The Gaming Den

Alright, I've made this thread in order to avoid hijacking the Mearls thread.

Let's break this down piece by piece. Sigil said this:

Sigil wrote:No, that shit's true. Being a person only gives you the potential to be worth something. There are plenty of people that have negative worth, if you replaced them with actual nothing, the sum total of things that are of worth would be increased.

Now my response was this:

Drolyt wrote:I disagree with this in the strongest manner possible.

At this point we have nothing approaching a reasoned philosophical discourse, just some back and forth, so I think I should more clearly outline my objection. First, let us translate "replaced them with actual nothing". To replace a person with nothing would be to kill them. So if we take Sigil's statement at face value he is saying that murdering bad people will create net worth for the world. Don't try to weasel out of that, that is the logical fucking conclusion of what Sigil said and that is what I objected to. Now let us look at what DSMatticus said (broken up a bit):

DSMatticus wrote: Then either your metric of value is morally abhorrent, or you think there exist no individuals whose net contributions to the world are negative. Here is a list of serial killers, in descending order of people they murdered. Please explain to me what good they've contributed that makes up for and exceeds the lives they've destroyed. Then there's Hitler, Pol Pot, and so on, and those pretty much speak for themself. And then we get into the mundane modern evils, like Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers and that bullshit, whose legacies are massive propaganda machines that throw money and positive media attention at any ideology that furthers the interests of the few they like at the expense of the many they don't, and while they have probably never murdered anyone directly their actions have indirectly cost millions of people their very livelihoods and have cost us as a people a frightening amount of progress in every way imaginable.

So DSMatticus thinks that all of those people should be killed for the common good and not doing so is morally abhorrent. Well, no, that's not what he is saying because he thinks my original objection was that nobody is of zero or negative worth, so what he is actually saying is that thinking Rupert Murdoch's life has some value is morally abhorrent.

DSMatticus wrote:You are claiming that these people all have positive value, and the world is better because of them. You are wrong. Please do not fap to bullshit like "the inherent value of human life", because that there are people who are not valuable, inherently or otherwise, is as immediately obvious as the statement "terrible people exist." Your refusal to acknowledge that is not a noble statement about human dignity or what the fuck ever - it is just stupid and offensive. The number of people you owe an apology to is measured in the billions.

So with nothing but appeals to emotion DSMatticus has proven that there is no "inherent value of human life".

DSMatticus wrote:Now, I don't think shadzar is worthless, because extrapolating from "says things that are dumb about D&D" to "net contribution to the world is negative," would be placing a hilariously inappropriate value on TTRPG's. I think he's worthless in a discussion about D&D because I disagree vehemently with nigh everything he says, but otherwise he's just a dude.

Well at least this I can agree with, the worth of a human life has nothing to do with their opinions on fucking TTRPGs. So what does it depend on? Well if we go back to Kaelik's original post:

Kaelik wrote:A troll or script that said things of any value would be worth more than Shadzar. Being a person does not mean you are actually worth anything if you are a stupid person that never says anything worth listening too.

A person's worth apparently depends on the quality of their message board posts.

Seriously though, although DSMatticus has not actually said how he measures the worth of a human being it is pretty clear that he is using a sort of utilitarian values judgment. Causing pleasure makes you worth more, causing pain makes you worth less. This is a bit weird, because utilitarians do not normally make those kind of judgments (torturing Hitler and torturing Ghandi would be considered just as wrong (note: killing them might not be, because killing Hitler might prevent harm to the world while killing Ghandi might cause harm)). Which I guess brings us to my next point: what do we do with these measurements of worth? If someone has negative worth does that mean we should have them hanged, drawn and quartered (hint: there is a reason I'm not proposing a more humane method of execution)?

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. What is important is that we make the choices today that will lead to a better tomorrow. The whole concept of worth requires that people's past influence our actions today above and beyond the consideration of the consequences of those actions,which by definition will lead to suboptimal outcomes, which should really bother DSMatticus since he seems to be taking a utilitarian moral stance. So it isn't so much that I think everyone has worth as I think that worth is a meaningless concept.

