David Sklansky and the Bible Baby

[madnak]

David, if there's anything I respect about you it's your ability to make decisions without being overly influenced by your emotions. To that end, I want to know how you'd respond to a situation described in a recent thread. What makes the presentation of this scenario difficult is that you are neither religious nor (as far as I can tell) particularly appreciative of art. So I'll offer 3 examples and I'd like to hear your thoughts on them.

In the first example, there's a large building burning to the ground. At one end of the building (the left end as you enter, say) is the only known copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Aside from being the only copy, this document is special in that if it burns, all knowledge of Shakespeare's work (not necessarily his life) will go with it. Nobody will have it memorized, it will never be pieced together again, Shakespeare's work is gone. At the other end of the building (the right end, say) is a living baby, chosen at random from the human population. You have time to save either the baby or the Works, but not both (if you attempt to save both they'll burn and so will you). What is your choice - save the Works, save the baby, or save neither?

The next situation is similar, but involves all the works of Newton and Leibniz at the left end of the building (with the random baby at the right). If these works burn, then the mathematical and scientific work of Leibniz and Newton, and all works built on that foundation (that is, virtually all of math, science, and technology since the 18th century) will be lost. However, this loss will not be irrevocable - we may recover the knowledge and it may not even take 300 years to do so (though it will presumably take at least a century). Also, the upheavals relating to this loss will not result in any loss of life. What choice do you make now?

Finally, imagine a promising young scientist, the most brilliant in his field, who can be expected to be responsible for a number of great innovations is on the left side (same baby on the right). Now who do you choose?

It seems that the most common answer is "right right left," but I belief this to be highly illogical. Personally I'd go "left left left." What say you?

[arahant]

I'm betting he goes for LLL.

[David Sklansky]

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%?

[madnak]

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.

[m_the0ry]

You definitely can place a value on human life. It's just something we don't like to think about.

[arahant]

agreed. In fact, 37cents/day*number of ADL's is my standard [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[madnak]

Well, that's my position but not that of those in the other thread (by and large). I suppose David's line could be translated into:

Is there any number of people for whom you would kill one to increase the happiness of all the rest by 1%?

That gets to the core of it much more effectively.

[m_the0ry]

[ QUOTE ]
Well, that's my position but not that of those in the other thread (by and large). I suppose David's line could be translated into:

Is there any number of people for whom you would kill one to increase the happiness of all the rest by 1%?

That gets to the core of it much more effectively.

[/ QUOTE ]

So then your question is whether we can place a value on happiness?

[madnak]

No, so that doesn't work either. I'm using different examples because it's not all about happiness. It's about (something other than life). I should have used money as one of the examples, in retrospect. Political money, not personal money (the government must spend ten million to save a life, should it do so, etc).

My position is that people, in general, are very inconsistent about how they evaluate life and that is because they use primarily emotional rather than rational standards to do so.

[m_the0ry]

I'm kind of confused what makes you believe most people would say, "RRL"?