Thank you for your work. It seems like a really important thing to study. Thank you for taking the time to lay your your plans so clearly.
Do you think your work will at any point reach onto how individuals could live that would make them more happu or have greater well being? I think there is room for publising a kind of workflow/ lifehacks to help peoeple know how their lives could be better. I acknolwedge that’s not what you speak about here but it seems adjacent. Perhaps another reader could point me in the direction of this.
We think well-being consists in happiness, defined as a positive balance of enjoyment over suffering. Understood this way, this means that when we reduce misery, we increase happiness.
Sure though there are some kinds of misery you don’t want to reduce. I could choose not to attend my fathers funeral and that would reduce misery. Do you have any idea how you will attempt to account for “good sadness” in any way? If you will avoid those kinds of interventions, how will you choose your interventions and how will you avoid bias in this?
Hello Nathan. I think HLI will probably focus on what we can do for others. There is already quite a lot of work by psychologists on what individuals can do for themselves, see e.g. The How of Happiness by Lyubormirsky and what is called ‘positive psychology’ more broadly. Hence, our comparative advantage and counterfactual impact will be on how best to altruistically promote happiness.
Sure though there are some kinds of misery you don’t want to reduce
I think we should be maximising happiness over any organism’s whole lifespan; hence, some sadness now and then may be good for maximising happiness over the whole life. It’s an empirical question how much sadness is optimal for maximum lifetime happiness.
On the funeral point, I think you’re capturing an intuition about what we ought to do rather than what makes life go well for someone: you might think that not going the funeral would make your life go better for you, but that you ought to go anyway. Hence, I don’t think your point counts against happiness being what makes your life go well for you (leaving other considerations to the side).
Thank you for your work. It seems like a really important thing to study. Thank you for taking the time to lay your your plans so clearly.
Do you think your work will at any point reach onto how individuals could live that would make them more happu or have greater well being? I think there is room for publising a kind of workflow/ lifehacks to help peoeple know how their lives could be better. I acknolwedge that’s not what you speak about here but it seems adjacent. Perhaps another reader could point me in the direction of this.
Sure though there are some kinds of misery you don’t want to reduce. I could choose not to attend my fathers funeral and that would reduce misery. Do you have any idea how you will attempt to account for “good sadness” in any way? If you will avoid those kinds of interventions, how will you choose your interventions and how will you avoid bias in this?
Hello Nathan. I think HLI will probably focus on what we can do for others. There is already quite a lot of work by psychologists on what individuals can do for themselves, see e.g. The How of Happiness by Lyubormirsky and what is called ‘positive psychology’ more broadly. Hence, our comparative advantage and counterfactual impact will be on how best to altruistically promote happiness.
I think we should be maximising happiness over any organism’s whole lifespan; hence, some sadness now and then may be good for maximising happiness over the whole life. It’s an empirical question how much sadness is optimal for maximum lifetime happiness.
On the funeral point, I think you’re capturing an intuition about what we ought to do rather than what makes life go well for someone: you might think that not going the funeral would make your life go better for you, but that you ought to go anyway. Hence, I don’t think your point counts against happiness being what makes your life go well for you (leaving other considerations to the side).
Yeah, fair points. :)