Tiling the universe and 'simple' theories of wellbeing plus an update on my life

[There may more errors in grammar, spelling, etc., and perhaps even reasoning than usual for reasons that will be apparent in the second half of the article.]

I have an argument. It is not an argument that I made, but it is an argument that I cherish because I think it is undervalued, and I have developed it in my own way. I don’t see it around nearly as much as I feel I should because, in my opinion, it blows two of the most popular theories of well-being out of the water.

Wellbeing is exactly what it sounds like- it’s whatever it is for your life to go well for you. As you would expect, philosophers argue a lot about wellbeing and what exactly it consists of.

Suppose you think that wellbeing is something simple, e.g.:

Desire satisfaction: To have well-being is to have your desires fulfilled. Or

Pleasure: To have well-being is to experience a lot of pleasure and very little or no pain.

These are two of the most popular theories of well-being in their most basic form. The basic problem is that if the desire satisfaction or pleasure theories of wellbeing are true, it should be possible to make a superb world just by filling it up with people experiencing a single blissful moment, but it isn’t.

I’ve only watched one episode of Rick & Morty, but by chance, it had a little ‘thought experiment’ which was quite illustrative. In it, there’s a character named simple Rick who repeats one of his happiest moments over and over again and is “farmed” for his neurochemicals. Even if he weren’t being farmed, doesn’t there seem to be something wrong with his life?

Here is how I would frame the idea as an argument:

1. Consider a universe Complexworld in which people live complex lives, happy, though with elements of sadness, filled with personal growth, challenges, meaningful connections, self-discovery, and so on. Now consider a universe Simpleworld in which beings experience simple lives filled with pleasure and desire satisfaction reliving the same moment over again. [Clarification: assume they may not realize they are in this state of affairs, but if they did, they’d be happy about it]. If the desire satisfaction or pleasure theories are true, the Simpleworld is better than the Complexworld

2. There are no morally relevant differences other than welfare between Complexworld and Simpleworld.

3. If Simpleworld is better in welfare and worse in no other respect than Complexworld, then Simpleworld is superior to Complexworld.

4. By 1, 2 & 3, Simpleworld should be morally preferable to Complexworld.

5. But Simpleworld isn’t superior to the Complexworld, and the best explanation for why we got the wrong result is that the desire satisfaction and pleasure theories- at least in the form we took them to be for the sake of this argument are not true.

The weakest link seems to me to be premise 2. Perhaps you think there are differences between the worlds that make the complex world better than the simple world that have nothing to do with welfare. If so, you owe us an explanation of what they are, a motivation for caring about them, and a reason to think they are not part of welfare.

Such objections to the desire satisfaction and pleasure theories have been bought up in the philosophical literature- of course- but what surprises me is that I haven’t heard more of them. It seems obvious that there is something awful about individuals relieving moments of satisfaction or pleasure over and over again, but the desire satisfaction and pleasure theories can’t explain this. Related concepts like “wireheading”, while certainly discussed don’t seem to me to get nearly as much play as they should.

Why am I comparing universes full of beings rather than just individuals to make this point? I think something of the cosmic horror is more appreciable at that scale. You might wonder whether or not a person reliving a very satisfying moment over and over again has it good, but the wrongness becomes undeniable when there are a vast number of people involved. I think a lot of problems in ethics become clearer at scale.

Possibly desire and pleasure satisfaction theories might be saved by adding a requirement for diversity. Perhaps one might even argue that we have implicitly given the eudaimonic theory an advantage by comparing a world full of varied experiences to a world of repetition- temporal and spatial. The role of variation in the moral value of welfare- the sense that two people living the same good life is less valuable to the universe than two people living very different good lives- is a question that fascinates me.

I suspect diversity won’t save these views in the end. A life, or a huge collection of lives, that consists of one very different pleasure or instance of satisfaction after another with no continuity would surely not be better than a eudaimonic life. Imagine countless Simple Ricks living an endless variety of blissful moments with no sense of continuity over and over again, is that world better? A good world requires not just bliss or happiness, but also people with complex projects, continuity, and relations. Thus it is unlikely there is an easy way to get “simple” theories of welfare to avoid a problem like this and variations on the problem.

The narrative theory of wellbeing

Finally, I want to conclude with a conjecture. Thus far I’ve spoken of the Eudaimonic theory of wellbeing as my preferred rival to the desire satisfaction and happiness theories. I wonder though if a better alternative wouldn’t be the narrative theory:

X’s life goes well for X to the extent that it forms a coherent, rich and positive narrative.