So, objections?

Drolyt wrote:First, let us translate "replaced them with actual nothing". To replace a person with nothing would be to kill them.

Are you really being this stupid?

John Magnum wrote:

Drolyt wrote:First, let us translate "replaced them with actual nothing". To replace a person with nothing would be to kill them.

Are you really being this stupid?

How is replacing someone with nothing not killing them? Where a person was there is nothing. The only difference between that and stabbing them is that you don't have a body or a bloody mess. You can argue that that is not what Sigil meant, but it is plainly what he said.

So let's start with you being a dickbag. My specific response was to someone saying "respond to Shadazar as a person" so when I say he is not worth anything, in that context it is very clear that I mean he is not worth talking to on a message board because his worth on the message board is nothing (or negative).

That said, let us move on to the discussion of murdering people who are shit.

I'll let someone else deal with why your whole "only kill people and only in the most gruesome way for no reason."

Dumbshit wrote: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.

No it doesn't. When you evaluate Hitler's worth as a college student, you don't stab him because he made bad art. You stab him because if you don't he will kill millions of fucking people.

Dumbshit wrote:So it isn't so much that I think everyone has worth as I think that worth is a meaningless concept.

And as Frank said. You can be nihilistic about the whole thing, but then a) what is the fucking point of disagreeing in the strongest possible manner. b) That doesn't conflate with all your "please don't torture or kill people, because that is bad" inherent human worth shit.

...actually, you know what. Fuck you guys.
If you don't see the inherent value in human life on a planet where we're the only sapient beings... you're a part of everything that's wrong with humanity.

Kaelik wrote:So let's start with you being a dickbag. My specific response was to someone saying "respond to Shadazar as a person" so when I say he is not worth anything, in that context it is very clear that I mean he is not worth talking to on a message board because his worth on the message board is nothing (or negative).

That was a joke. I get that what you said was just your usual abrasive posting style, but zugschef took you seriously and Sigil actually defended the strawman interpretation of your post.

I'll let someone else deal with why your whole "only kill people and only in the most gruesome way for no reason."

Actually let's not skip that because it is important. If I am allowed to treat people different because of some nebulous concept of "worth" then why am I allowed to kill Hitler but not torture him while I am at it? Sigil and DSMatticus aren't saying it is okay to kill Hitler in order to keep him from doing evil in the future, they are saying it is okay to kill him because he has negative worth, whatever the hell that means.

Dumbshit wrote: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.

No it doesn't. When you evaluate Hitler's worth as a college student, you don't stab him because he made bad art. You stab him because if you don't he will kill millions of fucking people.

Except that isn't what DSMatticus said at all. He never once referenced the future consequences of our actions, he just thinks some people are worthless because of things they did in the past.

Dumbshit wrote:So it isn't so much that I think everyone has worth as I think that worth is a meaningless concept.

And as Frank said. You can be nihilistic about the whole thing, but then a) what is the fucking point of disagreeing in the strongest possible manner. b) That doesn't conflate with all your "please don't torture or kill people, because that is bad" inherent human worth shit.

a) I can say that the concept of "worth" is meaningless while still seeing value in human life. Terminology is limiting us here, what I object to is the idea that you can measure different people and decide which one is worth more (to begin with, what metric would we use to measure this worth?) not that human life has some value in and of itself, or that even if there is no value in human life it might still be wrong to torture people.
b) So are you saying that torturing and killing people is fine and dandy? I really don't know what the hell your point is.

Midnight_v wrote:...actually, you know what. Fuck you guys.
If you don't see the inherent value in human life on a planet where we're the only sapient beings... you're a part of everything that's wrong with humanity.

Perhaps, but I'd still like to hear what you have to say. Discussing these issues is a good thing.

Droylt wrote: what I object to is the idea that you can measure different people and decide which one is worth more (to begin with, what metric would we use to measure this worth?) not that human life has some value in and of itself, or that even if there is no value in human life it might still be wrong to torture people.

