Moral philosophers have tried for centuries to find some other way to define good and bad, but none has ever convinced the rest (or me). We cannot say that something is good unless we can say what it is good for, and if we examine all the may objects and experiences that our species calls good and ask what they are good for, the answer is clear: By and large, they are good for making us feel happy. p. 71 Stumblng on Happiness
Americans can be classified as one of two types: those who live in California and are happy they do, and those who don't live in California but believe they'd be happy if they did. Yet, research shows that Californians are actually no happier than anyone else--so why does everyone (including Californians) seem to believe they are? California has some of the most beautiful scenery and some of the best weather in the continental United States, and when non-Californians hear that magic word their imaginations instantly produce mental images of sunny beaches and giant redwood trees. But while Lost Angeles has a better climate than Columbus, climate is just one of the many things that determine a person's happiness--and yet all those other things are missing from the mental image. If we were to add some of these missing details to our mental image of beaches and palm trees--say, traffic, supermarkets, airports, sports teams, cable rates, housing costs, earthquakes, landslides, and son on--then we might recognize that L.A. beats Columbus in some ways (better weather) and Columbus beat L.A. in others (less traffic). We think that Californians are happier than Ohioans because we imagine California with so few details--and we make no allowance for the fact that the details we are failing to imagine could drastically alter the conclusions we draw.
The tendency that causes us to overestimate the happiness of Californians also causes us to underestimate the happiness of people with chronic illnesses or disabilities For example, when sighted people imagine being blind, they seem to forget that blindness is not a full-time job. Blind people can't see, but they do most of the things that sighted people do--they go on picnics, pay their taxes, listen to music, get stuck in traffic--and thus they are just as happy as sighted people are. They can't do everything sighted people do . . . and thus sighted blind and sighted lives are not identical. But whatever a blind person's life is like, it i about much more than blindness. And yet, when sighted people imagine being blind, they fail to imagine all the other things that such a life might be about, hence they mispredict how satisfying such a life can be.
103-104
Meursault in regards to leaving out details--and thus underestimating the happiness quotient . . .
