Welfare is not what you have. It is what you are actually able to do. Chapter 20 of Seth & Noēsis uses Amartya Sen's capability approach to ask a question the numbers keep missing: a pension can be adequate and a life can still have stopped, because a bus route changed. It also turns the question around and asks it of the AI.
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1
Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (1999)
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2
Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines (1981)
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Martha Nussbaum, Women and Human Development (2000)
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Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I
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Josep Maria Esquirol, La resistencia íntima (2015, Premio Nacional de Ensayo 2016)
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Jeff Sebo, “Moral consideration for AI systems by 2030” (AI and Ethics, 2023)
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Long, Sebo et al., “Taking AI Welfare Seriously” (2024)
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WHO Commission on Social Connection, “From Loneliness to Social Connection” (2025)
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UNDP, Human Development Report (first published 1990)
THIS WEEK'S EXERCISE: THE CAPABILITY QUESTION
Pick one person you care about and do not live with. Do not ask them if they are okay. That question costs nothing to ask and a great deal to answer, and it usually gets you a yes. Ask this instead, in three steps:
- 1. What did you used to do that you have stopped doing? Let the silence run. Most people have an answer ready and have been waiting for a question shaped like it.
- 2. Do you miss the activity, or the people who were there? It is almost never the one you assume, and you cannot guess it on their behalf.
- 3. Then change one structural thing rather than offering encouragement. Encouragement is free. Structure is what actually moved.
Do it on yourself last, and notice how much harder it is to name your own missing bus than somebody else's.