One view like that is the view of people who think that no one or almost no one has a life worth living—the suffering outweighs all the good. I’m pretty sympathetic to this view, more than I am sympathetic to any of the views outlined above. And this would make EA quite wrong (when we are saving lives and not merely making them better).
I didn’t mean to sound like I’m committed to the view. I’m merely sympathetic to it, in the sense that I think reasonable people could disagree about this. I don’t yet know if I think it’s right.
Have you seen any of the empirical psychology literature suggesting that humans have evolved to be highly optimistic and evaluate their lives as better than they actually are? That literature, combined with more common worries about evaluating happiness (I’m a hedonist) make me worried that most people don’t have lives that are good on the whole.
Thought I’d just chime in with a relevant reference, in case anyone was curious:
Diener, E., Kanazawa, S., Suh, E. M., & Oishi, S. (2014). Why People Are in a Generally Good Mood. Personality and Social Psychology Review. doi: 10.1177/1088868314544467
“Evidence shows that people feel mild positive moods when no strong emotional events are occurring, a phenomenon known as positive mood offset. We offer an evolutionary explanation of this characteristic, showing that it improves fertility, fecundity, and health, and abets other characteristics that were critical to reproductive success. We review research showing that positive mood offset is virtually universal in the nations of the world, even among people who live in extremely difficult circumstances. Positive moods increase the likelihood of the types of adaptive behaviors that likely characterized our Paleolithic ancestors, such as creativity, planning, mating, and sociality. Because of the ubiquity and apparent advantages of positive moods, it is a reasonable hypothesis that humans were selected for positivity offset in our evolutionary past. We outline additional evidence that is needed to help confirm that positive mood offset is an evolutionary adaptation in humans and we explore the research questions that the hypothesis generates.”
Certainly chimes more with my intuition.
For the curious;-):
‘adaptive functioning’ or the ability to handle strong emotional events, seems to be ameanable to change through practice (but there might be a selection effect worth mulling over)
http://self-compassion.org/UTserver/pubs/baermeditators.pdf (don’t worry, journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, just published here to get past paywall)
I have seen such literature, but you can get around some of the looking back bias problems by recording how you feel in the moment (provided you aren’t pressured to answer dishonestly). I am sure a lot of people have miserable lives, but I do think that when I believe I have been fairly happy for the past 4 years, it is very unlikely the belief is false (because other people also thought I was happy to).
I do think the concern about accuracy of beliefs about experience warrants finding a better way to evaluate people’s happiness in general though. It think such analysis could change the way people set up surveys to measure things like QALYs. I think it is quite likely that the value of years lived disabled or with old age are better than people think.
Yeah, I think you’re all-around right. I’m less sure that my life over the past two years has been very good (my memory doesn’t go back much father than that), and I’m very privileged and have a career that I enjoy. But that gives me little if any reason to doubt your own testimony.
One view like that is the view of people who think that no one or almost no one has a life worth living—the suffering outweighs all the good. I’m pretty sympathetic to this view, more than I am sympathetic to any of the views outlined above. And this would make EA quite wrong (when we are saving lives and not merely making them better).
Interesting view—how did you come to it? What do you say to the millions/billions that report being very happy/satisfied with life?
I didn’t mean to sound like I’m committed to the view. I’m merely sympathetic to it, in the sense that I think reasonable people could disagree about this. I don’t yet know if I think it’s right.
Have you seen any of the empirical psychology literature suggesting that humans have evolved to be highly optimistic and evaluate their lives as better than they actually are? That literature, combined with more common worries about evaluating happiness (I’m a hedonist) make me worried that most people don’t have lives that are good on the whole.
Thought I’d just chime in with a relevant reference, in case anyone was curious:
Diener, E., Kanazawa, S., Suh, E. M., & Oishi, S. (2014). Why People Are in a Generally Good Mood. Personality and Social Psychology Review. doi: 10.1177/1088868314544467
“Evidence shows that people feel mild positive moods when no strong emotional events are occurring, a phenomenon known as positive mood offset. We offer an evolutionary explanation of this characteristic, showing that it improves fertility, fecundity, and health, and abets other characteristics that were critical to reproductive success. We review research showing that positive mood offset is virtually universal in the nations of the world, even among people who live in extremely difficult circumstances. Positive moods increase the likelihood of the types of adaptive behaviors that likely characterized our Paleolithic ancestors, such as creativity, planning, mating, and sociality. Because of the ubiquity and apparent advantages of positive moods, it is a reasonable hypothesis that humans were selected for positivity offset in our evolutionary past. We outline additional evidence that is needed to help confirm that positive mood offset is an evolutionary adaptation in humans and we explore the research questions that the hypothesis generates.”
http://psr.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/09/09/1088868314544467.abstract
Thanks for sharing! That’s good to know.
Certainly chimes more with my intuition. For the curious;-): ‘adaptive functioning’ or the ability to handle strong emotional events, seems to be ameanable to change through practice (but there might be a selection effect worth mulling over) http://self-compassion.org/UTserver/pubs/baermeditators.pdf (don’t worry, journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, just published here to get past paywall)
Long term meditators also report feeling positive background moods that are quite dramatic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_30JzRGDHI
Which doesn’t necessarily change much about the debate.
I have seen such literature, but you can get around some of the looking back bias problems by recording how you feel in the moment (provided you aren’t pressured to answer dishonestly). I am sure a lot of people have miserable lives, but I do think that when I believe I have been fairly happy for the past 4 years, it is very unlikely the belief is false (because other people also thought I was happy to).
I do think the concern about accuracy of beliefs about experience warrants finding a better way to evaluate people’s happiness in general though. It think such analysis could change the way people set up surveys to measure things like QALYs. I think it is quite likely that the value of years lived disabled or with old age are better than people think.
Yeah, I think you’re all-around right. I’m less sure that my life over the past two years has been very good (my memory doesn’t go back much father than that), and I’m very privileged and have a career that I enjoy. But that gives me little if any reason to doubt your own testimony.