The Value of Life

[Paleophyte]

...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.

And in that particular case, it isn't murder because you have consent. The person is asking to be killed, and it's contentious even then.

[Rhythmcs]

Courts would disagree there as well. Are we looking to come to a conclusion about litigation or value competition?

[Rhythmcs]

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.

Sure, but it's an explicit part of the thought experiment.  The button, apparently, does know...and in the thought experiment, so do we.

[Dānu]

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.

Sure, but it's an explicit part of the thought experiment.  The button, apparently, does know...and in the thought experiment, so do we.

Nonsense. The only thing the hypothetical says about it explicitly is that it's magic. If you're claiming to know how magic works, then please enlighten me.

[Rhythmcs]

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.

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).

The hot dog producer didn't put the hot dog in my mouth.  I did that.  Kind of amusing for a point of comparison, right?  Here's this button.   I won't press it and I would even prevent other people from pressing it..but not because I wouldn't gladly trade a half hour of my life while paying for the privilege!

I would suggest that things like hunger aren't actually an issue of no one having enough money to solve it, such that if you got that money -by whatever means- you actually could.  That has been tried, genuinely.  Let's suppose they are though.  Let's suppose hunger is.  How many minutes or hours or days of peoples lives would be worth it? What if it were a hungry persons life? How do we feel about cannibalism? It's not so much that people ignore the hypothetical or potential or alleged benefit. It's that some people, even if they acknowledged the possibility of some harmful scheme x working for some good y...still wouldn't do it. The tragedy of strong moral character I suppose - or boundary setting behaviors working as intended.

[Rizen]

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.

@SYZ
So it's murder to magically shorten someone's life by one day? Last year I was driving and someone tried to merge into my car on the freeway. I tried to pull to the left, spun out and hit the median at 65mph. My car was a total loss. That day cost me $8500 and surely the stress took a day off of my life without my consent. The other driver never stopped. That was far worse than simply taking a day off the end of my life. Did that driver murder me, yes or no?

I admit shortening a person's life by one day is slightly immoral. But tell me this: can you ever find a better deal? When a company succeeds it's because other companies failed. When you get a promotion it's because your coworkers got the raw deal. The problem with idealists is you want everything to be perfect in an imperfect world and it's not. People get screwed without consent all the time. Nothing would ever get done if people didn't accept this. Our entire country is built on screwing over the native Americans. 

Taking one day from some's life for a hundred grand is an infinitesimally small price compared to the screwing that happens every day to billions of people. It is not murder- it is life. This is the way the world works. This scenario is far less negatively impactful than anything that could happen in the real world. How much stress do you think you'd have to go through (thus lowering your life expectancy), toes you'd have to step on and days you'd have to toil to make a hundred grand? This is what bugs me. You're calling something murder that is a far less malicious way to make an impact than anything that could actually happen in real life! 

And you are ignoring the positives. "Oh no I just shortened some's life by one day yet extended it by decades by giving them and thousands of other people access to life saving vaccines. I guess I murdered them!" 

You have a magical source of practically infinite wealth yet you choose not to use it when people are starving, dying, in need of vaccines, etc. How are you any better than Elon Musk and his so call "philanthropies"?
https://www.alancantorconsulting.com/202...elon-musk/

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.

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).

I would suggest that things like hunger aren't actually an issue of no one having enough money to solve it, such that if you got that money -by whatever means- you actually could.  That has been tried, genuinely.  Let's suppose they are though.  Let's suppose hunger is.  How many minutes or hours or days of peoples lives would be worth it?  What if it were a hungry persons life?  How do we feel about cannibalism?  It's not so much that people ignore the hypothetical or potential or alleged benefit.  It's that some people, even if they acknowledged the possibility of some harmful scheme x working for some good y...still wouldn't do it.  The tragedy of strong moral character I suppose - or boundary setting behaviors working as intended.

IDK why you're talking about stuff like cannibalism but donating money to organizations like the world food program I mentioned earlier genuinely helps people. It is an issue of money to a large degree. 

This is my point about idealism. You chose to take the "moral" high ground and not press any buttons. I chose to make a pragmatic decision and feed millions of starving people (greatly extending their lives) for no more cost than one day taken from the end of the life of however many people that takes to end world hunger. At the end of the day, who has the moral high ground? 

