4 ms·

I think it would be best if we avoided engaging in the despicable, ghoulish practice of valuing one life over another.

nradov 7y ago
Why would that be best? Professional medical ethicists do it every day. For example when deciding which patients receive organ transplants.
- camgunz 7y ago
  I'm happy for those decisions to be made by educated, trained, licensed professionals according to strict guidelines and under the scrutiny of other similarly qualified people when small numbers of lives are at stake and where it has no chance of persuading anyone that it's alright to potentially let thousands and thousands of people die.
spiderfarmer 7y ago
This crisis shows you who some people really are. It seems a lot of people can't care less about the life of someone they don't know. That's a good thing. I now know what to think of those people. Who to avoid. But even better: it warms my heart to know the vast majority of people think it's okay to take an economic hit to save lives, to prevent the collapse of our healthcare systems, to buy time on our way to a vaccine. We're in this together, young and old. We don't want other people to spend the last days of their lives suffocating in their own lung fluids. Not if we can help it. Some people will kill someone for a couple of bucks and there are different limits for everyone, and there comes a point where we're no longer the majority, but right now I'm happy with what I see.
- thu2111 7y ago
  That can be easily flipped around though. From the perspective of people who see the virus as not in fact that dangerous in the grand scheme of things, it looks like a lot of people couldn't care less about the lives of others: the people who are trapped on their own for months at home under house arrest, the people who spent their lives building a business who tomorrow will have to tell their teammates it's all over, the people who are losing everything, and that's before we get to the risks of knock-on effects like food shortages, critical equipment failures due to the manufacturers of a special widget going bust and so on. I don't understand people who hear "the economy" and appear to think of going on holidays? Or gambling in a stock market? They don't think of a supply chain that leads to a replacement filter in their local water treatment plant. They don't think of the builders who are trying to grow a family by constructing their house. They don't think of food being harvested in the fields or internet companies linking loved ones by video chat. They think it's all "just a couple of bucks". It's not just user spiderfarmer above - we've seen actual politicians talk like that, which is terrifying. The economy isn't optional, the economy is life support and everything else that makes life worth living.
  - mifreewil 7y ago
    A lot of people seem to believe “the economy” is about profits, conspicuous consumption, and something like what you might see in a rap video. In reality, it is how we house, clothe, feed, and provide the most basic humans needs.
    - spiderfarmer 7y ago
      Fact: if we do nothing and don't buy time to prepare, our healthcare system collapses, a lot of people die and there'll be a lot of unforeseen consequences. You can say, think and believe that that's not much of an issue, but you can't proof it. Your argument: "the economy is important, we can't do without" Yes it is, but the economy will rebound like it always does. It will not disappear. We need to flatten the curve, gain more insight in other consequences. We don't need to lockdown forever, but we can't immediately reopen either. Both would be stupid, we need to find a middle ground.
  - camgunz 7y ago
    This is just strawman after strawman. No one's saying we shouldn't do essential work like maintaining water treatment plants. No one's saying the economy is just spring breakers. In fact, they're demanding financial support from Congress to help people while the economy is shut down. Please do more research and be more responsible. The stakes are very high.
    - thu2111 7y ago
      You've missed my point. There's no working definition of "essential". The water plant depends on regular deliveries of components. The components come from factories which in turn need more components, and those components come from factories that depend for business on orders from some "non essential" industry. So they shut down to preserve cash, and that ripples through the supply chain until suddenly water pressure is falling because treatment works can't get the supplies they need. The economy is one giant web. You say it's a strawman argument, but that would mean I was putting words in people's mouths. The problem is that this is the opposite of what's happening: people aren't talking about these kinds of problems because they seem to perceive the economy as this optional nice-to-have thing which governments can neatly and instant partition into "needed" and "frippery which shouldn't matter if anyone is sick". That's just not how economies work. Finally, please don't engage in childish condescension like your last statement. Describing people concerned about the economy as irresponsible is exactly the kind of behaviour I am condemning. There's nothing naive or irresponsible about the people sounding the alarm right now.
helaoban 7y ago
We assign value to human life all the time, in dollar terms or otherwise. And we most certainly assign a higher value to certain lives over others, you just do it implicitly. It’s the reason you don’t drop everything you’re doing in your life right now to go fight HIV in Africa, or aren’t organizing protests in front of the White House Lawn everyday to try to prevent the US from dropping another bomb on a Pakistani village. The personal and economic costs to do so are too great, therefore you’ve at least placed an upper bound on the value of those lives, which is something like the cost of maintaining your current lifestyle. In fact, the the true price of those lives can probably be approximated by looking at how much you’ve actually contributed in dollar terms to trying to preserve them, which is basically zero. Are you saying that it’s immoral to at least consider the implications of a prolonged economic shutdown, or to advance a timetable for reopening that isn’t contingent on waiting 6 months for a vaccine? Save us the sanctimony, you and everybody else is engaged in the exercise of assigning different values to different lives everyday.
- camgunz 7y ago
  Hi, let me try and defuse this a little. I'm sure we're both doing our best and these are trying times. Let's endeavor to be civil and not assume things about each other. For example, you have no idea what I did all day, so let me tell you. I work in social good, trying to close the access to justice gap. The way I justify not taking a plane to some hotspot is that I think I can "do the most good" (in the immortal words of Hillary Clinton) as a software engineer working in this field. I'm not letting you in on this to high road you. I also bought a new phone instead of donating that money to COVID relief, for example. Rather, my point is that we need to find sustainable ways to improve the world. We're not gonna solve genocide, famine, etc any time soon, and we shouldn't beat ourselves up for enjoying life while we work to improve it. It's the only way it will ever get done. > Are you saying that it’s immoral to at least consider the implications of a prolonged economic shutdown, or to advance a timetable for reopening that isn’t contingent on waiting 6 months for a vaccine? I'm confident that isn't what I said. Consider away. Please don't minimize the danger of COVID-19.
  - helaoban 7y ago
modzu 7y ago
is a classic moral dilemma. a train heading for some people on track a or you can pull a lever and send divert it to track b where there is one person. if you do nothing, many die, if you pull the lever, one dies, but you killed him because he wouldn't have died otherwise. what would you do? there isnt one right answer, but our world is complex and we are always making decions that affect everyone else. it turns out different people have different intuitions about what is the 'right' thing to do. thats ok, and people who think this debate is as simple as "we must save lives from the virus at all costs, duh, #stfh" are totally ignorant of that
- camgunz 7y ago
  This isn't the trolley problem. We have tools to address the economic destruction, but we only have 1 tool to address coronavirus: shelter in place. It's not any more complicated than that.
  - modzu 7y ago
    that is false. first of all, a lack of imagination does not mean we have a single tool to fight a coronavirus. shelter in place is perhaps the single tool in your mind, not in the world. secondly, it is absolutely more complicated than that. economy vs health is a flase dichotomy. like the trolly problem one option seems obvious (save the crowd) but the implications for the other choice are, importantly, equally valid if less obvious : it means mudering a person. so maybe letting the trolly hit the crowd is the moral choice? in this case what are the effects of each choice? im not an american but dont americans pay for healthcare? so isnt a poor american worse off in terms of health outcomes? anyway even focusing on the health, here's an exercise that might get you to think deeply about it. coronavirus is a respiratory disease. it turns out that means if you're in good lung health you have much better odds of recovering. so one way to think about 'treatment' is treating lung health. many health problems are addressed this way -- holistically. where is our cure against lung cancer? its too hard to fight lung cancer qua cancer. but we are doing a fantastic job of eliminating it by eliminating smoking. you can stay inside your home and not catch any transmissable disease whatsoever. but the consequences of this are absolutely not merely economic!

