EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM OTTAWA

TL:DR - Come out to discuss whether Effective Altruists should be more directly focused on increasing reported happiness (compared to quality or quantity of life). Watch the talk and read the paper linked below. Effective Altruists want to make the world a better place. There are many different things this could mean though, and there are different ways to measure progress. Even if two people agree on the same notion of good, if they have different ways of measuring it, they may end up recommending different behaviours. Consider these broader questions: Should we try to prevent someone dying from malaria (thereby giving them a longer life)? Should we try to reduce poverty which would improve the quality of someone's life? Should we be focused on reducing mental illness? Michael Plant raises these questions (and others) and argues effective altruists can and should use happiness surveys to determine cost-effectiveness and show how doing this generates some substantially different charity recommendations from those given by GiveWell. In this meetup we'll discuss a talk Plant gave at EA Global last year - What are the best ways to improve world happiness - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeUOHOCFteM Full talk in PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hFPQANTVmM3YzYZslVYxpRwR630OxmUv/view Additionally, Plant wrote a longer "Happiness Manifesto" - https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FvbTKrEQWXwN5A6Tb/a-happiness-manifesto-why-and-how-effective-altruism-should which we will discuss. The Happiness Manifesto is less accessible but it covers a lot of important ground, such as how many evaluations measure how people feel about their lives, rather than how happy they feel during them. Complexity abounds... but we still have to make decisions. This topic should be a good one because it gets to the core of what it is we're trying to do. Are we trying to improve how people rate their own well-being? If not that, then what? While all of these issues touch on population ethics, this particular meetup will have a greater focus on measures of well-being, their pros and cons, and how to act to make the world a better place. Hope to see you there! Darren