This is a valid concern. It is true that you cannot tell with 100% certainty what someone will do in the future (that is, their 'future worth', as long as you accept that actions can have worth. Otherwise you really do have a nihilistic position), what you can do, however, is examine a persons past actions and extrapolate from that what their future actions are likely to be. This is, truly, the basis of a legal system. You first examine the actions someone performed, determine if or not they were wrong (had negative worth), and implement a solution that will prevent them from performing actions of negative worth in the future.

The legal system (should) do this to the best of its ability. Sometimes, you get this wrong. Even though sometimes you get it wrong, acting on probability is better than allowing random chance to determine the worth of the future.

You might argue that the harshest punishment in the legal system should be life imprisonment instead of death, in either case the effect is largely the same. Their presence in society is reduced to 'nothing', within the context of society they have been replaced by nothing, and if the system worked correctly the value of that society in the future is increased by that.

Also, this was a really abstract way to discuss this.

Drolyt wrote:Actually let's not skip that because it is important. If I am allowed to treat people different because of some nebulous concept of "worth" then why am I allowed to kill Hitler but not torture him while I am at it?

No dumbshit. Your stupid statement was that we had to kill people in the meanest possible way, because you are a fucking troll, and don't want to admit that putting a bullet to Hitler's brain is a good thing, so you want to dress it up as an elaborate six year torture system first. Now, that is bad both because it is inefficient as compared to bullet in the brain, and also it is "bad" because your reason for doing so, being a psychopath who enjoys torture, is likely to mean you will do bad shit in the future if we accommodate you now.

Drolyt wrote:Sigil and DSMatticus aren't saying it is okay to kill Hitler in order to keep him from doing evil in the future, they are saying it is okay to kill him because he has negative worth, whatever the hell that means.

1) if you don't know what negative worth means, then how do you know it doesn't involve future bad actions?

2) Of course they are saying that it is okay to kill Hitler in order to keep him from doing evil in the future. When people talk about killing Hitler they are not fucking talking about shooting him in his bunker 2 seconds before he shoots himself, they are talking about killing him before he starts a war and genocide program that both kill millions of people. You fucking idiot.

Drolyt wrote:a) I can say that the concept of "worth" is meaningless while still seeing value in human life. Terminology is limiting us here, what I object to is the idea that you can measure different people and decide which one is worth more (to begin with, what metric would we use to measure this worth?) not that human life has some value in and of itself, or that even if there is no value in human life it might still be wrong to torture people.

1) If human life has some inherent value, then people have worth. What the fuck is wrong with you? Worth is the same goddam thing as value.

2) If you want to assert that human life has inherent worth, the burden is on you. I mean, are people alive in commas who will literally never wake up worth anything? No, they aren't. They no longer have value. What magic thing besides peoples actions actually has value?

Drolyt wrote:b) So are you saying that torturing and killing people is fine and dandy? I really don't know what the hell your point is.

As far as I can tell, your point is that people have inherent worth from their souls. So go fucking knock yourself into a comma so your soul can remain pure.

My point is that sometimes, even often, killing and torturing people is bad because of the consequences, and certainly not because it is inherently bad because it hurts people souls.

Sigil wrote:

Droylt wrote: what I object to is the idea that you can measure different people and decide which one is worth more (to begin with, what metric would we use to measure this worth?) not that human life has some value in and of itself, or that even if there is no value in human life it might still be wrong to torture people.

This is a valid concern. It is true that you cannot tell with 100% certainty what someone will do in the future (that is, their 'future worth', as long as you accept that actions can have worth. Otherwise you really do have a nihilistic position)

I have no problem with the idea that actions have worth, indeed determining whether actions are good or bad is essentially the point of moral philosophy.

, what you can do, however, is examine a persons past actions and extrapolate from that what their future actions are likely to be. This is, truly, the basis of a legal system. You first examine the actions someone performed, determine if or not they were wrong (had negative worth), and implement a solution that will prevent them from performing actions of negative worth in the future.

The legal system (should) do this to the best of its ability. Sometimes, you get this wrong. Even though sometimes you get it wrong, acting on probability is better than allowing random chance to determine the worth of the future.

