The Value of Life

[Rizen]

...I'm a pragmatist, not an idealist. Pragmatists get stuff done.

Is it always the right or proper thing they get done though?

For pragmatism, or more philosophically, utilitarianism to work, someone
somewhere has to decide what is good for the greatest number, and then
enforce it. This power could be a dictatorship, or be the tyranny of majority
rule.

1 This isn't pragmatism. Pragmatism is simply "character or conduct that emphasizes practicality."
2 The whole reason we have Trump is people are too stupid for democracy. He was elected democratically and won the popular vote. Democracy isn't so great either. I'd value the opinions of a smart, educated, informed minority over the majority of science denying idiots any day.

[Rizen]

This is kind of a false equivalency. There's a big difference between taking one day out of someone's life and bombing Iran. Especially if it's for a good cause.

When I talked about projects in my previous post I was talking about entrepreneurial projects for the good of the world. For example, the prevent cancer foundation has provided more than $120 million since 1985 to fund research and community outreach programs. This includes critical early funding for the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, which prevents over 90% of HPV-related cancers. If I can take one day off someone's life but extend their life and the lives of thousands of other people by decades, I do it. I'm a pragmatist, not an idealist. Pragmatists get stuff done.

So if someone needs my kidney to extend their life at no cost to my own life, they should just be able to take it without consent?

If someone discovered a cure for a disease in my blood, and needed to take more blood, "for a good cause" I shouldn't be able to say no? Personally I'd say yes, if I could help, I would, but this is dangerous territory we're entering here.

I don't really like the slippery slope analogy, but this might actually fit this time, we're talking about humans here, we always push things too far.

Eugenics anyone?

Again, the kidney thing is a false equivalency. Taking one day out of someone's life is incredibly minuscule and inconsequential compared to what happens in the real world every day. Are you familiar with the saying you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet? This is how the world works. When you build new apartments you have to tear down the old theater that a small group of enthusiasts love. Does that mean you shouldn't do it?  

I could play the same morality card on your philosophy. With great power comes great responsibility. Money can go a long way toward helping people. You've been given a huge opportunity. Are you morally justified to turn your back on people in need because you're unwilling to accept an incredibly small consequence?

Edit,
700 million people live in extreme poverty, surviving on less than $3 a day and 1.1 billion people live in poverty worldwide. If I walked up and said to them "hey, I took a day off your life, have a hundred grand" how many people do you think would be mad? It's not a bad idea. Spreading out the money over the entire population of the world just means each individual only loses a mere day.

[Unsapien]

So if someone needs my kidney to extend their life at no cost to my own life, they should just be able to take it without consent?

If someone discovered a cure for a disease in my blood, and needed to take more blood, "for a good cause" I shouldn't be able to say no? Personally I'd say yes, if I could help, I would, but this is dangerous territory we're entering here.

I don't really like the slippery slope analogy, but this might actually fit this time, we're talking about humans here, we always push things too far.

Eugenics anyone?

Again, the kidney thing is a false equivalency. Taking one day out of someone's life is incredibly minuscule and inconsequential compared to what happens in the real world every day. Are you familiar with the saying you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet? This is how the world works. When you build new apartments you have to tear down the old theater that a small group of enthusiasts love. Does that mean you shouldn't do it?  

I could play the same morality card on your philosophy. With great power comes great responsibility. Money can go a long way toward helping people. You've been given a huge opportunity. Are you morally justified to turn your back on people in need because you're unwilling to accept an incredibly small consequence?

Edit,
700 million people live in extreme poverty, surviving on less than $3 a day and 1.1 billion people live in poverty worldwide. If I walked up and said to them "hey, I took a day off your life, have a hundred grand" how many people do you think would be mad? It's not a bad idea. Spreading out the money over the entire population of the world just means each individual only loses a mere day.

[Bold is mine]

It's not your life you're taking from, it's someone else's, it's not your eggs your making the omelette with , and it's not our "incredibly small consequence" to take.

It's not a false equivalency, it's about consent. If you could ask millions of people if taking a day from them was okay because they'd benefit from it, I agree they'd say yes, it's the asking that's important.

[Dānu]

Many of the questions surrounding the second button devolve into how situational and consequentialist our ethics are. The problem with consequentialism is the answer very much depends on 'cui bono'.

[Rizen]

Again, the kidney thing is a false equivalency. Taking one day out of someone's life is incredibly minuscule and inconsequential compared to what happens in the real world every day. Are you familiar with the saying you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet? This is how the world works. When you build new apartments you have to tear down the old theater that a small group of enthusiasts love. Does that mean you shouldn't do it?  

