3 ms·
It’s at least a pretty common take. I think it’s the idea that we all get so many years. A 25-year-old and an 85-year-old both getting terminal cancers tends to
by travisjungroth 6y ago
It’s at least a pretty common take. I think it’s the idea that we all get so many years. A 25-year-old and an 85-year-old both getting terminal cancers tends to be looked at very differently. Maybe by them, too.
Or look at it in a probabilistic sense. I think the actuarial table puts an 85-year-old at having about 5 years left on average. For a 25-year-old it’s more like 55. So a loss of one causes a loss of much more human life.
- onethought 6y agoI like your second point thinking of "human life years". It's an interesting perspective. As I commented in a sibling. Drs need these kind of tools to know who to treat first. But governments don't (and shouldn't). There is a moral point here about the meaning and value of human life that can't be ignored. As a government you can (and sometimes do) reduce lives to economic value (young will pay more tax over their life time), but other times you need to assess life on a more humanistic level. If we all know we hit the age of 60 and society stops giving a fuck, then I'm going to do very different things, converging on 100% selfishness as I approach 60, as that is the logical thing to do... but a society would fall apart if we did that.