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## Worth of a Human Being

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Drolyt
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Post by Drolyt » Sun Jun 23, 2013 1:55 am

> Kaelik wrote:

> > Drolyt wrote:A quote from my first post in this thread:

> > > Drolyt wrote:I think that worth is a meaningless concept.

> > That has always been my position. It isn't that I think humans don't have inherent worth, its that I'm not even sure what the hell people mean when they say that, and I'm betting they don't really know either. Now where did I contradict myself and where did I try to weasel out of it?

> Right here:

> > Drolyt wrote:"I can say that the concept of "worth" is meaningless while still seeing value in human life."

That isn't a contradiction. Even if we accept your equation of the words worth and value, saying that a person has worth and a life has worth isn't the same thing. I was trying to say that I could place a value on human life even if I think it is meaningless to talk about how much people are worth.

> Ancient History wrote:Worth is subjective, but I think you can objectively state that humans in general perceive themselves to have worth, and perceive other human beings to have worth..

That is fine, and maybe you can take an existentialist route and say that is just as valuable as objective worth, but DSMatticus seems to think there is an objective worth based on a balance sheet of good and bad deeds. That is what I was arguing against (among other things).

> Ancient History wrote:From a sheer economic standpoint, every human being does have an objective worth, measured in the amount of work they have put into the economy, what they have earned, and what they have spent and consumed. When measured against an average, such an individual could have been seen as sum productive or non-productive over the course of their life...but though that is rarely what people describe when they talk about worth, a lot of people do ascribe worth to objective standards like how much they work, and how much they earn. But even an individual with no income or productivity (a prisoner on death's row, a baby) is valued by some individual, and certainly not for their earning potential - and of course, that usually where people arguing against their economic worth start talking about the cost of keeping a prisoner or raising a child.

This however is nonsense. Economic worth is completely subjective and artificial.
Last edited by Drolyt on Sun Jun 23, 2013 1:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Maj
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Post by Maj » Sun Jun 23, 2013 1:59 am

> DSMatticus wrote:The former saves millions of lives. Bonus: stabbing Hitler in the face before or in the middle of the Holocaust also saves millions of lives.

So what? If lives don't have an inherent value, what's the point in saving any?
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Ancient History
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Post by Ancient History » Sun Jun 23, 2013 2:01 am

"Good" and "bad" are subjective, and efforts to quantify things like that tend to get really icky fairly quickly. Like, if you killed everyone that committed a felony there would be quantitatively fewer criminals, but that doesn't mean that the resulting society would automatically be better or worse as a result. You have to take into account, for instance, the propensity for individuals to re-commit crimes - multiple murderers and rapists for example are (relatively) rare, and killing all the murderers and rapists is not going to reduce statistics regarding rape or murder as much as it might be desired.
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Drolyt
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Post by Drolyt » Sun Jun 23, 2013 2:18 am

> Maj wrote:

> > DSMatticus wrote:The former saves millions of lives. Bonus: stabbing Hitler in the face before or in the middle of the Holocaust also saves millions of lives.

> So what? If lives don't have an inherent value, what's the point in saving any?

Isn't the fact that people value their own lives reason enough?
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Voss
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### Re: Worth of a Human Being

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Post by Voss » Sun Jun 23, 2013 3:39 am

> Drolyt wrote: Finally, my main objection to DSMatticus's conception of worth is that it violates one of the moral precepts I think any good moral philosophy must follow: the past does not fucking matter.
> So, objections?

Yes. Your 'good moral philosophy' is obscene and ridiculously stupid, bereft of anything resembling learning behavior, survival instinct or the protection of other people.
But its ok. Every year there was a chance the Assyrians would stop attacking their neighbors next year. The fact that they didn't was no reason for neighboring kingdoms to defend themselves. Hell, past behavior is no reason not to give a repeat offender a child, a knife, and take them out to a secluded location. What could possibly go wrong?

> Drolyt wrote: This however is nonsense. Economic worth is completely subjective and artificial.

Artificial, certainly. But not subjective at all. You really can't get more objective than just adding numbers up.
Not everyone values it, and very few people use it as the only factor in determining a person's worth, but that doesn't make the math 'subjective.'
Last edited by Voss on Sun Jun 23, 2013 3:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Koumei
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Post by Koumei » Sun Jun 23, 2013 3:40 am

For selling your organs and such, you could get something like fifty thousand pounds (assuming you have the full set to sell and are in great condition and so on). If just reduced to your base elements and sold as lumps of carbon, zinc, calcium, gold etc. you could fetch less than ten pounds.
There. There's the value of a human. Bonus: it doesn't involve reading Drolyt's shit.