I could play the same morality card on your philosophy. With great power comes great responsibility. Money can go a long way toward helping people. You've been given a huge opportunity. Are you morally justified to turn your back on people in need because you're unwilling to accept an incredibly small consequence?

Edit,
700 million people live in extreme poverty, surviving on less than $3 a day and 1.1 billion people live in poverty worldwide. If I walked up and said to them "hey, I took a day off your life, have a hundred grand" how many people do you think would be mad? It's not a bad idea. Spreading out the money over the entire population of the world just means each individual only loses a mere day.

[Bold is mine]

It's not your life you're taking from, it's someone else's, it's not your eggs your making the omelette with , and it's not our "incredibly small consequence" to take.

It's not a false equivalency, it's about consent. If you could ask millions of people if taking a day from them was okay because they'd benefit from it, I agree they'd say yes, it's the asking that's important.

Consent isn't in the parameters that were laid out. Life is not fair. Consent is rarely in the cards in real life either. You don't give consent to be taxed, pay rent, have someone break up with you... Shit happens. 

Lets say my goal is to give everyone a hundred grand for clarity. At the end of the day there are much worse things than losing one day of your life to get a hundred grand. How much do most Americans make in one day? How about people in third world countries? Most people would go through a hell of a lot worse for that kind of money. That kind of money is life changing for literally billions of people. It's saving lives. Do starving people give consent to be starving? Do sick people who can't afford treatments give consent to slowly die? 

Call me immoral if you will but the bottom line is I took charge and made a positive, life changing difference for billions of people. 
   

Like I said in my earlier post: the real question isn't "if" I will do it, it's "how".

[Unsapien]

I think we're looking at this from 2 different angles. Maybe you personally could use this power to do good, maybe I could too, but I don't think so not for very long.

From my perspective, humans can't be trusted with this power, it will corrupt you, it will corrupt me. Would you know when you're done fiddling with peoples' lives?

Because people don't stop, once you get a million you'll want 2, then 10, then a billion...

Other then yourself, who would you trust with this power?

[brewerb]

Another angle, rational for #2, is big picture. Can enough be killed and money/resources shifted to improve the overpopulation/global warming issues?

[Unsapien]

[Bold is mine]

It's not your life you're taking from, it's someone else's, it's not your eggs your making the omelette with , and it's not our "incredibly small consequence" to take.

It's not a false equivalency, it's about consent. If you could ask millions of people if taking a day from them was okay because they'd benefit from it, I agree they'd say yes, it's the asking that's important.

Consent isn't in the parameters that were laid out.

I would think that consent is one of the parameters, otherwise what's the difference between the 2 buttons?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Lady or tiger?

[Rhythmcs]

Entomb the buttons in concrete and shoot anyone who approaches the complex.

[Aoi Magi]

I'd paint on the first button "DO NOT PUSH, NUKE!!!" set the dial to a billion.

Put a cover and lock on the #2 one.

Then invite a certain orange-haired baboon to play golf in that room.

-----

Alternately, I'll set the dial to a trillion and set up an autoclicker on button #2


------

meh, life is overrated!

[SYZ]

I'm suggesting that the hypotheticals that've been suggested
and debated over in this particular thread illustrate exactly why
I always claim that philosophical debate—mind games—are bullshit
and never lead to practical, real-world solutions to anything.

People just add to the original hypothetical more and more ifs, buts
and maybes, until the context of the original point is lost in a plethora
of alternate interpretations.

But by-and-large, philosophy is written by professional philosophers for professional
philosophers, which makes it more vulnerable to academic displacement than literature
or religion or fine arts. If philosophers were driven from the university tomorrow,
philosophy as it is currently practiced would cease to exist.

When philosophical inquiry into a particular subject is pushed too far and too long, it
undergoes a fundamental and disfiguring change. No longer is it about raising an
important question or exploring some of the interesting ways that one might approach
it so that other people may wrestle with it themselves. Instead, it has turned into an
effort to find a conclusive answer to some question. And as we’ve seen, philosophical
questions are not the sort that admit of conclusive answers.

 —Daniel A. Kaufman, The Decline & Rebirth of Philosophy,

[Rhythmcs]

I suppose it depends. Sometimes there's no practical use case (or no obvious or present one) but it's still an exercise. To get better at thinking cleanly, or just for fun. Then again, how often do we find some later or more subtle use for things we hone in what amounts to games? Taken at face value the question really only suggests an answer to whether we value our own lives or others much or equally. The convo has since turned to long termist and maximalist thinking. To counterintuitive and less obvious uses of just cause scenarios.

