Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I am a little torn about valuing pure intelligence effects. On one hand it seems silly to only focus on the income effect when we know that education likely increases intelligence, quality of democratic participation, socialization, wisdom, etc. but on the other hand, when I tried to find evidence for education increasing health or life satisfaction beyond what we would expect from the income effects, I did not find much (I mention this briefly towards the end of the post). I would want to be wiser and more intelligent partly because I would expect to be able to live a more satisfied life, and to be able to make better choices that would make me happier and healthier. If the additional intelligence doesn’t seem to be actually increasing heath or life satisfaction, it makes me more suspicious of the claim that it is really producing a valuable kind of intelligence or wisdom. On the other hand, I do believe that life satisfaction is only one of many morally valuable things. Maybe the (overly convenient) reconciliation of these intuitions is to say that health interventions likely have these other effects too, where a healthier person gains the ability to make more free decisions, and potentially live a more social and fuller life.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I am a little torn about valuing pure intelligence effects. On one hand it seems silly to only focus on the income effect when we know that education likely increases intelligence, quality of democratic participation, socialization, wisdom, etc. but on the other hand, when I tried to find evidence for education increasing health or life satisfaction beyond what we would expect from the income effects, I did not find much (I mention this briefly towards the end of the post). I would want to be wiser and more intelligent partly because I would expect to be able to live a more satisfied life, and to be able to make better choices that would make me happier and healthier. If the additional intelligence doesn’t seem to be actually increasing heath or life satisfaction, it makes me more suspicious of the claim that it is really producing a valuable kind of intelligence or wisdom. On the other hand, I do believe that life satisfaction is only one of many morally valuable things. Maybe the (overly convenient) reconciliation of these intuitions is to say that health interventions likely have these other effects too, where a healthier person gains the ability to make more free decisions, and potentially live a more social and fuller life.