You Too Can See Suffering

There has to be some kind of trade-off here between false positives and false negatives here, doesn't there? If you decide to "use that skill" to see more suffering, isn't it likely that you are getting at least some false positives, some cases where you think someone is suffering and they aren't?

If "happiness" is too vague a term or has too many other meanings we don't necessarily want to imply, we could just say "positive utility". As in "try to notice when you or the people around you are experiencing positive utility".

I do think that actually taking note of that probably does help you move your happiness baseline; it's basically a rationalist version of "be thankful for the good things in your life". Something as simple as "you know, I enjoy walking the dog on a crisp fall day like this". Noticing when other people seem to be experiencing positive utility is also probably important in becoming a more morally correct utilitarian yourself, likely just as important as noting other people's suffering/ negative utility.

Hmm. I'm not sure I can clearly distinguish between "see" and "think about" for this topic. There's a lot of layers to cognition, and this kind of perception is well toward the "modeling/thinking" end of the spectrum, rather than the "sensory input" end. Maybe "recognize" or "notice" is closer to what I think you mean, but you may even mean higher - would the title "you too can react to suffering" have matched your thoughts?

I think that for myself (I'll try to stay agnostic on my typicality or lack thereof), the lack of focus/perception on this unpleasant aspect of life is a direct result of choosing not to think about it most of the time. I do set aside time to think about it, and in those times I certainly remember and recognize suffering and consider what, if anything, to do about it.

Most of the time, though, especially in contexts where I have spent considerable time considering problems and options, my conscious perception cuts off before this specific instance really affects me. You can call it "denial", "compartmentalization", or other things, and you may be right. But I argue that's very different from "not seeing".

More importantly, how far, really, is the accusation of willfully not seeing ("you don't see, but you can and you should") from the accusation of not caring?