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Love and Death: “Quality of life” calculations leave out much that matters

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Re: Love and Death: “Quality of life” calculations leave out much that matters

#41

Post by Damorian »

sandworm101 wrote: post #37
Damorian wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo, society needs more of this, and these ideas are not in any way new to philosophy. We live in an age of widespread hedonism and much of the way people live is unhealthy on an individual and societal basis. I fully reject the "be yourself, do what makes you happy" mindset of today because the ideal day for a young person now is sleeping in, eating sugar for breakfast, smoking weed, playing video games and watching…

>> moral productive work and rearing children that actually advances the human race Do not assume that everyone has the freedom to make such decisions. Moral decisions are ones that you can make regardless of life circumstance. Many people simply cannot afford the traditional lifestyle of getting married and having kids. I don't mean incels, I mean that all over the world there are young people who want to marry and…

I would encourage you to read up on "the success sequence". It's very simple to avoid poverty, but it involves depriving yourself of pleasure. I say this as someone who grew up in poverty and escaped it.

Re: Love and Death: “Quality of life” calculations leave out much that matters

#42

Post by sandworm101 »

Damorian wrote: post #41
sandworm101 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> moral productive work and rearing children that actually advances the human race Do not assume that everyone has the freedom to make such decisions. Moral decisions are ones that you can make regardless of life circumstance. Many people simply cannot afford the traditional lifestyle of getting married and having kids. I don't mean incels, I mean that all over the world there are young people who want to marry and…

I would encourage you to read up on "the success sequence". It's very simple to avoid poverty, but it involves depriving yourself of pleasure. I say this as someone who grew up in poverty and escaped it.

>> It's very simple to avoid poverty

Poverty isn't what I meant. There are people, sometimes rather well off people, who are nevertheless in economic situations that preclude marriage. For instance, some people have elderly or disabled family members which they must take care of. There is huge gap, the entire middle class, between "poverty" and not having enough money to hire 24/7 care. Others have good well-paid jobs, but jobs that mean they are located in places with male/female ratio that makes finding a partner next to impossible (China's "bachelor" villages). Still others are limited by cultural norms that do not accept marriage of persons without traditional full-time employment regardless of wealth (India, Japan). Just look at the difficulties surrounding Japan's princess. The real issue there isn't that her husband is poor, he really isn't, but that he doesn't have a traditional fulltime job.

Re: Love and Death: “Quality of life” calculations leave out much that matters

#43

Post by JoeAltmaier »

This.

In the 50' we used to see Science Fiction stories about robots taking the yoke of labor from our shoulders, to allow us all to live our better, truer lives.

Now that it's happening, all modern philosophers can think of is, How to get Everybody Back To Work! Like that is some end in itself.

Re: Love and Death: “Quality of life” calculations leave out much that matters

#44

Post by strulovich »

jlos wrote: post #11

> These people who live a vigorous life to 70, 80, 90 years of age—when I look at what those people “do,” almost all of it is what I classify as play. It’s not meaningful work. They’re riding motorcycles; they’re hiking. Which can all have value—don’t get me wrong. But if it’s the main thing in your life? Ummm, that’s not probably a meaningful life. I'm never really to sure which to find more shocking about these kin…

An obvious missing thought by John Lee here is that people would go for their hedonism at different ages depending on their expected years remaining.

If you told me I will live to 100, quitting at 70 to travel the world sounds ok.

If you told me I’ll die at 50, I will be retiring before that.

By prolonging life from 80 to 90, we also encourage people to retire later. So even if “meaningful” would mean “work” (and oh boy, it doesn’t) it still is important to to prolong life.

You can always trust an intellectual to not consider anything but first order effects I guess.

