A meaning to life: Part 5 - A vision for an Utopia

At the end of part 3 I suggested:

ActualisationAnswer:   the answer to Meanlife is that each human should aim for self-actualisation- they should develop themselves and strive to achieve their potential.

In Part 4 I argued that the best thing we could do is to generalise the ActualisationAnswer - to make it possible for everyone to achieve self actualisation. In this post I'm going to go more deeply into what I think such a world would look like as well as well as articulate my plan for helping achieve this world.

What is an Utopia?

The word Utopia describes a community or society that is ideal or perfect. The term itself is meant to be ironic and means 'no place'. It was originally coined by the author Thomas Moore as the name of his 1516 book. The term is usually said with connotations of being unrealistic or imaginary. When utopias are depicted in literature, they are often shown to be only perfect on the outside, and deeply flawed within.

I'm a bit of an optimist so I would like to take the challenge head on - I'd like to live in a world that is utopian or at least in a world that is much improved from our current. The first step I think is to discuss what it means for a society to be ideal or perfect. I've already argued previously that a society should be there to improve and make better the lives of its citizens. To make it better - I think - should be connected to the ActualisationAnswer - the society should help its citizens achieve their potential.

Now, I've indicated previously that I think actualisation is an important part of being happy, and I think one could quite easily argue that a utopian society is one in which everyone is really or even maximally happy. This of course requires us to assess the concept of happiness more deeply.

For brevity, I'm going to refer to the three kinds of theories of happiness as described by Derek Partfit in his book Reasons and Persons. 

1: Hedonism: happiness is about having more pleasure and less pain.

2: Desire fulfilment: happiness is about having one's desired fulfiled

3: Objective list: there exists a list of things that are good or bad for people, and happiness is about having the good things and not having the bad things.

The third kind is a little bit vague, so let me describe two common types of things that might be on this objective list. The first (call this 3A) is of course the Aristolean concept of Eudaimonia - broadly connected to self actualisation, but focussing heavily on the development of virtue. The second (call this 3B) is a more buddhist notion that focusses on ridding oneself of the three causes of unhappiness - aversion, craving and ignorance. 

I do think that each of these positions have their own problems, but I also think that these positions are somewhat consistent with one another and that a world that properly addresses all such options could be validly described as Utopian.

To give an idea of how this analysis might work, let's discuss a few cases that I would describe as non utopian because they fail.

Perhaps the easiest example is to talk about Nozick's experience machine. Imagine there is this machine that is able to simulate experiences perfectly, and that you could programme it to provide really enriching, pleasurable experiences. While this machine clearly maxes on hedonism and arguably desire fulfilment, it fails on 3A. If we are using the thing we are merely experiencing, but not actually doing something or having something. We aren't actually being virtuous or flourishing - we are just feeling like it. One could also argue that it fails 4A - we're fully buying into craving and we are living an ignorant life (depends if we recognise that the machine experiences are false).

Another example is to consider a world in which I have complete freedom and can do whatever I want. Suppose now that I have the desire to harm or kill others and I actually do so (thus meeting desire fulfilment). Should we consider myself as happy? This of course has the side effect of thrusting a negative freedom on others. Or suppose my desires are a bit more mundane - I might be an incredibly talented mathematician but instead I decide to sit at home and sleep my days away. My desires might be fulfilled but I'm failing on my actualisation. I think this also shows an important distinction when discussing happiness - the distinction between the state of being (e.g. I feel good) compared to the leading of a valuable life (e.g. I am doing good things).

A final example to consider is perhaps to consider the life of an army veteran that has saved many people but is actually the war. He might have achieved the best that he can do, thus reaching eudaimonia. Yet he might also experience PTSD and frustration that the war is ongoing. We could argue that he has failed the 1 (lack of pleasure), 2 (desires not fulfilled) and 3B (ongoing aversion of the mind).

What would a utopia that broadly satisfies these four definitions involve?

This will be tricky as although the four definitions are broadly consistent, it's a lot to discuss for each.

Let's look first at what I've previously discussed - Eudiamonia. I think there are some problems that need to be solved:

1) One needs the money to be able sustain their life as well as make purchases required to pursue their activities of choice.

2) One needs the time to be be able to pursue their dreams, passions and so on.

3) They need to be able to have the motivation and there needs to be no distractions.

4) They need to be able to identify what their dreams and passions are, and such activities need to be available in society.

I think normally one would expect the first problem to be solved by getting a job. Unfortunately, jobs are the single biggest consumers of time (as well as the most miserable activity of the day). So I'd expect in such a society there would need to be a way for jobs to be optional. One way of doing this would be for the government to provide resources unconditionally - either via a form of income or otherwise. That's a tall order because there needs to be a way for the government to make the money / resources - things that normally come from a functional economy where people have jobs.

An obvious solution to this would maybe be the leveraging of AI to generate economic surplus. We would somehow have AI replace people's jobs and use the technology to generate income and resources. I think we're still quite far from such a future and no doubt there will be various issues in leveraging this.

The third problem is interesting. Some people will already have the motivation and we can perhaps hope that given the time and resources, people will be able to follow it without distraction. For others this might be more difficult and the government might need to help them. This could be in the form of enrichment centres, guidance or so on. Possibly we could also just let people do as they wish, even if it involves traditionally 'waste of time' activities.

The fourth problem could be solved through government guidance. Maybe an enrichment advisor? Or maybe just a culture that really promotes pursuing one's dreams. One issue I anticipate is that some dreams and passions require a society we have now, but the changes in society might remove these options. For example some people might dream of a certain job, and this kind of utopia might not have those jobs. I think certain jobs still need to be available and they should be rewarded - we just need it to be in some sense optional. We're really catering for the individual who wants to pursue music but is forced into a corporate job. We assume that given enough money they can follow their music passion, even if they don't have the most glamorous life. 

There's also the problem of competition. Many of these dreams and passions are considered valuable because they are difficult or are the best. I think we need to retain these somehow - we need our achievements to be genuine, only then do we feel like we have achieved actualisation.

The other definitions

1: Hedonism

So with hedonism I've argued previously we need to have a balanced take. Certain pleasure is good and certain pleasure should be considered bad. For example we might argue that pursuing a life of drugs or 'induced pleasure' is problematic in some way (although maybe we want to give people the option of it still). The options for pleasure should be available in this ideal society, but we need to consider which ones.

I think at a basic level by providing money we ensure that people always have enough resources to survive and meet their minimal requirements. I don't think anyone is arguing that people should be starving. I don't necessarily think people should have superfluous money (as I suspect its not economically feasible and also takes away the joy of accomplishment), but they should be able to enjoy certain luxuries. I mentionde that some jobs should still be there - I think people there should be ways for people to 'earn' more luxuries if they want to have even more pleasure.

2: Desire fulfilment

I think the important thing is that people are given the autonomy and freedom to do what they want and at least attempt to fulfil their desires. Naturally some desires will be easier to fulfil than others - this will depend e.g. on how it influences and freedoms of others but also the nature of competition. I think having some kind of challenge is important - desires should be possible to fulfil but not trivially.

