As we cannot easily measure improvements in the human condition, we need proxy measurements to guide our activities.

So the two things we want from increasing autonomy and freedom is a more robust society and a happier society. Do these measures suffice to lead us towards these?

It is worth noting that we directly optimising for a happier society is probably not what we want (lest we alter our brain chemistry to be happy all the time for no reason and do nothing), but optimising for things that are valuable and increases happiness seems like a win.

  • Robustness
  • Happiness through freedom
  • Evaluating autonomy

So it is not the one measure to rule them all. It is interesting that working towards it can work towards two separate goals of humanity and so likely to represent real value. The autonomy measure seems as good as the goal of trying to increase the world economy by a certain amount. You can also work towards the it as a way of working towards human happiness without having to measure human happiness at each point.

Read the source article at improvingautonomy.wordpress.com