Epistemic status: Iāve only spent perhaps 15 minutes thinking about these specific matters, though Iāve thought more about related things.
Iād guess that happiness levels (while of course intrinsically important) wouldnāt be especially valuable as a metric of how well a global health/ādevelopment intervention is reducing existential risks. I donāt see a strong reason to believe increased happiness (at least from the current margin) leads to better handling of AI risk and biorisk. Happiness may correlate with x-risk reduction, but if so, itād probably due to other variables affecting both of those variables.
Metrics that seem more useful to me might be things like:
quality of reasoning and evidence used for key political and corporate decision-making
Though operationalising this is of course difficult
willingness to consider not just risks but also benefits of technological and economic development
This is tricky because I think people often overestimate or overweight the risks from various developments (e.g., GMO crops), especially if our focus is on just the coming years or decades. So weād want to somehow target this metric to the āactuallyā risky developments, or to āconsideringā risks in a reasonable way rather than just in general.
levels of emissions
levels of corruption
The last two of those metrics might be ādirectlyā important for existential risk reduction, but also might serve as a proxy for things like the first two metrics or other things we care about.
I also think well-being is not the ideal metric for what type of development would reduce x-risk either. When I mention the Gross Nation Happiness metric this is just one measure currently being used which actually includes things like good governance and environmental impact among many other things. My point was that growth in GDP is a poor measure of success and that creating a better metric of success might be a crucial step in improving the current system. I think a measure which attempts to quantify some of the things you mention would be wonderful to include in such a metric and would get the world thinking about how to improve those things. GNH is just one step better IMO than just seeking to maximize economic return. For more on GNH: https://āāophi.org.uk/āāpolicy/āānational-policy/āāgross-national-happiness-index/āā
Oh, ok. I knew of āgross national happinessā as (1) a thing the Bhutan government talked about, and (2) a thing some people mention as more important than GDP without talking precisely about how GNH is measured or what the consequences of more GNH vs more GDP would be. (Those people were primarily social science teachers and textbook authors, from when I taught high school social science.)
I wasnāt aware GNH had been conceptualised in a way that includes things quite distinct from happiness itself. I donāt think the people Iād previously heard about it from were aware of that either. Knowing that makes me think GNH is more likely to be a useful metric for x-risk reduction, or at least that itās in the right direction, as you suggest.
At the same time, I feel that, in that case, GNH is quite a misleading term. (Iād say similar about the Happy Planet Index.) But thatās a bit of a tangent, and not your fault (assuming you didnāt moonlight as the king of Bhutan in 1979).
Epistemic status: Iāve only spent perhaps 15 minutes thinking about these specific matters, though Iāve thought more about related things.
Iād guess that happiness levels (while of course intrinsically important) wouldnāt be especially valuable as a metric of how well a global health/ādevelopment intervention is reducing existential risks. I donāt see a strong reason to believe increased happiness (at least from the current margin) leads to better handling of AI risk and biorisk. Happiness may correlate with x-risk reduction, but if so, itād probably due to other variables affecting both of those variables.
Metrics that seem more useful to me might be things like:
quality of reasoning and evidence used for key political and corporate decision-making
Though operationalising this is of course difficult
willingness to consider not just risks but also benefits of technological and economic development
This is tricky because I think people often overestimate or overweight the risks from various developments (e.g., GMO crops), especially if our focus is on just the coming years or decades. So weād want to somehow target this metric to the āactuallyā risky developments, or to āconsideringā risks in a reasonable way rather than just in general.
levels of emissions
levels of corruption
The last two of those metrics might be ādirectlyā important for existential risk reduction, but also might serve as a proxy for things like the first two metrics or other things we care about.
I also think well-being is not the ideal metric for what type of development would reduce x-risk either. When I mention the Gross Nation Happiness metric this is just one measure currently being used which actually includes things like good governance and environmental impact among many other things. My point was that growth in GDP is a poor measure of success and that creating a better metric of success might be a crucial step in improving the current system. I think a measure which attempts to quantify some of the things you mention would be wonderful to include in such a metric and would get the world thinking about how to improve those things. GNH is just one step better IMO than just seeking to maximize economic return. For more on GNH: https://āāophi.org.uk/āāpolicy/āānational-policy/āāgross-national-happiness-index/āā
Oh, ok. I knew of āgross national happinessā as (1) a thing the Bhutan government talked about, and (2) a thing some people mention as more important than GDP without talking precisely about how GNH is measured or what the consequences of more GNH vs more GDP would be. (Those people were primarily social science teachers and textbook authors, from when I taught high school social science.)
I wasnāt aware GNH had been conceptualised in a way that includes things quite distinct from happiness itself. I donāt think the people Iād previously heard about it from were aware of that either. Knowing that makes me think GNH is more likely to be a useful metric for x-risk reduction, or at least that itās in the right direction, as you suggest.
At the same time, I feel that, in that case, GNH is quite a misleading term. (Iād say similar about the Happy Planet Index.) But thatās a bit of a tangent, and not your fault (assuming you didnāt moonlight as the king of Bhutan in 1979).