More nearby, my guess is that caring about this will be anti-selected for in EA, since it currently selects for people with above average neuroticism who use the resultant motivation structure to work on future threats and try to convince others they should worry more about future threats.
I have the opposite intuition. While EA demographics contain a lot of people with above-average neuroticism, the individuals I know in EA tend to be unusually appreciative of both how bad it is to suffer and how good it is to be happy:
“Rational fiction” (quite popular in EA circles) often contains deep exploration of positive emotion.
People encourage one another to try unusual experiences (chemical, romantic, narrative) for the sake of extra happiness.
Fewer people than in the general population are satisfied with “default” options for happiness (e.g. watching TV) -- sometimes because they care less about personal happiness, but often because they really want to go beyond the default and have experiences that are on the extreme positive end of the scale, because they are very physiologically or intellectually satisfying.
Standard nonprofit messaging is often along the lines of “help people live ordinary happy lives ”. EA messaging has a lot of that, mixed with some “help people survive the worst possible outcome” but also some “help people transcend the burdens of ordinary life and move forward into a future that could be much, much better than today”.
I don’t see the future in the latter case as “everyone has a reasonably productive farm and an extra room in their small house”, but as “everyone has access to all the wealth/knowledge they want, and all their preferences are satisfied unless they interfere with others’ preferences or run afoul of Fun Theory”.
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To put it more succinctly: people in EA tend to be nerdy optimizers, and many of us want to optimize not just “avoiding bad experiences”, but also “having good experiences”.
Fair. I may be over updating on the EAs I know who don’t seem particularly concerned that they are default stressed and unhappy. Also I think people living in high density cities underestimate how stressed and unhappy they actually are.
It’s a U shaped curve since rural folks are also unhappy. My own sense was that there was a phase shift somewhere between 100k and 250k (exact mapping to density I don’t know) related to whether the schelling points for social gathering condense or fracture. I’d recommend people find out for themselves by visiting smaller and happier places. People in SV for instance can spend time in Santa Cruz which is #2 in happiness in the nation.
I have the opposite intuition. While EA demographics contain a lot of people with above-average neuroticism, the individuals I know in EA tend to be unusually appreciative of both how bad it is to suffer and how good it is to be happy:
“Rational fiction” (quite popular in EA circles) often contains deep exploration of positive emotion.
People encourage one another to try unusual experiences (chemical, romantic, narrative) for the sake of extra happiness.
Fewer people than in the general population are satisfied with “default” options for happiness (e.g. watching TV) -- sometimes because they care less about personal happiness, but often because they really want to go beyond the default and have experiences that are on the extreme positive end of the scale, because they are very physiologically or intellectually satisfying.
Standard nonprofit messaging is often along the lines of “help people live ordinary happy lives ”. EA messaging has a lot of that, mixed with some “help people survive the worst possible outcome” but also some “help people transcend the burdens of ordinary life and move forward into a future that could be much, much better than today”.
I don’t see the future in the latter case as “everyone has a reasonably productive farm and an extra room in their small house”, but as “everyone has access to all the wealth/knowledge they want, and all their preferences are satisfied unless they interfere with others’ preferences or run afoul of Fun Theory”.
----
To put it more succinctly: people in EA tend to be nerdy optimizers, and many of us want to optimize not just “avoiding bad experiences”, but also “having good experiences”.
Fair. I may be over updating on the EAs I know who don’t seem particularly concerned that they are default stressed and unhappy. Also I think people living in high density cities underestimate how stressed and unhappy they actually are.
Can you say more about this?
I think there were some previous links in a debate about this on FB that I’m not finding now.
https://www.sciencealert.com/where-you-live-has-a-drastic-effect-on-your-happiness-levels
It’s a U shaped curve since rural folks are also unhappy. My own sense was that there was a phase shift somewhere between 100k and 250k (exact mapping to density I don’t know) related to whether the schelling points for social gathering condense or fracture. I’d recommend people find out for themselves by visiting smaller and happier places. People in SV for instance can spend time in Santa Cruz which is #2 in happiness in the nation.