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Sigil
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Post by Sigil » Sun Jun 23, 2013 3:50 am

> Maj wrote: So what? If lives don't have an inherent value, what's the point in saving any?

The average human life has immense potential worth. And I'd like to think that, on average, people have a positive worth. Therefore, saving a life that you know nothing about, on average, will be good and you should do it.
As for how you actually define worth, the most simplistic and base way to describe it would be "The more I like something, the more worth it has to me" and expanding that to a broader scale "the more people on average like something, the more worth it has". The real trouble is determining what people like.
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Drolyt
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### Re: Worth of a Human Being

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Post by Drolyt » Sun Jun 23, 2013 4:06 am

> Voss wrote: Artificial, certainly. But not subjective at all. You really can't get more objective than just adding numbers up.
> Not everyone values it, and very few people use it as the only factor in determining a person's worth, but that doesn't make the math 'subjective.'

The math isn't subjective, but the value is. The price of anything is simply a function of supply and demand, but not only are supply and demand based on peoples subjective preferences they are very easily manipulated by all manner of factors (eg governments can print money and then spend it to temporarily raise aggregate demand). Even more than that the measure we are using is completely artificial, the government can print as much money as it wants so what does a dollar even represent? Really, the idea that price at all accurately represents the value of something is a lie put forward by neoclassical economics to justify their social-Darwinist philosophy.

> Koumei wrote:For selling your organs and such, you could get something like fifty thousand pounds (assuming you have the full set to sell and are in great condition and so on). If just reduced to your base elements and sold as lumps of carbon, zinc, calcium, gold etc. you could fetch less than ten pounds.
> There. There's the value of a human. Bonus: it doesn't involve reading Drolyt's shit.

You are an asshole. Suggesting that humans are only worth what their organs will sell for on the black market, even in jest, is seriously fucked up. You may disagree with what I have to say, but none of it is as awful as what you have to say.
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Sigil
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### Re: Worth of a Human Being

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Post by Sigil » Sun Jun 23, 2013 4:10 am

> Drolyt wrote: You are an asshole. Suggesting that humans are only worth what their organs will sell for on the black market, even in jest, is seriously fucked up.

Actually, I'm not entirely sure I need all of these organs, I want to hear more about what she has to say!
Lighten up man.
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Drolyt
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### Re: Worth of a Human Being

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Post by Drolyt » Sun Jun 23, 2013 4:17 am

> Sigil wrote:Lighten up man.

Fair enough.
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DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus » Sun Jun 23, 2013 4:42 am

I'm just gonna start from square one, because this conversation is getting way too fucking huge for quote>response format.
So, value functions (things that take information and a set of actions, then assign values to those actions) are arbitrary and have no objective validity, which is something Drolyt points out when convenient and then shits all over in sometimes the very same sentence ("I can say that the concept of "worth" is meaningless while still seeing value in human life." - hahaha no, you can't, not using the argument you actually used to say that worth was meaningless, jackass).
But the point here is not that I am suggesting some arbitrary value system that lets me say the holocaust was terrible and that makes Hitler terrible and that everyone should use my value system because it's good. There is a reason I picked unambiguously terrible people like serial killers, perpetrators of mass genocides, and propagandists for downright vile ideologies. It's because I am counting on two facts to hold:
1) Even people who think value functions are arbitrary can still think the results of those value functions are meaningful. This holds; Drolyt explicitly said he values human life more than once. He has an arbitrary value system that he listens to despite its arbitrariness.
2) The arbitrary value systems we all have tell us those people I listed do terrible things. I.e. I am assuming that everyone here agrees that the Holocaust was a net negative. If you disagree with that statement, you'll have to speak up and I'll respond to you on that basis, but otherwise I'm assuming you do think the holocaust was a bad thing.
If those two assumptions hold (and I can't imagine how they wouldn't), then I don't actually need to discuss value system specifics, whether or not they're arbitrary, or any of that bullshit, because I'm not proposing one - I'm just borrowing the one Drolyt (or whoever else) has that lets him denounce the Holocaust. The leap from saying "the holocaust was a net negative," to "the people who perpetrated the holocaust were a net negative" is a small and obvious one. If you accept that you can evaluate actions, and individuals take actions, how the fuck can it be impossible to evaluate the existence of individuals?
The defenses against this have been stupid shit like "you should only evaluate entities on the interval [now, future)" (because a business that loses a million bucks a year for nine years and then stands to make a million bucks in profit for its tenth and final year is totally a 'success,' right?) and gibberish about worth and value meaning different things, I don't fucking know.
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Drolyt
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Post by Drolyt » Sun Jun 23, 2013 6:37 am

