From a utilitarian perspective, it would seem there are substantial benefits to accurate measures of welfare.
I was listening to Adam Mastroianni discuss the history of trying measure happiness and life satisfaction and it was interesting to find a level of stability across the decades. Could it really be that the increases in material wealth do not result in huge objective increases in happiness and satisfaction for humans? It would seem the efforts to increase GDP and improve standard of living beyond the basics may be misdirected.
Furthermore, it seems like it would be extremely helpful in terms of policy creation to have an objective unit like a util.
We could compare human and animal welfare directly, and genetically engineer animals to increase their utils.
While efforts might not super successful, it would seem very important to merely improve objective measures of wellbeing by say 10%.
From a utilitarian perspective, it would seem there are substantial benefits to accurate measures of welfare.
I was listening to Adam Mastroianni discuss the history of trying measure happiness and life satisfaction and it was interesting to find a level of stability across the decades. Could it really be that the increases in material wealth do not result in huge objective increases in happiness and satisfaction for humans? It would seem the efforts to increase GDP and improve standard of living beyond the basics may be misdirected.
Furthermore, it seems like it would be extremely helpful in terms of policy creation to have an objective unit like a util.
We could compare human and animal welfare directly, and genetically engineer animals to increase their utils.
While efforts might not super successful, it would seem very important to merely improve objective measures of wellbeing by say 10%.