4 ms·

Because it's an objective unit of measurement. You can't objectively measure (or assign a value to) human suffering.

EGreg 10y ago
It depends what you are measuring. If a city could increase its financial prosperity at the expense of poisoning its population (fracking may be a good example) would they do it? After all, if money is the only thing that matters then human health only matters insofar as it affects the flow of money. And if other factors compensate to preserve "financial health" then human health outcomes become expendable. If you could produce more meat cheaper at the expense of keeping animals in terrible conditions on factory farms, would you do it? After all, if money is all that matters the animal's suffering doesn't even enter the equation. How about increasing financial gain at the expense of destroying the natural environment (eg overfishing, dumping plastics and releasing all the carbon from the ground)? Grandchildren may have to pay the bill, but what if you had perfect knowledge and knew they'd be economically richer, but with worse health outcomes and lots of species gone exinct? Measuring implies a model, and the model makes assumptions about the world that may not be true, and the whole combination can be extremely harmful. Not to mention very human-centric (and "us" centric). As the Native American chief said: When the Last Tree Is Cut Down, the Last Fish Eaten, and the Last Stream Poisoned, You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money
roel_v 10y ago
Except that we do. We assign monetary values to human lives in actuarial models every day. The statistical value of a human live in the Netherlands when considering traffic safety was E700k in the last project I worked on, but this varies by purpose and over time. Furthermore, there are several international standard methods of quantifying the burden of disease, like the DALY and QALY. So yes, we can and we do 'objectively' (as in, per a standardized methodology) assign value to human suffering.
- EGreg 10y ago
  Yes, by using a model. The assumptions of the model are subjective in the sense of making judgments about what's important. For example, they don't take into account catastrophic collapse of the environment (overfishing, species extinction, ecological collapse eg from bees dying out, acidification of oceans from CO2 release). They also make assumptions about people's utility functions -- the famous example by Bill Gates that baldness has much more more research being done on it than malaria relative to the suffering, because people with more money speak with a larger economic voice and skew the results. In your model, given certain starting conditions, can you ever get a positive value for human suffering? For example if rich people are willing to pay to see gladiators fight animals to the death, or just to see the poor people subjugated as slaves. I am pretty sure you assign positive financial value to animal suffering because factory farms torture animals to save a buck and therefore in purely economic terms they are doing "better".
- return0 10y ago
  You mean, assign FINANCIAL value.
  - roel_v 10y ago
    Right, for some reason I thought the gp said monetary and I was keeping with what I thought was the terminology of the thread.
- ghgfhgfhn 10y ago
  sick

EGreg 10y ago

It depends what you are measuring. If a city could increase its financial prosperity at the expense of poisoning its population (fracking may be a good example) would they do it? After all, if money is the only thing that matters then human health only matters insofar as it affects the flow of money. And if other factors compensate to preserve "financial health" then human health outcomes become expendable. If you could produce more meat cheaper at the expense of keeping animals in terrible conditions on factory farms, would you do it? After all, if money is all that matters the animal's suffering doesn't even enter the equation. How about increasing financial gain at the expense of destroying the natural environment (eg overfishing, dumping plastics and releasing all the carbon from the ground)? Grandchildren may have to pay the bill, but what if you had perfect knowledge and knew they'd be economically richer, but with worse health outcomes and lots of species gone exinct? Measuring implies a model, and the model makes assumptions about the world that may not be true, and the whole combination can be extremely harmful. Not to mention very human-centric (and "us" centric). As the Native American chief said: When the Last Tree Is Cut Down, the Last Fish Eaten, and the Last Stream Poisoned, You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money

roel_v 10y ago

Except that we do. We assign monetary values to human lives in actuarial models every day. The statistical value of a human live in the Netherlands when considering traffic safety was E700k in the last project I worked on, but this varies by purpose and over time. Furthermore, there are several international standard methods of quantifying the burden of disease, like the DALY and QALY. So yes, we can and we do 'objectively' (as in, per a standardized methodology) assign value to human suffering.

EGreg 10y ago
Yes, by using a model. The assumptions of the model are subjective in the sense of making judgments about what's important. For example, they don't take into account catastrophic collapse of the environment (overfishing, species extinction, ecological collapse eg from bees dying out, acidification of oceans from CO2 release). They also make assumptions about people's utility functions -- the famous example by Bill Gates that baldness has much more more research being done on it than malaria relative to the suffering, because people with more money speak with a larger economic voice and skew the results. In your model, given certain starting conditions, can you ever get a positive value for human suffering? For example if rich people are willing to pay to see gladiators fight animals to the death, or just to see the poor people subjugated as slaves. I am pretty sure you assign positive financial value to animal suffering because factory farms torture animals to save a buck and therefore in purely economic terms they are doing "better".
return0 10y ago
You mean, assign FINANCIAL value.
- roel_v 10y ago
  Right, for some reason I thought the gp said monetary and I was keeping with what I thought was the terminology of the thread.
ghgfhgfhn 10y ago
sick