> I'd rather have a reliable measurement of quantity that I believe contributes to well-being than a direct measurement of well-being that I think is unreliable.
Sometimes there's a difficult trade-off here, especially since (un)reliability isn't binary.
But a heavy prioritisation of reliability over direct measurement (which seems to be your position) is probably why governments have spent decades obsessing over GDP, which is a very poor wellbeing measure for all sorts of reasons.
Sometimes there's a difficult trade-off here, especially since (un)reliability isn't binary.
But a heavy prioritisation of reliability over direct measurement (which seems to be your position) is probably why governments have spent decades obsessing over GDP, which is a very poor wellbeing measure for all sorts of reasons.