3B: Enlightenment

I'm focussing as before on the buddhist notion here. I think people should be given training on how to control their mind (and definitely research is needed here). They should be supported via e.g. mental health services and be able to live a calm and peaceful existence. People should live genuine lives, not artificial ones.

What's next?

I've articulated this world now and also mentioned various issues with it. I think it is likely that such a world is still quite far out, and many changes - cultural and material - are required to achieve it. I expect progress to be gradual, and likely turbulent.

I propose going for a double attack, addressing the cultural as well as the material changes required to get to this world.

First on the cultural - currently society is engrained with certain notions of success, and there is an expectation that you have to 'work for a living'. People are still largely obsessed with external, capitalistic notions of success. I argue that this does not provide genuine happiness and that we require a shift. We want people to take control of their lives and have freedom and autonomy, for them to be encouraged to pursue their dreams and passion. 

Writing this blog is one very small way to change our culture, but I think broader influence is needed. A few keys way stand out to me:

- Academic

- Media

- Personal

Academic influence is via writing and research. This could be in terms of books but it could also be living in the pop-academic space and talking about these issues. 

Media is focussed on the use of social media to achieve change. Blogging counts of course, but also things like youtube, instagram and so on. One should become a popular figure - an influencer - and push forwards these ideas to the world.

The final is personal, and I think this has limited impact. We talk about what we're doing and we try and encourage change in others. Hopefully this change spreads throughout the world.

Now on the material side there are a few key policies I think that are needed. The one's I'll discuss are the following:

- Work reform, including Universal Basic Income

- Job automation, including what happens to the unemployed

- Happiness based policy making 

- AI governance and proper use of technology

First on work reform, we obviously need to change the role of jobs in our society. We need a way for people to be able to fund their passions and experiences.

On Job automation, the vision I've described makes jobs optional because we're hoping to get economic surplus via other means (e.g. AI). I think it's already happening but we need to discuss what the impacts of job automation are, how it affects the unemployed and how we will support them to do other things.

In terms of happiness based policy making, this is a shift in government and society to do things that improve people's wellbeing and lives. Government currently focusses more on economic effort and it will take an internal shift to be able to change the purpose of policy making for the better. This is a more meta area.

AI governance is important because this future world likely relies on technology (largely AI?) to be able to sustain itself and ensure that individual people have the freedom to as they wish. We need to make sure we are careful with what we are doing and make sure that everything is still in line with our interests.

Conclusion

I've articulated what I think a utopia looks like and different dimensions that we need to target it. My goal is to target both sides - I want to be an influencer and change our cultural views on this topic, but I also want to target the material side and actually exact change. I think doing both simultaneously is challenging but should be rewarding as it gives one the perspective on society as well as intellectual credibility to change the world.

That's my vision for now, let's see how it goes!

 

 

How consume cultural content?

In my last post I discussed in detail the three kinds of capital - economic, social and cultural, with a particular focus on the development of cultural capital. In this post I want to discuss some of the origins of this theory of cultural capital, the three different versions of cultural capital and the key of problem of consuming cultural content.

Origins

The term cultural capital is typically credited to the French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu was interested in understanding why children with similar cognitive abilities (e.g. IQ) but different social classes ended up having vastly different life outcomes. In particular, how was it that the wealthy were able to 'socially reproduce' and pass on various advantages to their children. According to Boudieu, this was because the wealthy were able to endow their children with cultural capital. To Bourdieu, children from wealthy families entered school already prepared to succeed in it - they shared a common mode of speech, style of interaction and have prior awareness of both the ways of teaching and content of the syllabus. The idea therefore is that these children come with something - a form of capital.

Now, my interest is primarily in discussing cultural capital in a more general sense - not focussed on educational attainment but as a form of capital that individuals can accumulate, spend and convert. I see his analysis as descriptive - it provides a way to see the world. I won't comment here on to what degree it is metaphysically substantive.

 

Bordieu's three kinds of cultural capital

Bordieu distinguishes between three kinds of cultural capital, which I will denote as follows:

<1>: The embodied state

<2>: The objectified state

<3>: The institutionalised state

Let's discuss these in order.

First with the embodied state (<1>) - this refers to capital that is linked to the body and is internal. It refers to our knowledge, our skills, our experiences. One important aspect of <1> is the difficulty in cultivating it. I cannot simply pass my knowledge to you - you have to somehow cultivate it over time. The somehow of this is extremely important and I'll discuss it in more detail later in this post. The development of <1> is what I describe as cultural enrichment.

The objectified state (<2>) refers to cultural artefacts - for example books, paintings, sculpurse. Rather facetiously - if it's British Museum, it's probably this second kind of cultural capital. What's interesting is the transmission of <2> objectified cultural capital. I can of course sell you a collection of paintings, but what is transferred is only the legal ownership of the artefact - not the means of 'consuming' the painting. This point about consumption is vitally important - imagine I sold you first edition copy of Descartes meditations in the original French. While the artefact has value in itself, if you're unable to read French then you cannot really consume it. To consume the book you will need to be able to understand French (and philosophy) to a sufficient level - part of your embodied (<1>) capital.

The third state (<3>) refers to recognition received by an institution, for example a qualification. The problem with (<1>) embodied capital is that it is a part of you - there's value but someone might not believe it (in comparison e.g. to (<2>) objectified capital). By having recognition from an institution, you can validate your capital. Qualifications are a form of a signal that tells onlookers certain things - here being my level of (<1>) embodied capital. It is important of course to distinguish the qualification from the skill - qualifications are external while skill is internal. You need to show someone your qualification for it to be of value (and in theory you can fake it), while your skill requires no witness.

Consumption of cultural content

Now that I've discussed the three kinds of cultural capital, I want to focus on what I describe as cultural content. Rather abstractly, I'm referring to the 'meaning' or 'value' behind cultural artefacts (<2>) or qualifications (<3>) that is amassed in the embodied state (<1>).

Let's return to my example of French. 

The embodied state (<1>) refers to my actual ability in French. For example how I am able to speak the language, how I am able to read French books, how I am able to understand native speakers and so on. 

The objectified state (<2>) might refer to all the French books or films I have. It could also refer to various French museums or artefacts. Note that such cultural artefact or films have some kind of content that I cannot fully access unless I'm able to actually French. 

Finally, the institutionised state (<3>) might refer to my French qualifications - a DELF exam or an A-level.

The key here is this idea of content -  the more cultural capital we have in the embodied state, the more we can content we can consume. It's worth highlighting here that there more forms of consumption than simply cultural artefacts - we can for example consume an interaction (e.g. a conversation with a French person) or an experience (e.g. a French film).Indeed, we can think of our ability to consume capital in the embodied state (<1>) as the way we can spend our cultural capital. We use to gain access to content that we would otherwise be restricted from.

A natural conclusion is therefore to think about how we can increase our cultural capital in the embodied state  (<1>). Well quite obviously to anyone who has tried learning a language, I need to consume more content. I.e. I need to speak more French, I need to read more French and so on. Note that there's clearly some kind of loop involved - develop <1> by consuming <2> and vice versa. Of course the more we develop <1> the more we are able to consume <2> and only with a sufficient amount of <1> are we able to legitimately develop <3>.

