|
On the other hand, is killing or otherwise victimizing people wrong in the first place? There are so many of them; too many really. Obviously I don't want to be raped and/or murdered, but from an objective standpoint what's the net effect of, say, some random kid being violently and painfully killed? What's the environmental externality this potential person would have inflicted on the world? What would he really have accomplished in a lifetime of gorging on cheap calories, mindless consumerism and unfulfilling relationships? What if, god forbid, he or she should have children? And, in the long run, and with the impenetrable loneliness of the human condition, does it matter what pains or indignities this putative person suffered in his or her moments or hours of being dispatched? Not in any tangible sense. Maybe we should rethink the harm, or indeed the value of the "monsters, ax murders, and pedophiles" of society. To say nothing of the wide array of similar (sometimes virtually indistinguishable) activities carried out in the name of the state and unironically held up as necessary and desirable for the advancement of political, economic, and moral interests.
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2015 16:26
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 14:19 |
|
|
Are you suggesting I should be kept against my will in a state institution, without any evidence to suggest that this incarceration might benefit me or society in any way? I doubt you would suggest that I come into your basement to be restrained for years; that would make you a "monster." But you are unconcerned at the thought of the state taking an equivalent action.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2015 16:38
|
|
|
SedanChair posted:I don't require that the state control you, but if you don't see the inherent value in human life and quality of life then somebody needs to. So would you say that the world would a priori be a better place with 12 billion people in it? 20 billion? 100 billion? Do you revel in how wonderfully more rich the world your life has become as the world welcomed 3 billion more people in the last 60 years? Is your life measurably or hell even intangibly improved by all this new value? The answer should be yes. If human life inherently has value this conclusion seems inevitable. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Mar 19, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2015 17:06
|
|
|
Effectronica posted:Sure, just like the world would be a better place with ten million exact duplicates of the Mona Lisa The world currently possesses effectively infinite duplicates of the Mona Lisa of indifferent quality, and a large number of high quality duplicates. What benefit would you say you derive from them? Not to get too caught up in your poorly chosen analogy but I would like you to at least contemplate this reckless assignation of value. I can't help but point out that people are more unlike copies of the Mona Lisa than not, and that one of the important ways that they are unlike copies of the Mona Lisa is that they compete for finite resources with other people.* Other than maple and paint, of course, which one might say that copies of the Mona Lisa compete for indirectly, not having agency, which incidentally is one of the many ways in which they do not resemble people. *More or less but not exactly equally unlike copies of the Mona Lisa. (Your analogy is terrible.)
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2015 17:14
|
|
|
SedanChair posted:No, I just find your reasoning spooky and devoid of certain essential qualities humans need to live together safely. There is no need to assign human life a priori positive "value"* in order to live safely in a community. Humans have lived together "safely" forever with these "monsters, ax murders, and pedophiles" in their midst. In the last 60 years violent deaths per human life have plummeted and more generally the trend is downward. I have serious doubts about whether these "monsters" are actually responsible for very much harm**, and I have philosophical objections to the unquestioning assumption that violent murder is a morally or socially undesirable act. You never really did respond to my question of why you would call the state to lock me up but not imprison me in your basement. Presumably the distinction goes beyond the purely pragmatic in your mind? *We haven't even touched on what the "value" of a human life means. Value in what sense? To whom? How quantified? **Same problem. Harm to whom? How quantified?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2015 17:32
|
|
|
Effectronica posted:The Mona Lisa has value. This is essentially indisputable. Surely, we should be maximizing value as much as possible by turning everything that is not what we absolutely need to live into copies of the Mona Lisa. Do you disagree? Why? So you agree that such a thing as too many human beings is possible?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2015 17:37
|
|
|
A yes or a no would be adequate.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2015 17:43
|
|
|
