Given the methodological challenges in measuring the neutral point, I would have some hesitation to credit any conclusions that diverged too much from what revealed preferences imply. A high neutral point implies that many people in developing countries believe their lives are not worth living. So I’d look for evidence of behavior (either in respondents or in the population more generally) that corroborated whether people acted in a way that was consistent with the candidate neutral point.
For instance, although money, family, and other considerations doubtless affect it, studying individuals who are faced with serious and permanent (or terminal) medical conditions might be helpful. At what expected life satisfaction score do they decline treatment? If the neutral point is relatively close to the median point in a country, one would expect to see a lot of people decide to not obtain curative treatment if the results would leave them 1-2 points less satisfied than their baseline.
You might be able to approximate that by asking hypothetical questions about specific situations that you believe respondents would assess as reducing life satisfaction by a specified amount (disability, imprisonment, social stigma, etc.), and then ask whether the respondent believes they would find life still worth living if that happened. I don’t think that approach works to establish a neutral point, but I think having something more concrete would be an important cross-check on what may otherwise come across as an academic, conjectural exercise to many respondents.
A high neutral point implies that many people in developing countries believe their lives are not worth living.
This isn’t necessarily the case. I assume that if people described their lives as having negative wellbeing, this wouldn’t imply they thought their life was not worth continuing.
People can have negative wellbeing and still want to live for the sake of others or causes greater than themselves.
Life satisfaction appears to be increasing over time in low income countries. I think this progress is such that many people who may have negative wellbeing at present, will not have negative wellbeing their whole lives.
Edit: To expand a little, for these reasons, as well as the very reasonable drive to survive (regardless of wellbeing), I find it difficult to interpret revealed preferences and it’s unclear they’re a bastion of clarity in this confusing debate.
Anectdotally, I’ve clearly had periods of negative wellbeing before (sometimes starkly), but never wanted to die during those periods. If I knew that such periods were permanent, I’d probably think it was good for me to not-exist, but I’d still hesitate to say I’d prefer to not-exist, because I don’t just care about my wellbeing. As Tyrion said “Death is so final, and life is so full of possibilities.”
I think these difficulties should highlight that the difficulties here aren’t just localized to this area of the topic.
Thanks for these points! The idea that people care about more than their wellbeing may be critical here. I’m thinking of a simplified model with the following assumptions: a mean lifetime wellbeing of 5, SD 2, normal distribution, wellbeing is constant through the lifespan, with a neutral point of 4 (which is shared by everyone).
Under these assumptions, AMF gets no “credit” (except for grief avoidance) for saving the life of a hypothetical person with wellbeing of 4. I’m really hesitant to say that saving that person’s life doesn’t morally “count” as a good because they are at the neutral point. On the one hand, the model tells me that saving this person’s life doesn’t improve total wellbeing. On the other hand, suppose I (figuratively) asked the person whose life was saved, and he said that he preferred his existence to non-existence and appreciated AMF saving his life.
At that point, I think the WELLBY-based model might not be incorporating some important data—the person telling us that he prefers his existence to non-existence would strongly suggest that saving his life had moral value that should indeed “count” as a moral good in the AMF column. His answers may not be fully consistent, but it’s not obvious to me why I should fully credit his self-reported wellbeing but give zero credence to his view on the desirability of his continued existence. I guess he could be wrong to prefer his continued existence, but he is uniquely qualified to answer that question and so I think I should be really hesitant to completely discount what he says. And a full 30% of the population would have wellbeing of 4 or less under the assumptions.
Even more concerning, AMF gets significantly “penalized” for saving the life of a hypothetical person with wellbeing of 3 who also prefers existence to non-existence. And almost 16% of the population would score at least that low.
Of course, the real world is messier than a quick model. But if you have a population where the neutral point is close enough to the population average, but almost everyone prefers continued existence, it seems that you are going to have a meaningful number of cases where AMF gets very little / no / negative moral “credit” for saving the lives of people who want (or would want) their lives saved. That seems like a weakness, not a feature, of the WELLBY-based model to me.