You might argue that the harshest punishment in the legal system should be life imprisonment instead of death, in either case the effect is largely the same. Their presence in society is reduced to 'nothing', within the context of society they have been replaced by nothing, and if the system worked correctly the value of that society in the future is increased by that.

Why not replace the negative value with a positive one? With therapy and education most criminals could be rehabilitated so that they contribute to society, but most countries don't even attempt this or just give it lip service.

On another note you seem to be defining worth completely differently than DSMatticus. The way you are using it worth is about potential future value, the way DSMatticus uses it it some kind of cosmic balance sheet. Or am I off base?

Also, this was a really abstract way to discuss this.

Abstraction is occasionally useful.

Drolyt wrote:Why not replace the negative value with a positive one? With therapy and education most criminals could be rehabilitated so that they contribute to society,

Because it is hard. Also because people who believe in the inherent worth of human life are prone to think that murderers have corrupted their souls.

No one here is saying the current penal system is ideal.

Drolyt wrote:the way DSMatticus uses it it some kind of cosmic balance sheet. Or am I off base?

Yes, you are completely off base.

Kaelik wrote:

Drolyt wrote:Actually let's not skip that because it is important. If I am allowed to treat people different because of some nebulous concept of "worth" then why am I allowed to kill Hitler but not torture him while I am at it?

No dumbshit. Your stupid statement was that we had to kill people in the meanest possible way, because you are a fucking troll, and don't want to admit that putting a bullet to Hitler's brain is a good thing, so you want to dress it up as an elaborate six year torture system first. Now, that is bad both because it is inefficient as compared to bullet in the brain, and also it is "bad" because your reason for doing so, being a psychopath who enjoys torture, is likely to mean you will do bad shit in the future if we accommodate you now.

Drolyt wrote:Sigil and DSMatticus aren't saying it is okay to kill Hitler in order to keep him from doing evil in the future, they are saying it is okay to kill him because he has negative worth, whatever the hell that means.

1) if you don't know what negative worth means, then how do you know it doesn't involve future bad actions?

2) Of course they are saying that it is okay to kill Hitler in order to keep him from doing evil in the future. When people talk about killing Hitler they are not fucking talking about shooting him in his bunker 2 seconds before he shoots himself, they are talking about killing him before he starts a war and genocide program that both kill millions of people. You fucking idiot.

Drolyt wrote:a) I can say that the concept of "worth" is meaningless while still seeing value in human life. Terminology is limiting us here, what I object to is the idea that you can measure different people and decide which one is worth more (to begin with, what metric would we use to measure this worth?) not that human life has some value in and of itself, or that even if there is no value in human life it might still be wrong to torture people.

1) If human life has some inherent value, then people have worth. What the fuck is wrong with you? Worth is the same goddam thing as value.

2) If you want to assert that human life has inherent worth, the burden is on you. I mean, are people alive in commas who will literally never wake up worth anything? No, they aren't. They no longer have value. What magic thing besides peoples actions actually has value?

Drolyt wrote:b) So are you saying that torturing and killing people is fine and dandy? I really don't know what the hell your point is.

As far as I can tell, your point is that people have inherent worth from their souls. So go fucking knock yourself into a comma so your soul can remain pure.

My point is that sometimes, even often, killing and torturing people is bad because of the consequences, and certainly not because it is inherently bad because it hurts people souls.

What in the hell is with you? Everything you think I said are things I did not say. Are you just deliberately obtuse? Seriously, I never said I believed that humans have inherent worth. I never mentioned souls or anything supernatural. I have no idea why you are putting words in my mouth.

Kaelik wrote:

Drolyt wrote:Why not replace the negative value with a positive one? With therapy and education most criminals could be rehabilitated so that they contribute to society,

Because it is hard. Also because people who believe in the inherent worth of human life are prone to think that murderers have corrupted their souls.

You really have a hate on for souls.

No one here is saying the current penal system is ideal.

No one said that anyone said that.

Drolyt wrote: Why not replace the negative value with a positive one? With therapy and education most criminals could be rehabilitated so that they contribute to society, but most countries don't even attempt this or just give it lip service.

