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This is: Announcing the launch of the Happier Lives Institute, published by MichaelPlant on the Effective Altruism Forum.
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Following months of work by a dedicated team of volunteers, I am pleased to announce the launch of the Happier Lives Institute, a new EA organisation which seeks to answer the question: ‘What are the most effective ways we can use our resources to make others happier?’
Summary
The Happier Lives Institute is pioneering a new way of thinking about the central question of effective altruism - how can we benefit others as much as possible? We are approaching this through a ‘happiness lens’, using individuals’ reports of their subjective well-being as the measure of benefit. Adopting this approach indicates potential new priorities, notably that mental health emerges as a large and neglected problem.
Our vision is a world where everyone lives their happiest life.
Our mission is to guide the decision-making of those who want to use their resources to most effectively make lives happier.
We aim to fulfill our mission by:
1. Searching for the most effective giving opportunities in the world for improving happiness. We are starting by investigating mental health interventions in low-income countries.
2. Assessing which careers allow individuals to have the greatest counterfactual impact in terms of promoting happier lives.
Our approach
Our work is driven by three beliefs.
1) We should do the most good we can
We should use evidence and reason to determine how we can use our resources to benefit others the most. We follow the guiding principles of effective altruism: commitment to others, scientific mindset, openness, integrity, and collaborative spirit.
2) Happiness is what ultimately matters
Philosophers use the word ‘well-being’ to refer to what is ultimately good for someone. We think well-being consists in happiness, defined as a positive balance of enjoyment over suffering. Understood this way, this means that when we reduce misery, we increase happiness. Further, we believe well-being is the only thing which is intrinsically good, that is, that matters in and of itself. Other goods, such as wealth, health, justice, and equality are instrumentally valuable: they are not valuable in themselves, but because and to the extent that they increase happiness.
3) Happiness can be measured
The last few decades have seen an explosion of research into ‘subjective well-being’ (SWB), with about 170,000 books and articles published in the last 15 years. SWB is measured using self-reports of people’s emotional states and global evaluations of life satisfaction; these measures have been shown to be valid and reliable. We believe SWB scores are the best available measure of happiness; therefore, we should use these scores, rather than anything else (income, health, education, etc.) to determine what makes people happier.
Specifically, we expect to rely on life satisfaction as the primary metric. This is typically measured by asking “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?” (0 - 10). While we think measures of emotional states are closer to an ideal measure of happiness, far fewer data of this type is available. A longer explanation of our approach to measuring happiness can be found here.
When we take these three beliefs together, the question: “How can we do the most good?” becomes, more specifically: “What are the most cost-effective ways to increase self-reported subjective well-being?”
Our strategy
Social scientists have collected a wealth of data on the causes and correlates of happiness. While there are now growing efforts to determine how best to increase happiness through public policy, no EA organisation has yet attempted to translate this information into recommendations about what the most effective ways are for private actors to make l...
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