I love this post! Solarpunk was my first intuition as well, I think there is a lot of good evidence that green and natural environments support happiness and productivity, and so I don’t think it is actually out of alignment with utilitarianism or EA at all.
I have a theory of reality which makes aesthetics the fundamental force of the universe. To demonstrate this, if effective altruism is successful in colonizing space and ends up determining the shape of the future of the universe, then this “shape” will be whatever aesthetic shape we have determined creates maximum utility.
I think aesthetics is a much better fundamental for utilitarianism than pleasure, which intuitively seems quite base and basic. Therefore, I agree that aesthetics are exceedingly important in figuring out what future we want to create.
Aesthetics as the foundation of utilitarianism, rather than pleasure, is definitely an interesting idea. Perhaps less tractable because beauty is much harder to define in a coherent way than physical pleasure, but as you say, the additional complexity might be why it actually matters more.
I love this post! Solarpunk was my first intuition as well, I think there is a lot of good evidence that green and natural environments support happiness and productivity, and so I don’t think it is actually out of alignment with utilitarianism or EA at all.
I have a theory of reality which makes aesthetics the fundamental force of the universe. To demonstrate this, if effective altruism is successful in colonizing space and ends up determining the shape of the future of the universe, then this “shape” will be whatever aesthetic shape we have determined creates maximum utility.
I think aesthetics is a much better fundamental for utilitarianism than pleasure, which intuitively seems quite base and basic. Therefore, I agree that aesthetics are exceedingly important in figuring out what future we want to create.
Aesthetics as the foundation of utilitarianism, rather than pleasure, is definitely an interesting idea. Perhaps less tractable because beauty is much harder to define in a coherent way than physical pleasure, but as you say, the additional complexity might be why it actually matters more.