Now, the development loop for language learning is relatively, but other kinds of cultural capital are more complex to develop. For example, what does it mean to develop greater knowledge of a certain culture - what might it mean to learn how to be 'truly French'? 

Is it it about reading up on the country? Or does it involve living in the country and experiencing an specific lifestyle? What if I go to the country but never talk to anyone? Is that better than sitting in my UK home and watching videos about France? 

Without knowledge of how to properly consume content, we might struggle to develop wide cultural capital. I could visit the van Gough gallery every single day, but if I'm rushing through the paintings each time, am I really developing my cultural capital or understanding of impressionism? Is it wasted on me? They say practice makes perfect, but I think it is targetted or active practice that does so.

I went to visit the Angkor Wat recently spending a day looking at various temples. I spent around $40 on a day pass and $20 on a Tuk Tuk driver to take me around for the day. Why did I do this? Well aside from the fact that I thought it would be interesting (and a great photo opportunity!), I also believed that it would culturally enrich me on some level - but how? What is the difference between e.g. just looking at photos of Angkor Wat in comparison to seeing it in person?

Another way of framing this question – how do I consume the Angkor Wat?

On some level, this question seems bizarre – we do not consume a temple. The point however is that we can get more or less out of the experience of visiting Angkor Wat. It can add to my cultural capital to a large degree, or it can barely affect me. Think about the guy who visits each place and only takes a photo from the outside and then moves onto the next. What does he gain from the visit, except a bunch of photos (that are probably worse than the stock photos used for advertising the site)? It feels like this guy is missing out on something.

Reading online, I saw a bunch of suggestions on what to do when visiting Angkor Wat. They suggested sitting for a bit in each temple, looking around and feeling the atmosphere. They suggested hiring a guide to talk about the differences between each temple, and the history involved. They suggested looking out for specific inscriptures on the walls of the temple. These all seem like suggestions on how to more effectively consume the experience of viewing Angkor Wat.

I saw this interesting post the other day on viewing art that discusses various techniques one can use to view art - for example by looking the art medium and looking up the context of the art. I think that these are ways to improve our ability to consume art and hopefully get something more out of the experience.

I'll leave this post here with the key message that to properly develop cultural capital we need to invest in properly consuming content. In the next post I want to go into some more detail about the difficulty in determining the value of cultural capital and the resultant risk we incur when we invest in cultural capital.

What do I mean by cultural enrichment? To build cultural capital

What do I mean by cultural enrichment?

Cultural enrichment is a phrase I use frequently. I tend to use it to justify doing certain things, and as an end in itself. In this post I discuss the theory behind cultural enrichment and why I think it is important to seek.

The short answer to my title question is the following:

“To build cultural capital”

This of course leads to the next question – what is capital? Capital is often used in economics to refer to money, or resources of some kind. For example, a business needs capital (typically financial) in order to initiate running.

I tend to think of there being three main types of capital.

Financial capital

Social capital

Cultural capital

 

Let's survey them:

Financial capital is relatively self explanatory – it is about your financial power – how much money you have and your capacity to spend that money to achieve your means. Money that you cannot spend is not useful – liquidity is important. It's important to note that there can be some scaling benefits of financial capital – the more money you have the easier it tends to be to make more money. On the flip side, money scales with significant diminishing returns against happiness – you need a certain amount of money to be 'sufficiently' happy. More than that amount doesn't increase your happiness by much.

Social capital refers to your social power or rather, your network and your ability to leverage your network. What matters here is who you know and who you are. For example, connections can help you get a job or access to other special opportunities. Note there's a slight nuance here, we are talking about the 'value' of those in our network, but there multiple kinds of value. The obvious one is for example knowing royalty, a politician or a CEO. The perception is that such direct value can be exploited in some sense. In our current society that prides itself in meritocracy, we tend to think that such exploitation would amounts to nepotism. The second kind of value I'd mention is more indirect – it focuses more on the sort of knowledge and experience provided by those who you know. As we will discuss shortly, it is crucial that we can convert between different kinds of capital – almost like a form of currency exchange. The final kind of social capital is more matter of fact – having relationships is vital to happiness. Loneliness – literally – kills. Emotional support is very important.

I tend to think of cultural capital as as combination of the below:

Human capital: Our skills, experience and ability to do things.

Physical capital: Our physical and mental health as well as our physical and mental resistance and capability.

Cultural knowledge: Our knowledge, understanding and ability to engage in our culture and other cultures.

Some analyses would differentiate these three aspects instead of putting them all under the umbrella of cultural capital. The reason I don't do this is because I tend to view cultural capital as 'everything aside from financial and social capital'. Doing so allows me to categorise such capital in the following way:

A person with only physical capital is one who basically enters a new society with no experiences, skills and know no one. The only thing at their disposal is that they have the money to buy whatever they need. A useful example is to think of them as a rich tourist – they are vulnerable to being scammed but will get by regardless.

A person with only social capital is one who knows and is connected to important people, but they themselves have no skills, experience or even money. They get by because important people want them to. A useful example is to think of them as a CEOs son.

This then leaves a person with cultural capital as someone who has wide skills, experience and so on but have nothing otherwise. For example if we are transported into a new society with no money and knowing no one, it is our ability to adapt and thrive in said society.

Conversion

Let's discuss conversion – perhaps the most immediately obvious conversion is from financial capital to other forms. For example, if I have a lot of money I am more likely to be well connected with other rich and powerful people (perhaps via my business, or my job). I can pay people to get what I need. Furthermore, I can use money to help develop my cultural capital – I can pay for private tutors to teach me languages, I can get a personal trainer and a gym membership and I can go skiing on the weekends. It's worth highlighting that capital can take time to convert – we can't just amass huge amounts of financial capital and expect to be able to cash in instantly.

With social capital, we can more easily find useful opportunities. We become aware of the hidden politics behind organisations and power. We can for example get a well paid job leading to more financial capital. We can also understand more about the world by engaging with other people with cultural capital. Through this we can better understand what is valuable and how best to approach issues.

Finally with cultural capital, our skills and experiences can lead us to important opportunities. Through this we can meet interesting people and develop our network.

One of the big challenges with conversion is that it is difficult to measure. Financial capital has its own currency, while social and cultural does not. There's no obvious 'cultural currency' with an exchange rate to dollars. There's a sense that we need to trust we can do this conversion without knowing what the exact worth.

Cultural enrichment

We've now discussed the different kinds of capital as well as how conversion might work. I've mentioned earlier that to me, cultural enrichment is about developing one's cultural capital.

The question is therefore – how do we develop cultural capital?

Let's first discuss a few examples of cultural capital and corresponding ways to develop it.

• Awareness of other cultures, for examples their history, their norms, their state of affairs.

  • Developed by speaking to people from different cultures and reading their history. Visiting other places.

• Up to date knowledge of our own culture, for examples recent events and potential developments.

  • Developed by keeping up with the news, speaking to people around us and considering how issues might relate to one other.

• Skills and experiences in relevant areas, for example languages, technical abilities.

  • Pursuing education, in the form of courses, qualifications. Supplemented with practice.

• Social awareness and relatable experiences to establish common ground.

