Something I’ve been wondering is whether most people misjudge their average level of happiness because they exclude a significant portion of their subjective experience. (I’m of course talking about the time spent dreaming.) Insofar as most dreams are pleasant, and this is certainly my experience, this could be a rational reason for [people who feel like their live isn’t worth living] (definitely not talking about myself here!) to abstain from suicide. Probably not a very persuasive one, though, in most cases.
Relevant caveats:
This will probably be less interesting the more dissimilar your moral views are from valence utilitarianism.
Even for utilitarians, it excludes your impact on the lives of others. For EAs, this is hopefully the biggest part of the story!
It’s not clear what most people seek in terms of happiness. I doubt it’s average—more like some function of anticipated and recent sampled/modeled exemplars, with a penalty for particularly salient pain.
You might be interested in this post by Harri Besceli, which argues that “the best and worst experiences you had last week probably happened when you were dreaming”.
Something I’ve been wondering is whether most people misjudge their average level of happiness because they exclude a significant portion of their subjective experience. (I’m of course talking about the time spent dreaming.) Insofar as most dreams are pleasant, and this is certainly my experience, this could be a rational reason for [people who feel like their live isn’t worth living] (definitely not talking about myself here!) to abstain from suicide. Probably not a very persuasive one, though, in most cases.
Relevant caveats:
This will probably be less interesting the more dissimilar your moral views are from valence utilitarianism.
Even for utilitarians, it excludes your impact on the lives of others. For EAs, this is hopefully the biggest part of the story!
It’s not clear what most people seek in terms of happiness. I doubt it’s average—more like some function of anticipated and recent sampled/modeled exemplars, with a penalty for particularly salient pain.
You might be interested in this post by Harri Besceli, which argues that “the best and worst experiences you had last week probably happened when you were dreaming”.
Eric Schwitzgebel has also written that philosophical hedonists, if consistent, would care more about the quality of dream experiences: https://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2012/04/how-much-should-you-care-about-how-you.html