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Yes, it is rational. We should live in a society where the expected human sacrifice of a construction project should be 0. Pure utilitarianism leads to outcom

Yes, it is rational. We should live in a society where the expected human sacrifice of a construction project should be 0. Pure utilitarianism leads to outcomes that are clearly out of step with almost everyone's moral codes. For example you could kill someone and take their organs to save the lives of 4-5 people. Is it rational that we're not allowed to do that? Why do some people get to keep 2 kidneys when there are others with none? This is solved at least somewhat by using 'rule utilitarianism' instead of 'act utilitarianism'. Society is better off as a whole if we adhere to rules such as protection of the human body or safety regulations when constructing buildings.

lobotryas 8y ago
Yes, but only up to a point. If all the rules and safety checks inflate the cost and timeline of projects exponentially then barely anything would get built. The question, as always, is: "Where do we draw the line?".
- beaner 8y ago
  This doesn't seem to be true because things do get built with high safety today.
raldi 8y ago
Do you believe we should make the national speed limit 25? If not, you're accepting that people will die needlessly, and that the value of a human life is not, in fact, infinite.
- XorNot 8y ago
  Is this the argument you want to plant your stake in the ground on as absurd? Because the modern debate in the tech community is "should people be allowed to operate motor vehicles at all?"
  - raldi 8y ago
    Even autonomous vehicles will always have nonzero fatality rates. Letting them go 50mph will lead to more human deaths than capping them at 25.
  - jsight 8y ago
    lol, I hear people frame the self driving car discussion that way regularly, but it is just wrong. Noone is going to be making human driven vehicles illegal. They may be more like classic cars than regular vehicles at some point, though.
    - allannienhuis 8y ago
      I wouldn't be surprised to see an increasing number of (express-type) roads or perhaps dedicated lanes where human drivers were not allowed on though, after self-driving capabilities become the norm. (yes I realise that's an assumption). I think people underestimate the cultural impact that self-driving vehicles will have - imagine a whole generation or two after self-driving vehicles are generally available - how many people will bother learning to drive? I think it might become more of a job-specific skill than a general 'adult life' skill as it is now in most places.
      - raldi 8y ago
        First it will be like knowing how to drive a stick-shift. Then it'll be like owning a sports car. Then it'll be like owning a horse or a boat.
      - jsight 8y ago
        I think you are absolutely right about some limited circumstances that make them the only legal option. But the analogy that I keep making is to classic cars. A lot of them don't have the safety features that we expect today. It isn't uncommon for their owners to say things like "I'm only safe on roads that existed in 1960". It is obviously an exaggeration, but the point is that even today there are plenty of cars that are legal to operate but probably wouldn't be anyone's preference on a busy 70 MPH interstate. At some point, human driven cars become novelties, just like that. There is no reason to ban them, but as you suggest, maybe there will be some HOV-like lanes where they don't really have access. Or even some time constraints (not during rush hour on some key roads, not in lower manhattan, etc).
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  Has this been tried? I would expect more speeding and maybe even more fatalities.
  - raldi 8y ago
    Not if there were an ironclad law that cars have to be manufacturered to be physically incapable of exceeding that speed.
  - mhjas 8y ago
    That is essentially how "vision zero" works, but with the right speed for the right conditions. https://youtu.be/7kIFegy4fII?t=1478 https://youtu.be/7kIFegy4fII?t=1478
- ball_of_lint 8y ago
  The value of a human life is not infinite, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth more than a certain amount of time spent on a construction project. The people who make executive choices about construction projects should not decide that it is acceptable for x people to die on this project in exchange for y fewer months construction time. Accidents happen, but we should not plan to trade lives. Consider if by sacrificing someone on an altar you could magically cause several months of construction work to happen overnight. That would still be murder.
  - raldi 8y ago
    Sorry, let me clarify: I meant my question literally. May I ask what your answer is?
- carapace 8y ago
