Nozick - Anarchy State and Utopia - Easterlin Paradox - how does this apply to distribution of pains over a life?
We would be willing, moreover, to give up some amount of happiness to get our lives’ narratives moving in the right direction, improving in general. Even if a downwardly sloping curve had slightly more area under it, we would prefer our own lives to slope upward. (If it encompassed vastly greater area, the choice might be different.) Therefore, the contour of the happiness has an independent weight, beyond breaking ties among lives whose total amounts of happiness are equal. In order to gain a more desirable narrative direction, we sometimes would choose not to maximize our total happiness. And if the factor of narrative direction might justify forgoing some amount of happiness, so other factors might also.
It is better,” John Stuart Mill wrote, “to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” And although it might be best of all to be Socrates satisfied, having both happiness and depth, we would give up some happiness in order to gain the depth.
Nozick - Anarchy State and Utopia - Easterlin Paradox - how does this apply to distribution of pains over a life?
We would be willing, moreover, to give up some amount of happiness to get our lives’ narratives moving in the right direction, improving in general. Even if a downwardly sloping curve had slightly more area under it, we would prefer our own lives to slope upward. (If it encompassed vastly greater area, the choice might be different.) Therefore, the contour of the happiness has an independent weight, beyond breaking ties among lives whose total amounts of happiness are equal. In order to gain a more desirable narrative direction, we sometimes would choose not to maximize our total happiness. And if the factor of narrative direction might justify forgoing some amount of happiness, so other factors might also.
It is better,” John Stuart Mill wrote, “to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” And although it might be best of all to be Socrates satisfied, having both happiness and depth, we would give up some happiness in order to gain the depth.