It also made me wonder if the opposite is also a skill you need to learn; do people need to learn how to see happiness when that happens around them? Some people seem strangely blind to happiness, even to their own.
On one hand, my intuition suggest that “happiness” is ill defined as a thing to do work here (sorry if it sounds annoyingly mysterious, I’m not sure what that’d mean exactly too!), and thinking in these terms can only take you so far.
OTOH, there’s definitely some stuff you can do to push your “happiness baseline” around a little bit, and I think some people from rationality blogosphere had reports on this (Agenty Duck? can’t find it).
If “happiness” is too vague a term or has too many other meanings we don’t necessarily want to imply, we could just say “positive utility”. As in “try to notice when you or the people around you are experiencing positive utility”.
I do think that actually taking note of that probably does help you move your happiness baseline; it’s basically a rationalist version of “be thankful for the good things in your life”. Something as simple as “you know, I enjoy walking the dog on a crisp fall day like this”. Noticing when other people seem to be experiencing positive utility is also probably important in becoming a more morally correct utilitarian yourself, likely just as important as noting other people’s suffering/ negative utility.
Really interesting essay.
It also made me wonder if the opposite is also a skill you need to learn; do people need to learn how to see happiness when that happens around them? Some people seem strangely blind to happiness, even to their own.
Hmm, interesting point!
On one hand, my intuition suggest that “happiness” is ill defined as a thing to do work here (sorry if it sounds annoyingly mysterious, I’m not sure what that’d mean exactly too!), and thinking in these terms can only take you so far.
OTOH, there’s definitely some stuff you can do to push your “happiness baseline” around a little bit, and I think some people from rationality blogosphere had reports on this (Agenty Duck? can’t find it).
If “happiness” is too vague a term or has too many other meanings we don’t necessarily want to imply, we could just say “positive utility”. As in “try to notice when you or the people around you are experiencing positive utility”.
I do think that actually taking note of that probably does help you move your happiness baseline; it’s basically a rationalist version of “be thankful for the good things in your life”. Something as simple as “you know, I enjoy walking the dog on a crisp fall day like this”. Noticing when other people seem to be experiencing positive utility is also probably important in becoming a more morally correct utilitarian yourself, likely just as important as noting other people’s suffering/ negative utility.