I want to challenge the notion that human life is inherently valuable and force the thread to actually confront the question of valuation of human life especially in regards to the "monsters" of the OP who are probably doing a lot less harm than their epithet suggests. Even the idea of "inherent" value is problematic, since it suggests a utility monster. Until the costs of human life (I conceive of it in terms of externality but I'm open to other suggestions) are explored the naive assignation of value to human life regardless of circumstance will inevitably lead to the reducto ad absurdum I brought up on the first page: if more humans is better, infinite humans ought to be infinitely good. Then there's the question of what harm the thread's "monsters" do to people who are not their victims. Naturally they harm their victims, but given that people do not experience other people's experiences and the chance of actually being victimized or even having a first-order connection to someone victimized by "monsters, ax murder, and pedophiles" is quite small, how do we quantify the harm to society? The empathetic trauma of imagining the victim's demise? The fear in the population's minds in general? The chance, however remote, of suffering a terrible end? To me this suggests that media glorifying the serial victimizer is in fact more socially harmful than the victimizers themselves. The third question is the moral one: is a private citizen who kills morally different from a state agent who kills? How different? We accept state killing on scales more vast by far than all the serial murderers of the world put together, and also accept that some victims of "legitimate" state violence will be innocent. So, some posters may have been shocked by my initial post, but: are we sure "monsters" are actually harmful? If so, how harmful? Enough that we should even be worrying about them? Might the socially efficient action on the question of "monsters, ax murders, and pedophiles" be nonaction?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2015 03:31
|
|
|
Effectronica posted:You failed to deal with the basic problem that such an argument is obviously insane once we look at anything else with value of some non-monetary kind. It would help your argument if you actually bothered to make it.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2015 04:06
|
|
|
I knew you thought you were being clever with that remark, but I didn't realize just how clever you thought you were. Congratulations on discovering the law of diminishing benefits? I'm not sure how you think your bad analogy impacts the current discussion. If you were to explain it, perhaps using written words, it would enlighten us all.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2015 04:18
|
|
|
Wow, I really overestimated your understanding of the conversation. I thought you were trying to demonstrate diminishing marginal value, which was confusing because it supports my argument. If there were 7 billion Niagara Falls, would the 7 billionth be as valuable as the first? If we had to demolish Notre Dame de Paris to construct the 7,000,000,001st Niagara Falls, would you argue that this instantiation of Niagara Falls had inherent value?* wateroverfire posted:Life has subjective value rather than inherent value. From your POV your life is priceless. From someone else's point of view your life is worth a half off coupon for a value meal. From a societal point of view your life is worth the result of a complex net present value calculation that would probably depress you. This guy gets it, although net present value is misleading since it does not include potential. For example a single unemployed unattached male might have a net present value in the area of $300,000-500,000, while the net total value of an American life is estimated by various US government agencies at $6-10 million. However we need to grapple with the question of the costs associated with a human life before we can escape the utility monster argument that you bizarrely seem to think is a trump card. *Before you complain that this analogy is fantastical, ask yourself how you feel about Tibetan Buddhism being extinguished or the Great Barrier Reef dying or a thousand hunter-gatherer cultures being extinguished in order to produce the 7,000,000,001st marginal human. Or if you think that's too unfair to the 3rd world, compare those costs to the value of a 320,495,001st marginal American. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Mar 20, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2015 04:40
|
|
|
Scrub-Niggurath posted:lmao the idea of human life having inherent value is because of the extremely widespread consensus that every individual assigns significant value to their own life and the best way to ensure that you are not deprived of it is to communally prevent the deprivation of life in general, extenuating circumstances notwithstanding. Were all polities that tend to represent the interests of their constituents pacifist, I might agree with you. Were self-sacrifice an uncommon choice, I might agree with you.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2015 04:49
|
|
|
We've arrived at this juncture faster than I anticipated. If you believe that human life defies qualitative valuation, could you at least attempt to qualify the value of a human life then? If you reject "how much" on a conceptual level, can you provide an answer to "what?" If not, your argument is nothing more than an assertion of faith. Would you call yourselves pacifists, by the way? If you know what deontological ethics is, would you identify with it?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2015 05:59
|
|
|
