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It doesn't seem that way to me at all. Surely, we need to optimize for population-level happiness or something like it, and it hardly seems evident that this is

It doesn't seem that way to me at all. Surely, we need to optimize for population-level happiness or something like it, and it hardly seems evident that this is compatible with optimizing for identical experiences. Besides, who is to say that "professional loneliness" is worse than the "personal loneliness" that your male cohorts experience? Do women generally want to trade easy access to optimal partners to avoid the tedium of negotiating relationship ambiguity? Even if they do want that, are they taking for granted the current balance (all groups are prone to think the grass on the other side is greener, after all). Are women even worse off overall in the first world? Men are more likely to be victims of almost every kind of violence, to be falsely convicted, to die younger, to die at the workplace, to lose child custody battles, to pay more in divorces, drafted into war, etc. Are these issues overall better than the issues women have to deal with? Is it safe to assume that the epistemological institutions charged with answering these questions (the media and social sciences) are trustworthy, given that they skew hard to one side of the political spectrum? I really don't know the answer, but I'm disappointed that these questions are so rarely broached in national debate. It seems like the epistemological institutions (universities, newsrooms, etc) responsible for addressing these questions prefer to ignore these questions and impugn the moral credentials of anyone who tries to answer them (if indeed these questions are invalid, surely an explanation would be more effective and expedient than an inquisition).

T2_t2 9y ago
When it comes to happiness, it is really interesting the choices people make. Thought experiment: in an ideal world, what is the preference that leads to 100/0 split in career choice? By that I mean in an ideal world, by how much does someone have to prefer career A over career B before there is a 100% chance people choose A? At an 80-20 preference for A, surely 100% of people choose A - why would you choose B when you overwhelmingly prefer A? But what about 60-40? Of even 51-49? Unlike say eating lunch, where you have 300 odd per year, which means you can have Thai 200 times, Italian 100 and other things the rest, given how costly most careers are to establish - University is time AND money, and progressing the career ladder is time - I think a rather small preference, closer to 51-49 than than 60-40, is going to lead, in an ideal world, to 100-0 A over B. Because why would anyone choose a lesser preference? In an unideal world, where the cost of in income over a lifetime is large, job prospects limited and risks of failing large, preference will be negated, muted or reversed. In an ideal world, that tiny preference is going to really matter. TL;DR Happiness is as much a measure of what you can reasonably choose from as what you actually choose.

T2_t2 9y ago

When it comes to happiness, it is really interesting the choices people make. Thought experiment: in an ideal world, what is the preference that leads to 100/0 split in career choice? By that I mean in an ideal world, by how much does someone have to prefer career A over career B before there is a 100% chance people choose A? At an 80-20 preference for A, surely 100% of people choose A - why would you choose B when you overwhelmingly prefer A? But what about 60-40? Of even 51-49? Unlike say eating lunch, where you have 300 odd per year, which means you can have Thai 200 times, Italian 100 and other things the rest, given how costly most careers are to establish - University is time AND money, and progressing the career ladder is time - I think a rather small preference, closer to 51-49 than than 60-40, is going to lead, in an ideal world, to 100-0 A over B. Because why would anyone choose a lesser preference? In an unideal world, where the cost of in income over a lifetime is large, job prospects limited and risks of failing large, preference will be negated, muted or reversed. In an ideal world, that tiny preference is going to really matter. TL;DR Happiness is as much a measure of what you can reasonably choose from as what you actually choose.