> DSMatticus wrote:I don't actually need to discuss value system specifics

Yes you do. Listen, my original statement was merely that I rejected the idea that some humans are objectively worthless. You then accused me of having an abhorrent values system. You do not get to make such accusations without backing them up, which you have refused to do. Your (fallacious) claim that any arbitrary metric that allows you to judge actions allows you to judge people is irrelevant, because I don't want an arbitrary metric. I want to know what fucking principles would lead you to the conclusion that not deeming certain people worthless constitutes an abhorrent values system. Seriously, how can an arbitrary metric ever make that claim?
So I try to define some terms and discuss some issues so we are on the same page, and for some reason Kaelik decides to come in, misinterpret everything I say, and then you assholes accuse me of backpedaling and deception because in my attempts to respond to his insanity I'm having trouble explaining myself. I mean for fucks sake, this is not how a discussion should work.
So yeah, since you aren't actually trying to explain your position I think we should just quit here. We aren't getting anywhere.
Last edited by Drolyt on Sun Jun 23, 2013 6:39 am, edited 2 times in total.
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DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus » Sun Jun 23, 2013 8:42 am

> Drolyt wrote:Listen, my original statement was merely that I rejected the idea that some humans are objectively worthless.

No. The distinction between objective and arbitrary value judgments is one you introduced completely after the fact. I am wholly aware that all value judgments are arbitrary, but I am also completely aware that you are willing to make and abide by arbitrary value judgments (and have done so repeatedly, in this thread, everytime you've suggested that human life has value). Because every human being ever is willing to do that, even the most hardcore of nihilists (or else, making any decision ever is an impossible undertaking because no outcomes are preferable to any other).
If you are seriously going to go the "you can't really say murderers are bad" route, stop being a fucking pussy and just do it. Stop trying to have your fucking cake ("Okay I value human life") and eat it too ("but all those other arbitrary value judgments I don't want to have to deal with are invalid"). And if you aren't willing to do that, then you're admitting the validity of using arbitrary value judgments to make decisions and express claims. In which case, I'm going to frame this discussion in terms of arbitrary value judgments and I'm going to use your's because that sidesteps any possible personal disagreements you or I may have about specifics. You are logically obligated to agree with yourself, and if I can demonstrate inconsistency then you are just objectively wrong. Someone who proposes a contradiction cannot be correct.

> Drolyt wrote:Your (fallacious) claim that any arbitrary metric that allows you to judge actions allows you to judge people is irrelevant, because I don't want an arbitrary metric.

Nobody gives a fuck what you want, which is good because the things you want are stupid and irrelevant and in no way constitute a valid burden on the people you are demanding them of. Here: I demand you tell me why mountain dew is the best soda ever, right now, or else your argument is invalid because reasons. The only thing that matters here is what is sufficient to make my point, and that you have some arbitrary metric that allows you to judge actions is sufficient (because it lets me demonstrate inconsistency), and your only recourse is to either disavow having any such metric or explain why it's impossible to use your metric to evaluate the value of an individual's existence.

> Drolyt wrote:I want to know what fucking principles would lead you to the conclusion that not deeming certain people worthless constitutes an abhorrent values system

How the fuck is that even difficult to grasp? If you agree that people can do terrible things, then it follows that people's existences can be terrible by virtue of doing lots of terrible things.
For fuck's sake. You're a time traveler in 1930, and you're in an alley with Hitler and a plumber. For some magical reason you have to shoot one. Who do you fucking shoot? You're going to say Hitler. And you're going to claim that that's because you have future information about all the actions he's going to commit that are terrible, and that's exactly the fucking point. You are using the actions of an individual to judge the value of that individual. Shooting Hitler means that less things will happen in the world that produce negative outputs from your value function, so when you apply your value function to 'everything' the world becomes a better place without him.
The statements "I value human life" and "serial killers and (good) doctors have the same value" is inconsistent, because serial killers objectively reduce the amount of life and (good) doctors objectively preserve it. And the only way to salvage that is fairytale logic and SOOOOOUUUULS where people can do bad things and increase the net bad in the world but that doesn't really make them bad because rainbows and unicorns. It's not even comprehensible. There's nothing fucking there. If people can do things that make the world worse by a metric you personally agree with, then you cannot reject the statement that people can have a worth that is in the negatives. They can just do a fuckton of the things you think make the world worse - voila.
Last edited by DSMatticus on Sun Jun 23, 2013 8:44 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Parthenon
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Post by Parthenon » Sun Jun 23, 2013 11:48 am