That's a pretty popular justification amongst the morbidly wealthy and tech bros right now. People who've pushed both buttons irl to the point that they will soon be trillionaires but...somehow..none of those goods they think they might be able to to manifest have come along just because they condensed that wealth which was already out there in the system not solving those problems into their own hands. OFC, it's got a built in escape hatch for failure. You won't see the benefits in any human lifetime.

I would personally be leary of anyone suggesting that they had a rationally credible harm for benefit scheme that operated entirely by promissory note in some future state....but if we're deadset on believing in such a thing I suspect killing the rich would do more than killing the poor..which tend to be the targets of such thinking. The randomness of the button in the hypothetical makes it a poor tool for such arguments.

[Reltzik]

Just for reference, you can save one life by donating something like $4000 to a high-impact charity. That's 25 lives you can save for a single day of life sacrificed to the magic button.

... or save 10 lives and buy yourself a low-end luxury car.

For that matter, a stressful job can shave years off your life. Statistically, a 20-something could sacrifice a year and earn more than that back just from retiring early... or does that conflict with the premise of the question where you die the same way you would otherwise, just faster?

Also, if everyone gets a crack at pushing the button, what would that do to inflation? Or does inflation fall under the "no funny stuff" part of the original premise?

[Paleophyte]

Taking the situation where you press the purple button 8.3 million times and use the proceeds to improve the world...

Let's assume that we can hire a capable, competent, and honest team to manage the funds and their application. This removes a lot of the disconnect between money and improvement of conditions.

The utilitarian argument has a lot going for it. You just took a day from one person in a thousand. That's a decrease of less than a minute and a half to the average human lifespan for 830 billion dollars that can be applied to increasing human lifespan. It's hard to miss the fact that this scenario would almost certainly be a large net positive if implemented properly.

Two problems:

Consent. You're shortening somebody's life without ever asking them. Even if you just view that as "work", forcing somebody to work for you without consent has a name. If you could ask people to donate a day of their life, that would be one thing, but this scenario doesn't allow that. Consnt is impossible under the rules.

Murder. You're taking a life. Well, 8.3 million of them actually. Sure, it's one day at the end of a person's life and it's taken painlessly, but what else would we call it if you walked up to somebody the day before they were going to die and took their life? The fact that it's being done at a distance, untraceably, and remotely doesn't change that reality.

Humans are only granted so many days to live, so how do we justify taking one of them?

[Rizen]

Murder. You're taking a life. Well, 8.3 million of them actually. Sure, it's one day at the end of a person's life and it's taken painlessly, but what else would we call it if you walked up to somebody the day before they were going to die and took their life? The fact that it's being done at a distance, untraceably, and remotely doesn't change that reality.

Humans are only granted so many days to live, so how do we justify taking one of them?

Yet again this is a false equivalency. This is like saying "the firefighter who rescued me while I was unconscious murdered me by hurting my neck while saving my life". It makes no sense. Did you give consent to the firefighter to hurt your neck? No. It doesn't mean they murdered you. Taking one day off someone's life is not murdering someone especially if it is in the interest of expanding their life overall. 

Days and longer are taken off people's lives all the time. Stress has been proven to take time off someone's life. If you tried to sue your boss for murdering you because you have an unexpectedly stressful job, the case would be thrown out. Did the driver who cut you off murder you by causing you stress? No. This is how the world works! Like I said there are much worse things that happen every day than losing one day of your life to get a hundred grand. 
https://news.yale.edu/2021/12/06/stress-...ws-it-down

This is the problem with idealism. People get so stuck up on an ideal that they choose not to do significant good. With great power comes great responsibility. Spiderman is morally responsible for using his powers for good. I say you're immoral for not choosing to improve the world by pressing either of the buttons.

[Szuchow]

Taking the situation where you press the purple button 8.3 million times and use the proceeds to improve the world...

Let's assume that we can hire a capable, competent, and honest team to manage the funds and their application. This removes a lot of the disconnect between money and improvement of conditions.

The utilitarian argument has a lot going for it. You just took a day from one person in a thousand. That's a decrease of less than a minute and a half to the average human lifespan for 830 billion dollars that can be applied to increasing human lifespan. It's hard to miss the fact that this scenario would almost certainly be a large net positive if implemented properly.

What you written below aside I see another problem with such scenario. I doubt that anyone willing to steal lives of others would actually spend money to improve lives of others. Talk is easy but if one is immoral enough to steal most precious commodity (as time can be easily spent but never acquired) that others can have then why would such person quail at not using money for purpose they're allegedly taken?

