Thanks. I guess I should not have included the simple utilitarian calculation, as it seems to work as a red herring :( Mea culpa.
Qiaochu: Would the article make better sense if framed like this: …assuming as per standard LessWrong reasoning, the actual utility function is very complicated, but also assuming, it has a large happiness component, whatever hapiness means, we may ask: what would be a relation of such component to usual approaches to measure happiness by asking people? And how to aggregate among people?
I don’t even buy that there is a large happiness component. I would not be surprised to find that in a hundred years we look back on the modern western preoccupation with happiness as mostly a strange cultural phenomenon. The analogous thing looking back on the past might be 11th century monks thinking of something like serving Christ as a large component of “true utility,” or whatever.
Thanks. I guess I should not have included the simple utilitarian calculation, as it seems to work as a red herring :( Mea culpa.
Qiaochu: Would the article make better sense if framed like this: …assuming as per standard LessWrong reasoning, the actual utility function is very complicated, but also assuming, it has a large happiness component, whatever hapiness means, we may ask: what would be a relation of such component to usual approaches to measure happiness by asking people? And how to aggregate among people?
I don’t even buy that there is a large happiness component. I would not be surprised to find that in a hundred years we look back on the modern western preoccupation with happiness as mostly a strange cultural phenomenon. The analogous thing looking back on the past might be 11th century monks thinking of something like serving Christ as a large component of “true utility,” or whatever.
(But yes, I would be happier with this framing.)