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If people wore an accurate net misery score on their foreheads, I wonder if it would reduce or increase identity based conflict? Would we look at the scores of

If people wore an accurate net misery score on their foreheads, I wonder if it would reduce or increase identity based conflict? Would we look at the scores of people at the intersection of disadvantaged groups, see that they were suffering a lot more, and increase our support for them? Or would we see that putatively privileged classes suffer about as much as others, and conclude that people are people, and our sympathy and support for each other shouldn't focus on demographics? I wonder if an objective misery score is possible, maybe with a portable continuous brain scanning device. I'd think that the data is in there, if only we had the tech to extract it.

kazagistar 7y ago
I dont think this article has any reading which says that privileged classes suffer the same as others. They still suffer, but the ways and chance of people in non white non affluent groups suffering is higher. The point was just to not be black and white about privilege as the only source of suffering.
mistermann 7y ago
An interesting variation of this idea: a crowdsourced website that performs an incredibly vigorous and intellectually honest evaluations of discrete situations, encompassing as many possible perspectives as possible. Resulting in something like: "From perspective <x>, this group could be considered unfairly disadvantaged by <quantity X>." "From perspective <y> this group could be considered unfairly disadvantaged by <quantity Y>." "Unfairly", and all other terms, would require very strict definitions. The crowd sourcing part would come in by people pointing out logical flaws or missing perspectives. I wonder if this might improve people's ability to more "correctly" evaluate reality, as well as make the boundary between matters of fact and matters of opinion more obvious, rather than all opinions being little more than a mishmash of subconscious heuristics based on personal experiences and a partial understanding (likely unbalanced) of the relevant facts. I would consider this an attempt at finally applying the same academic rigor (that has yielded such success) in the hard sciences to the far more complicated soft sciences. Does anyone know of any undertaking that does this in any way?

kazagistar 7y ago

I dont think this article has any reading which says that privileged classes suffer the same as others. They still suffer, but the ways and chance of people in non white non affluent groups suffering is higher. The point was just to not be black and white about privilege as the only source of suffering.

mistermann 7y ago

An interesting variation of this idea: a crowdsourced website that performs an incredibly vigorous and intellectually honest evaluations of discrete situations, encompassing as many possible perspectives as possible. Resulting in something like: "From perspective <x>, this group could be considered unfairly disadvantaged by <quantity X>." "From perspective <y> this group could be considered unfairly disadvantaged by <quantity Y>." "Unfairly", and all other terms, would require very strict definitions. The crowd sourcing part would come in by people pointing out logical flaws or missing perspectives. I wonder if this might improve people's ability to more "correctly" evaluate reality, as well as make the boundary between matters of fact and matters of opinion more obvious, rather than all opinions being little more than a mishmash of subconscious heuristics based on personal experiences and a partial understanding (likely unbalanced) of the relevant facts. I would consider this an attempt at finally applying the same academic rigor (that has yielded such success) in the hard sciences to the far more complicated soft sciences. Does anyone know of any undertaking that does this in any way?