Don't be an idealist! Idealists are Christians who voted for a convicted felon and rapist because he supports Christianity. Idealists are people who let Trump get elected the first time because they couldn't hold their nose and vote for Hillary. Be a pragmatist and get shit done.

________________________________________________

Furthermore, I'd like to point out that the magic takes one day from the end of a person's life. Those days suck anyway. My mom died of metastasized breast cancer causing liver failure. In her last days her skin was yellow and she wasn't even conscious but she was still having nightmares she couldn't wake up from because I heard he say "Help, Matthew, help" in her sleep. Killing her a day early would have been a mercy.

[Rhythmcs]

I think people would disagree with you about whether or not losing a day...or more accurately having a day taken away from them by you, was an infinitesimally small price to pay for you to get the opportunity to learn whether or not hunger is a money problem. I asked about cannibalism because there's some number of poor people we could eat that would be an infinitesimally small price to pay to end world hunger, too. Yes?

It's just a negotiation at this point.

[Rhythmcs]

-as a sideline, I think it's worth pointing out that your objections about taking a moral high ground are misplaced. I'm not wasting anytime making the bad thing that might do good things -not a bad thing-. Not making any arguments about how this wouldn't be murder, or that there really isn't anything objectionable about doing it. I'm accepting that it's not a free good. It doesn't meet my level of negotiation, maybe it meets yours...but if it does, is it because the numbers are good if it's exactly what it sounds like, or do you require it to be other than it is....suggesting your actual threshold (in time, in days, in numbers of people, in amounts of money..whatever) would be higher in practice?

Let's say that you really can solve the problem this way...but you've massively underestimated the cost? Does that change anything?

[Rizen]

I think people would disagree with you about whether or not losing a day...or more accurately having a day taken away from them by you, was an infinitesimally small price to pay for you to get the opportunity to learn whether or not hunger is a money problem.  I asked about cannibalism because there's some number of poor people we could eat that would be an infinitesimally small price to pay to end world hunger, too.  Yes?  

It's just a negotiation at this point.

Hunger is not exclusively a money problem but money is a huge part of it. If someone's starving I have no issues with cannibalism. 

There's not really an "if" about money helping feed starving people. To quote the article I linked:
https://wfpusa.org/news/how-much-would-i...ld-hunger/
Despite mounting challenges, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is still finding ways to deliver food to tens of millions of people every year. They know what it takes to end world hunger, and they know what it costs. They simply need the collective will to make it happen.
Back in July of 2021, former U.N. World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley mentioned it would take an estimated $40 billion each year to end world hunger by 2030.

-as a sideline, I think it's worth pointing out that your objections about taking a moral high ground are misplaced.  I'm not wasting anytime making the bad thing that might do good things -not a bad thing-.  Not making any arguments about how this wouldn't be murder, or that there really isn't anything objectionable about doing it.  I'm accepting that it's not a free good.  It doesn't meet my level of negotiation, maybe it meets yours...but if it does, is it because the numbers are good if it's exactly what it sounds like, or do you require it to be other than it is....suggesting your actual threshold (in time, in days, in numbers of people, in amounts of money..whatever) would be higher in practice?

Let's say that you really can solve the problem this way...but you've massively underestimated the cost?  Does that change anything?

The funny thing about murder is it's hard to murder someone who's not dead. This is the vast majority of people, over 99%. Theoretically the few people who have less than a day left in the first place I'd consider a grey area. I support assisted suicide and pulling the plug of cases with no hope of recovery. I've personally taken care of three people who died and at that point consider death a mercy. The mind shuts down near death.  

I said this once before but I am terrified of the process of dying. Not being dead but the process. There was a Bojack Horseman about it where he nearly drowned in a pool while passed out drunk. Like being stuck in a nightmare you can't wake up from.

I wouldn't want to wish that upon myself or anybody.
 

