I appreciate that there's a fair amount of effort in organising the course - thank you for giving it a shot and for sharing your thoughts.
I've run this course with friends and acquaintances several times since posting this. Although the content is no longer new, I do find it valuable to be reminded to apply it, and I also find it useful as a social bonding exercise. I do think it tends to increase my happiness, but that the effects fade over time.
Regarding the 4 mechanisms mentioned, I think I believe 4 and 2/3 the most. I think the programme, as typically run, would likely select for people who are lonely/going through mental health struggles - people drawn to volunteering to participate in a happiness course will be those who think they need it. I can see the programme being particularly helpful for people going through mental health difficulties, and perhaps of more limited utility for people who are already quite happy.
When I initially ran the course, the participants didn't know each other very well and I think it was very helpful as a bonding exercise. This may have had less value in your group if you already knew each other quite well?
I do agree that the material tends to present research results somewhat uncritically - this was and has been a common point of discussion for us - and that the material could benefit from being more action oriented. I've seen the first session of the newer version of the materials, and it seems more concise and action-oriented: I think they're shifting more towards trying to cultivate regular habits to increase happiness as opposed to once-off actions.
+1 Regarding extending the principle of charity towards HLI. Anecdotally it seems very common for initial CEA estimates to be revised down as the analysis is critiqued. I think HLI has done an exceptional job at being transparent and open regarding their methodology and the source of disagreements e.g. see Joel's comment outlining the sources of disagreement between HLI and GiveWell, which I thought were really exceptional (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/h5sJepiwGZLbK476N/assessment-of-happier-lives-institute-s-cost-effectiveness?commentId=LqFS5yHdRcfYmX9jw). Obviously I haven't spent as much time digging into the results as Gregory has made, but the mistakes he points to don't seem like the kind that should be treated too harshly.
As a separate point, I think it's generally a lot easier to critique and build upon an analysis after the initial work has been done. E.g. even if it is the case that SimonM's assessment of Strong Minds is more reliable than HLI's (HLI seem to dispute that the critique he levies are all that important as they only assign a 13% weight to that RCT), this isn't necessarily evidence that SimonM is more competent than the HLI team. When the heavy lifting has been done, it's easier to focus in on particular mistakes (and of course valuable to do so!).
There's a guy in my (Econ) PhD programme with a working paper relevant to this - I can put you in touch with him if you life: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2203.10305.pdf
This might not be well-founded at all, and it might well (and could even likely) be the case that higher levels of happiness lead to clearer thinking.
I suppose I was thinking about a bit of a dichotonomy between analytical, focussed attention and expansive awareness (while I appreciate that this is an oversimplication, something like the distinction between 'left-brain thinking' and 'right-brain thinking'). My understanding is that''left-brain thinking' can contribute to anxiety and cause one to be overly critical of oneself, but can also facilitate critical thinking regarding whether e.g. a cause area which seems noble is relatively more important. 'Right-brain thinking' might facilitate greater creativity and imagination (for which this course would, I imagine, be helpful), but may lead one to be less analytically rigorous.
This is great advice, thank you! Targeted advertisement is something that I hadn't thought of and seems potentially promising. I just found some other posts (here and here) that relates to this if other people are also thinking about this.
I definitely agree that it's important to consider facets of a career other than impact, but personally I wouldn't want to use the weighted sum approach. I'd prefer to mostly think more about thresholds and aim to 'satisfice' in most areas other than impact.
It's very important to have boundaries and avoid burnout but if you have a reasonable sense of what level of social standing, income etc. is satisfactory and ensure that any career choice satisfies these conditions I think you can avoid these issues.
The reason I would prefer a satisficing approach for these aspects is, as you pointed out, that optimisation is costly, both in terms of cognitive resources and potentially in terms of happiness. Optimising a career along a number of dimensions is a very complex problem, as you pointed out, particularly when we have incomplete information and struggle to predict our future preferences. Furthermore, continually evaluating whether our career path is 'good enough' on a number of dimensions focusses our mind on the negative aspects of our career rather than being grateful for what we have.
And while it's incredibly important to ensure that you're appropriately tending to your wants/needs other than impact, impact has a broader range than the other factors which makes optimisation more important (one path may be orders of magnitude more impactful than another, but is less likely to differ to such a degree on other dimensions).
This approach might also be worthwhile as much of what these other factors are aiming for is likely to be something like happiness, and satisficing is more likely to be conducive to happiness (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-18731-012).