Why would that be best? Professional medical ethicists do it every day. For example when deciding which patients receive organ transplants.

camgunz 7y ago
I'm happy for those decisions to be made by educated, trained, licensed professionals according to strict guidelines and under the scrutiny of other similarly qualified people when small numbers of lives are at stake and where it has no chance of persuading anyone that it's alright to potentially let thousands and thousands of people die.

spiderfarmer 7y ago

This crisis shows you who some people really are. It seems a lot of people can't care less about the life of someone they don't know. That's a good thing. I now know what to think of those people. Who to avoid. But even better: it warms my heart to know the vast majority of people think it's okay to take an economic hit to save lives, to prevent the collapse of our healthcare systems, to buy time on our way to a vaccine. We're in this together, young and old. We don't want other people to spend the last days of their lives suffocating in their own lung fluids. Not if we can help it. Some people will kill someone for a couple of bucks and there are different limits for everyone, and there comes a point where we're no longer the majority, but right now I'm happy with what I see.

thu2111 7y ago
That can be easily flipped around though. From the perspective of people who see the virus as not in fact that dangerous in the grand scheme of things, it looks like a lot of people couldn't care less about the lives of others: the people who are trapped on their own for months at home under house arrest, the people who spent their lives building a business who tomorrow will have to tell their teammates it's all over, the people who are losing everything, and that's before we get to the risks of knock-on effects like food shortages, critical equipment failures due to the manufacturers of a special widget going bust and so on. I don't understand people who hear "the economy" and appear to think of going on holidays? Or gambling in a stock market? They don't think of a supply chain that leads to a replacement filter in their local water treatment plant. They don't think of the builders who are trying to grow a family by constructing their house. They don't think of food being harvested in the fields or internet companies linking loved ones by video chat. They think it's all "just a couple of bucks". It's not just user spiderfarmer above - we've seen actual politicians talk like that, which is terrifying. The economy isn't optional, the economy is life support and everything else that makes life worth living.
- mifreewil 7y ago
  A lot of people seem to believe “the economy” is about profits, conspicuous consumption, and something like what you might see in a rap video. In reality, it is how we house, clothe, feed, and provide the most basic humans needs.
  - spiderfarmer 7y ago
    Fact: if we do nothing and don't buy time to prepare, our healthcare system collapses, a lot of people die and there'll be a lot of unforeseen consequences. You can say, think and believe that that's not much of an issue, but you can't proof it. Your argument: "the economy is important, we can't do without" Yes it is, but the economy will rebound like it always does. It will not disappear. We need to flatten the curve, gain more insight in other consequences. We don't need to lockdown forever, but we can't immediately reopen either. Both would be stupid, we need to find a middle ground.
- camgunz 7y ago
  This is just strawman after strawman. No one's saying we shouldn't do essential work like maintaining water treatment plants. No one's saying the economy is just spring breakers. In fact, they're demanding financial support from Congress to help people while the economy is shut down. Please do more research and be more responsible. The stakes are very high.
  - thu2111 7y ago
    You've missed my point. There's no working definition of "essential". The water plant depends on regular deliveries of components. The components come from factories which in turn need more components, and those components come from factories that depend for business on orders from some "non essential" industry. So they shut down to preserve cash, and that ripples through the supply chain until suddenly water pressure is falling because treatment works can't get the supplies they need. The economy is one giant web. You say it's a strawman argument, but that would mean I was putting words in people's mouths. The problem is that this is the opposite of what's happening: people aren't talking about these kinds of problems because they seem to perceive the economy as this optional nice-to-have thing which governments can neatly and instant partition into "needed" and "frippery which shouldn't matter if anyone is sick". That's just not how economies work. Finally, please don't engage in childish condescension like your last statement. Describing people concerned about the economy as irresponsible is exactly the kind of behaviour I am condemning. There's nothing naive or irresponsible about the people sounding the alarm right now.

