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First of all, we absolutely have the legal right — it's well within the confines of the Brandenburg test, so I have no idea what you're on about there. Second

by bhupy 6y ago

First of all, we absolutely have the legal right — it's well within the confines of the Brandenburg test, so I have no idea what you're on about there. Second of all, we entertain this tradeoff all the time. If we just all stopped driving cars, we would save about 35,000 lives per year. It would likely cripple the economy (until we can find alternatives), but we all just decide that it's worth it to not cripple the economy. It's an example of us sacrificing lives for economic activity (or in your words, "profit"). Maybe the tradeoff is actually wrong (and it could be!), but it's by no means illegal to make that tradeoff...

pmiller2 6y ago
Who said anything about "legal"? 200 years ago, slavery was legal. Do you think we have the right to re-implement slavery if it would stop this pandemic? Or even that we should entertain a plan to re-implement slavery if we believed it could stop the pandemic?
- bhupy 6y ago
  Ah yes, very good, the "slavery" argument. In your own words, "legality" isn't everything. Moral rights aren't absolute, nor are they objective — different people have different morals. There is probably no moral framework in which slavery can be justified. There are LOADS of valid moral frameworks in which economic vs number of lives cost/benefit tradeoffs are made. Many things can be true at the same time. The world isn't as simplistic as you seem to make it out to be.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    Provide one such framework that justifies the certainty that innocent people will be harmed, in exchange for imaginary numbers in a computer being incremented ("economic activity"). If there are LOADS of them, it shouldn't be that hard. Yet, you have not done so.
    - bhupy 6y ago
      The same framework that justifies the collective driving of automobiles for personal transportation which results in the deaths of about 35,000 innocent people per year, in return for measurable improvement to "economic activity", as told by the imaginary numbers in my computer.
      - pmiller2 6y ago
        As I said, that analogy is false. The magnitude of the damage is so much higher for the coronavirus, and the people endangered are already those most vulnerable in society. Let me put it to you this way: my parents are in no danger from you crashing your car. They are if you go out and start resuming "normal activity" to increment your fake numbers in a computer. Is scoring imaginary points really worth endangering my parents? You seem to have an inordinate amount of trouble finding a single justification for endangering people at this scale, even though there are apparently LOADS of frameworks that would say it's okay. Why is that?
        bhupy 6y ago
        The analogy is not "false", it's used to show you that we all decide how many lost lives we find to be acceptable for modern society to function. Your parents have a non-zero statistical probability of dying from a car crash, the same way that they have a non-zero statistical probability of dying from COVID due to "normal activity". The probability of the latter is undeniably higher than that of the former, and you appear to consider the former to be acceptable. I mean no disrespect to your parents, but you have to accept that for some people, they draw the line differently, and the probability threshold is within their limit. > You seem to have an inordinate amount of trouble finding a single justification for endangering people at this scale, even though there are apparently LOADS of frameworks that would say it's okay. Why is that? I'm going to emphasize "At this scale", in your statement, because you're implicitly arguing that THIS scale is unacceptable. I'm simply arguing that, while that may be true for you — and for the record, it's also unacceptable to me — you have to understand that different people have different acceptable thresholds. You think that one loses the moral right to entertain the deaths of innocent people at some arbitrary threshold. But it's arbitrary, and unique to you.

by bhupy 6y ago

pmiller2 6y ago

Who said anything about "legal"? 200 years ago, slavery was legal. Do you think we have the right to re-implement slavery if it would stop this pandemic? Or even that we should entertain a plan to re-implement slavery if we believed it could stop the pandemic?

bhupy 6y ago
Ah yes, very good, the "slavery" argument. In your own words, "legality" isn't everything. Moral rights aren't absolute, nor are they objective — different people have different morals. There is probably no moral framework in which slavery can be justified. There are LOADS of valid moral frameworks in which economic vs number of lives cost/benefit tradeoffs are made. Many things can be true at the same time. The world isn't as simplistic as you seem to make it out to be.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Provide one such framework that justifies the certainty that innocent people will be harmed, in exchange for imaginary numbers in a computer being incremented ("economic activity"). If there are LOADS of them, it shouldn't be that hard. Yet, you have not done so.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    The same framework that justifies the collective driving of automobiles for personal transportation which results in the deaths of about 35,000 innocent people per year, in return for measurable improvement to "economic activity", as told by the imaginary numbers in my computer.
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      As I said, that analogy is false. The magnitude of the damage is so much higher for the coronavirus, and the people endangered are already those most vulnerable in society. Let me put it to you this way: my parents are in no danger from you crashing your car. They are if you go out and start resuming "normal activity" to increment your fake numbers in a computer. Is scoring imaginary points really worth endangering my parents? You seem to have an inordinate amount of trouble finding a single justification for endangering people at this scale, even though there are apparently LOADS of frameworks that would say it's okay. Why is that?
      - bhupy 6y ago
        The analogy is not "false", it's used to show you that we all decide how many lost lives we find to be acceptable for modern society to function. Your parents have a non-zero statistical probability of dying from a car crash, the same way that they have a non-zero statistical probability of dying from COVID due to "normal activity". The probability of the latter is undeniably higher than that of the former, and you appear to consider the former to be acceptable. I mean no disrespect to your parents, but you have to accept that for some people, they draw the line differently, and the probability threshold is within their limit. > You seem to have an inordinate amount of trouble finding a single justification for endangering people at this scale, even though there are apparently LOADS of frameworks that would say it's okay. Why is that? I'm going to emphasize "At this scale", in your statement, because you're implicitly arguing that THIS scale is unacceptable. I'm simply arguing that, while that may be true for you — and for the record, it's also unacceptable to me — you have to understand that different people have different acceptable thresholds. You think that one loses the moral right to entertain the deaths of innocent people at some arbitrary threshold. But it's arbitrary, and unique to you.