  • Practice engaging with a variety of people and trying out different things.

• Physical and mental capability to be able to follow through with potential options.

  • Physical training and having a good mental health. Developing a solid baseline to easily try out new activities.

So when I say cultural enrichment I mean doing some of the above activities to develop cultural capital.

It is clear to me that many of these things will 'cost' or require other kinds of capital to achieve. For example, visiting other countries will obviously incur travel fees. Indeed, the time itself to pursue these activities can be costly as we need to sustain ourselves. Some of these activities are much better done (or outright require) other people to support us. Having friends from other cultures is very valuable to support cultural understanding and to accurately pinpoint the most valuable things to do.

I've also discussed previously how many of my goals are centred around eudaimonia – a 'flourishing' sense of happiness. I've already mentioned how money in itself has rather diminishing returns for happiness. So from my perspective it is best a certain point and then invest any excess into building social and cultural capital instead.

My career break is an example of my pursuit of cultural enrichment. I am trading off my financial capital (savings, and lost earnings from not working) in order to develop my cultural capital by developing myself and travelling around the world. It is an investment with unclear return – but one that I am willing to bet will be valuable in the future.

Ideological tensions as an Effective Altruist in the civil service

The civil service delivers public services and supports the government of the day to implement policies. At first glance, working in the civil service seems to align quite strongly with EA principles and values as there's a common motivation to do good through evidence based decision making. 

In this post I want to discuss what I see as an ideological tension between working as a civil servant (in the UK government) and being an effective altruist. My main motivation for writing this is to help articulate a real frustration. On the one hand, working in the civil service can have enormous impact - arguably much more than relevant alternatives. On the other hand, there are serious ideological clashes between civil service and EA principles that any EA civil servant would need to internally reconcile.

The main structure of this post will be as follows:

1) A brief introduction outlining my experience working in the UK civil service, my experience with EA and why now's the time for me to write this.

2) An argument for why it might seem logical to work as a civil servant.

3) An argument for why one might think working as a civil servant is a more impactful than relevant alternatives in the private sector, research centres or charities.

4) An explication of various tensions between EA values and government values

5) Reconciliation and concluding remarks

 

1 - Introduction

I've worked as a civil servant in the UK government for four years now and this post mainly refers to the UK and other countries that use the Westminster political system. For those not aware, civil servants in the UK are apolitical. They work alongside politicians - ministers - but they themselves have no political affliation. The theory is that ministers are democratically elected to make decisions for the benefit of the country, and that civil servants are the ones that implement those decisions. In practice the line can be somewhat blurred - it is usually the civil service who suggest what decisions to take based on policy analysis, with the minister having the final say. It is worth noting that the civil service is wide and covers a range of roles - including key operational roles that have minimal ministerial engagement. This post will primarily focus on policy roles.

I took part in the civil service graduate programme, which involved 5 rotations across government. I've worked in the Department for Transport, the Cabinet Office, the Home Office, The Alan Turing Institute (the UK's national AI institute) and BEIS (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy). In my current role I work as a technical lead on policy around law and AI. My experience I think is relatively wide, although not very deep - but hopefully this provides context on where I'm coming from.

I've been aware of EA for a while, although started looking at it more deeply in the last year as I have been considering different career options. This naturally led me to 80,000 hours, as I've considered moving towards the AI policy space (the second highest rated career according to their analysis!). This led me to ask the question - where's the best place to do this kind of policy work. Should I stay in government, or should I go elsewhere? What's the best option based on traditional EA analysis?

There's also three observations I've had that surprised me and motivated this analysis:

• How few civil servants there are in EA
• How few civil servants care about the magnitude of their impact (compared just to the fact they are impacting society)
  
• How (comparatively) little I see civil service discussed as a EA career path
  

This post should hopefully shed some light on these questions and observations, detailing my thoughts on where I should go to make an impact. It will hopefully convince the reader of the potential impact of being a civil servant, and also explicate what I see as key tensions being an EA in the civil service.

My thoughts here were greatly informed from various discussions I've had through the Civil Service EA network, for which I'm very thankful.

2 - Why be a civil servant?

When you ask a civil servant why they work in government, you're likely to hear a few things. Flexibility, security and most relevant to this discussion - impact to society. Many people work for government because they want to change citizen lives for the better and to contribute towards long term change.

Now if you're like me, the next question you'll have in mind is this: do civil servants actually have impact? And perhaps more relevant - are civil service jobs more impactful than relevant alternatives in the private sector, research centres or charities?

Let's focus on the first question for now. In some sense the answer should be an affirmative yes. Civil servants work to implement government decisions, which are meant to support and thereby positively impact the citizens of the country. In this sense, the roles is designed to have social impact.

In response, consider the following argument: there are many 'well-motivated' roles in this world, but not all of them will have significant impact under 'traditional EA metrics (QALY, DALY etc). The main reason for this is usually the scale of the work. From my personal experience, there are two 'roles' volunteering in charities that I've done that I'd like to think were well motivated, but probably had rather minimal overall impact. The first role was volunteering in a charity shop - organising goods, steaming clothes and talking to customers. The second role was volunteering at a community centre helping the elderly with IT problems. My view is that both roles were impact constrained as they could only focus on supporting a few people. It felt good to support the old man down the road to use his phone to call his children, but the two hours spent may represent a large opportunity cost.

EA analysis I think can be heartless at times, but the numbers should be clear - helping individuals on such a local level lacks the same scalability as working in a larger organision to influence how society is run.  As EAs we'd ideally like to positively impact as many people as possible - scaling is critical.

I think this kind of argument forces a certain nuance in the analysis of being a civil servant. Strategy and policy roles are often criticised because they are very far away from the beneficiary - but I think there's an important trade-off. Macro roles allow for more potential impact - perhaps at the loss of feeling good about what one does. Writing the cost of living rebate policy probably doesn't give you the same emotions inside compared to being an assylum case worker supporting refugees but it's overall impact is likely higher. I will say of course that while policy roles may be the most obvious place to have this macro impact, there are many relevant alternatives. For example, as poor as the UK's overall Covid19 approach was, we could argue that the commercial team delivering on vaccines development and roll out had an extraordinarily high impact in reducing Covid deaths. A similar point could be made about technical teams building contract tracing applications.

Thus I argue that at least at first glance (and with the right considerations), working as a civil servant can have significant societal impact. Governments have enormous budgets and scope - there's a lot of potential.

3) How does the impact compare to relevant alternatives?

Now for the other question. Let's suppose that you're someone who wants to change how society functions. There are different ways to do this, but in the UK (I don't have experience of other governments, but I assume it is somewhat similar) this is usually done by influencing goverment law and regulation. Since I've already mentioned the 80,00 hours career review, let's just use the example that you care about AI governance or strategy.

The question now becomes - where should you go to have the most influence?

This is actually a real question I've been considering. Here is a list of roles that I've considered so far - I appreciate it is not comprehensive. We can consider this as our comparison space - we want to determine the most impactful role of the below.

• 1) Minister
  
• In the UK this would likely be in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, as a the minister for Science, Research and Innovation.

• 2) Civil Service
  
• Policy Lead in the same department.
  