Re: Love and Death: “Quality of life” calculations leave out much that matters

#45

Post by closeparen »

Damorian wrote: post #36
jlos wrote: post #11

> These people who live a vigorous life to 70, 80, 90 years of age—when I look at what those people “do,” almost all of it is what I classify as play. It’s not meaningful work. They’re riding motorcycles; they’re hiking. Which can all have value—don’t get me wrong. But if it’s the main thing in your life? Ummm, that’s not probably a meaningful life. I'm never really to sure which to find more shocking about these kin…

Imo, society needs more of this, and these ideas are not in any way new to philosophy. We live in an age of widespread hedonism and much of the way people live is unhealthy on an individual and societal basis. I fully reject the "be yourself, do what makes you happy" mindset of today because the ideal day for a young person now is sleeping in, eating sugar for breakfast, smoking weed, playing video games and watching…

Delayed childrearing is also sometimes a desire to have intense and high-effort experiences: living in new countries, learning new languages, acquiring skills, climbing mountains, etc. The idea is once you have a committed partner your life is mostly over, and once you have a kid it's completely over, so you'd better have lived fully by then. To be honest, the messaging from my own parents was not too far off of that.

Some friends are theoretically open to committed partners, but only if they can be long-distance for the first few years while completing their adventures around the world. There's a big push against compromising even your travel agenda, let alone your career, to be with someone.

Re: Love and Death: “Quality of life” calculations leave out much that matters

#46

Post by wing-_-nuts »

Damorian wrote: post #36
jlos wrote: post #11

> These people who live a vigorous life to 70, 80, 90 years of age—when I look at what those people “do,” almost all of it is what I classify as play. It’s not meaningful work. They’re riding motorcycles; they’re hiking. Which can all have value—don’t get me wrong. But if it’s the main thing in your life? Ummm, that’s not probably a meaningful life. I'm never really to sure which to find more shocking about these kin…

Imo, society needs more of this, and these ideas are not in any way new to philosophy. We live in an age of widespread hedonism and much of the way people live is unhealthy on an individual and societal basis. I fully reject the "be yourself, do what makes you happy" mindset of today because the ideal day for a young person now is sleeping in, eating sugar for breakfast, smoking weed, playing video games and watching…

>moral productive work and rearing children

I have a hard time with the idea that there is anything moral or immoral about work or leisure. In 50 years time, it's very unlikely anything 'work' I have done will matter.

Leisure activities are only immoral if they hurt yourself or others. If your activities lead you to become an overweight shut-in in poor health with few friends, sure. You could make the argument they are immoral.

I think you can be a retired dabbler and dilettante and absolutely live a 'good life'. At the end of the day, all that matters is that we live lives true to ourselves and our relationships with others. All of our accomplishments are dust in the wind, and will be forgotten.

Re: Love and Death: “Quality of life” calculations leave out much that matters

#47

Post by Damorian »

closeparen wrote: post #45
Damorian wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo, society needs more of this, and these ideas are not in any way new to philosophy. We live in an age of widespread hedonism and much of the way people live is unhealthy on an individual and societal basis. I fully reject the "be yourself, do what makes you happy" mindset of today because the ideal day for a young person now is sleeping in, eating sugar for breakfast, smoking weed, playing video games and watching…

Delayed childrearing is also sometimes a desire to have intense and high-effort experiences: living in new countries, learning new languages, acquiring skills, climbing mountains, etc. The idea is once you have a committed partner your life is mostly over, and once you have a kid it's completely over, so you'd better have lived fully by then. To be honest, the messaging from my own parents was not too far off of that…

This is a really bizarre comment, to me at least. The central point of travel in your post, particularly, as some sort of universal, valuable goal is an unfamiliar concept to me. Travel, along with what I'm guess most of what you consider as "intense and high-effort experiences" to do before "your life is over" after getting married and having kids I would probably categorize as the self-destructive and ultimately pointless pleasure seeking I'm advocating against. My point is the fact that you and most people consider this "desirable" is not good. If you think you should seek a great deal of pleasure before "ending" your life by becoming a responsible adult, my advice is to get addicted to heroin, as it will offer a far more intense pleasure than travel, or whatever else you mean.

