Milliongenerations:How can there be most happiness?

Prize question

Milliongenerations plans to organize a USD 10.000 prize question asking submissions on the question "How can there be most happiness?".

Putting the question out in a public way hopes to help draw attention to the existence of future generations. Plus, there is a chance that there will be new ideas. Obviously, there might be some focussing on individual happiness, and others debating ideal society. The requirement of "most", and linking the prize to it, should open the view to whatever people come up with. Selection by reviewers instructed to rank randomly selected entries according to which they believe have most potential for practical increase in happiness.

Concrete plans:

• Website with details of question
  • including review and evaluation formats, however no determination on how to interpret the question.
  • Criterion is for success is that reflections can practically lead to "more happiness" than other
  • entrants and reviewers are free to interpret the question in whatever way they see, reviewers must be consistent accross reviewed entries.
  • Limit size, should be about 1.000 - 3.000 words with an abstract of no more than 250 words and a representative title of no more than 160 letters
  • explain procedure
• Establish response email address & organize processing
• Announcement of just question, prize, deadline (e.g. +2 months) and link to more information in some well read publication with intellectual audience, e.g. an ad in The Economist, and/or philosophical journals/circles. Also include call for people interested in reviewing.
• Screen reviewers (submit CV, demonstrate some form of relevant ability, sign confidentiality statement)
• Participants submit via email
• Require participants to name one or two knowledgeable & independent people (include CV, references or similar) who are willing to review one or two submissions
• Require participants to review two or three themselves.
• After submission deadline, screen for formal checks and send out randomly selected (not own) submissions to named reviewers and participants and ask for return until + 4 weeks
  • Review to check for
    • originality / if found & documented plagiarism, no further evaluation
    • own summary and judgement of concept, argument, stringency, benefit
    • rating according to utility perceived by the reviewer: order the reviewed submissions according to how much happiness the proposal could lead to, by providing the reviewer with the question of which of the essays he reviewed previously provides for more happiness
• Evaluate only submissions where serious reviews were returned timely
• Make submissions with reviews available on a closed site
• Allow anyone to register (& promise confidentiality)
  • Let them rank entries they read in a relative order according to how much happiness they bring
  • Stop ranking process after some weeks
  • Screen for odd choices, reduce weight of reviewers if strange patterns occur or where the submissions rated were not read
• Award points to submissions on the lists: 0 points for last (or only) selected, 1 for second last, 2 for third last etc., the more points the more reviewed
• Create shortlist from those submissions collecting the most points
• Have jury to judge & explain their choice on shortlist
• Pay out price to author of winning submission
• Make a selection of submissions and publish them, along with reviews (can be hardcopy, selling to journals or sponsored site)
• Use of the resulting information (e.g., submitted essays, reviews, rating) should be used with the intent to increase happiness, or at least well being.
  • If publication or other exploitation of the resulting information can be made profitable, profits (after costs and taxes , if any) from such exploitation shall be distributed
    • 30% to the authors of published pieces, probably unweighted
    • 40% to all reviewers (weighted according to number of essays reviewed) and
    • use the rest towards further actions of milliongenerations.
    • If external investment is needed to enable such exploitation (e.g., by a publisher), such an investor may require a share of profits to justify the investment. The organizers should seek to optimize happiness resulting from exploitation first, and the share of profit distributed among authors, reviewers, and foundation second.

Other prizes

• In 1839 Schopenhauer submitted entries to academic prize questions, famously resulting in his essays On the Freedom of the Will (as a response to the question of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences) and On the basis of Morality (question posed by the Royal Danish Society of Sciences, Schopenhauer famously submitted the only entry to this contest but failed to win).
• Several academic institutions regularly award philosophy prizes e.g., Harvard University, Trinity College, Australasian Association of Philosophy, American Philosophical Society. The prizes are usually cash prizes on the order of several hundered to a few thousand dollars and are often for dissertations or publications published elsewhere. Those that are for essays are usually limited to about 10.000 words.
• Kids Philosophy Slam awards prizes to young students to "give kids a voice, and to inspire them to think by unlocking their intellectual and creative potential through a unique yet powerful philosophical forum."
• 3 Quarks Daily in 2009 started awarded prizes to blogs in arts, politics, science and philosophy. Steven Pinker and Dan Dennett respectively selected the winners of the science and philosophy contest from a shortlist determined by online voting.
• The [www.waseda.jp/intl-ac/Straniak%20Philospphy%20Prize2008.pdf Straniak Philosophy Prize] in 2008 was worth 30.000 SFr, entry could be English or German for unpublished essays between 50 and 250 pages. Contestants were given about 18 months from publication to submit entries. http://www.apa.udel.edu/apa/opportunities/prizes/summary.html