•  3) Research Centre
• For example the Alan Turing Institute or something like the Centre for the Governance of AI. Research associates or other roles.
  

• 4) Academic Institution
  
• From a PhD / Post-Doc going up towards Professorship.
  

• 5) Private Sector
  
• Incredibly variable - this could include policy leads in big tech companies or product owners for AI safety products. It could also just amount to working a role that requires some degree of AI governance.
  
•  6) Charities
• I think there's overlap here with research centres -  some roles here might involve policy research and lobbying.
  

Now there's extraordinary nuance here and I really say comparison in the loosest sense. The barriers to entry for each role are clearly different and represent different levels of seniority. Furthermore, I lack personal experience in many of these options - unsurprisingly I haven't worked as a minister before! The argument I'm going to raise is primarily rooted in my own experience working on AI-related policy in government.

I argue now that while there are 6 kinds of roles, there are in practice only three relevant categories - decision makers, implementors and advisors. Using our above example, we can think that the decision maker signs off on the policy, the implementor ensures it happens (e.g. manages the law making process, communicates it and ensures compliance) and the advisor feeds into the evidence base (e.g. through a consultation).

Here, the decision maker is clearly the minister as they have formal authority. However one could argue that the civil servant also has considerable decision making capability - they are providing the formal recommendation to the minister, and it's fairly common for ministers to just do as their civil servants recommend.

The implementor is most obviously the civil servant as it is their job to implement ministerial decisions. In practice though, some of the implementation can be outsourced or decentralised - for example technical delivery is often done by private sector consultancies. Vaccines for example are produced outside of government, and vaccine centres decentralised to the NHS / local councils.

Who are the advisors? Definitely not the minister, and probably not the civil servant - but likely anyone else. As an example - the civil servant might release a consultation asking for views on various topics. It is common for various companies, research centres, charities and academics to feed into this work. The civil servant will analyse the responses, writes up a strategy and then tries to get broader agreement and eventually ministerial sign off. Now, I don't know how long it takes stakeholders to prepare such comments, but I'm fairly sure the amount of time civil servants spend on each one probably doesn't do it justice.

Another common thing is to run roundtables, where various academics or senior industry leaders are invited to make something happen. From my own experiences it is still surprising in some sense that these academics (who are far more intelligent than myself) are just feeding in their comments, for me to accept into our approach. I'd highlight of course that reality is more nuanced than this - certain stakeholders (e.g large tech companies) may have disproportionally more influence than the average advisor.

Now I would argue that the role with the most impact tends to be decision maker. Note that this can be a positive or negative impact but for sake of argument we will also assume that all role holders here are well motivated and competent. The second most impactful role is the implementor as they make it happen. The least impactful role is the advisor, although they still do considerable good for society.

If you've been following this argument you can see where this leads.

I'm arguing that if you want to make an impact you should be the minister, and if not then be the civil servant. If you can't do those then you should work as an advisor - providing feedback to the minister and civil servants.

Being a minister of course is tricky - there only say 100 such roles available at any one time. It requires one to get elected and chances of success are low. By all means would I encourage people to do so, but I don't think it's an entirely realistic path to pursue. 

There are hundreds of thousands of civil servants (with varying levels of impact), but it's clearly much easier to get into compared to being a minister. My personal view is that the entrance barrier to join the UK Civil Service is not particularly high. I recognise that my perspective might be a bit skewed here as I joined government four years ago. I also recognise that the roles I've mentioned have limited availability, although my experience running recruitment is that many roles are so niche that they receive few applications.

I think certain advisors have serious impact, however I think the investment in becoming an advisor with serious impact comes at a large time cost. As an example, most academics we engage with are professors with more than twenty years of experience in the field compared to our policy leads with potentially one to two. I'd argue the same point for other advisors - it takes to get into a position where you can have a large influence on policy. Of course it's worth mentioning that the policy eco-system relies on a range of stakeholders - I'm certainly not arguing that everyone should suddenly transition into the civil service. It's clearly important for example that there are people doing active research on the relevant questions that can advise government. I'm just arguing the marginal individual would likely make more impact in government than elsewhere.

Anyhow, let me just drive forward my point: if one is interested in changing government policy, usually the best route is to do it from the inside. In this sense, I'd argue that if you want to make an impact, being a civil servant is usually better than relevant alternatives.

4) Tensions between EA and the civil service

Hopefully I've given you at least some reason to think that being a civil servant is not only a suitable choice for an effetive altruist, but potentially even an optimal one. My hope is that such a recognition will make my next argument hit more deeply (and frustratingly), as I discuss some ideological tensions between the two.

I think it is fair to say that EA is value laden, in the sense it presupposes the acceptance of a particular set of values. Now it's entirely possible that these values are objectively true - and as a moral realist I'd be open to this - but epistemically it is difficult to know whether that's the case. What this means is that - potentially - the EA values are wrong, and we aren't yet sure if that is the case. Other values might therefore be more important, leading to the issue of value conflict.  

The centre for effective altruism website outlines principles such as a committment to others, a scientific mindset (evidence based decision making) and openess (transparency). Marginally more controversial, but lets also add some degree of acceptance of long-termism and placing great value on future life. In practice it might mean focusing only on policy areas that have high predicted impact.

Now, I think generally government should and does endorse a committment to others, evidence based decision making and transparency. These are good things. I will shortly however be covering two values that I think government would consider even more important - democracy and comprehensivity.

Before I go into these values in detail, I first want to outline and distinguish between two relevant but slightly different notions.

1) Whether government should follow Effective Altruism (the macro)

2) Whether a civil servant working in government should follow Effective Altruism (the micro)

The first notion essentially means that government should fully embrace EA principles (I'm using principles interchangeably with values) in decision making and prioritisation.

The second notion focuses on the individual working in government. It places greater emphasis on such an individual to seek high impact areas of work. It might additionally mean embodying the various principles mentioned above in one's day to day practice.

Onto the value conflict.

Democracy

The (UK) government is democratically appointed and ministers (with a few rare exceptions) are politicians who have the democratic mandate. The government prides itself (and I think rightly so) on this mandate - it has the power to make decisions because the people elected it to do so. Civil servants in comparison are hired by meritocractic principles - their authority is indirectly granted by the political establishment. This means that ministers have overriding decision making power - they can (and often will) disagree with their civil servants, even if it goes against the evidence.

It is actually somewhat ironic that having this democratic mandate can lead to surprisingly tryannical decision making.

While civil servants are (in theory) apolotical, and focused purely on the public good - ministers are not. They have pressures to get re-elected and must consider positions that are popular as opposed to merely effective. Ministers frequently worry about how they might be portrayed in the media and are (perhaps rightly) concerned that they might lose their jobs if things go poorly.  Ministers themselves might have a slightly warped sense of risk, at times taking an overly risk averse approach to avoid controversy and other times adopting an overly risk loving approach, taking advantage of generally short tenures in post.  

