Speaker 2
before we move on, this question of, like, or either wote be good or bad, ork, has the universe been good up until now, or or bad up until now? Thes seem like such important, like, fundamental questions for understanding existence, understanding our situation, that you'd think t theye'ld be like, lots of professors, lots of academics who specialized in this question of, know, i'm in the sub discipline of, like, understanding what it's like to fish in order to, like, help to answer this broader question of whether the universe has been good or bad. And yet, it's funny, because you know that there are gong to be no academics who have specialized in this question, more or less. I don't think t ther actualy are any, or that this is like a disalin exactly. I just seems craz yetiis intressan to me. Money. It's
Speaker 1
completely crazy to me. I mean, especially philoophe s are going to talk about anything. You think it would be less, but you get, i mean, david benetar has made some arguments, you know, pofit makes these like, casual comments. But yet, very, very few people have, like, really given a sustained treatment of this topic. Yes, the problem is wider than that. So within psychology, he a question, how many people in the world to day, an psycholgeon economics, how many people in the world to day have lives that are above zero, such that they are actually happy to have lived? This is enormously important. Forget all along termi staff suppose you're just doing public health. It really matters, like if you're weighing life saving interventions compared to interventions that improved quality of life, it really matters the answer to that question,
Speaker 2
a. Because how many. Physically, the same logic is with the species, the species level. You say, well, if people's lives are actualy just like bad ase ayen, then we don't like le let's let's set aside extending life for now and just improve their lives so that it's good when their lives are longer. Exactly.
Speaker 1
Yes. Exactly. And it means you might be sympathetic to, you know, people who smoke, or people who take drugs that shorten their life expectancy, but improving the quality of life while they are alive, obviosly, smoking is alto diction and so on. Or just like lots of things, like, your life is close to zero in well being, then shortening your life expectancy in order to make your well being vators just make senses. Ye. And so before this book was written, how many published studies were there addressing this question? Ah,
Speaker 2
gongto get zero.
Speaker 1
Zero is the answer. Exactly theire. Still, zero published studies. There's one, unpublished by joshua gleen killingsworth that somewhat does address this question, looking j people in the us. In particular. And then a commissioned one that's just by our abigail hoskin, lucius caviola and joshua lewis, that's just directly asking people, i mean, a variety of questions, but including, does your arm life contain more happiness than suffering? Are we asked that of people in the us. And india. And so among the respondents, 16 % of respondents in the us. Said that their life contained more suffering than happiness, and about percent said it was more happiness than suffering. In india it was nine % that said that am they had more suffering than happiness. So indian despondents actually, am ready the lads bet elives better by that measure. Yes. And like, these aren't representatives of the country, necessarily, but thats still, like that kind of, you know, the standard economic method of doing postafecns analysis, the quality adjusted life year, assumes that death is the worst state you can be in. That's zero. You can't go below zero. Where is radicalempito? The empirical evidence is that lots of people think their lives are y the letter, are worse than zero. And that would really mean that we, which like, have much more focus an obseiving quality of life, of saving life, yes.