@rastinza

I think you only need a few axioms, eg “suffering is bad”. There doesn't need be a big apparatus of ideology.

Your example is simple: losing friends is trivially easy; making and maintaining friendship is costly and for some people may be difficult. Your hermit who has “too many friends” can “solve” the situation in a day or two, alienating or ignoring people as needed. The opposite is not true.

Also: necessarily, when we approximate the ingredients of well-being, there'll be outliers and exceptions. That's to be expected, and doesn't mean numbers don't work.

You can always refine the model, and measure instead no. of friends _in relation to desired no. of friends_: 1 means perfect; anything above or below is worse.

Ultimately, everything is quantifiable.

@rastinza @tripu simply measuring the amount of friends would not tell you who has a better life, as you say, because each person prefers different amounts of friends. What we can measure is the effect of each amount of friends in the brains of those people, and that might tells us who feels more content with the number of friends they have. That is measurable.

@ImperfectIdea
Sure, but you're still just measuring the effects in the brain of a person.
You still have no way to determine which person has a better life, you did not measure that.

You could say that you assume that one response in the brain is associated to a better life *in your opinion* and thus measure that.
But that is still your opinion.
Because first of all you have to decide what it means to have a better life, and that is not something that you can design experiments or falsify.
If someone tells you he has a better life than billionaires because he has fun throwing rocks at trees, you cannot say that's not true. A billionaire might disagree and prefer its own life. Now, deciding who has a better life is possible: you can have an opinion about it. But that is not scientific and that is not something that can be measured.
@tripu

@rastinza, let me try to reset the conversation, with a couple hypothetical scenarios:

👉 We are discussing some wealth transfer program or social intervention. I present you with a number of specific individuals, in order to decide who should pay, or start paying more, or be asked to help the community somehow — and who should benefit from subsidies, grants or other kind of social assistance. How do you proceed?

👉 You're pondering whether to have kids at all, or have another kid, or have kids now or ten years from now. Your friends advise you in one direction, your religion tends to recommend something else (but your own pastor seems to disagree), your parents have their own piece of advice, social norms push you in one direction, and your gut seems to disagree with them all. How do you make up your mind?

👉 You could invest what little spare time you have in studying a new degree, working extra time at a side gig, tackling the pile of books you've been meaning to read for years, or starting to work out. What tools do you use to move forward?

/cc @ImperfectIdea

@tripu

I already agreed with you that science is an useful tool, I don't see why you want to discuss that further.
I never said the opposite.

1. Science is surely a useful tool that can aid you in taking this decision.
You cannot however use science alone to take it: you must first of all decide whether wealth transfer or social intervention are things that should be done, that is, if you think it is a moral and acceptable thing.

2. You will decide to do what you'll decide to do, you will ponder all things that come at you. Certainly you will consider whether it's a good economical decision, but that won't be the decisive thing.
All in all, it won't be the scientific method telling you "you should have a child"

3. Science will not motivate you in doing things, that is something you must do yourself.

All in all, this discussion is getting quite useless. I feel I am learning nothing and you're not willing to consider the fact that antimaterialistic philosophies do exist and you cannot prove them wrong, thus you should consider their existence even if you disagree.
If the world is not completely material, you cannot measure immaterial things using material ones, thus science will fail in explaining everything that is not material.
Even if you're a materialist, science cannot provide clear answers to certain questions, such as "should I have a child?"

I propose we finish this discussion, unless you have something different to say than "science is useful".
@ImperfectIdea

@rastinza what I'm trying to say is that any feelings that we might associate with "a good life" are ultimately brain states - which are measurable, at least, in principle. If you say that the definition of "a good life" changes with time, culture and each person, that's true, but the brain states that give all those different definitions are also measurable. Define "good life" well enough and you'll end up with atoms and electric charges.
@tripu

@rastinza @tripu And I'm not saying we can determine which is "better" - there might be brain states that can't be felt by everyone, so they're not comparable; there might be many different ways to get to the same brain states. Context is needed. But for each life there's definitely better and wrong choices, depending on the brain states they produce. Religion simply tries to answer questions that we haven't been able to define well enough mathematically yet.

@ImperfectIdea
> But for each life there's definitely better and wrong choices

That is opinable. Are you able to tell a person whether he should suicide or not? Is it an objective analysis that can be done simply through science? If that's possible, then one day we will have a computer telling people the exact day in which they should suicide.
If you can say that living is a better choice than dieing for that person then he should not suicide, if you can tell the opposite then he should.

> Religion simply tries to answer questions that we haven't been able to define well enough mathematically yet

You are assuming that it is possible to do so.
I believe it is not possible.

> Define "good life" well enough

This is what I think is impossible to do in a scientific way.
It's possible to define good life, but not through science.
You can do a lot of calculations and stuff, but none of those will result in "this is good life, while that is not"
You must first define what is good life and then you can use science to identify which people have a good life and which ones do not.
@tripu

@rastinza that's exactly what I said. If we define "good life" in any way, it will be, in principle, measurable. Good life = happiness? Define happiness. Happiness = serotonin (simplifying a lot for the sake of argument)? That's measurable. Add any amount of feelings and definitions, but it will be measurable. I'm not saying we *can* define it, because linguistical concepts are fuzzy, but in the end it's all atoms (or whatever the universe is made of).
@tripu

@ImperfectIdea

> in the end it's all atoms

Well, that's like your opinion, man.
@tripu

@rastinza @ImperfectIdea

🤷

@tripu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimaterialism

@ImperfectIdea

@rastinza not my opinion, just what humans have been able to demonstrate so far. Anything else is so improbable it can be disregarded until new evidence comes up. Happy to update my worldview based on that.
@tripu

@ImperfectIdea
There is no proof of what you're saying, thus that is just your opinion.
Science demonstrated that atoms exist, not that the universe is only made up of atoms or that immaterial things do not exist.

> Anything else is so improbable it can be disregarded until new evidence

The fact that you disregard it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
You may be right or you may be wrong, but saying that those things don't exist is an opinion.
Also, you cannot talk about probability... If those things exist then they exist, if they don't they don't; there's no existence probability.
@tripu

@rastinza I haven't said they don't exist, have I? I said I'm happy to update my worldview.

"...that immaterial things do not exist"

But I don't even know what you're talking about. And you don't either. If you define "immaterial" then we can try and test that. Otherwise we're not saying anything.

@tripu

@ImperfectIdea
Things which are not material and are not observable in the material world.
Let's take that everything in the material world is made up of atoms, something immaterial is something that is not made up of atoms and cannot be observed.
@tripu

@rastinza ok... How do we test something that can't be observed?
@tripu

@ImperfectIdea
You don't
That's why the scientific method fails
@tripu

@rastinza how can something that can't be observed exist? Define exist.
@tripu

@ImperfectIdea
I'm drunk and in no mood to define the meaning of existence.
I gave links to inform yourself about antimaterialism and antirealism, if you're interested in this matter go read those things and then come back.

Something that cannot be observed can indeed exist, for example God cannot be observed, but it could very well exist.
Plato's world of ideas cannot be observed but it could very well exist. I do not believe it does, but it could; even though it cannot be observed.
@tripu

@rastinza yep, that's what happens when we get into details. We need to be clear about the terms we use, otherwise, once again, I don't know what you're talking about, and it seems neither do you. If someone says "You can't prove god doesn't exist" they need to specify what they mean by "god" and "exist" in order to get an answer - if they don't, their challenge can't be taken seriously.
@tripu