Given the methodological challenges in measuring the neutral point, I would have some hesitation to credit any conclusions that diverged too much from what revealed preferences imply. A high neutral point implies that many people in developing countries believe their lives are not worth living. So I’d look for evidence of behavior (either in respondents or in the population more generally) that corroborated whether people acted in a way that was consistent with the candidate neutral point.
For instance, although money, family, and other considerations doubtless affect it, studying individuals who are faced with serious and permanent (or terminal) medical conditions might be helpful. At what expected life satisfaction score do they decline treatment? If the neutral point is relatively close to the median point in a country, one would expect to see a lot of people decide to not obtain curative treatment if the results would leave them 1-2 points less satisfied than their baseline.
You might be able to approximate that by asking hypothetical questions about specific situations that you believe respondents would assess as reducing life satisfaction by a specified amount (disability, imprisonment, social stigma, etc.), and then ask whether the respondent believes they would find life still worth living if that happened. I don’t think that approach works to establish a neutral point, but I think having something more concrete would be an important cross-check on what may otherwise come across as an academic, conjectural exercise to many respondents.
This isn’t necessarily the case. I assume that if people described their lives as having negative wellbeing, this wouldn’t imply they thought their life was not worth continuing.
People can have negative wellbeing and still want to live for the sake of others or causes greater than themselves.
Life satisfaction appears to be increasing over time in low income countries. I think this progress is such that many people who may have negative wellbeing at present, will not have negative wellbeing their whole lives.
Edit: To expand a little, for these reasons, as well as the very reasonable drive to survive (regardless of wellbeing), I find it difficult to interpret revealed preferences and it’s unclear they’re a bastion of clarity in this confusing debate.
Anectdotally, I’ve clearly had periods of negative wellbeing before (sometimes starkly), but never wanted to die during those periods. If I knew that such periods were permanent, I’d probably think it was good for me to not-exist, but I’d still hesitate to say I’d prefer to not-exist, because I don’t just care about my wellbeing. As Tyrion said “Death is so final, and life is so full of possibilities.”
I think these difficulties should highlight that the difficulties here aren’t just localized to this area of the topic.
Thanks for these points! The idea that people care about more than their wellbeing may be critical here. I’m thinking of a simplified model with the following assumptions: a mean lifetime wellbeing of 5, SD 2, normal distribution, wellbeing is constant through the lifespan, with a neutral point of 4 (which is shared by everyone).
Under these assumptions, AMF gets no “credit” (except for grief avoidance) for saving the life of a hypothetical person with wellbeing of 4. I’m really hesitant to say that saving that person’s life doesn’t morally “count” as a good because they are at the neutral point. On the one hand, the model tells me that saving this person’s life doesn’t improve total wellbeing. On the other hand, suppose I (figuratively) asked the person whose life was saved, and he said that he preferred his existence to non-existence and appreciated AMF saving his life.
At that point, I think the WELLBY-based model might not be incorporating some important data—the person telling us that he prefers his existence to non-existence would strongly suggest that saving his life had moral value that should indeed “count” as a moral good in the AMF column. His answers may not be fully consistent, but it’s not obvious to me why I should fully credit his self-reported wellbeing but give zero credence to his view on the desirability of his continued existence. I guess he could be wrong to prefer his continued existence, but he is uniquely qualified to answer that question and so I think I should be really hesitant to completely discount what he says. And a full 30% of the population would have wellbeing of 4 or less under the assumptions.
Even more concerning, AMF gets significantly “penalized” for saving the life of a hypothetical person with wellbeing of 3 who also prefers existence to non-existence. And almost 16% of the population would score at least that low.
Of course, the real world is messier than a quick model. But if you have a population where the neutral point is close enough to the population average, but almost everyone prefers continued existence, it seems that you are going to have a meaningful number of cases where AMF gets very little / no / negative moral “credit” for saving the lives of people who want (or would want) their lives saved. That seems like a weakness, not a feature, of the WELLBY-based model to me.