David Sklansky and the Bible Baby

[revots33]

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Would you follow this reasoning along and make 60 million people miserable in order to save one life?

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No but that is a different scenario. Not saving Shakespeare or the Beatles might slightly decrease some people's happiness, but I'd still save the baby. However, I would not trade one person's life for the misery of millions. For example I would not save the baby at the expense of a cure for influenza or forcing everyone to give up indoor plumbing forever.

It's a value judgement and I rank a human life above a specific work of art that most people could live just as happily without (Shakespeare and the Beatles included).

[madnak]

We were talking about the 1% happiness increase, not the loss of Shakespeare. Doesn't it stand to reason that if you would rather save the baby than see the 1% happiness increase, then you'd rather see a 1% happiness decrease than see the baby die?

[revots33]

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We were talking about the 1% happiness increase, not the loss of Shakespeare. Doesn't it stand to reason that if you would rather save the baby than see the 1% happiness increase, then you'd rather see a 1% happiness decrease than see the baby die?

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Yes I think that's fair.

But of course it is relative. There is obviously a limit to the amount of happiness everyone should give up to save a single life. But 1% sounds reasonable.

After all volunteer firefighters themselves risk their own lives to save those random people in buildings. Aren't they sacrificing at least 1% happiness (considering some of them get seriously injured or killed) in exchange for saving a life?

[madnak]

Okay, why is taking 1% away from 6 billion different from taking 100% away from 60 million?

[madnak]

Moreover, what if there are a hundred babies? A thousand? How does the curve look?

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
We were talking about the 1% happiness increase, not the loss of Shakespeare. Doesn't it stand to reason that if you would rather save the baby than see the 1% happiness increase, then you'd rather see a 1% happiness decrease than see the baby die?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes I think that's fair.

But of course it is relative. There is obviously a limit to the amount of happiness everyone should give up to save a single life. But 1% sounds reasonable.

After all volunteer firefighters themselves risk their own lives to save those random people in buildings. Aren't they sacrificing at least 1% happiness (considering some of them get seriously injured or killed) in exchange for saving a life?

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Its probably more accurate to say they are risking some % of their happiness to attain some other % that is either higher or more likely. But I'm not a volunteer fireman, so who knows.

[madnak]

At any rate the numbers are the other way around. They're risking a relatively small amount of happiness to save a relatively large amount of lives. He's sacrificing an overwhelming about of happiness to save a tiny amount of life. Going by proportion, it's 1/100 for 1/6,000,000,000, a disproportion of 60-million-to-one. That's a pretty extreme incongruity and so I expect it's irrational and primarily emotionally motivated (but we'll see).

[RayBornert]

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To point out that it's unrealistic to assume every human life has infinite value.

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if your original post had said:

"i want all humans to embrace the idea that each individual human being has finite value and not infinite value. do you want the same thing i want?"

we could be focusing on the spirit and wisdom of what you want and why instead of dissecting a thought experiment that is trying to say what is in the quote above.

btw - i don't think a single human life has infinite value.

ray

[madnak]

Well, my purpose was to illustrate that it's unrealistic and irrational to make that assumption (in most cases). That is, the design is to challenge the reasoning of those who support the claim through clear logical examples.

[RayBornert]

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Well, my purpose was to illustrate that it's unrealistic and irrational to make that assumption (in most cases). That is, the design is to challenge the reasoning of those who support the claim through clear logical examples.

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i understand.

if you allow the random baby and the newton baby to both have an identical (very large - maybe infinite) quantity of value at birth (whether or not you want to say all humans start with the same value is another discussion), then you can argue that the value newton produced would be greater than the probable value that would be produced by the random baby; you can then subtract the starting value (B) from both sides of the equation to arrive at the idea that newtons life has a very high probability of delivering more value to us. and you'd save newton and not the random baby.

as soon as you want to measure a human life against something that is not a human life you're going to get wildly subjective and relative viewpoints.

ray