To what extent is the value of a human life similar to the value of money- it only has as much worth as society as a whole thinks it has?
So, it doesn't matter whether or not an individual has inherent worth or is capable of negative worth, it only matters whether society as a whole thinks it has.
It doesn't matter if someone goes around shouting that money is just numbers, people will still go on using it because they need to eat. Similarly, the discussion doesn't matter because people will still act based on whether society thinks individuals have value.
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Whatever
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Post by Whatever » Sun Jun 23, 2013 2:36 pm

> Grek wrote:To answer the thread title:
> GiveWell (a non-profit organization devoted to analyzing the relative merits of various charities) has calculated that the best charity in terms of Dollars of Donations per Lives Saved is the Against Malaria Foundation, which spends an average of $2300 per life saved. So this gives us a first order estimate of the Worth of a Human Being as being about 2300$. Take that as you will.

That seems a little high, if we consider how much slaves cost today. Looking for the cheapest prices suggests that a human life is worth about $50.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sun Jun 23, 2013 3:54 pm

> Whatever wrote:

> > Grek wrote:To answer the thread title:
> > GiveWell (a non-profit organization devoted to analyzing the relative merits of various charities) has calculated that the best charity in terms of Dollars of Donations per Lives Saved is the Against Malaria Foundation, which spends an average of $2300 per life saved. So this gives us a first order estimate of the Worth of a Human Being as being about 2300$. Take that as you will.

> That seems a little high, if we consider how much slaves cost today. Looking for the cheapest prices suggests that a human life is worth about $50.

That is the fallacy of easy knowledge. The cost to buy a bicycle from the shady guy in the alley may only be a couple of bucks, but that doesn't mean the value of the bicycle is "one hit of meth". It means that you got a bargain by paying to take possession of stolen property.
I think you'll find that the cheapest slaves are being sold by people whose legal right to do so is dubious.
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Whatever
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Post by Whatever » Sun Jun 23, 2013 7:11 pm

Well, slavery is officially illegal everywhere, as of 2007 (thanks, Mauritania!), so anyone selling an actual person is by definition a criminal. But the $50 figure is for people in debt bondage, which is prohibited by international law but still sanctioned (at least at the local level) in some countries.
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Almaz
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Post by Almaz » Sun Jun 23, 2013 7:32 pm

> DSMatticus wrote:For fuck's sake. You're a time traveler in 1930, and you're in an alley with Hitler and a plumber. For some magical reason you have to shoot one. Who do you fucking shoot? You're going to say Hitler. And you're going to claim that that's because you have future information about all the actions he's going to commit that are terrible, and that's exactly the fucking point. You are using the actions of an individual to judge the value of that individual. Shooting Hitler means that less things will happen in the world that produce negative outputs from your value function, so when you apply your value function to 'everything' the world becomes a better place without him.

I think that's a little overly simplistic. Is my operating hypothesis that Hitler is the sole cause of things like the Final Solution, or am I an anthropologist who decided it was because of a rising tide of anti-Semitism such that killing Hitler would not deteriorate in any way except giving it a new figurehead? In short, do I or do I not subscribe to Great Man Theory? If I do, I shoot Hitler as I believe him to be the cause of such things, and that there is no other figurehead who will take his place. If I don't, then, I might decide that Hitler is nonetheless an effective leader and figurehead, likely to come to power, and thus shoot the plumber, explain that he was about to murder Hitler, and with this deception hopefully gain the confidence of Adolf Hitler so that, close to him, I might use the potential power conferred by his relative trust to save thousands of others covertly during the ongoing Final Solution, or maybe prevent its implementation entirely, in exchange for that one life.
Naturally, all that ignores the question of the rules of time travel in the first place. If I know that no amount of shooting Hitler can change the actual course of time, since the past has already happened and my travel to it is merely documentary in nature, I would probably shoot Hitler. And then travel back to shoot him again. And again. And again. And again.
As to what I believe?
Well, I'd probably just shoot him out of spite rather than any thoughtful, considered reason, and let the rest of my brain manifest a post-hoc justification.
I mean, I subscribe to the general hypothesis of maximizing value, but adding time travel in involves a lot of unknowns that I think we might not want to get into if we're still trying to argue about how to apply our ethical norms to the present.
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zugschef
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Post by zugschef » Sun Jun 23, 2013 7:54 pm

if you think that shooting hitler would've prevented the holocaust you really don't know what you're talking about.
Last edited by zugschef on Sun Jun 23, 2013 7:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Dr_Noface
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Post by Dr_Noface » Sun Jun 23, 2013 8:03 pm