MaxxBot posted:Can you point to any human society where murder was permitted and socially acceptable? I'm not talking about some groups being allowed to murder other groups, but murder itself not being viewed as socially or morally problematic as you seem to be suggesting? Even bands of hunter-gatherers would generally try to refrain from murdering each other and focus on murdering other bands of hunter-gatherers. It's kind of hard to form any sort of civilization if killing each other at will is considered acceptable, it's a hell of a lot harder to make more babies than it is to kill someone. Hey this is a much better response than most. There are many societies where murder has been considered a lawful act within social groups. Off the top of my head there are Germanic law's approach to lawful murder, a similar attitude among the New Guineans, and instances of same-group human sacrifice in America, SE Asia and the South Pacific that modern Americans would no doubt consider murder. The Bible certainly assigns monetary value to the lives of humans: wives, slaves, and unborn children, and treats murder in certain instances more like a tort than a felony. It depends on what you mean by murder and social group, of course. The example that's closest-to-home for Americans I think is the practice of lynching in the American South. When we expand our view to consider killings outside the social group, then virtually every society everywhere sanctions the violent death of human beings. Indeed humans will sacrifice their own lives in order to violently kill other humans. These facts stand in stark contrast to the idea that human life has inherent, ineffable value. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Mar 20, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2015 06:25
|
|
|
SedanChair posted:We are better than those societies. What is the value of a human life? From whence does it derive, and to whom does it accrue?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2015 07:07
|
|
|
Scrub-Niggurath posted:The 'value' of a human life is relative to the personal values of each individual, just like the 'value' of every single thing in the world OwlFancier posted:A sum of all existing and potential experiences and capabilities of the life in question. Experience gives a life value by making it unique, and capability gives it value by making it useful. It's sort of depressing that you guys are flailing like this when there has been a lot of well-respected work on the question. I'm arguing against the inherent and necessarily >0 value of human life and I'm the only one who has actually referenced scholarly attempts to find the value of a human life.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2015 11:26
|
|
|
Effectronica posted:Okay, so you're trying another tactic, but you're demanding other people do all the work for you. Why don't you propose some qualitative values for a human life, and then we can go from there. I've provided figures from the US DoT and DHHS. If you want to make an argument then go ahead but as the conversation stands you've asserted that human life has an unquantifiable value and provided no explanation for what you mean by that or even a basic argument to support your assertion.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2015 14:23
|
|
|
Effectronica posted:I said qualitative. I don't know how to qualify the value of a human life, I was approaching the question quantitatively. You rejected the entire concept of quantification, so I asked you to qualify it or accept that you were making a statement of faith only. Then you asked me to make your argument for you. Effectronica posted:In any case, you haven't really addressed the problem that you can't pay the actuarial average, or an actuarial computation of the victim's value, to avoid prison time for murder. If that was the actual value of a human life, you'd think this would be part of the legal system. There's also the issue of where this leads us when all's said and done, but- There is no problem here. The argument "X is not part of the American legal system, therefore it cannot be true," is ridiculous on its face. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Mar 20, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2015 14:54
|
|
|
Effectronica posted:Hey, you even said that human life is valueless earlier, so clearly, there would be nothing wrong with strangling you to death, right? Are you really this obtuse or do you just have bad reading comprehension? Effectronica posted:Or, hell, let's say we have people who actuaries value at under ten thousand dollars of worth. I can easily finance a yearly, twice-yearly murder habit with a solid UMC job. Is this acceptable? You're getting really mad about things that actually happen all the time. How much does it cost to launch a missile from a Predator drone? How much does it cost for a polluting industry to lobby for the right to release pollutants that later lead to an increase in mortality? If we could divide the cost of their lobbying efforts by the number of premature deaths downwind/downstream, what sort of number would we get? Is it acceptable? These are the decisions that polities have to make all the time. Effectronica posted:All right, so let's assume you have a significant other, and I jump out of nowhere, murder them with a hacksaw, and give you five million dollars in cash (the average value of an American life, which is definitely overpaying!!). Is this a fair exchange? There are definitely societies that would call this fair! I would say that giving me all that money probably isn't what the DoT had in mind when they calculated the value of an American life at $6 million. I think you'd probably be overpaying me. Now would I want to make that exchange? I don't know, this is a hypothetical. But I think if you actually proposed this deal publicly (supposing it was legal) you'd be surprised at the response you'd get. I think there would not only be people willing to trade the lives of other for $5 million, there would be people willing to trade their own lives for $5 million. Welcome to actually having a conversation though, glad to see you do a 180 on your previous position that the value of human life is unquantifiable. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Mar 20, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2015 15:25
