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Which then leads me to wonder... The risk vs reward calculation for human-involved missions is necessarily higher than robotic missions. Is that additional co
by alistairSH 3y ago
Which then leads me to wonder...
The risk vs reward calculation for human-involved missions is necessarily higher than robotic missions.
Is that additional cost an order of magnitude higher? IE, we can afford one and only one human mission, but three robotic missions? Does the math work out in favor of the single high-success mission, or the three slightly lower success missions? Obviously depends on the expected success rate and cost of each.
But, probably why we haven't done a lot with human missions since the 60s.
- strogonoff 3y agoI am not sure such utilitarian math is the true solution, attempts to put a number on the value of human life seem all silly. I would rather say that the failure of a robotic mission costs an amount X, while the failure of a human mission intuitively has infinite price.
- pixl97 3y agoConversely setting human life to infinity cost quickly breaks down with the trolley problem. Any problem where groups a or b are going to die then whatever group is bigger lives, even if it doesn't make sense, such as group b is all very old and group a is very young but slightly smaller.
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoTo be fair, it's not really a breakdown of the trolley problem. It's the point of the trolley problem. Setting the value of a human life to infinity basically gives you deontology, in that both outcomes are approximately equally bad, and thus your choosing to get involved at all is unethical.
- strogonoff 3y agoTrolley problems are an exercise in utilitarianism and maybe generally consequentialism. If those are your views, then you can probably put a number on it. Other views are available, however. (See sibling mentioning deontology.)