If the parameters of this exercise were different I'd have a different argument but they're not. I will say in no uncertain terms that it should be a crime for people like Elon Musk to have that much money when millions of people are starving. If you have resources like that it's every citizen's moral duty to help those in need. Money begets money. We shouldn't worship human shitpiles like Trump or Musk, we should tax them into the ground and forcefully take their money if they won't give it willingly. Having billions of dollars doesn't mean you worked any harder than the plumber who makes $20 an hour snaking toilets. The world is such a fucked up place because we are afraid to break a few eggs. We're unwilling to break a failing system where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

[Dānu]

WHY IS BUYING heroin easier than hiring a hitman? Both are illegal. Yet find yourself in an unfamiliar town and ask around where you might get your fix and—possibly after being met by a few disgusted glances and wide-eyed stares—you are eventually given a phone number or directions to some sketchy area. Even if someone bothers to report you to the police, the constabulary is too busy to follow up on a single user. Start asking where you can get the services of a contract killer, however, and if you receive any leads at all, you are most likely to find yourself talking to an undercover policeman.

This is one of the questions asked in “Moral Economics”, a new book by Alvin Roth, a Nobel-prizewinning economist at Stanford University. Mr Roth’s Nobel was for his work on market design, particularly in those markets where two or more parties must be paired up in the absence of price signals (think university places or marriage). His studies led him to the trade in human organs—he set up a kidney exchange in which donors who are not a match for their respective intended recipients can swap—and, more broadly, to the murky world of “repugnant transactions”. These Mr Roth defines as ones where, like scoring heroin but not securing a hitman, buyers and sellers would happily transact but someone else not directly harmed by the exchange wishes to prevent it.

Mr Roth’s subject is a good one. Morality clearly shapes markets far beyond those for heroin and hitmen. Like all of his discipline, he makes moral economics about trade-offs: are the harms of allowing an activity greater than the harms of disallowing it? After all, he writes, people “can’t generally expect to reach a consensus” about the principles at stake. The clear-eyed evidence he gathers is a useful place from which to argue about when prohibition works. Yet despite his attempts to “take moral and ethical concerns seriously”, the book too often treats other people’s principles as an irrational bias to be managed rather than a reasoned position to be argued against. That is a missed opportunity.

Some of his frustration is understandable. What different societies consider repugnant can seem arbitrary. Horsemeat, a delicacy in parts of Europe, is off the table in California following a referendum in 1998. Many European countries forbid surrogacy on the ground that it violates the dignity of women to make the body into a tradable commodity, yet they permit some forms of sex work. In America it is the other way around: prostitution is illegal everywhere except for a few counties in Nevada whereas surrogacy is widely available. California allows paid sex—so long as it is being used to make pornography. Americans can be paid to donate blood but could not partake in “challenge trials” for covid-19 vaccines, tested on donors who expose themselves to the disease. British blood donors can count on at best a biscuit but are allowed to offer their life for a fee to see if a jab works.

---

Perhaps more important, it lets Mr Roth skirt an uncomfortable question about the role of repugnance. He is right that it often serves to exercise social control: dietary restrictions let an in-group that shuns pork, or beef, or meat, ostracise the out-group that does not. But it is also a tool of social cohesion. Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist at the turn of the 20th century, argued that societies divide the world into the sacred, covered by ritual and taboo, and the profane, the ordinary. One that treats everything as tradable might struggle to sustain the tacit co-operation on which markets, repugnant or otherwise, ultimately rely.

How should economists treat morality?

[Paleophyte]

So it's murder to magically shorten someone's life by one day?

Sure. If you're shortening 8.3 million lives with an average lifespan of 80 years, then 284 of those people had less than a day to live. Those people drop dead on the spot when you push that button. Is that an obvious enough example of murder for you?

Last year I was driving...

An activity that you chose to engage in, knowing the risks.

I admit shortening a person's life by one day is slightly immoral.

Is it slightly immoral to the 284 bodies that just hit the deck? Is it still slightly immoral if we change it from a day to a year? To a century? Does morality depend on the cost of days? Does it change when we twiddle a numeric variable? Or was it always wrong?

But tell me this: can you ever find a better deal?

So it's about the price tag? Is that how we're determining morality? A very utilitarian approach, but hardly one that's universally accepted.

People get screwed without consent all the time.

And do we suggest that's morality? Or do we have a right to complain about being screwed?

