Counter-theory: there is no “raw” happiness. There are multiple distinct “raw” inputs (current and historic dopamine levels, multiple kinds of pain, etc.) which contribute with various correlations to perceived happiness, and these components have a fairly complex relationship among each other which result in perceived happiness. Further, experienced perceived happiness has a different equation than remembered perceived happiness or projected future perceived happiness.
I’m a big fan of adding logarithms as the first shot at improvement when something in nature seems nonlinear. But you really need to have candidate measures of the inputs BEFORE you try to guess at the shape.
Separately, I’m suspicious of attempts to aggregate this sort of thing—there’s a value system embedded in the aggregation, and no apriori reason to prefer to aggregate any (or all) of the inputs over aggregating the output. What is it you’re actually trying to optimize (in operational, measurable terms)?
Re: counter-theory - would you also argue there is no “raw” wealth? To me it seems the argument is broadly the same—there are many distinct inputs, some with hard-to-determine value, some with complex realtionships. (A fresh Harvard graduates beeing “poorer” than farmers in Nepal due to loans, etc.). Still, the aggregate concept is useful and in practice is often quantified.
I would argue you can guess at the shape by observing how some sort of “addition” operation on the inputs changes the output. (Like you can have fairly complex function F with many inputs, which is then perceived through some non-linear lens, like P(F()) … you can still guess at P() from partial derivative of P(F()), if you assume e.g. F() is nothing worse than some sort of polynomial )
Re: suspicion. This sort of aggregation goes on in many places when making decisions. Apparently the sort of problem this propsal hints at is usually not reflected at all, and the aggregation goes on by simply averaging the perceptions.
Counter-theory: there is no “raw” happiness. There are multiple distinct “raw” inputs (current and historic dopamine levels, multiple kinds of pain, etc.) which contribute with various correlations to perceived happiness, and these components have a fairly complex relationship among each other which result in perceived happiness. Further, experienced perceived happiness has a different equation than remembered perceived happiness or projected future perceived happiness.
I’m a big fan of adding logarithms as the first shot at improvement when something in nature seems nonlinear. But you really need to have candidate measures of the inputs BEFORE you try to guess at the shape.
Separately, I’m suspicious of attempts to aggregate this sort of thing—there’s a value system embedded in the aggregation, and no apriori reason to prefer to aggregate any (or all) of the inputs over aggregating the output. What is it you’re actually trying to optimize (in operational, measurable terms)?
Re: counter-theory - would you also argue there is no “raw” wealth? To me it seems the argument is broadly the same—there are many distinct inputs, some with hard-to-determine value, some with complex realtionships. (A fresh Harvard graduates beeing “poorer” than farmers in Nepal due to loans, etc.). Still, the aggregate concept is useful and in practice is often quantified.
I would argue you can guess at the shape by observing how some sort of “addition” operation on the inputs changes the output. (Like you can have fairly complex function F with many inputs, which is then perceived through some non-linear lens, like P(F()) … you can still guess at P() from partial derivative of P(F()), if you assume e.g. F() is nothing worse than some sort of polynomial )
Re: suspicion. This sort of aggregation goes on in many places when making decisions. Apparently the sort of problem this propsal hints at is usually not reflected at all, and the aggregation goes on by simply averaging the perceptions.