On 2, I don’t mean to suggest having two versions of the truth—I mean we should just say “we want to maximise the number of people who have flourishing lives” or something broader like that, rather than “WALYs”, which sounds like an official metric, but isn’t, and is a bit goofy.
On 1 and 3, I still lean towards talking about wellbeing or flourishing, because happiness sounds too narrow. It depends a bit on who you’re talking to—many people don’t notice the distinction.
Ah, I see. I do think that makes sense: we stress the value of things besides health but shy away from using terms which make us look silly.
And yet whilst ‘well-being’ and ‘flourishing’ are good names, they seem problematically vague to my ears: I imagine a conversation where I say “I want to help people lead flourishing lives” and they pause before saying “I agree, QALYs sounds too narrow … but what exactly do you mean about leading a flourishing life? How are you defining/measuring that?” I think there’s an advantage, if you want to do cost-effectiveness, to having a clear, if slightly wrong, measure. QALYs have the virtue of providing a uniform score sheet.
On your last point, I think that reveals a problem about word use. I don’t see ‘happiness’ being used narrowly in ordinary language at all. It describes a whole host of things: the good life, well-being, life satisfaction, emotions, etc.
Hi Michael,
On 2, I don’t mean to suggest having two versions of the truth—I mean we should just say “we want to maximise the number of people who have flourishing lives” or something broader like that, rather than “WALYs”, which sounds like an official metric, but isn’t, and is a bit goofy.
On 1 and 3, I still lean towards talking about wellbeing or flourishing, because happiness sounds too narrow. It depends a bit on who you’re talking to—many people don’t notice the distinction.
Ah, I see. I do think that makes sense: we stress the value of things besides health but shy away from using terms which make us look silly.
And yet whilst ‘well-being’ and ‘flourishing’ are good names, they seem problematically vague to my ears: I imagine a conversation where I say “I want to help people lead flourishing lives” and they pause before saying “I agree, QALYs sounds too narrow … but what exactly do you mean about leading a flourishing life? How are you defining/measuring that?” I think there’s an advantage, if you want to do cost-effectiveness, to having a clear, if slightly wrong, measure. QALYs have the virtue of providing a uniform score sheet.
On your last point, I think that reveals a problem about word use. I don’t see ‘happiness’ being used narrowly in ordinary language at all. It describes a whole host of things: the good life, well-being, life satisfaction, emotions, etc.