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> To convince yourself that the task of "value of human life" is futile, the following thought experiment suffices -- there are different penalties for delibera

> To convince yourself that the task of "value of human life" is futile, the following thought experiment suffices -- there are different penalties for deliberately causing the death of another (and distinction based on the quality and recency of those motives) vs. negligently causing a death vs. recklessly causing a death, in all justice systems invented by humans. How does that prove the futility of the exercise? It only proves that there must be more than one way to do it, and that the right method depends on context. There are metrics for use in criminal cases, civil cases, insurance, etc. It's not like we can fail to make these determinations -- failing to put a value on human life in each relevant context is akin to saying there is no value to human life at all.

andrewla 6y ago
> failing to put a value on human life in each relevant context is akin to saying there is no value to human life at all. This is the crux of the problem with metric-based examination of nearly everything except physics. It is not nearly akin to that. If anything, saying that you can have a metric that measures the value of human life is much more akin to saying there is no value to human life at all -- all of life is "haggling over the price" as it were. Saying that it cannot be measured is just making an epistemological declaration of lack of knowledge. Not of the general form of "well, we just have to find the right variable and plug them in to the right formula" but of the form of "this is not well-suited to being reduced to a metric, as any such reduction will mask aspects of its value that are obvious but not easily measured". To be clear on the dangers (as if the McKinsey-fication of "dump the pollution in pooristan" wasn't enough) the problem is that given an imperfect approximation to some theoretical perfect metric, we have absolutely no way of determining how imperfect it is. There's nothing to measure it against except other potential metrics. There's absolutely no concept of ground truth -- the universe will not correct you (as it will if you measure mass incorrectly when doing physics).

andrewla 6y ago

> failing to put a value on human life in each relevant context is akin to saying there is no value to human life at all. This is the crux of the problem with metric-based examination of nearly everything except physics. It is not nearly akin to that. If anything, saying that you can have a metric that measures the value of human life is much more akin to saying there is no value to human life at all -- all of life is "haggling over the price" as it were. Saying that it cannot be measured is just making an epistemological declaration of lack of knowledge. Not of the general form of "well, we just have to find the right variable and plug them in to the right formula" but of the form of "this is not well-suited to being reduced to a metric, as any such reduction will mask aspects of its value that are obvious but not easily measured". To be clear on the dangers (as if the McKinsey-fication of "dump the pollution in pooristan" wasn't enough) the problem is that given an imperfect approximation to some theoretical perfect metric, we have absolutely no way of determining how imperfect it is. There's nothing to measure it against except other potential metrics. There's absolutely no concept of ground truth -- the universe will not correct you (as it will if you measure mass incorrectly when doing physics).