Depression is on the rise, despite a generally rising standard of living, technology, and knowledge (not sure if that’s quite true put that way, but accept it for the purpose of the hypothetical). Suppose it’s actually due to these factors: mankind, evolved to cope with simple realities, is happiest as ignorant pig farmers, attributing their worries to unseen forces beyond their control, believing in spirits looking out for them, taking comfort in ideas of an afterlife, growing their own food, leading a simple life without igadgets and twitter. Science, unveiling our fundamental loneliness in a void, careless, infinite universe, depresses us; technology, estranging us from the fruit of our labor, dehumanizes us. Faced with this discovery (appropriately depressing as it is), what would you plead for? Continue to seek enlightenment in the cold truths science offers, or return to a healthy, rural lifestyle, happily sacrificing the occasional pig to the moon goddess, that she may grant a good harvest (if that were an option, of course, which, with the current population level, it’s not)?
In other words, knowing you only can have one – truth, or at least an ever increasing approximation thereof, or happiness, at least relatively more than you would otherwise have – which would you choose? (Poll following)
Just to be clear here, I didn’t intend to state any kind of premise, but merely to propose a hypothetical: suppose it were the case that science, technology, etc. lead to a decrease in happiness. Which one would you prefer?
Neither. Gaining knowledge is one of the things that makes me happy. I read things like Scientific American for pleasure. Striving for knowledge is built into our genes.
Science and technology are part of what makes us human. The pig farmer you mention is practicing agricultural technology. The use of fire is technology. Stone arrowheads are technology.
We can’t give it up anymore than a lion can give up it’s teeth and claws.
I didn’t write about you specifically at all, rather about people in general – suppose the finding is that, on average, people are less happy the more scientific knowledge is gathered, and the higher the technological standard is.
But still, it’s a priori possible that amassing scientific knowledge, ultimately, makes us less happy, no? Suppose things were that way. Do you advocate continuing scientific progress, or would you be OK with returning to a simpler, more ignorant, but also more happy lifestyle (if possible)?
So which is it? Knowledge definitely makes us unhappy, or is it a supposition on which we should vote?
It’s never been clear to me that ignorance and superstition make for a happy person, either now or historically. Ancient worries about evil spirits (or currently, worries about evil spirits and/or Big Government/Corporate conspiracies), pretty much have created unhappy people.
Since science makes it possible for me to have a curative operation for appendicitis rather than relying on a juju man to cast spells while my abdomen gradually fills with pus, science makes me a happier person.
People believe what they believe and do what they do based on their best interpretation of what information is available for them at the time. Furthermore, we do a lot of stuff that isn’t really aimed at increasing human happiness- plenty of people consider accumulating wealth, perpetuating a political idea, serving their assigned role in society to the best of their abilities, or being a useful member of their family or other group to come above “happiness” itself. Individual happiness is just one of many human goals, and actually not as important as we would think it is when you look at what we actually do with our time.
Anyway, people do what they do. There is no choice here that can be made here.
Truth (or science) may be relative, or limited by the knowledge we have available to us. But I imagine true happiness and contentment is absolute.
So on a very basic, simplistic level, I’d choose to be happy and content over knowledgeable and depressed if I could choose my next life with no recollection of my present life. But that’s just me, personally.
This is an unanswerable question when applied to mankind in general, for the reasons davidm pointed out. I can’t answer any of the poll questions.
Suppose we find mathematical proof that science leads to disaster, and therefore decide to return to subsistence agriculture for everyone.
Except, how the heck do we actually accomplish this? Presumably to determine that science is bad, you need scientists to prove it. OK, scientists prove science is bad, and they all start buying farms and worshipping the moon and whatever.
Except, now that we no longer have science, we are no longer justified in thinking that science is bad. We needed science to prove that science is bad, now that we have no science how do we convince ourselves that science is bad? Through logic? We hate logic now, and therefore have no logical reason to reject logic.
Besides, even if we were happier as neolithic subsistence farmers, there’s bound to be a tribe over in the next valley that decides that although subsistence farming is pretty nice, it would be even nicer if they could sit around watching other people subsistence farm, and then come over to their village with swords and take our stuff. We need to be able to defend yourself against those assholes, which means we need weapons yourselves. But then, if we’re so tough that the assholes in the next village don’t dare to steal our stuff, it would be pretty easy for us to steal their stuff. So they need to get tougher, or we’ll enslave them. But then they can enslave us, so we need to get tougher. It might be nice to be a yeoman farmer, it’s not so nice to be an agricultural slave.
Attempting to return to non science based subsistence agriculture would also lead to disaster. There would be a massive die off of the world’s population.
I voted for truth, because a stable lower level of happiness is to be preferred to a bi-polar world in which I might be ritually slaughtered to ensure fertility.
I don’t think I’d ever willfully delude myself. I think that’s what has most people going “What?” to the OP. Everyone thinks they know what’s “real” and “true”, whether they consider themselves an empiricist or not.
I think a better question is “Would you rather have proof of what you know and experience the emotional consequences of this certainty? Or would you rather continue to hold onto beliefs developed based on faith and your own reasoning and risk potentially deluding yourself?”
I’m a scientist, by profession and by cognitive style (I’m a thinker, not a feeler–analytical, not intuitive). And I consider myself a knowledge maven. But I do not think I’d like to know everything. There is something comforting in not knowing some things. Like I do not want to know when I die, even though I do not think I am afraid of death. I just like feeling like I do not have to prepare or get ready for anything, and having the ETA of the Grim Reaper would squash this open-ended feeling. Also, even though I’m agnostic and do not like thinking of supernatural phenomena, I like not knowing what is going to happen to after I die. I think it would be kind of depressing knowing there is nothing waiting for us, even though I do not believe there is anything necessarily there.
I also like that there are questions that human beings cannot and will never get an answer to. As soon as we feel like we have all the answers to everything, that’s when we will collectively die IMHO.
It wasn’t a choice. I naturally lack faith and spirituality, and am interested in facts. I’ve also derived a great deal of comfort and happiness from finding my own ways of understanding the meaning of life; atheism and science. I was raised to be religious and it made no intuitive sense to me and was therefore depressing.
A fool’s paradise may feel good…but it is founded on quicksand. It might last my whole lifetime…but it might not! So, I, like others above, prefer to undermine the premise of the question by saying that, in the long run, truth and happiness are correlated.
But…even if it were proven otherwise…I’d prefer to know the truth, even if it harms me.
(I would hate living in Plato’s “ideal” Republic, where society is based on myth!)
It’s a hypothetical, as I said in the OP. Personally, I don’t believe it’s true that science makes people unhappy; it’s above all much too simplistic. That doesn’t mean one can’t entertain the thought, though.
Yes, and the question is if you would consider truth to be one of these things.
Everybody is way overthinking this. Let’s say growing scientific knowledge is correlated with a disbelief in free will, and a disbelief in free will makes people less happy. Or, before anybody comes pointing out that in that case, if we had no free will, we wouldn’t have any say over whether we prefer science or happiness, substitute something else in its place. It really doesn’t matter. It also doesn’t matter what happens after the decision is made, or whether it is practical to implement any societal change, etc. It’s a simple question about people’s opinions: given the choice, wherever it may come from, would you rather live in ignorant bliss, or in enlightened misery?