Stepping back first: Iām quite morally uncertain, but the moral theory I have the highest degree of belief in is āsomething like classical hedonistic utilitarianism, with a moral circle that includes basically sentient beings, across any point in timeā. (My moral circle therefore may or may not include mammals, insects, digital minds, etc., depending on whether they āempirically turn out to be sentientāāthough itās quite unclear what that means. For expected value reasons, concerns about digital minds, insects, etc. play a substantial role in my priorities.)
The classical hedonistic utilitarianism bit (setting aside the moral circles bit) makes me very strongly inclined to agree that:
what really matters is how (human) wellbeing has changed over time, and
that itās unfortunate that discussion/āstudies of āgrowthā and āprogressā often focus on things that may not be strongly correlated with (human) wellbeing.
Iād say the focus is, as you suggest, often on āsatisfying peopleās stated preferencesā. But Iād even go further and say that itās often on one of the following things:
what the person in this discussion or doing this study thinks is a typical or ideal preference
what that person themselves thinks is terminally valuable (regardless of preferences)
whatever is easiest to measure/ādiscuss and seems plausibly related somehow to wellbeing, preferences, or valuable things
Two EAs whoāve done what seems to me good work in relation to subjective wellbeing, its measurement, and its correlation with other things are Michael Plant and Derek Foster. (Though I donāt think they focused much on history.)
...but then thereās the moral circles bit. This makes me think that (a) human wellbeing is unlikely to be a dominating concern, and (b) wellbeing at the moment or so far is unlikely to be a dominating concern.
So I care about present-day human wellbeing primarily to the extent that it correlates with across-all-time, across-all-sentient-life wellbeing. And this means that, for instrumental reasons, I probably actually should pay more attention to other proxies, like GDP or technological developments, than to wellbeing. (This doesnāt mean itās clear to me that GDP growth or technological developments tend to be good, but that theyāre likely important, for good or ill. See differential progress.)
So, in contrast to what I might have said a few years ago when my moral circle hadnāt expanded to consider nonhumans and future beings more, I wouldnāt personally be extremely excited about historical analysis of changes in human wellbeing over time, and what affected those changes. But:
I think thatād be quite exciting from a human-centric, non-longtermist perspective
I think itās still net-positive, and maybe quite positive, from my perspective, because understanding this may help us make various predictions about important aspects of the future, and work out how we should intervene
Iāll sort-of elaborate on this in a separate comment
Youāve made some really good points here and I agree with most of it! And weāre on the same page in terms of āhedonistic utilitarianism, with a moral circle that includes basically all sentient beings, across any point in timeā.
I guess my main motivation for wanting to see a historical study of well-being is because I feel that, to fully understand what makes humans happy, it is valuable to consider a wide range of possible human life experiences. Studying history does this: we can consider a wide range of societies, lifestyles, circumstances etc, and ask which humans were happy and which were suffering. And comparing this to standard āprogressā measures such as violence and life expectancy can help us understand whether interventions to improve such measures are the best we can do. Then this can help us design and implement future strategies to improve well-being moving forward.
I think these are good points.
Stepping back first: Iām quite morally uncertain, but the moral theory I have the highest degree of belief in is āsomething like classical hedonistic utilitarianism, with a moral circle that includes basically sentient beings, across any point in timeā. (My moral circle therefore may or may not include mammals, insects, digital minds, etc., depending on whether they āempirically turn out to be sentientāāthough itās quite unclear what that means. For expected value reasons, concerns about digital minds, insects, etc. play a substantial role in my priorities.)
The classical hedonistic utilitarianism bit (setting aside the moral circles bit) makes me very strongly inclined to agree that:
what really matters is how (human) wellbeing has changed over time, and
that itās unfortunate that discussion/āstudies of āgrowthā and āprogressā often focus on things that may not be strongly correlated with (human) wellbeing.
Iād say the focus is, as you suggest, often on āsatisfying peopleās stated preferencesā. But Iād even go further and say that itās often on one of the following things:
what the person in this discussion or doing this study thinks is a typical or ideal preference
what that person themselves thinks is terminally valuable (regardless of preferences)
whatever is easiest to measure/ādiscuss and seems plausibly related somehow to wellbeing, preferences, or valuable things
Two EAs whoāve done what seems to me good work in relation to subjective wellbeing, its measurement, and its correlation with other things are Michael Plant and Derek Foster. (Though I donāt think they focused much on history.)
...but then thereās the moral circles bit. This makes me think that (a) human wellbeing is unlikely to be a dominating concern, and (b) wellbeing at the moment or so far is unlikely to be a dominating concern.
So I care about present-day human wellbeing primarily to the extent that it correlates with across-all-time, across-all-sentient-life wellbeing. And this means that, for instrumental reasons, I probably actually should pay more attention to other proxies, like GDP or technological developments, than to wellbeing. (This doesnāt mean itās clear to me that GDP growth or technological developments tend to be good, but that theyāre likely important, for good or ill. See differential progress.)
So, in contrast to what I might have said a few years ago when my moral circle hadnāt expanded to consider nonhumans and future beings more, I wouldnāt personally be extremely excited about historical analysis of changes in human wellbeing over time, and what affected those changes. But:
I think thatād be quite exciting from a human-centric, non-longtermist perspective
I think itās still net-positive, and maybe quite positive, from my perspective, because understanding this may help us make various predictions about important aspects of the future, and work out how we should intervene
Iāll sort-of elaborate on this in a separate comment
Youāve made some really good points here and I agree with most of it! And weāre on the same page in terms of āhedonistic utilitarianism, with a moral circle that includes basically all sentient beings, across any point in timeā.
I guess my main motivation for wanting to see a historical study of well-being is because I feel that, to fully understand what makes humans happy, it is valuable to consider a wide range of possible human life experiences. Studying history does this: we can consider a wide range of societies, lifestyles, circumstances etc, and ask which humans were happy and which were suffering. And comparing this to standard āprogressā measures such as violence and life expectancy can help us understand whether interventions to improve such measures are the best we can do. Then this can help us design and implement future strategies to improve well-being moving forward.