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).
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. :)