[Szuchow]

I'm suggesting that the hypotheticals that've been suggested
and debated over in this particular thread illustrate exactly why
I always claim that philosophical debate—mind games—are bullshit
and never lead to practical, real-world solutions to anything.

People just add to the original hypothetical more and more ifs, buts
and maybes, until the context of the original point is lost in a plethora
of alternate interpretations.

But by-and-large, philosophy is written by professional philosophers for professional
philosophers, which makes it more vulnerable to academic displacement than literature
or religion or fine arts. If philosophers were driven from the university tomorrow,
philosophy as it is currently practiced would cease to exist.

When philosophical inquiry into a particular subject is pushed too far and too long, it
undergoes a fundamental and disfiguring change. No longer is it about raising an
important question or exploring some of the interesting ways that one might approach
it so that other people may wrestle with it themselves. Instead, it has turned into an
effort to find a conclusive answer to some question. And as we’ve seen, philosophical
questions are not the sort that admit of conclusive answers.

 —Daniel A. Kaufman, The Decline & Rebirth of Philosophy,

There was time when philosophical debates transcended the realm of dispute and were tried in reality. Best known example is Russian Revolution and Lenin attempts to make Word into flesh to paraphrase the Bible. Understandably people nowadays aren't all that keen on philosophy providing solutions as they have past in mind.

[Rhythmcs]

I think we're still missing the partially hidden and false premise in these. If you had the money to hire the team...it would do what that the money, which is already out there, and has already hired many teams, wouldn't or hasn't done?

[Rhythmcs]

Murder. You're taking a life. Well, 8.3 million of them actually. Sure, it's one day at the end of a person's life and it's taken painlessly, but what else would we call it if you walked up to somebody the day before they were going to die and took their life? The fact that it's being done at a distance, untraceably, and remotely doesn't change that reality.

Humans are only granted so many days to live, so how do we justify taking one of them?

Yet again this is a false equivalency. This is like saying "the firefighter who rescued me while I was unconscious murdered me by hurting my neck while saving my life". It makes no sense. Did you give consent to the firefighter to hurt your neck? No. It doesn't mean they murdered you. Taking one day off someone's life is not murdering someone especially if it is in the interest of expanding their life overall. 

Days and longer are taken off people's lives all the time. Stress has been proven to take time off someone's life. If you tried to sue your boss for murdering you because you have an unexpectedly stressful job, the case would be thrown out. Did the driver who cut you off murder you by causing you stress? No. This is how the world works! Like I said there are much worse things that happen every day than losing one day of your life to get a hundred grand. 
https://news.yale.edu/2021/12/06/stress-...ws-it-down

This is the problem with idealism. People get so stuck up on an ideal that they choose not to do significant good. With great power comes great responsibility. Spiderman is morally responsible for using his powers for good. I say you're immoral for not choosing to improve the world by pressing either of the buttons.

I wouldn't want to be arguoing in court that taking a day off of someones life wasn't murder.  Sure, maybe that geriatric was going to die later than day..but if you killed them this morning...

Let it be what it is?  A just cause case.  That there is a just cause for some number of murders or some amount of harm. We don't have to believe that's true, but we probably do have to acknowledge that his is the form of the argument. -and you're right, we're already taking days out of peoples lives, killing them either directly on the job or putting them into the grave ealier...and it's creating a vast amount of wealth..and I reutrn to my other observation above.

Mitchell and web did a bit on it, raise the vat and kill the poor. In the spirit of keeping the hypothetical tight lets just accept that it's true for purposes of discussion that killing some number of people (or reducing the quality or quantity of their lives..even) would yield a far larger net benefit...say, if we counted by people effected. That;s pretty unobjectionable. It may be that small action today has huge followon effects in a long enough time frame. Is it that such ideas work or wouldn't work that we decide our advocacy or acceptance, or are there some things that would work..that we still won't do (or that we know wouldn't, but still feel compelled to "try")?

[Rizen]

Yet again this is a false equivalency. This is like saying "the firefighter who rescued me while I was unconscious murdered me by hurting my neck while saving my life". It makes no sense. Did you give consent to the firefighter to hurt your neck? No. It doesn't mean they murdered you. Taking one day off someone's life is not murdering someone especially if it is in the interest of expanding their life overall. 

Days and longer are taken off people's lives all the time. Stress has been proven to take time off someone's life. If you tried to sue your boss for murdering you because you have an unexpectedly stressful job, the case would be thrown out. Did the driver who cut you off murder you by causing you stress? No. This is how the world works! Like I said there are much worse things that happen every day than losing one day of your life to get a hundred grand. 
https://news.yale.edu/2021/12/06/stress-...ws-it-down

This is the problem with idealism. People get so stuck up on an ideal that they choose not to do significant good. With great power comes great responsibility. Spiderman is morally responsible for using his powers for good. I say you're immoral for not choosing to improve the world by pressing either of the buttons.

