paper-machine comments on Is Kiryas Joel an Unhappy Place? - Less Wrong

20 Post author: gwern 23 April 2011 12:08AM

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Comment author: spriteless 22 December 2013 06:16:39PM 0 points [-]

My first thought was that if everyone with a low happiness level had already committed suicide it would bump up the average happiness. I mean, the dead don't answer those polls.

Killing the unhappy to make sure everyone is happy is an amoral solution, is my conclusion from a utilitarian perspective. Yep. Don't do that. Engineering peeps with higher happiness set points seems the moral counterpart, but we can't do that yet.