It wouldn't have?
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Sun Jun 23, 2013 8:29 pm

Wow, we have reached a new level of trolling here.
You should shoot a Plumber instead of Hitler because time travel is hard, and Hitler had nothing to do with the Holocaust.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Maj
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Post by Maj » Sun Jun 23, 2013 9:29 pm

> Sigil wrote:

> > Maj wrote: So what? If lives don't have an inherent value, what's the point in saving any?

> The average human life has immense potential worth. And I'd like to think that, on average, people have a positive worth. Therefore, saving a life that you know nothing about, on average, will be good and you should do it.
> As for how you actually define worth, the most simplistic and base way to describe it would be "The more I like something, the more worth it has to me" and expanding that to a broader scale "the more people on average like something, the more worth it has". The real trouble is determining what people like.

I asked the question because I didn't understand why - if lives have no inherent value - saving them was even something to think about. DSM cleared that up by saying that people do have value, not necessarily inherent, and based on some criteria I don't fully understand.
Personally, as much as the idea is anathema to many people here, I believe that there is value in Bad Stuff™. Many of the greatest lessons in my life came from Bad Stuff™, and I believe that Bad Stuff™ contributed to significant moments in history, like the formation of my country's government. So discounting someone because they have a directly negative value seems incredibly myopic to me. <shrug>
Last edited by Maj on Sun Jun 23, 2013 9:33 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Omegonthesane
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Post by Omegonthesane » Mon Jun 24, 2013 12:50 am

> Maj wrote:

> > Sigil wrote:

> > > Maj wrote: So what? If lives don't have an inherent value, what's the point in saving any?

> > The average human life has immense potential worth. And I'd like to think that, on average, people have a positive worth. Therefore, saving a life that you know nothing about, on average, will be good and you should do it.
> > As for how you actually define worth, the most simplistic and base way to describe it would be "The more I like something, the more worth it has to me" and expanding that to a broader scale "the more people on average like something, the more worth it has". The real trouble is determining what people like.

> I asked the question because I didn't understand why - if lives have no inherent value - saving them was even something to think about. DSM cleared that up by saying that people do have value, not necessarily inherent, and based on some criteria I don't fully understand.
> Personally, as much as the idea is anathema to many people here, I believe that there is value in Bad Stuff™. Many of the greatest lessons in my life came from Bad Stuff™, and I believe that Bad Stuff™ contributed to significant moments in history, like the formation of my country's government. So discounting someone because they have a directly negative value seems incredibly myopic to me. <shrug>

Please elaborate - how was the Bad Stuff™ vital to the good, in such a way that it was better than sorting it out in other ways?

> Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

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Prak
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Post by Prak » Mon Jun 24, 2013 2:46 am

Moved from the Mearls thread:
Weeellll... the holocaust and treatment of segments of the population as non-humans did cause the discovery of medical and scientific knowledge which we wouldn't have because no person in their right mind would perform certain experiments on living people. I don't know how many lives such knowledge has saved (or indeed the extent of such knowledge, or the benefit of gaining it), but it's... something. Hitler and his cronies were of course horrendous serial killers either by action or inaction, but knowledge did come those actions.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.

> Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

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> You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

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Almaz
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Post by Almaz » Mon Jun 24, 2013 6:11 am

> Kaelik wrote:Wow, we have reached a new level of trolling here.
> You should shoot a Plumber instead of Hitler because time travel is hard, and Hitler had nothing to do with the Holocaust.

Hey, the question is a legitimate one about how much responsibility you assign to Adolf Hitler and not, say, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Göring, and so on, and what will actually save the most lives - killing him or being an undercover Jewish sympathizer?
I just proposed it as an alternative way to view the dilemma of shooting Hitler - for every piece of time travel fiction where shooting Hitler before the Night of Long Knives results in an age of peace and prosperity, there is another where the absence of Hitler results in even worse atrocities, or another where the Nazi regime rises under another name, essentially unchanged in character, or another where the world is slightly bettered for the absence of Hitler's regime but worse in other ways... all of them products of debates about stuff like whether a single individual matters more than the movements of the group. Ones held by real historians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional ... ntionalism
And mostly, it's a dig at people trying to use scifi to justify their ethical structures when they're arguing about how to apply those ethics in the present.
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