4 ms·
How do you quantify human suffering?
by canttestthis 14y ago
How do you quantify human suffering?
- patdennis 14y agoYou can't. What you should do is acknowledge that fact.
- rayiner 14y agoHowever you quantify it, you can't ignore it because then you implicitly quantify it as 0.
- Clotho 14y agoMeaning that it can't be done to it has no value. I can think of lots of ways to capture it's essence quantitatively. Life expectancy, social mobility, marriages. savings rate....
- msellout 14y agoThe EPA and many other agencies try to quantify the value of life (cost of death). Without that estimate, they would be unable to decide the appropriate level of pollution to allow.
- rdl 14y agoAnd I think the number they use usually ends up pretty low -- something like $2-10mm.
- obtu 14y agoThe report used 6.3 million USD for a US life (the EPA's VSL, value of a statistical life, p. 287). They want to learn more about the feedback between natural resources and health, so that they can price natural resources that economists are normally unable to value.