  FWIW, I would [make the national speed limit 25] if I could. (With some hopefully obvious qualifications.) The current traffic system as an insane "death and mayhem lottery" that we force ourselves to play, with out respect of youth, age or anything. The current interest and action towards bike-friendly cities is a symptom, I think, of a healing of societies' psyches. We have been pretty brutal to each other since the Younger Dryas, and it's only recently that we've started to calm down and think about what we really want our civilization to be like.
  - ttty 8y ago
    Ok, so from 50 to 25 will reduce some deaths. That's right. But now we can reduce to 20, will reduce even more deaths. Then 15, 10... Where do we stop?
    - carapace 8y ago
      Fair point, and I have two answers for you. The real thing I would advocate (if this weren't a beautiful Sunday afternoon, calling me from my keyboard) is a design for traffic that began from the premise of three (or four) interconnected but separate networks, one each for pedestrians, bikes, and rail, and maybe one network of specialized freeways for trucks and buses. Personal cars would be a luxury (unless you live in the country) that few would need (rather than a cornerstone of our economy) with rentals taking up the slack for vacations and such. But if you're interested in this sort of thing, don't bother with my blathering, go read Christopher Alexander. My other answer is really just an invitation to a kind of thought experiment: what if we really did restrict ourselves to just walking, biking, and trains? How would civilization look in that alternate reality?
    - taneq 8y ago
      And what is the real human cost when we factor in the number of human lives wasted sitting in traffic at stupidly low speeds. If decreasing your speed from 100km/h to 50km/h gives you a 1% lower chance of dying in a road traffic accident, but you spend an additional 2% of your life stuck in traffic, is that a win?
gameswithgo 8y ago
> We should live in a society where the expected human sacrifice of a construction project should be 0. No, but that should be the ideal which you should strive to move towards, when practicable. But you can't ever actually get there, and shouldn't try infinitely hard either.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
sooheon 8y ago
Your "pure utilitarianism" is a complete straw man. Killing someone to take their organs to save 5 lives is utilitarianism to only first order effects. We live in a world that does not terminate after one time step, so we have to consider Nth order effects to calculate utility. For example, the second order effect is other humans' moral judgements. "How horrible, he murdered that man" is a valid moral reaction to have, and this is disutility that must be accounted for in a "pure utilitarian" world view. Third order effects may be the social disorder that results from allowing such ad hoc killings as means to an end, and so on. The only thing preventing pure utilitarianism from being viable is a lack of compute power, and "rule utilitarianism" is a poor heuristic based approach for philosophers without patience ;)
- ericd 8y ago
  Great comment, I've never had a good way of putting that same thought.
tzs 8y ago
> For example you could kill someone and take their organs to save the lives of 4-5 people. Is it rational that we're not allowed to do that? Why do some people get to keep 2 kidneys when there are others with none? There was a pretty good short story, "Dibs" by Brian Plante, about that published in the April 2004 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Everyone was required to be registered in the transplant matching system. Occasionally you'd receive a letter telling you that someone was going to die soon unless they got one of your organs. That person now had dibs on that organ, and if anything happened to you before they died they got it. Usually you would get another letter a couple weeks or so later telling you that the person no longer had dibs, which generally meant that they had died. Sometimes, though, you'd get a second dibs letter while you already had one organ under dibs. And sometimes you'd get a dibs letter when you already had two organs under dibs...meaning if you died now it would save three lives. At that point you were required to report in and your organs were taken to save those three other lives. The story concerned someone who worked for the transplant matching agency who got a second dibs letter and was quite worried. He illegally used his insider access to find out who the people were who had dibs on him, and started digging around to try to convince himself they were terrible people who didn't deserve to survive to justify illegally interfering, if I recall correctly (I only read the story once, when it was in the current issue). I don't remember what happened after that. I just remember thinking that it was an interesting story and explored some interesting issues.

