David Sklansky and the Bible Baby

[revots33]

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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.

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I agree with this 100%.

I do not place an infinite value on a human life. I don't think most people do. However I personally value a single random human life more than the complete works of Shakespeare. That's my subjective valuation - I'm sure a Shakespeare scholar might differ with my valuation.

And I disagree that taking 1% happiness away from 6 billion is equivalent to taking 100% happiness away from 60 million. They are miles apart. Imagine everyone on earth lived to 100 years old. Is it better to have everyone die at 99, or to kill 60 million random babies so everyone else could live to 100?

1% happiness reduction is not much of a hardship. 100% = death which is much more of a hardship.

[Zygote]

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The specific issue I'm getting at is "you can't place a value on a human life." I'm not sure that kind of statement would be to the point.

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Are you saying life is worth infinite odds?

Do you drive a car?

If so, you're not a very good gambler.

[vhawk01]

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The specific issue I'm getting at is "you can't place a value on a human life." I'm not sure that kind of statement would be to the point.

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Are you saying life is worth infinite odds?

Do you drive a car?

If so, you're not a very good gambler.

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Do you get the difference between saying something and supporting that something? In case you don't, some posters are kind enough to put into scare-quotes those things which they are simply saying, and not supporting.

[DougShrapnel]

R, Unknown, R

Number 2 has this wierd element of time travel to it that gives me pause in going right. I mentioned my reasons in the other thread the life is not yours to sacrifice. It can not belong to you. People do need to take better care of these irreplacable items.

[valenzuela]

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The question is interesting enough if you don't muddy the waters. Restate it sort of like this:

Is it OK to randomly kill one person to increase every elses in the world's happiness by 1%?

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[valenzuela]

The answer to that question is whatever wins the poll

[Zygote]

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

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are you a neoclassical or austrian?

...because according to the latter, happiness is a sort of value that is ordinal, not cardinal. Happiness only exists as a preference of one scenerio over the other possible scenerios and this is the basis of the relation theory of value. You cannot divide preferences in half or add them up and deduce wild ratios. The issue is you can never find a common denominator.

[madnak]

What about the other question? One baby's at risk, you sacrifice 1% of the population's happiness to save it. Now another baby is at risk - do you sacrfice 1% of the remaining happiness to save it?

[madnak]

Neither. And I'm not talking politics. Although maybe I should. How much money should we spend to save a life?

[Zygote]

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Neither. And I'm not talking politics. Although maybe I should. How much money should we spend to save a life?

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How much should we spend to save a banana?

The answer is it depends. It depends on whose trying to save the banana and whether or not they prefer that over the other possible alternatives. This process will reveal their subjective value for the goods of that moment.

The question of how much we should spend to save a life is a tough one, since we probably hold different finite relational values for life and these values are probably dynamically changing all the time depending on the available alternatives. The extent of my preference or value for saving the life can only be measured by seeing how many alternatives i'll actionably sacrifice in order to continue the life's existence.

note: i dont think actionably is a word but you get the point