[Rizen]

Sure. If you're shortening 8.3 million lives with an average lifespan of 80 years, then 284 of those people had less than a day to live. Those people drop dead on the spot when you push that button. Is that an obvious enough example of murder for you?

If someone's dying of cancer and you shorten their life by one day what killed them, the cancer that ate away their organs for years that would have killed them anyway or losing one day that they in all likeliness weren't even conscious for? The day in question really had no bearing on their outcome. 
I also consider that a mercy for reasons I already explained. I do admit this is a grey area though. Is it murder to put someone in critical condition out of their misery? Is it murder to kill a mass of cells no larger than a pin head? I say no but I do concede that some people would object.

The fact remains that 99.9X% of the cases of the button press are objectively not murder. You can't classify a crime as murder if no one dies.

"Is it slightly immoral to the 284 bodies that just hit the deck? Is it still slightly immoral if we change it from a day to a year? To a century? Does morality depend on the cost of days? Does it change when we twiddle a numeric variable? Or was it always wrong?"
Moving the goal posts? I answered the question as it was phrased now answer mine:

Why is it not okay to kill 284 people in critical condition who would die in under 24 hours anyway yet it's okay to let the 345 million people who are starving as I type this die?

[Rhythmcs]

Does it really matter whether it's murder if, for whatever reason (including your own that you've listed), that particular day is as close to worthless as can be imagined? If the button pusher thinks it has a negative value? As a thing to be avoided if possible.

For that matter, why stop at just enough to end world hunger - why not mash the button until it's maxed? Keeping with that negative valuation, why even aim for world hunger? Why not max it out unsnarling the traffic on I-5 just an hour on a single friday in 2026? Still trading something valueless or to be avoided for some kind of nice thing.

As an answer to the questions above..yes, it does seem like if it's bad to deprive someone of any unit of something it would follow that it's more bad to deprive them of more units of that something. Life, for example..or food. Is there a moral difference between petty theft and looting the government? Probably. Why is it not okay to kill 284 people in critical condition to save just 1 person who is hungry, or to kill just one for 284 million? Because taking units of things that are not yours to take is wrong to wronger. Not right if it works out well for some people. I think what you're running into is that for many people, finding a way to accomplish something is not, in and of itself, compelling. I think we can all think of at least one way to accomplish some goal of ours that we won't entertain for whatever passes for moral reasons to us. That's why arguing that it would work fails to convince them of your point. They don't question whether it can be done, but whether it should be even if it could be. You'll have trouble making moral appeals after telling them to abandon morality for what you consider pragmatism.

[Rizen]

Does it really matter whether it's murder if, for whatever reason (including your own that you've listed), that particular day is as close to worthless as can be imagined?  If the button pusher thinks it has a negative value?  As a thing to be avoided if possible.  

For that matter, why stop at just enough to end world hunger - why not mash the button until it's maxed?     Keeping with that negative valuation, why even aim for world hunger?  Why not max it out unsnarling the traffic on I-5 just an hour on a single friday in 2026?  Still trading something valueless or to be avoided for some kind of nice thing.

As an answer to the questions above..yes, it does seem like if it's bad to deprive someone of any unit of something it would follow that it's more bad to deprive them of more units of that something.  Life, for example..or food.  Is there a moral difference between petty theft and looting the government?  Probably.  Why is it not okay to kill 284 people in critical condition to save just 1 person who is hungry, or to kill just one for 284 million?  Because taking units of things that are not yours to take is wrong to wronger.  Not right if it works out well for some people.  I think what you're running into is that for many people, finding a way to accomplish something is not, in and of itself, compelling.  I think we can all think of at least one way to accomplish some goal of ours that we won't entertain for whatever passes for moral reasons to us.  That's why arguing that it would work fails to convince them of your point.  They don't question whether it can be done, but whether it should be even if it could be.  You'll have trouble making moral appeals after telling them to abandon morality for what you consider pragmatism.

Like I said in a previous post, money begets money. I'd set up a steady source of massive income like forming some sort of company and donate the profits. Then there would be no need for buttons.

