What is the public’s views, visions and ideas of what a good future will look like?
The idea here is that a clear vision of a what a good future looks like has been a key part of successful long-term policy making to date (based on experiences in Wales and Portugal). The hope is a clear vision of what the public want helps make long-term decision making feel easier to democratic policy makers, it helps them to explain and justify a focus on the long-term and should ultimately helps policy-makers prioritise the long-term more.
I’ve been playing around with the idea of doing something in this direction—if any collaborators want to work on doing some survey or experimental work exploring this, feel free to reach out!
respondents can omit morally further individuals in their considerations
so a good future for all sentient beings would have to be specified or skillfully implied by questions leading to this one
replies can only include what respondents can imagine, can be influenced by popular media portrayals, and may focus on solving personal problems
for example, a person in a negative relationship who sees commercials that portray a product providing positive emotions may reply that people [like them] would have products to feel good—this does not identify the fundamental problems or include others’ needs
thus, the ability to empathize with different alternatives, even those not commonly portrayed, should be offered and inclusivity in mental image invited
advanced economies’ public may seek to secure a good future for itself, even risking the institutionalization of norms negative or suboptimal for others
thus, this survey should be run in different parts of different economies
but then, especially in emerging economies, ways to mitigate experimenter bias should be found
So, I would pay attention to the questions specifics to make appropriate thought-through recommendations to policymakers.
The alternative is to have a broad solution, such as continuously improving the welfare of all sentience, and then ask the public to endorse it by a sequence of type/wording of questions or solicit answers that can accommodate the inclusion of consideration/can be interpreted as such (for example, ‘do you want future good for all?’ - yes!) - this should have much lower critical thinking requirements.
What is the public’s views, visions and ideas of what a good future will look like?
The idea here is that a clear vision of a what a good future looks like has been a key part of successful long-term policy making to date (based on experiences in Wales and Portugal). The hope is a clear vision of what the public want helps make long-term decision making feel easier to democratic policy makers, it helps them to explain and justify a focus on the long-term and should ultimately helps policy-makers prioritise the long-term more.
I’ve been playing around with the idea of doing something in this direction—if any collaborators want to work on doing some survey or experimental work exploring this, feel free to reach out!
I am doing work on this in the UK. Will PM you.
Edit: I do plan to do some of this. So if anyone else is interested in helping with such work on the UK do let me know.
The issues here can be that
respondents can omit morally further individuals in their considerations
so a good future for all sentient beings would have to be specified or skillfully implied by questions leading to this one
replies can only include what respondents can imagine, can be influenced by popular media portrayals, and may focus on solving personal problems
for example, a person in a negative relationship who sees commercials that portray a product providing positive emotions may reply that people [like them] would have products to feel good—this does not identify the fundamental problems or include others’ needs
thus, the ability to empathize with different alternatives, even those not commonly portrayed, should be offered and inclusivity in mental image invited
advanced economies’ public may seek to secure a good future for itself, even risking the institutionalization of norms negative or suboptimal for others
thus, this survey should be run in different parts of different economies
but then, especially in emerging economies, ways to mitigate experimenter bias should be found
So, I would pay attention to the questions specifics to make appropriate thought-through recommendations to policymakers.
The alternative is to have a broad solution, such as continuously improving the welfare of all sentience, and then ask the public to endorse it by a sequence of type/wording of questions or solicit answers that can accommodate the inclusion of consideration/can be interpreted as such (for example, ‘do you want future good for all?’ - yes!) - this should have much lower critical thinking requirements.