|
|
|
Well yeah. Obviously the victims of violence have a different perspective on the value of their own lives than other actors or society as a whole. Although some individuals see their own lives as having low enough value even to themselves that they consciously choose death for a variety of reasons. These facts tend to cast their weight against the idea that there is an objective, inherent, net positive value to a human life. Have you been paying attention at all?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2015 15:44
|
|
|
Effectronica posted:Hold on... you're telling me that you have a difficult time understanding the difference between abstract and concrete? Color me S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E-D. You keep doing these smug one-liners and when pressed to explain what you mean you give up or retreat. But please, enlighten us as to the difference between abstract and concrete value.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2015 17:41
|
|
|
Effectronica posted:That's not what I said. You're making inferences, but you're too stupid to do so, and should stop. When people say "human life has value", they are not talking about any concrete person's life. They are talking about an abstract entity that stands for human lives in general. So showing that individual, particular lives have different values to different people does not do what you want it to do. See, you're retreating again. You started out with the position that humans lives have unquantifiable value, now you admit that the value of a given human life can be quantified, and now you admit that I've shown that the value of a given human life can vary. You've retreated to asserting that "human lives in general" (what is that?) have value in an abstract sense (care to actually argue for your assertions at any time ever?) and that this is somehow problematic for my argument. (Again, you're not good on specifics.) Who What Now posted:Arglebargle are you just trying to make some pedantic point that human life doesn't have inherent value, just value projected by the overwhelming majority of society? If so, who gives a poo poo? Help me out here because everything you say is so stupid it makes my eyes go cross. Since you asked, I would suggest you start by looking up "utilitarian ethics." Scrub-Niggurath posted:Everyone gets what you're arguing against champ, it's just that you are wrong. SedanChair posted:On the one hand, it seems like we have all the people who share in the concept of human community and agree that all human life has inherent value, and on the other hand we have people who cannot see the value of anything unless it is assigned a value by those in power. I'm not sure if there is any thing else to communicate at this point, everyone has their positions. Scrub-Niggurath posted:I genuinely do not understand their stance however. If human life having some sort of inherent value is a principle agreed upon by a vast majority of the world, then doesn't that give it inherent value by definition? OwlFancier posted:A sum of all existing and potential experiences and capabilities of the life in question. Experience gives a life value by making it unique, and capability gives it value by making it useful. OwlFancier posted:That's not flailing, that's my answer. No, this is flailing and it's pathetic. I'm really disappointed that when asked to defend the value of human life, this is what you come up with. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Mar 21, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2015 03:56
|
|
|
Effectronica posted:You are unable to respond to the point that people aren't talking about specific people's lives when they say "human life has value", and you're crowing about your victory. You haven't made a point. You make bald assertions, and every time you're asked to justify them you either retreat or post something gob-smackingly stupid. If you'd like to go ahead and EXPLAIN what "people are talking about" (lol) when they say "human life has value" then you might make a point, but I at this point I doubt you have anything more than a vague idea of what you mean. Also Effectronica please back off with the personal insults, you've called me a liar and a depressive, and told me to shut up and go away in one post. OwlFancier posted:Defend it from what? Defend it rhetorically.  OwlFancier posted:Things acquire value through utility, and that can be found in many ways. A thing that is unique is valuable because it can provide a unique experience, and individual humans are functionally very unique, you are unlikely to meet two people sufficiently similar to nullify that value. Each one is something that you will not be able to find again, and represents an irreplaceable, and potentially important part of your life. This is a start. C for effort I guess. So you've finally mentioned utility and proposed that the value of human life derives from social utility. Now that we've finally arrived at this point, we could start discussing the harm that "monsters, ax murders, and pedophiles." cause at least in terms of loss of value, though we still have the thorny issue of the costs of human life to approach.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2015 07:04