Re: Love and Death: “Quality of life” calculations leave out much that matters

#48

Post by joe_the_user »

closeparen wrote: post #16
joe_the_user wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Older people in the US seem in better shape because earlier generations were on average wealthier and had higher incomes, hence greater savings. The present generation is not headed towards a happy retirement at the expense of the present. Edit: As another poster mentioned, the US values the lives of the rich and more of the old are rich, for now.

The previous generations got a lot of stuff for free by promising each other pensions and not funding them. Obviously they were better off than we were: we don't have access to this trick anymore, and have to make actual sacrifices today if we want to retire in the future. To say nothing of the taxes we will have to pay in exchange for services long gone.

Nah,

Corporations (and the mob) generally stole the funds of the pension and used them. And they were promised pensions in line with prevailing wages, which were higher.

Re: Love and Death: “Quality of life” calculations leave out much that matters

#49

Post by Damorian »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #46
Damorian wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo, society needs more of this, and these ideas are not in any way new to philosophy. We live in an age of widespread hedonism and much of the way people live is unhealthy on an individual and societal basis. I fully reject the "be yourself, do what makes you happy" mindset of today because the ideal day for a young person now is sleeping in, eating sugar for breakfast, smoking weed, playing video games and watching…

>moral productive work and rearing children I have a hard time with the idea that there is anything moral or immoral about work or leisure. In 50 years time, it's very unlikely anything 'work' I have done will matter. Leisure activities are only immoral if they hurt yourself or others. If your activities lead you to become an overweight shut-in in poor health with few friends, sure. You could make the argument they a…

My point of moral productive work was to differentiate it from things like financial fraud or telemarketing, which require a great deal of work, but are ultimately unproductive and/or come at the expense of society. My other point about leisure/pleasure seeking is that you are always, no matter what, giving your life to something. If you give your life to leisure/pleasure it is a resource that is wasted that detracts both from your life, and the lives of any person you may have helped with that resource. I reject the notion that self destructive behavior doesn't hurt anyone else. I'd hate to live in a society of bums and drug addicts. We all do better when we all do better. Right now, fully a third of all of my work efforts (read: taxes) are wasted on retired dabblers and dilettantes who do nothing to help the rest of us. Their pleasure comes at the cost of myself, and my children. So long as you pass on your genes and your ideas, your efforts matter on Earth, and potentially our actions matter on a spiritual/supernatural level. The only respite I find in these conversations as that the hedonists will just be dust in the wind.

Re: Love and Death: “Quality of life” calculations leave out much that matters

#50

Post by ggm »

Filligree wrote: post #32
ggm wrote: post #21

People commenting on this story should state their age. It would be interesting to help understand aspects of the answer. Some parts of this essay worked for me but I believe in QALYS as a basic measure to keep in mind, like millimorts. Another version of this thesis is "it takes a village to rear a child" I'm 59 btw

Completely off topic, but... it does take a village to raise a child. I understand that instinctively, and I suppose I've read enough factual articles about it to believe it, but I'm missing a real explanation. Something I could point people at in lieu of trying to explain why that is, myself, which covers everything from "A higher diversity of 'parents' is helpful" to "it's not good to segregate children by age, act…

Depends who you ask:

It doesn't:

* https://phys.org/news/2011-09-child-doesnt-village.html

It does:

* https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol34/34/34-34.... * https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137386724_5 * https://theconversation.com/it-takes-a-village-to-raise-a-ch...

I think, if you go into genetics, you would be looking to the altruistic benefits to the gene pool of non-gene transfer roles in the community and effect on the gene overall. Lots of organisms show collective child rearing, for defense against predators, for food management, to ensure 'sneaky fucker' offspring get raised (that whole top-dog king-lion thing is a bit of a myth: everybody gets some, if they can..)

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