lobotryas 8y ago

Yes, but only up to a point. If all the rules and safety checks inflate the cost and timeline of projects exponentially then barely anything would get built. The question, as always, is: "Where do we draw the line?".

beaner 8y ago
This doesn't seem to be true because things do get built with high safety today.

raldi 8y ago

Do you believe we should make the national speed limit 25? If not, you're accepting that people will die needlessly, and that the value of a human life is not, in fact, infinite.

XorNot 8y ago
Is this the argument you want to plant your stake in the ground on as absurd? Because the modern debate in the tech community is "should people be allowed to operate motor vehicles at all?"
- raldi 8y ago
  Even autonomous vehicles will always have nonzero fatality rates. Letting them go 50mph will lead to more human deaths than capping them at 25.
- jsight 8y ago
  lol, I hear people frame the self driving car discussion that way regularly, but it is just wrong. Noone is going to be making human driven vehicles illegal. They may be more like classic cars than regular vehicles at some point, though.
  - allannienhuis 8y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised to see an increasing number of (express-type) roads or perhaps dedicated lanes where human drivers were not allowed on though, after self-driving capabilities become the norm. (yes I realise that's an assumption). I think people underestimate the cultural impact that self-driving vehicles will have - imagine a whole generation or two after self-driving vehicles are generally available - how many people will bother learning to drive? I think it might become more of a job-specific skill than a general 'adult life' skill as it is now in most places.
    - raldi 8y ago
      First it will be like knowing how to drive a stick-shift. Then it'll be like owning a sports car. Then it'll be like owning a horse or a boat.
    - jsight 8y ago
      I think you are absolutely right about some limited circumstances that make them the only legal option. But the analogy that I keep making is to classic cars. A lot of them don't have the safety features that we expect today. It isn't uncommon for their owners to say things like "I'm only safe on roads that existed in 1960". It is obviously an exaggeration, but the point is that even today there are plenty of cars that are legal to operate but probably wouldn't be anyone's preference on a busy 70 MPH interstate. At some point, human driven cars become novelties, just like that. There is no reason to ban them, but as you suggest, maybe there will be some HOV-like lanes where they don't really have access. Or even some time constraints (not during rush hour on some key roads, not in lower manhattan, etc).
erikpukinskis 8y ago
Has this been tried? I would expect more speeding and maybe even more fatalities.
- raldi 8y ago
  Not if there were an ironclad law that cars have to be manufacturered to be physically incapable of exceeding that speed.
- mhjas 8y ago
  That is essentially how "vision zero" works, but with the right speed for the right conditions. https://youtu.be/7kIFegy4fII?t=1478 https://youtu.be/7kIFegy4fII?t=1478
ball_of_lint 8y ago
The value of a human life is not infinite, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth more than a certain amount of time spent on a construction project. The people who make executive choices about construction projects should not decide that it is acceptable for x people to die on this project in exchange for y fewer months construction time. Accidents happen, but we should not plan to trade lives. Consider if by sacrificing someone on an altar you could magically cause several months of construction work to happen overnight. That would still be murder.
- raldi 8y ago
  Sorry, let me clarify: I meant my question literally. May I ask what your answer is?
carapace 8y ago
FWIW, I would [make the national speed limit 25] if I could. (With some hopefully obvious qualifications.) The current traffic system as an insane "death and mayhem lottery" that we force ourselves to play, with out respect of youth, age or anything. The current interest and action towards bike-friendly cities is a symptom, I think, of a healing of societies' psyches. We have been pretty brutal to each other since the Younger Dryas, and it's only recently that we've started to calm down and think about what we really want our civilization to be like.
- ttty 8y ago
  Ok, so from 50 to 25 will reduce some deaths. That's right. But now we can reduce to 20, will reduce even more deaths. Then 15, 10... Where do we stop?
  - carapace 8y ago
    Fair point, and I have two answers for you. The real thing I would advocate (if this weren't a beautiful Sunday afternoon, calling me from my keyboard) is a design for traffic that began from the premise of three (or four) interconnected but separate networks, one each for pedestrians, bikes, and rail, and maybe one network of specialized freeways for trucks and buses. Personal cars would be a luxury (unless you live in the country) that few would need (rather than a cornerstone of our economy) with rentals taking up the slack for vacations and such. But if you're interested in this sort of thing, don't bother with my blathering, go read Christopher Alexander. My other answer is really just an invitation to a kind of thought experiment: what if we really did restrict ourselves to just walking, biking, and trains? How would civilization look in that alternate reality?
  - taneq 8y ago
    And what is the real human cost when we factor in the number of human lives wasted sitting in traffic at stupidly low speeds. If decreasing your speed from 100km/h to 50km/h gives you a 1% lower chance of dying in a road traffic accident, but you spend an additional 2% of your life stuck in traffic, is that a win?

gameswithgo 8y ago

> We should live in a society where the expected human sacrifice of a construction project should be 0. No, but that should be the ideal which you should strive to move towards, when practicable. But you can't ever actually get there, and shouldn't try infinitely hard either.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

sooheon 8y ago

Your "pure utilitarianism" is a complete straw man. Killing someone to take their organs to save 5 lives is utilitarianism to only first order effects. We live in a world that does not terminate after one time step, so we have to consider Nth order effects to calculate utility. For example, the second order effect is other humans' moral judgements. "How horrible, he murdered that man" is a valid moral reaction to have, and this is disutility that must be accounted for in a "pure utilitarian" world view. Third order effects may be the social disorder that results from allowing such ad hoc killings as means to an end, and so on. The only thing preventing pure utilitarianism from being viable is a lack of compute power, and "rule utilitarianism" is a poor heuristic based approach for philosophers without patience ;)

ericd 8y ago
Great comment, I've never had a good way of putting that same thought.

tzs 8y ago

> For example you could kill someone and take their organs to save the lives of 4-5 people. Is it rational that we're not allowed to do that? Why do some people get to keep 2 kidneys when there are others with none? There was a pretty good short story, "Dibs" by Brian Plante, about that published in the April 2004 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Everyone was required to be registered in the transplant matching system. Occasionally you'd receive a letter telling you that someone was going to die soon unless they got one of your organs. That person now had dibs on that organ, and if anything happened to you before they died they got it. Usually you would get another letter a couple weeks or so later telling you that the person no longer had dibs, which generally meant that they had died. Sometimes, though, you'd get a second dibs letter while you already had one organ under dibs. And sometimes you'd get a dibs letter when you already had two organs under dibs...meaning if you died now it would save three lives. At that point you were required to report in and your organs were taken to save those three other lives. The story concerned someone who worked for the transplant matching agency who got a second dibs letter and was quite worried. He illegally used his insider access to find out who the people were who had dibs on him, and started digging around to try to convince himself they were terrible people who didn't deserve to survive to justify illegally interfering, if I recall correctly (I only read the story once, when it was in the current issue). I don't remember what happened after that. I just remember thinking that it was an interesting story and explored some interesting issues.