Category: Sentience in Humans
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The “Eternal-Playlist” thought experiment
Privileged beings (students) of the privileged species (human) at privileged time (XXI c.) and privileged space (Germany) ranked only 30% of the recent experiences as “worth living”. The “Eternal-Playlist” thought experiment, by Thomas Metzinger: “At Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, we began a first series of small pilot studies with a group of advanced philosophy…
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The Sad Truth About Happiness Scales: Empirical Results
“We replicate nine key results from the happiness literature: the Easterlin Paradox, the ‘U-shaped’ relation between happiness and age, the happiness trade-off between inflation and unemployment, cross-country comparisons of happiness, the impact of the Moving to Opportunity program on happiness, the impact of marriage and children on happiness, the ‘paradox’ of declining female happiness, and…
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Are suffering and enjoyment measurable?
In Simon Knutsson‘s words: That happiness and suffering are measurable, in principle, to the extent that is required to talk about the net balance among several individuals is highly controversial and widely rejected. That is, it is controversial that they are (in principle) measurable to the required degree in an objective, non-arbitrary, scientific way that…
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A compass that is perpetually “stuck on South”
“If someone offered you a pill that would make you permanently happy, you would be well advised to run fast and run far. Emotion is a compass that tells us what to do, and a compass that is perpetually stuck on north is worthless.” —Professor Daniel Gilbert. Department of Psychology, Harvard University “Many millions of…
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Ideology of Reproduction versus Non-Suffering and conservatism vs progressivism
“While every sensitive being fundamentally wishes to avoid suffering and experience happiness, curiously, human societies have almost never made non-suffering and happiness their founding values. Why? The ideology of reproduction has existed for 100,000 years, while the belief that the spirit survives the death of the body appears. We must reproduce so that a progeny…
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The case of Dax Cowart
“I was burned so severely and in so much pain that I did not want to live even in the early moments following the explosion. A man who heard my shouts for help came running down the road, I asked him for a gun. He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Can’t you see I am a…
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On Kidney stones, by Andres Gomez Emilsson
I’ve never had a kidney stone. Thank God. According to Quora responses to the question “How painful are kidney stones?” they are about as painful as it gets. They’re the most painful thing a person can experience naturally, leaving aside torture and violent body-dismembering events. Many say they often get to be “10/10 pain”. That’s…
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Dimensions of suicide: perceptions of lethality, time, and agony
Two hundred ninety-one lay persons and 10 forensic pathologists rated the lethality, time, and agony for 28 methods of suicide for 4117 cases of completed suicide in Los Angeles County in the period 1988-1991. Whereas pathologists provided consistent ratings, lay persons demonstrated extreme variability and a tendency to inflate ratings of all three dimensions. Significant…