I agree it would be interesting to gather specific data on such questions by asking people. A lot depends on the actual life of someone who evaluates their life satisfaction at 2⁄10. Do they experience a great deal of suffering, though not extreme/ unbearable? Or are they reasonably happy much of the time, but see no hope of improving their material wellbeing, especially when they see the kinds of lives people have in richer countries? 2⁄10 may mean different things to different people. The life satisfaction measure is just a momentary cognitive assessment, whereas strong negative affect, experienced over long durations, is in a sense more real. Trying to eliminate the very worst, literally unbearable experiences – in humans and in animals – seems to me very reasonable.
You could also ask the person with 2⁄10 life satisfaction whether they would agree to live in a rich country but have excruciating attacks for several hours a day for at least 2-3 months/year. And for the preferences elicited with such questions to really be meaningful, the respondent would have to know what it’s really like, and to be able to compare stretches of both experiences. Brian Tomasik has referred to different utility functions of people imagining and even consenting to experience extreme suffering, and people actually experiencing it. I doubt many people would choose cluster headaches after experiencing them, regardless of the rest of their life circumstances.
In practice, of course, it isn’t a binary choice anyways, and we can devote resources to improving access to effective treatment for cluster headache while trying to alleviate global poverty.
I agree it would be interesting to gather specific data on such questions by asking people. A lot depends on the actual life of someone who evaluates their life satisfaction at 2⁄10. Do they experience a great deal of suffering, though not extreme/ unbearable? Or are they reasonably happy much of the time, but see no hope of improving their material wellbeing, especially when they see the kinds of lives people have in richer countries? 2⁄10 may mean different things to different people. The life satisfaction measure is just a momentary cognitive assessment, whereas strong negative affect, experienced over long durations, is in a sense more real. Trying to eliminate the very worst, literally unbearable experiences – in humans and in animals – seems to me very reasonable.
You could also ask the person with 2⁄10 life satisfaction whether they would agree to live in a rich country but have excruciating attacks for several hours a day for at least 2-3 months/year. And for the preferences elicited with such questions to really be meaningful, the respondent would have to know what it’s really like, and to be able to compare stretches of both experiences. Brian Tomasik has referred to different utility functions of people imagining and even consenting to experience extreme suffering, and people actually experiencing it. I doubt many people would choose cluster headaches after experiencing them, regardless of the rest of their life circumstances.
In practice, of course, it isn’t a binary choice anyways, and we can devote resources to improving access to effective treatment for cluster headache while trying to alleviate global poverty.
(Yep, I’m not having a go at the mission here, more at the nuances of measurement)