One critique of utilitarianism is that if you seriously use it to guide your decisions, you would find that for any given decision, the choice that maximizes overall wellbeing is usually not the one that does any good for your personal wellbeing, so you would turn into a “happiness pump”: someone who only generates happiness for others at the detriment of themself.
I think this only happens if you take an overly restictive/narrow/naive view of consequences. Humans are generally not productive if they’re not happy, so the happiness pump strategy is probably not actually good for the net well being of other people longterm.
I agree, maybe I should state that overtly in this post. It’s essentially an argument against the idea of a happiness pump, because of the reason you described.
I think this only happens if you take an overly restictive/narrow/naive view of consequences. Humans are generally not productive if they’re not happy, so the happiness pump strategy is probably not actually good for the net well being of other people longterm.
I agree, maybe I should state that overtly in this post. It’s essentially an argument against the idea of a happiness pump, because of the reason you described.