helaoban 7y ago

We assign value to human life all the time, in dollar terms or otherwise. And we most certainly assign a higher value to certain lives over others, you just do it implicitly. It’s the reason you don’t drop everything you’re doing in your life right now to go fight HIV in Africa, or aren’t organizing protests in front of the White House Lawn everyday to try to prevent the US from dropping another bomb on a Pakistani village. The personal and economic costs to do so are too great, therefore you’ve at least placed an upper bound on the value of those lives, which is something like the cost of maintaining your current lifestyle. In fact, the the true price of those lives can probably be approximated by looking at how much you’ve actually contributed in dollar terms to trying to preserve them, which is basically zero. Are you saying that it’s immoral to at least consider the implications of a prolonged economic shutdown, or to advance a timetable for reopening that isn’t contingent on waiting 6 months for a vaccine? Save us the sanctimony, you and everybody else is engaged in the exercise of assigning different values to different lives everyday.

camgunz 7y ago
Hi, let me try and defuse this a little. I'm sure we're both doing our best and these are trying times. Let's endeavor to be civil and not assume things about each other. For example, you have no idea what I did all day, so let me tell you. I work in social good, trying to close the access to justice gap. The way I justify not taking a plane to some hotspot is that I think I can "do the most good" (in the immortal words of Hillary Clinton) as a software engineer working in this field. I'm not letting you in on this to high road you. I also bought a new phone instead of donating that money to COVID relief, for example. Rather, my point is that we need to find sustainable ways to improve the world. We're not gonna solve genocide, famine, etc any time soon, and we shouldn't beat ourselves up for enjoying life while we work to improve it. It's the only way it will ever get done. > Are you saying that it’s immoral to at least consider the implications of a prolonged economic shutdown, or to advance a timetable for reopening that isn’t contingent on waiting 6 months for a vaccine? I'm confident that isn't what I said. Consider away. Please don't minimize the danger of COVID-19.
- helaoban 7y ago

modzu 7y ago

is a classic moral dilemma. a train heading for some people on track a or you can pull a lever and send divert it to track b where there is one person. if you do nothing, many die, if you pull the lever, one dies, but you killed him because he wouldn't have died otherwise. what would you do? there isnt one right answer, but our world is complex and we are always making decions that affect everyone else. it turns out different people have different intuitions about what is the 'right' thing to do. thats ok, and people who think this debate is as simple as "we must save lives from the virus at all costs, duh, #stfh" are totally ignorant of that

camgunz 7y ago
This isn't the trolley problem. We have tools to address the economic destruction, but we only have 1 tool to address coronavirus: shelter in place. It's not any more complicated than that.
- modzu 7y ago
  that is false. first of all, a lack of imagination does not mean we have a single tool to fight a coronavirus. shelter in place is perhaps the single tool in your mind, not in the world. secondly, it is absolutely more complicated than that. economy vs health is a flase dichotomy. like the trolly problem one option seems obvious (save the crowd) but the implications for the other choice are, importantly, equally valid if less obvious : it means mudering a person. so maybe letting the trolly hit the crowd is the moral choice? in this case what are the effects of each choice? im not an american but dont americans pay for healthcare? so isnt a poor american worse off in terms of health outcomes? anyway even focusing on the health, here's an exercise that might get you to think deeply about it. coronavirus is a respiratory disease. it turns out that means if you're in good lung health you have much better odds of recovering. so one way to think about 'treatment' is treating lung health. many health problems are addressed this way -- holistically. where is our cure against lung cancer? its too hard to fight lung cancer qua cancer. but we are doing a fantastic job of eliminating it by eliminating smoking. you can stay inside your home and not catch any transmissable disease whatsoever. but the consequences of this are absolutely not merely economic!