I was talking about the fitness of a culture. That’s why I said I was talking about the fitness of a culture. Individual happiness is not fitness, but it is of interest to us.
I know you were talking about the fitness of a culture. But James was talking about the fitness of individuals (that is what is allegedly not harmed by stupidity, after all). Which is why I pointed out that the two are different.
Maybe I misunderstood you; I confess it wasn’t very clear to me what actual point you were making. I took you to be defending James (even though he was disagreeing with your original proposal). Perhaps that wasn’t your intention?
I agree that we are interested in happiness as well as fitness (and that was kinda my point in distinguishing our values from evolution’s values). I’m not sure exactly what you’re intending to say about happiness. On the face of it you seem to be saying that values that reduce a culture’s fitness necessarily bear an economic cost (I don’t see why that need be true, on timescales shorter than those on which the culture goes extinct as a result) and that economic cost necessarily implies reduced happiness (which also seems doubtful, at least on a timescale of say 50-100 years) but again maybe I’ve misunderstood.
That’s basically what I’m saying—well, I think it was; I can’t see my original text now. But IIRC I misused the word “necessarily” because I thought doing so was closer to the truth than not using any modifier at all. I wanted to imply a causative link, and the notion that, even in cases where it appears there is no economic cost, the length of and multiplicity of paths from a nation’s values to its economic health are so great that the bias towards finding an economic cost on each such path make it statistically very unlikely that the net economic impact is not negative.
The fitness of a culture is not necessarily the same as the genetic fitness of its individuals.
I was talking about the fitness of a culture. That’s why I said I was talking about the fitness of a culture. Individual happiness is not fitness, but it is of interest to us.
I know you were talking about the fitness of a culture. But James was talking about the fitness of individuals (that is what is allegedly not harmed by stupidity, after all). Which is why I pointed out that the two are different.
Maybe I misunderstood you; I confess it wasn’t very clear to me what actual point you were making. I took you to be defending James (even though he was disagreeing with your original proposal). Perhaps that wasn’t your intention?
I agree that we are interested in happiness as well as fitness (and that was kinda my point in distinguishing our values from evolution’s values). I’m not sure exactly what you’re intending to say about happiness. On the face of it you seem to be saying that values that reduce a culture’s fitness necessarily bear an economic cost (I don’t see why that need be true, on timescales shorter than those on which the culture goes extinct as a result) and that economic cost necessarily implies reduced happiness (which also seems doubtful, at least on a timescale of say 50-100 years) but again maybe I’ve misunderstood.
That’s basically what I’m saying—well, I think it was; I can’t see my original text now. But IIRC I misused the word “necessarily” because I thought doing so was closer to the truth than not using any modifier at all. I wanted to imply a causative link, and the notion that, even in cases where it appears there is no economic cost, the length of and multiplicity of paths from a nation’s values to its economic health are so great that the bias towards finding an economic cost on each such path make it statistically very unlikely that the net economic impact is not negative.