I just realized that a link to an article by Angus Deaton about a Gallup poll that I meant to include in the comment above didn’t compile. I’ve since added it.
It’s entirely possible for working life to be awful and people living those lives to genuinely self-report an average of 7⁄10 on a happiness scale.
I agree. But I don’t see the considerations that you bring up as decisive. Several points:
•According to Angus Deaton’s article
I focus on the life satisfaction question about life at the present time, measured on an eleven-point scale from 0 (“the worst possible life”) to 10 (“the best possible life”)
If I were to give a response of 7⁄10 to this question it would indicate that my life is more good than it is bad. You’re right that my interpretation may not be the one used by the typical subject. But I disagree with:
There are also other problems with the average happiness level being above average—it suggests some constant is at work.
it could be that everyone finds their lives to be more good than bad or that everyone finds their lives more bad than good.
• You raise the hypothetical:
for social signaling and status purposes, reasons for them being different-better are more available to their conscious mind than reasons for them being different-worse, so they add a few points
but one could similarly raise ad hoc hypotheticals that point in the opposite direction. For example, maybe people function best when they’re feeling good and so they’re wired to feel good most of the time but grass-is-greener syndrome leads them to subtract a few points.
• Note that suicide rates are low all over the world. A low suicide rate is some sort of indication that members of a given population find their lives to be worth living.
• Note that according to Deaton’s article, life satisfaction scores by country vary from ~ 4 to ~ 7 in rough proportion to median income in a given country. This provides some indication that (a) life satisfaction scores pick up on a factor that transcends culture and that (b) Americans are distinctly more satisfied with their lives than sub-Saharan Africans are. But in line with my above point, sub-Saharan Africans seldom commit suicide. In juxtaposition with this, the data from Deaton’s article suggests that the average American’s life satisfaction is well above the point at which he or she would commit suicide.
Suicide rates could be low even when the average experience of the general population is worse than unconsciousness. People may apply scope insensitivity and discount large quantities of non-severe future suffering for themselves. Happiness reports can lead to different results than an hour-to-hour analysis would. Asking for each hour, “Would you rather experience an exact repeat of last hour, or else experience nothing for one hour, all other things exactly equal? How much would you value that diffence?” might lead to very different results if you integrate the quantities and qualities.
People with lives slightly not worth living may refrain from suicide because they fear death, feel obligated toward their friends and family, or are infected with memes about reward or punishment in an imaginary afterlife. A very significant reason is probably that bearably painless and reliable suicide methods are not universally within easy reach (are they in sub-Sahara Africa?). In fact, there is a de facto suicide prohibition in place in most contries, with more or less success. The majority of suicide attempts fail.
So continued existence can be either involuntary or irrational, and suicide rates can be low even when life generally feels more bad than good. If all sentient entities could become rational decision-makers whose conscious existence is universally voluntary, that would probably be the most significant improvement of life on earth since it evolved.
So continued existence can be either involuntary or irrational, and suicide rates can be low even when life generally feels more bad than good. If all sentient entities could become rational decision-makers whose conscious existence is universally voluntary, that would probably be the most significant improvement of life on earth since it evolved.
I agree. See also this comment and subsequent discussion. I consider low suicide rates to be weak evidence that people find their lives worth living, not definitive evidence. There’s other evidence, in particular if you ask random people if their lives are worth living they’ll say yes much more often than not. Yes they may be signaling and/or deluded, but it seems hubristic to have high confidence in one’s own assessment of their quality of lives over their stated assessment without strong evidence.
Yeah, re-reading my post it’s very handwave-y. However, a point you made about more good than bad / more bad than good stuck out to me. I wonder if a survey question “On a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is every thing that happens to you is a bad thing, and 10 is every thing that happens to you is a good thing, what number would you give to your life?” would provide scores correlated with life satisfaction surveys. (Ideally we would simply track people and, every time a thing happened to them, ask them whether this thing was good or bad. Then we could collate the data and get a more accurate picture than self-reporting, but the gain doesn’t outweigh the sheer impracticality so I’ll be content with self-reported values).
I feel like if it correlated weakly, you would be right. And now that I think about the experiment, I’m fairly convinced it would come out correlated.
I just realized that a link to an article by Angus Deaton about a Gallup poll that I meant to include in the comment above didn’t compile. I’ve since added it.
I agree. But I don’t see the considerations that you bring up as decisive. Several points:
•According to Angus Deaton’s article
If I were to give a response of 7⁄10 to this question it would indicate that my life is more good than it is bad. You’re right that my interpretation may not be the one used by the typical subject. But I disagree with:
it could be that everyone finds their lives to be more good than bad or that everyone finds their lives more bad than good.
• You raise the hypothetical:
but one could similarly raise ad hoc hypotheticals that point in the opposite direction. For example, maybe people function best when they’re feeling good and so they’re wired to feel good most of the time but grass-is-greener syndrome leads them to subtract a few points.
• Note that suicide rates are low all over the world. A low suicide rate is some sort of indication that members of a given population find their lives to be worth living.
• Note that according to Deaton’s article, life satisfaction scores by country vary from ~ 4 to ~ 7 in rough proportion to median income in a given country. This provides some indication that (a) life satisfaction scores pick up on a factor that transcends culture and that (b) Americans are distinctly more satisfied with their lives than sub-Saharan Africans are. But in line with my above point, sub-Saharan Africans seldom commit suicide. In juxtaposition with this, the data from Deaton’s article suggests that the average American’s life satisfaction is well above the point at which he or she would commit suicide.
Suicide rates could be low even when the average experience of the general population is worse than unconsciousness. People may apply scope insensitivity and discount large quantities of non-severe future suffering for themselves. Happiness reports can lead to different results than an hour-to-hour analysis would. Asking for each hour, “Would you rather experience an exact repeat of last hour, or else experience nothing for one hour, all other things exactly equal? How much would you value that diffence?” might lead to very different results if you integrate the quantities and qualities.
People with lives slightly not worth living may refrain from suicide because they fear death, feel obligated toward their friends and family, or are infected with memes about reward or punishment in an imaginary afterlife. A very significant reason is probably that bearably painless and reliable suicide methods are not universally within easy reach (are they in sub-Sahara Africa?). In fact, there is a de facto suicide prohibition in place in most contries, with more or less success. The majority of suicide attempts fail.
So continued existence can be either involuntary or irrational, and suicide rates can be low even when life generally feels more bad than good. If all sentient entities could become rational decision-makers whose conscious existence is universally voluntary, that would probably be the most significant improvement of life on earth since it evolved.
I agree. See also this comment and subsequent discussion. I consider low suicide rates to be weak evidence that people find their lives worth living, not definitive evidence. There’s other evidence, in particular if you ask random people if their lives are worth living they’ll say yes much more often than not. Yes they may be signaling and/or deluded, but it seems hubristic to have high confidence in one’s own assessment of their quality of lives over their stated assessment without strong evidence.
Yeah, re-reading my post it’s very handwave-y. However, a point you made about more good than bad / more bad than good stuck out to me. I wonder if a survey question “On a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is every thing that happens to you is a bad thing, and 10 is every thing that happens to you is a good thing, what number would you give to your life?” would provide scores correlated with life satisfaction surveys. (Ideally we would simply track people and, every time a thing happened to them, ask them whether this thing was good or bad. Then we could collate the data and get a more accurate picture than self-reporting, but the gain doesn’t outweigh the sheer impracticality so I’ll be content with self-reported values).
I feel like if it correlated weakly, you would be right. And now that I think about the experiment, I’m fairly convinced it would come out correlated.