Unfortunately, I think Bhutan is in the vanguard here.
We don't yet have a prime minister who gets to issue policy initiatives to increase Gross National Happiness.
But you can certainly get a lot of approval publishing articles explaining why letting people do what they think will make them happy doesn't actually make them happy, and everyone would really be happier if someone important just made the best choice for them.
Cass Sunstein is my favorite example of an intellectual who relentlessly argues that individual choice is bad. When I started typing this I had totally forgotten that he is now an official working for the Obama administration. Department of National Happiness, here we come.
Assuming a certain ideology(personal freedom) increases total societal happiness is just an assumption. if you don't measure it , you can't tell if it's helping or harming the happiness target.
Bhutan at least tries to measure happiness when trying to improve it.
And for example , in the Satisfaction with Life Index , Bhutan is in 8 place , u.s. is 23 place[1].
What's the net immigration flow between different pairs of countries on that list? Which of those countries have the most restrictions on (a) emigration or (b) immigration?
After edit, from the article:
"GNH rests on four pillars of value:
environmental conservation;
cultural preservation and promotion;
sustainable and equitable development;
and good governance, including the development of active and responsible citizenship."
I find it very hard to disagree with "good governance" as a goal, being a descendant of Americans who lived at the time of the Declaration of Independence. But I wonder what "cultural preservation and promotion" might mean in relation to (1) techological innovation (surely a concern of the hackers here), (2) religious dissent (another value cherished by my American ancestors), and (3) foreign policy with neighboring countries?
Yes, lots of fundamentalists are unhappy when others have the freedom to blaspheme their god or have sex in ways that they don't approve of. To them I say: tough.
When Bhutan is measuring happiness, how do they know what they're measuring is really "happiness"? Why do they think their methods are optimal, or at better than some other method, or meaningful at all?
The measurement is based on the work of some academics. while academics certainly make mistakes , usually academic research and debate is one of the best ways we as a society have to learn about truths.
Academic research can lead to learning truths, but I do not assume that everything that comes from academia is true, or even most of it. I think the modern world has an entirely unwarranted, and somewhat harmful, credulousness when it comes to claims of "studies show that . . .".
But that is really beside my main point, which is:
1) To define "happiness" is a process relying on various assumptions.
2) Any attempt to measure that happiness involves further assumptions, in the approach that you use, and assuming the reliability of the results.
3) The idea whatever you're calling "happiness" is something that should be maximized or optimized is also an assumption.
It doesn't matter if these assumptions are made by an academic or not. They're assumptions, not facts. They're worthy of challenge.
I agree that my notion that individual choice is valuable is an assumption, and not everyone shares it. But you don't seem to see the assumptions inherent in the ideas of the happiness planners.
Regarding 3: don't you think happiness should be optimized? don't you think that happiness/pleasure vs sadness/pain is the main motivating mechanism for human beings(at the biological level) , and that the big reason why individual choice ("freedom") is so important is exactly because lack of freedom caused lack of happiness, so people fought hard to change that?
In short , the lecturer talks about that every value system , is basically a system of rules and guidelines and values , with the purpose of optimizing human well-being. and if we find scientific ways to measure human well being , we can give better , more accurate answers to moral questions.
Choose our values better , etc...
> Regarding 3: don't you think happiness should be optimized?
If happiness is defined as the feeling one gets from winning a bingo game or watching a hilarious comedian, then nope, I sure don't.
If happiness is defined as behaving in the way that causes the largest possible number to appear in the final cell of the National Happiness Spreadsheet of the Ministry of Happiness, then no, I don't care about that either.
If happiness is defined as the vague and general satisfaction of human wants--the economist's "utility"--then yes, or at least much closer to yes. But this definition is too vague to lead to any widely shared ideas on how to measure it or pursue it. It does suggest to me that the measuring and optimizing needs to be done by the person experiencing the wants and the satisfying. But I already know not everyone agrees with this. :)
*
I watched the Harris lecture. A few thoughts:
He really didn't make his claim that science answers moral questions. If we assume the moral premise that humans should not suffer, then some other things logically follow, and perhaps science will later tell us some useful conclusions there that we don't know now. I agree that there is enough hard-wired similarity in human nature that some premises like "people should not suffer" can be widely accepted and used as a starting point. Nevertheless, widely shared assumptions is not the same thing as science having "proved" those assumptions.
I don't think we have a lot of problem even today with the widely shared assumptions. It's the ones that aren't shared that lead to the conflict. My feeling is Harris wants to be the guy that gets to tell everyone else what science has told us about morality, and then also get to declare the argument over because it isn't his opinion, instead it is "science".
It is manipulative, and dishonest, to claim that science will be able to answer moral questions objectively, and then proceed to "prove" this by using examples of behavior that you know in advance your audience will find offensive and outraging. Any preacher or imam can "prove" the will of God using similar tactics.
He hints that brain state will eventually provide the new knowledge that we need to answer questions of right and wrong. If I could, I would suggest that he reread Brave New World. There was very little suffering or unhappiness in that world--but I, and I think most people, wouldn't want to live there.
We know that different stuff makes different people happy. But I am sure we can get some metric that represents most people and this can be used to measure the overall happiness. As long as we don't try to push the value system of most people to individuals that dissent I think we would be fine.
in a previous thread. I have just started reading the book, and I agree with reviewers that the author has a lot of research-based insight into what makes people happy.
I think this is a great idea and Gross National Happiness should immediately become a major part of the Democrat's platform in the USA. Of course, then the Republicans are likely to counter with Gross National Morality.
Pretty soon, we can regulate and mandate Gross National Happiness, Gross National Morality, Gross National Love, Gross National Sharing, Gross National Caring, Gross National Thinking, Gross National Playing, Gross National Working, and we can mandate that people do what they can to improve those. We are entering into a brave new world, with prosperity for all! Democratize happiness! Democratize morality! Democratize work, and play, and love! Happiness, and love, and morality - democratized!
How come no one has tried this previously? It's such an obviously good idea, I can't see where anything could possibly wrong with it... How could anyone not think that democratizing people's lives won't produce the best possible society?
We don't yet have a prime minister who gets to issue policy initiatives to increase Gross National Happiness.
But you can certainly get a lot of approval publishing articles explaining why letting people do what they think will make them happy doesn't actually make them happy, and everyone would really be happier if someone important just made the best choice for them.
Cass Sunstein is my favorite example of an intellectual who relentlessly argues that individual choice is bad. When I started typing this I had totally forgotten that he is now an official working for the Obama administration. Department of National Happiness, here we come.