I wouldn't want to be arguoing in court that taking a day off of someones life wasn't murder.  Sure, maybe that geriatric was going to die later than day..but if you killed them this morning...

Let it be what it is?  A just cause case.  That there is a just cause for some number of murders or some amount of harm.  We don't have to believe that's true, but we probably do have to acknowledge that his is the form of the argument.  -and you're right, we're already taking days out of peoples lives, killing them either directly on the job or putting them into the grave ealier...and it's creating a vast amount of wealth..and I reutrn to my other observation above.

Mitchell and web did a bit on it, raise the vat and kill the poor.  In the spirit of keeping the hypothetical tight lets just accept that it's true for purposes of discussion that killing some number of people (or reducing the quality or quantity of their lives..even) would yield a far larger net benefit...say, if we counted by people effected.  That;s pretty unobjectionable.  It may be that small action today has huge followon effects in a long enough time frame.  Is it that such ideas work or wouldn't work that we decide our advocacy or acceptance, or are there some things that would work..that we still won't do (or that we know wouldn't, but still feel compelled to "try")?

Shortening some's life is not murder and that is an objective fact. Murder is a legal term defined as unlawfully killing another person. When PETA says "fur is murder" they are objectively wrong because the term murder involves killing a human. The whole murder thing is a ridiculous strawman argument. Ice cream producers are not "murdering" someone for making them less healthy, thus shortening their life. 

This scenario shortens one person's life by a day for $100,000, it does not kill them. Those are two entirely different things. You're not immediately killing anyone, you're magically taking one day off the end of their natural life. The same thing happens when you eat unhealthy foods, undergo stress, etc. 

For example: Studies have found that eating a hot dog costs a person 36 minutes of a healthy life. That does not mean the hot dog producers murdered people. They simply shortened their lives. Just like in this scenario. There is a difference. Taking a day off someone's life is not killing someone it is the equivalent of feeding them roughly 40 hot dogs. It really is not a big deal.
  https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2021posts/...-life.html

_________________________________________________

What gets me is people arguing against me are completely ignoring the positives gained. 828 million people on the planet are hungry. If I could take 1 day off a random person's life to donate $100,000 to the world food program, I'd do it.
https://wfpusa.org/news/how-much-would-i...ld-hunger/
That is just one example of how money can save lives. If I could solve all the world's problems with just my lifespan I'd do it but I don't have billions of dollars worth of days in my life. Spreading the cost out over the population only costs each person affected a measly day yet it saves millions of people's lives from things like starvation. 


This is why it should be a crime that the 1%ers of the world like Elon Musk are allowed to have that much money. We need another bastille day (not literally but we should be taxing the rich into the ground).
 

[SYZ]

...Shortening someone’s life is not murder and that is an objective fact.

Says who?     This is just playing with semantics.

The only unique time that shortening someone’s
life is not murder is with a voluntarily assisted dying
procedure for the terminally ill.

      BTW, "objective facts" need objective evidence.

[Phaedrus]

Button #2 in order to earn a reasonable amount to keep me comfortable for the rest of my life.

[Paleophyte]

Shortening some's life is not murder and that is an objective fact. Murder is a legal term defined as unlawfully killing another person.

What the button does is not lawful. You have no legal or moral right to take what you are taking. The result of doing so will kill the other person. It won't kill them here and now, but it will kill them. They will die before their time.

The purple button takes one day of the person's life and gives you $100,000. Imagine that it takes all but one day and gives you nothing. The latter is clearly murder. The only difference between it and the former is the duration and the price tag.

What gets me is people arguing against me are completely ignoring the positives gained.

Nobody's ignoring anything. The positives are there to make the diffuse and remote wrong of taking 8.3 million days seem right. And from many perspectives it is. But simply because the ends are noble and just doesn't mean that you can ignore or minimize the costs.

[Dānu]

...Shortening someone’s life is not murder and that is an objective fact.

Says who?     This is just playing with semantics.

The only unique time that shortening someone’s
life is not murder is with a voluntarily assisted dying
procedure for the terminally ill.

      BTW, "objective facts" need objective evidence.

This seems predicated on the idea that a person is in some sense entitled or owed a certain length of life, and by shortening their life you are depriving them of something they have a right to receive. But this is presumptuous bollocks, as noone knows how fate, length of life, and these buttons works, and nobody is owed a certain amount of life.