I admitted it is slightly unethical to press the buttons. I consider it more unethical to let millions of people stave. In this particular scenario the benefits heavily outweigh the cons. As stated you will never find a better deal than this. And, you're right, that is just the beginning. The possibilities for this money are endless. 

I didn't tell people to abandon morality, I told them to abandon idealism. If I can take one measly day from the life of X many people yet extend the lives of millions of people by decades by providing them food, vaccinations, medicine, etc, I consider that a moral victory.

[Rhythmcs]

The things you describe as idealism have tended to be where others moral principles could interfere with or inconvenience a chosen outcome. Contrasted against a different set of imperatives, your own, which you describe as pragmatism but (I'm guessing) also tend to be okay with your own moral code? Or, at least, you're putting in the work to minimize moral objections and think you've found a cause worthy enough to justify what you think might be a little dodgy. Does that sound fair?

We probably all have some ceiling like that, where the hoped for good justifies bad or distasteful or harmful acts - and possibly en masse. I'm wondering about the floor, though. What wouldn't be worth someone else's last (and arguably not best) day? You mentioned that in many cases you could consider the act itself a mercy. In that sense you're not trading bad for good, just doing good that produces (or could produce) even more good. World hunger...sure, but what about warming up a cup of hot chocolate for one kid somewhere? How much delivered mercy is a good trade for one cup of hot chocolate?

Even beyond that...do you think that some moral victories could be pyrrhic ones? Like, all disagreement about the moral status, calculus, or product aside...are there the kinds of moral victories that we might not possibly survive, in your estimation, or couldn't win more than a few times before it ended us or made things immensely worse for some other reason? We've been talking about ending hunger and now extending their lives...but doesn't that create an even bigger and longer term issue for hunger? We'd find ourselves returning to this button quite a bit, I would assume. Each time, because we did it the last time, with a bigger need or ask, an even larger mass of suffering.

(I ask because the conclusion of alot of long termist arguments like this can always be improved on their own grounds by population reduction. So..perhaps, shaving those days and just keeping the money might be better in the long term if it reduces the population nearer to the start)

[SYZ]

@SYZ
So it's murder to magically shorten someone's life by one day? Last year I was driving and someone tried to merge into my car on the freeway. I tried to pull to the left, spun out and hit the median at 65mph. My car was a total loss. That day cost me $8500 and surely the stress took a day off of my life without my consent. The other driver never stopped. That was far worse than simply taking a day off the end of my life. Did that driver murder me, yes or no.....

Well, if I accept for one second that this entire conundrum revolves solely
around "magic", then I'd say you're being entirely too subjective and not
addressing the abstract philosophy it deserves.  It's impossible to equate
real life eventualities with what we're talking about here, I reckon.

I consider this example of yours totally irrelevant (apologies) to this purely
philosophical debate. Your admittedly unfortunate road accident doesn't
really bear any relationship with killing—or not killing.  At any rate, the
stress of this accident didn't "surely" take a day off your life;  you have no
way of even guessing that.  Age and/or infirmity are far more likely to take
away at least some part of your anticipated lifespan—even one single day.

And your rhetorical questions as to whether or not the
errant driver murdered you is even more irrelevant to
this debate.  At any rate, no he did not.  Flip question.

[Rizen]

@SYZ
So it's murder to magically shorten someone's life by one day? Last year I was driving and someone tried to merge into my car on the freeway. I tried to pull to the left, spun out and hit the median at 65mph. My car was a total loss. That day cost me $8500 and surely the stress took a day off of my life without my consent. The other driver never stopped. That was far worse than simply taking a day off the end of my life. Did that driver murder me, yes or no.....

Well, if I accept for one second that this entire conundrum revolves solely
around "magic", then I'd say you're being entirely too subjective and not
addressing the abstract philosophy it deserves.  It's impossible to equate
real life eventualities with what we're talking about here, I reckon.

I consider this example of yours totally irrelevant (apologies) to this purely
philosophical debate. Your admittedly unfortunate road accident doesn't
really bear any relationship with killing—or not killing.  At any rate, the
stress of this accident didn't "surely" take a day off your life;  you have no
way of even guessing that.  Age and/or infirmity are far more likely to take
away at least some part of your anticipated lifespan—even one single day.

