6 ms·

Hanson explicitly disagrees, to quote: >Yet it is easy to show that we can both have more money and save more lives if we are more consistent about the price w

Hanson explicitly disagrees, to quote: >Yet it is easy to show that we can both have more money and save more lives if we are more consistent about the price we pay for lives in the many different death-risk-versus-cost choices that we make. He's not even saying you need an accurate value, he's saying you need a consistent value.

throwawaygh 6y ago
>> Yet it is easy to show that we can both have more money and save more lives if we are more consistent about the price we pay for lives in the many different death-risk-versus-cost choices that we make. TBH I'm not even quite sure what is meant by that assertion, but the article certainly doesn't contain a compelling justification and the claim is almost prime facie false. There are such completely trivial counter-examples for the plain meaning that I'm not even sure what the author's intended meaning was. E.g., "lives are worth negative infinity" is consistent, and you'll always end up with more money and save fewer lives. Ditto for "1 life = GDP of the world".
- GavinMcG 6y ago
  If the counterexamples are so trivial and obvious, the author must be a complete idiot, right? But of course they're not a complete idiot, so maybe there's another explanation, that you could have arrived at with a dash of charitable thinking.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    > If the counterexamples are so trivial and obvious, the author must be a complete idiot, right? No. Smart people make simple mistakes all the time. Being wrong doesn't make one an idiot. Fortunately for me :) Also, the realization that "lives vs. other-resource" is unnecessary to model because it's either dominated by other uncertainty or else results in deontology is not at all an obvious conclusion. It took me a decade to arrive there. What I was pointing out in the above comment is how choosing extreme values for one resource or the other effectively gives you a deontological ethics that strictly prioritizes one thing over the other. You can solve the optimization problem if you want, but the solution is obvious. deontological ethics is the subset of utilitarian ethics where you don't have to do some calculations because you just max out the value of certain objectives. > But of course they're not a complete idiot, so maybe there's another explanation, that you could have arrived at with a dash of charitable thinking. Maybe. Can you explain why I'm confused, then? The plain meaning of the author's quote, even taken in context, seems like it has some trivial counter-examples. What am I misunderstanding? BTW, I'm not being coy. I am being charitable. When I say "I'm not even quite sure what is meant by that assertion", I mean it. The thing I think the author means has trivial counter-examples, so the author must mean something aside from what I assume. Or else hasn't thought about the extreme values. Which would also be possible.
    - GavinMcG 6y ago
      A "counterexample" like infinite negative value breaks the system so easily that you ought to consider whether it's out of bounds, instead of being so certain that it's a counterexample.
      - throwawaygh 6y ago
        But Deontology is an entire school of ethics that basically does exactly that. Calling all of it "out-of-bounds" seems like not the most reasonable assumption for a reader to make.
        GavinMcG 6y ago
        Does exactly what? Given that the discussion is of a utility function for human life, the first assumption a reader should make is that deontology isn't part of the picture: it's incompatible with utility functions from the get go.
        totony 6y ago
        -infinity is clearly out of bounds as the whole discussion is about the policy to take to save the most lives, therefore assuming lives have values (or else you wouldn't want to save them). Even the quote itself implies it with "more money, more lives saved", clearly implying you want to save lives.
- totony 6y ago
  Putting in nonsensical extreme values is mot how you evaluate a claim like this. I dont think negative value is in the domain of that optimization function for any rational argumentation. Let's say it costs something to save a life, then the domain would be ]0, infinity[. He's saying that valuing 2 lives that are the same to 2 different values will not be optimal, because if one is valued more than the other, then another identical life could have been saved for the price of the lower valued one, therefore saving 2 lives for less than the inconsistently priced option. EDIT: to prove that negative values are non-sensical, assume you gain money by saving a life, then the only possible optimization is to save every life.

throwawaygh 6y ago

>> Yet it is easy to show that we can both have more money and save more lives if we are more consistent about the price we pay for lives in the many different death-risk-versus-cost choices that we make. TBH I'm not even quite sure what is meant by that assertion, but the article certainly doesn't contain a compelling justification and the claim is almost prime facie false. There are such completely trivial counter-examples for the plain meaning that I'm not even sure what the author's intended meaning was. E.g., "lives are worth negative infinity" is consistent, and you'll always end up with more money and save fewer lives. Ditto for "1 life = GDP of the world".

GavinMcG 6y ago
If the counterexamples are so trivial and obvious, the author must be a complete idiot, right? But of course they're not a complete idiot, so maybe there's another explanation, that you could have arrived at with a dash of charitable thinking.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  > If the counterexamples are so trivial and obvious, the author must be a complete idiot, right? No. Smart people make simple mistakes all the time. Being wrong doesn't make one an idiot. Fortunately for me :) Also, the realization that "lives vs. other-resource" is unnecessary to model because it's either dominated by other uncertainty or else results in deontology is not at all an obvious conclusion. It took me a decade to arrive there. What I was pointing out in the above comment is how choosing extreme values for one resource or the other effectively gives you a deontological ethics that strictly prioritizes one thing over the other. You can solve the optimization problem if you want, but the solution is obvious. deontological ethics is the subset of utilitarian ethics where you don't have to do some calculations because you just max out the value of certain objectives. > But of course they're not a complete idiot, so maybe there's another explanation, that you could have arrived at with a dash of charitable thinking. Maybe. Can you explain why I'm confused, then? The plain meaning of the author's quote, even taken in context, seems like it has some trivial counter-examples. What am I misunderstanding? BTW, I'm not being coy. I am being charitable. When I say "I'm not even quite sure what is meant by that assertion", I mean it. The thing I think the author means has trivial counter-examples, so the author must mean something aside from what I assume. Or else hasn't thought about the extreme values. Which would also be possible.
  - GavinMcG 6y ago
    A "counterexample" like infinite negative value breaks the system so easily that you ought to consider whether it's out of bounds, instead of being so certain that it's a counterexample.
    - throwawaygh 6y ago
      But Deontology is an entire school of ethics that basically does exactly that. Calling all of it "out-of-bounds" seems like not the most reasonable assumption for a reader to make.
      - GavinMcG 6y ago
        Does exactly what? Given that the discussion is of a utility function for human life, the first assumption a reader should make is that deontology isn't part of the picture: it's incompatible with utility functions from the get go.
      - totony 6y ago
        -infinity is clearly out of bounds as the whole discussion is about the policy to take to save the most lives, therefore assuming lives have values (or else you wouldn't want to save them). Even the quote itself implies it with "more money, more lives saved", clearly implying you want to save lives.
totony 6y ago
Putting in nonsensical extreme values is mot how you evaluate a claim like this. I dont think negative value is in the domain of that optimization function for any rational argumentation. Let's say it costs something to save a life, then the domain would be ]0, infinity[. He's saying that valuing 2 lives that are the same to 2 different values will not be optimal, because if one is valued more than the other, then another identical life could have been saved for the price of the lower valued one, therefore saving 2 lives for less than the inconsistently priced option. EDIT: to prove that negative values are non-sensical, assume you gain money by saving a life, then the only possible optimization is to save every life.