The Value of Life

[Paleophyte]

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.

Is the action legal?
Is it consensual? Informed?
Does it cause death where the person would otherwise be alive?

Look at it this way. Imagine that you pressed the red button, but in the next moment, before you could spend your money, I took it from you. Is that not theft? That's precisely what the purple button does, but it removes your choice to even agree to the exchange. I'm making you push the red button and pocketing the cash.

[Paleophyte]

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.

Really? If I go to a cancer ward and shoot somebody who would otherwise die tomorrow, that is not murder?

You refuse to acknowledge that shortening someone's life by a day yet extending it by decades is not murder.

If you extend one person's life by shortening another, how is that justice for the person with the shorter life?

That's one of the important questions that this attempts to explore. Is it morally right to subtract X days from one person's life to add Y days to another's? In this problem we have made X <<< Y, but what if X >>> Y? Is morality based on the values of X and Y? Shifting variables? Or is it always wrong to take from one person and give to another?

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.

Is forcing somebody to eat those hot dogs legal? Or did they have to consent to that and stuff those weiners into their own mouth?

I'll grant you that stress is an interesting example. So is pollution. Neither of which are viewed positively. They're exactly the sort of diffuse bad that this question attempts to look at. How are we feeling about forced, non-consenting stress?

You can't even answer my question.

Look again. I already did. It's everything that you quoted directly below your question.

My answer was:
 (1) You're clearly trying to justify your actions by providing an unrealistic solution.
 (2) That it is not shown that it is moral to take from 284 people and give to 345 million. Would it be right to take from 345 million and give to 284? Is it right to take from X people and give to Y? Is morality simply a numbers game that you need to know the value of the variables X and Y in order to understand right and wrong? Or is there an argument for not harming the minority so that the majority may benefit?

I'm done with this thread.

Perhaps you should be. You've lost sight of the fact that this is a hypothetical and that you're just arguing on the interwebs. Neither of us will be solving world hunger with this answer. You've become emotionally invested and mistken insult for reason.

[SYZ]

Living wills? Yea or nay?

Very popular here in Australia.  

Advance Care Directive.

   Definitely "yea" for me.

[SYZ]

...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.

This "button" or effectively playing God(!) thing is purely hypothetical
and has absolutely nothing to do with any real-world scenarios you've
introduced several times here.

I—we—haven't labelled "every little thing" as murder.  In fact you were
the first person to introduce the term when you talked about the fireman
rescuing somebody, but at the same time injuring them critically.

You've also responded repeatedly that "yet again this is a false equivalency"
when dissing other peoples' opinions, whilst at the same time posting several
of your own.  Ironical no?

...Taking one day out of someone's life is incredibly minuscule and inconsequential...

LOL... not for your victim!  And of course, from a philosophical viewpoint it's
certainly not inconsequential in the greater picture.  All actions have
consequences and are irrevocable.

Interestingly, here in Australia a few decades ago there was raging controversy
about the issue of abortion;  was it murder?  

Philosophical debate about the ethics of abortion reached stalemate on two key
issues. First, the claim that foetuses had moral standing that entitled them to
protections for their lives had been neither convincingly established nor refuted.
Second, the question of a pregnant woman's obligation to allow the gestating
foetus the use of her body was not resolved.

Both issues were deadlocked because philosophers addressing them invariably rely
on intuitions and analogies, and such arguments have weaknesses that make them
unfit for resolving the abortion issue.

Likewise, your numerous analogies here have made much of your argument unfit.  Sorry.