And your rhetorical questions as to whether or not the
errant driver murdered you is even more irrelevant to
this debate.  At any rate, no he did not.  Flip question.

First of all yes, it is relevant, and yes, you can compare it. Why not? I've been bringing in real life factors this whole debate. Second, yes, it has been proven stress takes time off your life. I can't say it took exactly a day off my life but I don't have to. My point was you can't label every little thing that reduces life expectancy as murder. 
You said:
"The only unique time that shortening someone’s
life is not murder is with a voluntarily assisted dying
procedure for the terminally ill."
You wanted objective evidence. There's your example. I've given you many examples from stress to hot dogs. Lives are shortened all the time, it's a shitty thing to do but it's rarely murder. 

Labeling every little thing as murder is a pet peeve of mine. Fur is not murder. Obamacare is not murder. Abortions are not murder. Magically removing a day from the end of someone's life is not murder.

[Rhythmcs]

Have we been talking about every little thing that reduces life expectancy or a button you push that does that for money? It seems like it's a magical timebomb, and we're doing it to get rich. Maybe we plan to do something superawesome with the money, IDK if that's going to be a compelling defense at trial.

[Paleophyte]

Well, if I accept for one second that this entire conundrum revolves solely
around "magic", then I'd say you're being entirely too subjective and not
addressing the abstract philosophy it deserves.  It's impossible to equate
real life eventualities with what we're talking about here, I reckon.

You can't conceive of anything that we do permit that can be demonstrated to shorten the average lifespan? But which is difficult to demonstrate actually shortened any specific lifespan? No diffuse harms with real consequences?

[Paleophyte]

If someone's dying of cancer and you shorten their life by one day what killed them, the cancer that ate away their organs for years that would have killed them anyway or losing one day that they in all likeliness weren't even conscious for?

You did. How else am I to view that? Did you have consent?

I do admit this is a grey area though. Is it murder to put someone in critical condition out of their misery? Is it murder to kill a mass of cells no larger than a pin head?

Do you have consent? If not, then it's pretty clearly murder, and you would go to jail for it.

The fact remains that 99.9X% of the cases of the button press are objectively not murder. You can't classify a crime as murder if no one dies.

You use the word "fact" a lot. If I take out a contract on your life, how many days must go by before it is no longer murder? How many days of your life must I steal before it is?

"Is it slightly immoral to the 284 bodies that just hit the deck? Is it still slightly immoral if we change it from a day to a year? To a century? Does morality depend on the cost of days? Does it change when we twiddle a numeric variable? Or was it always wrong?"
Moving the goal posts? I answered the question as it was phrased now answer mine:

Not in the slightest. I'm just trying to show you that duration doesn't make something moral. How many or how few of the days of your life must I take before it ceases to be murder and simply becomes "slightly immoral"?

Why is it not okay to kill 284 people in critical condition who would die in under 24 hours anyway yet it's okay to let the 345 million people who are starving as I type this die?

If you're going to complain about moving the goalposts, you had best not ask about 284 people in critical condition. It's 8.3 million people, 284 of whom will die immediately, 284 of whom will die tomorrow, 284 of whom will die the next day... And none of which were stated to be in critical condition. Is it reasonable to assume that some of them will be? Of course. Is it reasonable to assume that some of them won't? Absolutely. People die suddenly and without suffering. Stroke. Heart attack. Hit by a bus. Wrong alley, wrong time. You're inventing justifications.

Even assuming that all 284 people who will die were suffering, you still don't have that right. Many people would say that their last day is worth more than others. It will be their last chance to hold family and friends and say goodbye. People won't get that chance because you pushed the purple button. The button gives you might, not right.

And there is a difference between killing people and allowing them to die. Are you jumping up to save the latter? The ones who are starving as you type this?

How many people must we save to justify a death? What price do we put on human life? When do the ends justify the means?

[Paleophyte]

Magically removing a day from the end of someone's life is not murder.

Are you not taking life? Without consent? Or even notification? By what ethical principle is that not murder?

[Rizen]

If someone's dying of cancer and you shorten their life by one day what killed them, the cancer that ate away their organs for years that would have killed them anyway or losing one day that they in all likeliness weren't even conscious for?

