just doesn't matter.