This comes in both relative forms:

X’s life goes well for X from Y’s point of view to the extent that it forms a coherent, rich and positive narrative

And non-relative forms:

X’s life goes well for X from the point of view of the universe to the extent that it forms a coherent, rich and positive narrative.

A positive narrative is hard to pin down, though one knows one when one sees one. But built into the concept is surely continuity. It also necessitates many of the other markers that are often held to accompany the good life, for example, life satisfaction. It’s very unlikely that a life will form a positive narrative if its own liver despises it. Pleasure, flourishing, happiness- all these things tend to help make a narrative positive- but, as we saw with Simpleworld- they are not enough to make rich, coherent positive narratives on their own. Still, they have their place under this umbrella.

I wonder if it is not so much a rival theory to the eudaimonic theory, as a way of casting more light on exactly what flourishing is. I like the theory in part because it reveals the intimate connection between aesthetics and the good life.

Update on my health:

I had been feeling less sharp than normal and more anxious. I figured it was probably nothing. Then I noticed that my left foot was cold but not my right. I went to the ED, they detected widespread T wave inversion on an ECG, I was told to attend the chest pain clinic the next working day. Upon attending they did two days of tests and found I appear to be in a state of cardiac failure (35 percent left valve ejection fraction). I didn't fully understand what they were saying but in most respects my heart appears quite healthy, no calcium buildup, no clogging, it's just not pumping that well. The most probable diagnosis seems to be Cardiomyopathy, which from what I can tell has a reasonably good prognosis, but there are no guarantees, the etiology isn't known yet and as death is a real possibility I have to plan accordingly. It's funny, I am much more worried about cognitive decline as a result than death, which I suppose is a monument to my own insecurity and vanities, given death is, after all, very possibly a total cessation of cognition.

There is a real possibility of sudden death maybe around ~10%, especially until we can work out the cause. If it’s looking like I’m going downhill I may have some requests to make of my readers in terms of keeping my writing out there. The canonical version of everything I’ve written is either:

Here

Or if it’s not in there, it’s just the original Substack post (I’ve been naughty and haven’t been adding in new material since I made the linked anthology).

Likely I'll be fine, but let me lay out how I would feel were I not to cover the contingency. I'm more of a conveying-ideas type author than a crafter of Belles lettres, but I'll do my best. All my life I’ve felt gravely ill for psychological reasons, so there’s a kind of surreality to the situation, it feels, in a sense, like reality simply adjusting to what was already in a deeper way true. My OCD has given me a spine now, I spent so long wrestling with terrifying phantoms, that possible yet mundane fears like merely dying feel pale in comparison. There’s a kind of courage hidden in anxiety disorders, a phenomenon I’ve never heard anyone discuss, but that I would love to see more broadly talked about because I can’t be the only one. I feel quite relaxed about the whole thing, except for the prospect of diminished cognition.

If- and it’s unlikely- I don’t have much time left, I’m grateful, because through writing, both through extending my thoughts out to merge with others, and by imagining endless permutations, I have lived more lives than one. The pain I felt was just for me the price of that: “For he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.” or more starkly: “In the end, all you can hope for is the love that you feel to equal the pain you’ve gone through”.

I have a distinct memory of when I was young, before even kindergarten, tossing up in bed the outline of two lives. I don't think I would have put it in quite these terms but the gist of it was did I want a happy, active, sporty kind of life, or a life of the mind. I decided I preferred the latter. Later I remember being taught the story of King Solomon being asked what he wanted from God, and requesting wisdom. I went into the church later and made the same request. He could have asked for happiness, so could have I- and even a the time I was desperately unhappy. But I made that choice. I really feel I did choose this inward-looking, often painful life for myself.

Rhizomes spiraling out underground, I have touched more minds than I realize, and gained the power of being larger than myself, the author’s prize- a privilege belonging to even small-scale scratchers like me. I remember once reading a user comment on Reddit, in a thread on an unrelated topic, that my blog had saved their life multiple times. I knew then that I was larger than myself, that I'd managed to do something that was large in absolute terms, even if it was off by many orders of magnitude from the authors I admire.

Most of the posts I write get about a thousand reads, in relative and contemporary terms that’s tiny, but in absolute terms and by the standards of most of history, it’s large. I mention this not out of arrogance, but to convey just how impossibly grateful I am to have spiraled into so many lives. I hope I have been a good house guest, and that I have paid my rent for your attention.

Finally, if the worst that could happen happens I’d like to say that:

1. I forgive all wrongs done against me, both because it is right and because I would like to be forgiven for my wrongs. My OCD makes me unsure of the extent of my wrongs, but either way, all I can say is I tried.

2. Knowing what I know now, I would never have traded this life for a long and happy one.