You did. How else am I to view that? Did you have consent?

I do admit this is a grey area though. Is it murder to put someone in critical condition out of their misery? Is it murder to kill a mass of cells no larger than a pin head?

Do you have consent? If not, then it's pretty clearly murder, and you would go to jail for it.

The fact remains that 99.9X% of the cases of the button press are objectively not murder. You can't classify a crime as murder if no one dies.

You use the word "fact" a lot. If I take out a contract on your life, how many days must go by before it is no longer murder? How many days of your life must I steal before it is?

"Is it slightly immoral to the 284 bodies that just hit the deck? Is it still slightly immoral if we change it from a day to a year? To a century? Does morality depend on the cost of days? Does it change when we twiddle a numeric variable? Or was it always wrong?"
Moving the goal posts? I answered the question as it was phrased now answer mine:

Not in the slightest. I'm just trying to show you that duration doesn't make something moral. How many or how few of the days of your life must I take before it ceases to be murder and simply becomes "slightly immoral"?

Why is it not okay to kill 284 people in critical condition who would die in under 24 hours anyway yet it's okay to let the 345 million people who are starving as I type this die?

If you're going to complain about moving the goalposts, you had best not ask about 284 people in critical condition. It's 8.3 million people, 284 of whom will die immediately, 284 of whom will die tomorrow, 284 of whom will die the next day... And none of which were stated to be in critical condition. Is it reasonable to assume that some of them will be? Of course. Is it reasonable to assume that some of them won't? Absolutely. People die suddenly and without suffering. Stroke. Heart attack. Hit by a bus. Wrong alley, wrong time. You're inventing justifications.

Even assuming that all 284 people who will die were suffering, you still don't have that right. Many people would say that their last day is worth more than others. It will be their last chance to hold family and friends and say goodbye. People won't get that chance because you pushed the purple button. The button gives you might, not right.

And there is a difference between killing people and allowing them to die. Are you jumping up to save the latter? The ones who are starving as you type this?

How many people must we save to justify a death? What price do we put on human life? When do the ends justify the means?

No if someone's dying of cancer anyway the cancer killed them. The cancer took decades off their life; I merely shortened it by a day and there's a huge difference you refuse to acknowledge. You refuse to acknowledge that shortening someone's life by a day yet extending it by decades is not murder. I've given you many examples of why shortening someone's life by one day is just like applying relatively minimal stress or feeding someone forty hot dogs. 

You can't even answer my question. You're no better than Elon Musk. Who are you to lecture me about morals? At the end up the day I saved the lives of millions of people and you turned your back on them. It's a very fundamentalist way of thinking; unwilling to accept the nuances of real life that involve tough decisions about death because you're too righteous to accept anything other than a black and white view of it yet you don't concern yourself with those in need. "Once the unborn get out of the vagina they can go fuck themselves".


I'm done with this thread. I've given links, example after example but I guess I'm just the only one who feels the need to save millions of lives for a price so minimal it would only happen magically.

[Dānu]

Cutting a day off someone's life provokes genuine feelings of moral repugnance, but I don't think murder is the same moral transgression as this. There's an analog, but not a good one.

[Rhythmcs]

If we're not doing anything objectionable the question is a nothingburger. The whole setup pointless. If it's not doing some allegedly little bad for some allegedly immense good..there's no moral or even practical dilemma. If it is doing something bad for some good...and we have a low valuation of that bit of life...you won't find arguments to not do the thing hard to respond to......you'll find arguments to do an even more brutal and effective thing impossible to respond to - because it takes the form and details of your argument and draws them out to their maximalist and long termist limits.

You seem concerned about guys like elmo - well, this is exactly what they believe. That there's some amount of harm we ought to do to negatively valued lives today which would be of immense benefit to more highly valued lives, and more of them, tomorrow. They need all that money...and we should accept whatever harm that pursuit causes.....to make the world a better place.

If you find it difficult to understand why anyone would disagree with you about this..then it might be more useful to you to consider even more extreme forms of your own argument. If...if...you see something askance there, you may not change your mind about the initial position, but I'm willing to bet you'd be feeling the same thing that people who object to your own argument do.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Living wills? Yea or nay?