The democratic mandate means that government decision making can at times conflict with the scientific, evidence based decision making espoused in effective altruism theory.  Furthermore, the fact that ministers can change so frequently and priorities so radically can often undermine the capability to seriously evaluate evidence and make informed decisions. The shortness and uncertainty of ministerial post mean that government strategies are often focused on the immediate future - usually less than 5 years at a time. This represents further conflicts with the long-termist agenda often espoused by EAs.

I'd also like to discuss a real example that really hit home to me regarding this tension. The UK government has immense capital budgets, spending hundreds of billions of pounds on for example the net zero agenda. The government loves to talk about how much this capital spend. On the flip side, the government is making serious administrative cuts - they are trying to cut 90,000 civil servants by 2025. I appreciate here that a different government might slightly differ in approach, but I think the following argument still holds. Government is often evaluated on much it can spend on capital with a limited operational budget. Hopefully the parallel here is clear: this is exactly the same as the EA argument against evaluating charities based on what portion of one's donation goes towards the cause (instead of the operations). What should matter is not how much money is being spent but how much impact is created!

The democratic mandate can at times be very challenging and frustrating for civil servants themselves. We've seen recent news cases where civil servants have actively pushed back against government policies. Whether this is the ethical choice is an interesting question. I would argue that they're certainly not meeting their civil servant responsibilities, and maybe that they're even undermining democratic values. I still however have some sympathy for them - it really can be a struggle working on policy that one does not believe in.

Suppose a civil servant works in a policy area but really disagrees with the ministerial steer. This might be because of ethical reasons, or it could be because the steer goes completely against what the evidence suggests. This can be a really challenging experience and I think one that many civil servants experience in their career. 

One option is of course to go through with it nevertheless, but this can feel quite powerless and to some extent undermines the reasoning for joining the civil service. I argued earlier that one should join the civil service because it is better to influence the policy from within. If we're unable to leverage this influence at all it might feel pointless doing the role. Furthermore, if you have serious ethical qualms with the policy area you're dealing with, then it might even feel like you're selling out - not only are you not creating good, but you're actively implementing bad.

I've also seen cases where people try to actively block work. This seems somewhat problematic as well - you're actively going against your responsibilities as a civil servant, you're (arguably) taking a politically biased position and undermining the democratic mandate. You're also contributing to civil service beaurocracy, making it more difficult for things to get done - while being paid by the public purse. One argument to consider is whether it is really that bad to undermine democratic principles - especially if it is leading to negative outcomes. One of my colleagues has talked to me (quite proudly) about their (successful) attempts to block new policies that would reduce benefits for pregnant women. If the policies are really that bad, then maybe it's really worth fighting for - and democracy be damned.

Finally, you could just quit. This saves one's own moral character to some degree, but there are worries that your replacement will probably still make it happen, and likely worse than yourself (as it takes time to learn a role). This also feels a bit like giving up.

Comprehensivity

Government cannot just focus on a select few problems - in some sense, everything is its responsibility. Traditional EA theory might suggest that we focus on impact - donate to the best charities and work in the most critical areas. If government took this approach then maybe it focuses on say net zero, AI safety or pandemic preparedness - investing all of its resources.

What however happens to other areas - the one's that are less obviously impactful to our long term future but still need someone to work on. Presumably someone still needs to work on trade policies to ensure that there sufficient exports to meet the needs of UK citizens. And presumably someone needs to control who can immigrate or ensure that local councils have the funding for constitutent bins are collected.

 One thought is that if government don't do this, then someone will. Perhaps the free market will pick up on it and provide the relevant service. I don't think this a particularly convincing argument. Government takes responsibility to address market externalities and ensure fair access. There are specific work areas where it just isn't financially viable for private sector parties to respond to, and if pushed - would just lead to only wealthy gaining benefit. Moving on to the regulative side - we might think there needs to be some kind of central authority to ensure market compliance. Presumably we don't want to just let big coorporations decide immigration policy.

It's worth mentioning that comprehensivity is linked to democracy. In so far as government has a democractic mandate, it also has a responsibility to ensure that all citizen needs are accounted for. Some of these needs can certainly be provided by the private sector - and government invests a lot of resources to stimulate these markets. The government is voted for by the public and is there to serve their needs. If certain needs aren't being met elsewhere then it is up to the government to ensure that it is.

Just to mention a few nuances here. Government does not deal with everything, and in fact a lot of implementation work is outsourced. Thus the notion of comphrensivity is bounded primarily to work mentioned above that addresses externalities or requires central authority. Additionally, one might argue that EA theory places emphasis on supporting areas that are neglected. If government suddenly eschews responsibility for a workstream, it would become more neglected and thereby shift the priority areas. I suspect however that this new equilbrium would be probably be inadequate - there would likely be new priorities but I think there would still be significant gaps of neglect from government departure.

It's also worth considering what happens if government does suddenly place great focus on a few key areas. In fact, it's not that hard to imagine - there's been an extraodinary push in recently towards the net zero agenda and significant amounts of investment given towards it. The important question is whether these fields can properly scale with more investment  - which would likely be monetary, as opposed to operational resource.

So now suppose we grant that government should take responsibility for a wide range of areas. As an EA in government you'd presumably be going to the highest impact policy areas. There are concerns about a potential bottleneck, where all the EAs of government all pivot towards the roles - massively increasing competition in the space while leaving other areas neglected. One solution of course is to suggest that people place value on areas that they might be suitable for. For example, clearly not all policy advisors in government have advanced knowledge on AI, so maybe they shouldn't apply.

There's a few problem with this solution. First thing is to note that the civil service tends to pride generalism - it's not about knowledge of a specific policy, but knowledge of being a policy person. It's very common for people to enter policy spaces with no prior knowledge of the field. If this view is taken to the extreme then the suitability argument weakens (although still holds to some degree). A big follow up problem to this is the fact that civil servants rotate careers incredibly frequently - with most policy leads switching jobs every 1-2 years (not that dissimilar to ministers). Now I think these are primarily practical issues with the running of government, as opposed to a fundamental clash between civil service and EA values, but I think it is important to note.

I'd also highlight that the range of roles in the civil service and its generalism can lead to a pressure to always be searching for new opportunities. It's no surprise that some of the most senior civil servants I've met have rotated between crisis jobs yearly. I do think that the range and ease of movement can create a pressure on effective altruists within government as they provide a push to always do the job with more impact - further driving the problem of churn. One should also consider their own marginal impact in pursuing such roles. If they are so high in demand then it's likely that another person could do the role to a good standard as well. It's important not to ignore neglected areas that might need people the most!

Reconciliation and concluding remarks

I'd ideally have ended up this post with a comprehensive and tangible solution. It would have explained exactly how I would solve all the problems of government and outlined a direct approach for a civil servant navigating the process. I think however the tensions are at a fundamental level that there is no easy solution. I will however express a few comments on how I and I think other civil servants can start to reconcile these tensions.

Let's start with democracy. There's a whole raft of political philosophy literature discussing potential problems with the model and a whole lot more discussing why it might seem better than alternatives. I'll instead focus on the civil servant perspective.