I appreciate that there's a fair amount of effort in organising the course - thank you for giving it a shot and for sharing your thoughts.
I've run this course with friends and acquaintances several times since posting this. Although the content is no longer new, I do find it valuable to be reminded to apply it, and I also find it useful as a social bonding exercise. I do think it tends to increase my happiness, but that the effects fade over time.
Regarding the 4 mechanisms mentioned, I think I believe 4 and 2/3 the most. I think the programme, as typically run, would likely select for people who are lonely/going through mental health struggles - people drawn to volunteering to participate in a happiness course will be those who think they need it. I can see the programme being particularly helpful for people going through mental health difficulties, and perhaps of more limited utility for people who are already quite happy.
When I initially ran the course, the participants didn't know each other very well and I think it was very helpful as a bonding exercise. This may have had less value in your group if you already knew each other quite well?
I do agree that the material tends to present research results somewhat uncritically - this was and has been a common point of discussion for us - and that the material could benefit from being more action oriented. I've seen the first session of the newer version of the materials, and it seems more concise and action-oriented: I think they're shifting more towards trying to cultivate regular habits to increase happiness as opposed to once-off actions.
+1 Regarding extending the principle of charity towards HLI. Anecdotally it seems very common for initial CEA estimates to be revised down as the analysis is critiqued. I think HLI has done an exceptional job at being transparent and open regarding their methodology and the source of disagreements e.g. see Joel's comment outlining the sources of disagreement between HLI and GiveWell, which I thought were really exceptional (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/h5sJepiwGZLbK476N/assessment-of-happier-lives-institute-s-cost-effectiveness?commentId=LqFS5yHdRcfYmX9jw). Obviously I haven't spent as much time digging into the results as Gregory has made, but the mistakes he points to don't seem like the kind that should be treated too harshly.
As a separate point, I think it's generally a lot easier to critique and build upon an analysis after the initial work has been done. E.g. even if it is the case that SimonM's assessment of Strong Minds is more reliable than HLI's (HLI seem to dispute that the critique he levies are all that important as they only assign a 13% weight to that RCT), this isn't necessarily evidence that SimonM is more competent than the HLI team. When the heavy lifting has been done, it's easier to focus in on particular mistakes (and of course valuable to do so!).
There's a guy in my (Econ) PhD programme with a working paper relevant to this - I can put you in touch with him if you life: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2203.10305.pdf
I think this is exceptionally well-written, compelling and informative. Fantastic job!
This might not be well-founded at all, and it might well (and could even likely) be the case that higher levels of happiness lead to clearer thinking.
I suppose I was thinking about a bit of a dichotonomy between analytical, focussed attention and expansive awareness (while I appreciate that this is an oversimplication, something like the distinction between 'left-brain thinking' and 'right-brain thinking'). My understanding is that''left-brain thinking' can contribute to anxiety and cause one to be overly critical of oneself, but can also facilitate critical thinking regarding whether e.g. a cause area which seems noble is relatively more important. 'Right-brain thinking' might facilitate greater creativity and imagination (for which this course would, I imagine, be helpful), but may lead one to be less analytically rigorous.
This is great advice, thank you! Targeted advertisement is something that I hadn't thought of and seems potentially promising. I just found some other posts (here and here) that relates to this if other people are also thinking about this.
I definitely agree that it's important to consider facets of a career other than impact, but personally I wouldn't want to use the weighted sum approach. I'd prefer to mostly think more about thresholds and aim to 'satisfice' in most areas other than impact.
It's very important to have boundaries and avoid burnout but if you have a reasonable sense of what level of social standing, income etc. is satisfactory and ensure that any career choice satisfies these conditions I think you can avoid these issues.
The reason I would prefer a satisficing approach for these aspects is, as you pointed out, that optimisation is costly, both in terms of cognitive resources and potentially in terms of happiness. Optimising a career along a number of dimensions is a very complex problem, as you pointed out, particularly when we have incomplete information and struggle to predict our future preferences. Furthermore, continually evaluating whether our career path is 'good enough' on a number of dimensions focusses our mind on the negative aspects of our career rather than being grateful for what we have.
And while it's incredibly important to ensure that you're appropriately tending to your wants/needs other than impact, impact has a broader range than the other factors which makes optimisation more important (one path may be orders of magnitude more impactful than another, but is less likely to differ to such a degree on other dimensions).
This approach might also be worthwhile as much of what these other factors are aiming for is likely to be something like happiness, and satisficing is more likely to be conducive to happiness (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-18731-012).