|
|
|
Somfin posted:You are arguing that compassion is meaningless from an objective perspective that you refuse to turn on your own life. In one sentence you have destroyed the value of your argument, because you won't look at yourself objectively, but you are asking all of us to ignore that and argue about the lives of others who you then define as 'only the people who don't matter to me.' There is no point in arguing objective value with someone who sees no purpose in explaining their own objective value. Why would you take the time to explain that you wouldn't want harmless acts to happen to you? Because, obviously, you do not consider the acts harmless. Over the last 20 years there's been this sort of cultural shift to the idea that hypocrisy is the ultimate intellectual sin; that hypocrisy invalidates and renders crapulous anything it touches. This is profoundly wrong-headed, since hypocrisy is a necessary result of the human condition. Of course the individual values his or her life differently and according to different criteria than an outside observer might value it. You're right, I see harm to me as different than harm to other people, as does everyone, necessarily, since we do not experience other people's lives. You may empathize with harm done to others, disapprove of it, etc. but harm done to others does not harm you, nor does it necessarily harm society. Harm done to others can materially help you. Do you oppose the death penalty on the grounds that killing a murderer is a harmful act? Effectronica posted:I don't know what exactly you expect. I cannot put it any clearer than to say that when people say the words, "human", "life", "has", and "value", in that order, they are not talking about any particular person's life, any single life. They are not talking about an average of all persons. They are talking about an abstract concept, an idealized human being which has no specific characteristics. It is this concept, free from anything entangling, which is what they mean by it having value, because each individual person will have different things that lead people to value them in lesser or greater amounts, especially in different contexts. I suppose that you want proof of this, you want evidence of something that is blatantly obvious from simple context and human interactions, because you have shattered your own intellect in the pursuit of- what, exactly? Who are they, and what evidence do you have that they mean this when they say... that? I think it's pretty funny that you think you've tricked me into saying anything. I am "laughing out loud."
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2015 14:59
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 14:19 |
|
|
Somfin posted:You suggest that "of course" other people's lives are not valuable. I disagree. One cannot apply a single standard of right and wrong to one's own life and a second standard to everyone else's. Harm done to others does harm me. I'll answer your points in reverse order: What does "shown compassion" mean? Does it mean not punished? Do you mean do I want people to empathize with my attacker regardless of what actually happens to him? I think being charged with assault (and convicted) is fine, I guess. Obviously I don't want to be assaulted. However, this has little bearing on what society should do about assaults generally, because: Harm done to others does not necessarily harm you. You can apply a different standard of right and wrong to one's own life and a second standard to everyone else's; people do it all the time. However I'm not talking about right and wrong, I was talking about costs and social utility, which any utilitarian with intellectual worth would differentiate from concepts of absolute rightness and wrongness. It is natural and necessary that we apply different standards and criteria to our own lives and to the lives of others, and we should expect everyone to have this double standard. No matter how much you protest, the lethal car crash you bemoan in your example cost you much less than the people who actually died in it. In fact it probably cost you nothing beyond a fleeting bad-feeling of empathy. Finally, you've seriously misunderstood my point if you think I am arguing that human life necessarily has no value. I only challenge the idea that it a priori has value. The second point of my original post was that, even if "monsters" impose costs on society, are they significant? The car crash example is a good one: car crashes are a clear and present danger to most people, and directing the resources of society to reducing their impact on both the self and on people generally is probably an efficient use of resources. I question whether attempts aimed at reducing the damage done by "monsters" are socially efficient. This was all in my first post by the way.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2015 06:49
|
|