I mentioned an irony that the democratic mandate can lead to tyrannical and anti-scientific decision making. I think it's worth considering a notion of a democracy from a macro as well as local lens. If we choose to block work getting done we may be undermining 'macro' democracy. If however we have considerabl evidence from stakeholders then choosing to block such work might uphold a more 'local' democracy. Such behaviour could be consistent with EA principles such as consideration towards others or evidence based reasoning. I'd of course be remiss to highlight the possibility that our own views might wrong when disagreeing with ministers.

Another approach to consider is to simply avoid policy areas with significant ministerial opinion. A lot of new areas such as AI governance are actually quite good in this regard - most ministers lack the technical knowledge to effectively comment on policy in this space, meaning there is less likely to be conflict. Getting the right balance here can be tricky as you want them to be interested enough to have skin in the game and push it forward, but not so interested that they too many opinions themselves.

On the point around comprehensivity, I think there are a few questions to consider. I think it's generally quite damaging to government for policy people to move so frequently. On the flip side, it's entirely possible that certain policy areas are just so more immensely more impactful that it's worth investing whatever you can do to get there. 

I wonder if the best approach is more to stay in a specific field and develop expertise, as your marginal replacement (the best person who would be next to do the job after you) would just be radically worse than yourself in terms of impact. While in the same role, one could then try and bring in EA principles to the day to day work. I think there's already lot of demand in government to write business cases with the right KPIs (Key performance indicators). A lot of EA theory is well suited to government decision making. 

I'm going to draw this post to a close now. In summary I have argued for three main things. First, that EA and civil service principles are at first glance very much aligned, and that civil servants can have really high impact to society if they work in the write space. Second, that someone interested in making an impact should consider the civil service even over other relevant opportunities as it is more impactful to be an implementor over being a advisor. Finally I have argued that there are theoretical tensions between EA values and CS values, and that an EA civil servant will need to properly reconcile them.

I hope you can see that I'm still on my own journey in reconciling these issues, and I'd really welcome thoughts and feedback.

 

 

 

 

A meaning to life: Part 4 - Effective actualisation

 At the end of last post, we broadly agreed with:

ActualisationAnswer:   the answer to Meanlife is that each human should aim for self-actualisation- they should develop themselves and strive to achieve their potential.

 We also discussed further the concept of creating a society in which we enable other people to achieve actualisation, as well as the value in working towards such a society. Aristotle accepted that eudaimonia was not something that could be achieved by everyone - one had to be in the right circumstances. I agree with this view - but I see it as deeply unfair. If we take ActualisationAnswer as valid, then it seems unjust that only certain people could ever achieve the meaning of life. Why should one's circumstances - which are to some degree luck based - affect whether one can truly flourish in life? 

Now, it is intuitive to assume that the circumstances that we're discussing relate to financial circumstances. It is clear that those less well off in society will have to use more of their resources to finance basic existence - for example food and rent. This is compounded in cases of dependants and larger families - it seems harder to justify spending money to enrich oneself when one might have a child that needs feeding. I think it is likely however, that there are also other barriers aside from money - the primary one being culture. 

 Flourishing probably requires money, but I suspect a bigger blocker is time. Certainly if one lacks money, they may have to invest their time into earning it, and certainly one can use money to save time (for example hiring a cleaner). However there are people who have enough money in society who still struggle to find time to flourish. In some sense we'd expect this - we assume that a CEO of a company will live a busy life. It feels like the money motivation is linked with the hedonistic view of happiness - where one is motivated to achieve these goals but without it genuinely providing flourishing. It is not surprising that money tends to have diminishing returns with regards to life satisfaction.

I think this analysis indicates two primary concerns; 

1) The resource gap - people need a certain amount of resources in order to be able to live. If they lack these resources natively then they need to invest their time (or otherwise) to obtain them.

2) The time gap - people need to have the time to flourish. Flourishing requires dealing with adversery and developing oneself in accordance to one's goals. It is worth noting of course that working may indeed act as a source of flourishing - and that for some people the focus on career can be their way of development. I think that this is unlikely to be the case for everyone however.

Effective actualisation

Let us assume that the two gaps mentioned above are to some degree valid. The intuitive next step is to ask how we can address both of these resource gaps. For each gap it's worth considering three things.

i) What is the current state?

ii) What would block me from filling the gap, or what would make it worse?

iii) What would enable me to address this gap, and what circumstances would make it better?

Blockers

I think it is here that it may be worth drawing upon some relevant concepts in Effective Altruism. Broadly speaking, effective altruism is about making a larger difference with one's resources. It initially started by looking at donations and charities. It is clear that certain charities are more impactful than others - for example it costs around 11,000 dollars to 'make a wish' as part of the 'make a wish foundation'. In comparison, it costs around 6000 dollars for some of the malaria charities to save a life. Given this difference, there is clearly an opportunity cost in terms of how one uses their money. 

What I find quite interesting is that the effective altruism movement tends to be relatively risk focused. They are worried (and I think rightly) by people dying from (relatively) treatable diseases. They are concerned about existential risk - nuclear war, physical events and AI takeover. These are all useful things to consider and are certainly relevant for our second question.

For example - if we look at the resource gap. If we want people to have enough resources to flourish we would ideally be looking at a world where those resources might come even if the person does not 'directly contribute'. That is, we might be looking towards a world where the person is provided resources (food,  money, living) without working. This would likely be from the state, but not necessarily. To have such an infrastructure would likely require some degree of a functional and sustainable economy.

Concerns around existential risk are quite relevant here. A nuclear fall out for example would certainly distabilise our lives and likely make it harder to achieve the necessary resources for survival. 

Looking at the time gap - it is clear that 'needless' death is a big problem. If people are dying they clearly are losing time to achieve certain goals or to flourish. If we can provide treatments that increase people's time on earth then we are helping them address a flourishing gap.

 Addressing the gap

From the more positive side, let us consider our third question, which lacks at how we can try and address these gaps. Here we are are talking about how we can increase and improve resource distribution and provide people with more 'valuable' time that they can use to flourish. I think the important thing here is for us to take active steps towards the achievement of flourishing.

For example, let's look at the resource gap. If we want to ensure all people have sufficient resources to flourish we likely need to make certain decisions around our economy and how we distribute resources. I mentioned for example that this could be achieved by the state - with one approach being a universal basic income. This could ensure that everyone has a minimal amount of resources to survive. We would however still need to consider problems of how the state could generate enough money to do this.

One area to look might be around automation and technological advancement. If we could leverage technology more effectively, we may be able to create sufficient growth that meant the government could fuel most people a universal basic income.

On to the time gap - it's clear that income and time are connected here. If someone has the income to surive without working, it makes it much more likely that would actually invest their time into flourishing. I think it's worth noting that for various cultural reasons, this might not actually happen. For example, some people struggle to identify what makes them flourish, and many people tend to procrastinate in doing things. In this sense, simply providing time and resources may not be enough to really enable people to achieve flourishing.

It's possible to take a more heavy handed approach - where the state or some other entity actively engages with people to help them find worthwhile flourishing opportunities. This could be the equivalent of a career advisor, except a flourishing advisor! We'd need to seriously consider how this would work though - and who would do it.

Other areas where we could focus more research into would be eudaimonia and flourishing. We still need to understand these concepts more deeply in order to help positively establish actions for the future. I suspect right government policy (as well effective altruism) is more focused on eliminating risks and blockers, as opposed to actively improving our lives.

