Lit Nomad
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House sitting at my sister’s place in Arizona
🕑 Added 2024-12-10 08:52:34 +0000 UTCI’m done with the homeless leg of my journey and am now staying in my sister’s guest room while I plan my adventures abroad. While her family is in Disney World for a week, I’ve been taking care of the pets and have gotten to know their dog Oreo a lot better. He’s a stray dog that they rescued in Hawaii. He used to survive by digging up slugs and eating them and was super skinny and had patches of missing fur from stress when they first adopted him.
I’ve been taking him for walks and runs with me, and he seems so grateful to have the love and affection of a human. It makes me think about the concept of units of happiness, and how we can buy more happiness for others which can expand to our canine friends as well. He bothers me around sunset because that’s when I’ve been taking him for walks, and he’s so pumped when I grab the leash. I weigh the mild happiness I’d gain in scrolling through social media for 30min vs the immense happiness he gains in running around outside and sniffing new things and seeing other dogs on walks.
It’s clearly way more happiness for him in that 30min, so I grab the leash. I love the idea that Oreo is experiencing one of the greatest happiness deltas out of any dog on earth: from barely surviving as a stray, to being loved and cared for by a good family. What a wild ride for him. If reincarnation is a thing, I wouldn’t mind being reborn as a domesticated dog in a nice home.
Comments
Terrance Brown
I remember when the effective altruism movement first ripped through all the intellectual academic circles. What is your opinion on that expected value type analysis of happiness and lives?