I think I'm going to end this post here. In the next post I think I'll try and go a bit deeper into what I view the more 'positive side' and try and better articulate a world that we should live in. From there I hope to move towards a discussion on how I (we) can get there, and some of the logical steps I should take.

A meaning to life: Part 3 - Actualisation for everyone

At the end of last post we elaborated on an answer to Meanlife by appealing to Eudaimonia. This led to:

EudaimoniaAnswer:   the answer to Meanlife is that each human should aim for human flourishing - they should leave an enriching life where they can develop theoretical and moral virtue.

 So far our analysis has been relatively abstract, but in this week I hope to ground it more concretely by forming an initial association between Eudaimonia and self-actualisation, as well as arguing that a societies purpose is to maximise this actualisation.

Eudaimonia in practice

The Aristotelian notion of Eudaimonia is somewhat abstract, if a little vague. 'Human flourishing', 'The telos of man', 'Theoretical and moral wisdom' - these sound great but lets make it more concrete. An initial caveat is that I'm sure there are many philosophers who have analysed Aristotle far more than myself - my interest here is not in perfectly capturing Aristotle's view, but to express my own perspective as having grown (to some extent) out of my own reading of Aristotle's work.

I think a good place to start is to focus on 'theoretical and moral wisdom'. Aristotle focuses his analysis of man on their ability to reason, thus it seems plausible to think that part of Eudaimonia revolves around improving our reasoning abilities. What does that mean? More broadly I'd consider reasonining to be practice of considering different positions, their relation with one another and coming up with a conclusion. I'd associate it fairly closely with concepts of rationality. I'm personally an Accuracy First epistemologist, which means that what matters to me is that we have accurate beliefs - where a belief is accurate if it is 'close' to the truth. A rational person is one who maximises their accuracy given their evidence. So part of improving our ability to reason is to develop how we think about arguments, how we use logic and how we come to conclusions given our evidence. Let us call these skills 'meta-theoretical knowledge'. 

We can then mention broader 'theoretical knowledge' as things that help us deal with specific domains. For example, we can imagine that as an engineer, I might need to have a grasp of physics and material sciences in order to build something safe. Theoretical knowledge is still useful as it helps us respond to specific instances, where the additional knowledge allows us to establish relationships between propositions and concepts ('this material will break under this force'). It however contrasts with our meta-theoretical knowledge which touches at the purest of theoretical virtues.

On to moral wisdoms. I think that Aristotle is touching on the wisdom one gains through engaging in different moral actions and decisions. As we learn more about the world, we have a better perspective of the moral dimension - we have a better perspective on what is good and what is bad. When we're younger we might be told never to lie, however a few years later might learn of the concept of a 'white lie'. I'd also be open to thinking that emotions are some kind of indicator to moral concepts, and our ability to understand the emotions of others also improves over time. They key concept here is that we know more about people, more about the world and this gives us the knowledge of how to behave better.

Between these two concepts is a clear sense of self-improvement and self actualisation. We as humans need to develop ourselves for the better - both rationally and morally. Achieving this actualisation can take a life time - it's certainly not something one learns in specific instances, but something developed over time with deliberate practice.

Now, I would consider self actualisation as something a broader than what Aristotle is calling Eudaimonia. For example, I would see physical feats (e.g. training oneself to run a marathon) as fitting in with actualisation, even if its not directly related to moral or theoretical wisdom. Essentially, I'm less concerned by the idea that Human's telos is reason, but more focused on this broader notion of flourishing and living one's best life.

This leads me to my final analysis of Meanlife:

ActualisationAnswer:   the answer to Meanlife is that each human should aim for self-actualisation- they should develop themselves and strive to achieve their potential.

 What is the purpose of society?

 On its most basic level, we could consider a society a group of people. Generally we might expect them to have come together for some additional purpose - safety, common interest, familial all come to mind. Now an initial question comes to mind - all other things being equal, is it better for humans to be in a society or not? I'm not entirely sure if this is a philosophical question, as I imagine that it's probably better answered by athropological or biological analysis. 

Anyhow, I ask this question because we already have an analysis of the meaning of life for an individual person, so it's natural to ask whether a larger society helps, deters, changes this analysis.

If we focus for now on the normative side, we might argue that a society should be there to help improve the lives  of the people in the society. I.e. we should group together only if it helps us in some sense. And what sense is most relevant? Well I think the natural answer is to say that we should group together only if it helps us achieve the meaning of life - self actualisation.

Now, should society be helping each individual person achieve actualisation, or should it be trying to maximise (more broadly) the potential of the group of people? It's worth noting that the former may have a specific tension - if two individual people are trying to e.g. become the president of the society then it will be hard for both of them to reach actualisation. Of course, one might argue that the 'winner's' potential was higher (and they achieved it) while the loser's potential was lower (and they also achieved it) but I still feel there is some tension. For the latter, we might focus on enabling everyone as a collective - e.g. we aspire towards a society that is overall more advanced, humane and so on, even if some people may have a more stifled experience (for example, we might avoid funding research on more 'exploratory' topics such as space travel, and instead centre it on smaller and local issues). Anyhow, I won't focus on this distinction and I think the ideal society should achieve some kind of balance between the two.

What would this ideal society look like? Well one way to think about this is to consider what currently stops people in society achieving their potential. Suppose I'm an artist - I'm reasonably talented and would like to spend the rest of my life painting. Let us further suppose that while I'm good, I'm not *that* good, people probably won't be paying millions for my work and it is unlikely to be shown in any major exhibits. Still - I have a love for painting. Now in our current society it might be tricky to for me to devote my life to painting, as I normally need to spend time 'working a job'. If we assume that this takes around 35-40 hours a week, this significantly reduces the time I have to focus on my passion and achieve actualisation.

One response to this might be to say that I could instead be unemployed and just receive benefits from the government. There are a number of reasons why I think this is unconvincing. The first is that it's not really 'sustainable' in the sense that the government see benefits as a short-term solution. You're in theory expected to constantly be looking for new jobs and they might take away your benefits if you spend all your time painting, with no evidence of job hunting. The other problem is more of a social issue - some people may consider it shameful to need to take benefits. We want society to encourage us to achieve our potential - not shame us about doing so. 

I conclude from this that an ideal society should be able to provide sufficient income to it's members such that they can spend their time pursuing self actualisation. This would probably take the form of some kind of universal basic income, but I'm fairly neutral at the moment about how it would be done or funded - I'm currently just expressing a theoretical ideal.

Another thought I had was that some people might not have any explicit passions in life that they want to do. The ideal society I think would also need to have a way to help or at least encourage people to find their passions.

It's clear to me that the creation of this ideal society would be fantastic, as it would help a lot of people achieve their actualisation. Indeed, i think that the goal of achieving this ideal society would in itself be a great accomplishment and something that I myself would like to strive towards. Of course the exact properties of this ideal society are not fixed - the broader goal is to help as many as people achieve actualisation as possible.

I'm going to leave it there for this post. In my next post I'm going to discuss in a bit more detail my thoughts around creating this ideal society and helping people achieve self actualisation.