As Kaelik stated, this is hard. If you succeed, this is actually better, you have created more worth. If you fail, however, you actually generate even more potential negative worth than you started with. You wasted resources you could have used generating worth while simultaneously allowing someone else to continue decreasing worth. Sometimes you might even determine that the resources needed to rehabilitate someone are worth more than having the person rehabilitated. It's all a matter of needs and resources.

If we actually knew how to rehabilitate people efficiently, and had the resources to do that, the penal system would be revolutionized.

Droylt wrote: On another note you seem to be defining worth completely differently than DSMatticus. The way you are using it worth is about potential future value, the way DSMatticus uses it it some kind of cosmic balance sheet. Or am I off base?

Practically, a 'cosmic balance sheet' is what we use. You essentially look at how a person has performed up to this point, and judge them based on that because you assume it is indicative of how they will act in the future. The reason's for using that system can vary, and probably say something about you. You're either vengeful and want to punish for past actions, or more utilitarian and want to prevent future such actions. The implementation is pretty much the same either way.

Sigil wrote:If we actually knew how to rehabilitate people efficiently, and had the resources to do that, the penal system would be revolutionized.

Norway already figured it out. The recidivism rate in Norway is less then a third of that in the United States.

Droylt wrote:

On another note you seem to be defining worth completely differently than DSMatticus. The way you are using it worth is about potential future value, the way DSMatticus uses it it some kind of cosmic balance sheet. Or am I off base?

Practically, a 'cosmic balance sheet' is what we use. You essentially look at how a person has performed up to this point, and judge them based on that because you assume it is indicative of how they will act in the future. The reason's for using that system can vary, and probably say something about you. You're either vengeful and want to punish for past actions, or more utilitarian and want to prevent future such actions. The implementation is pretty much the same either way.

No, the implementation is not the same. If your goal is to punish people you will end up with worse outcomes than if your work for the public good.

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.

To provide useful commentary:
Drolyt's characterization of personal worth as being completely unrelated to past actions is completely unempirical in the most basic sense of the word. It assumes that past actions do not inform future actions and that the probable future contributions of a person to society cannot be predicted in any way by their past actions. While the possibility of moral reform should not be discounted when considering a person's future behavior, it is an even greater mistake to discount past behavior when making such a judgement.

Drolyt wrote:What in the hell is with you? Everything you think I said are things I did not say. Are you just deliberately obtuse?

Yes they are. You said DSM thinks that Hitler should have never existed as punishment killing people even though that makes no fucking sense. You think that people advocating for Hitler not existing want him to stop existing after he kills everyone. But that makes no sense, because Hitler did stop existing after, so there would be no reason for anyone to wish for him to have not existed other than to prevent his actions.

Drolyt wrote:Seriously, I never said I believed that humans have inherent worth. I never mentioned souls or anything supernatural. I have no idea why you are putting words in my mouth.

You fucking idiot, this is what you said:

what I object to is [X] not that human life has some value in and of itself.

What the fuck do you think inherent fucking means?

Drolyt wrote:First, let us translate "replaced them with actual nothing". To replace a person with nothing would be to kill them. So if we take Sigil's statement at face value he is saying that murdering bad people will create net worth for the world. Don't try to weasel out of that, that is the logical fucking conclusion of what Sigil said and that is what I objected to.

"The world would be a better place if Hitler had never been conceived" is a wildly different statement than "the world would be a better place if Hitler was alive today in hiding and we found him and stabbed him in the face until he was dead." The latter doesn't change a whole lot, but may be justified/necessary/whatever that's a different argument. 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.

I do not know how you made the leap of logic to the second interpretation, because the gap is fucking huge. There are only two possible conclusions, neither of which is good for you. The first is that you are an idiot, and that you made wings out of your stupidity and flew across the gap like some sort of retarded Icarus. The second is that you are backpedalling and fabricating a stupid interpretation that you can make the new target of your vague objection, so you can disavow the stupid, terrible things you previously said. In the first case, you can just say "my bad," because it is. In the second case, you can just fuck off, because you should. So since that foundation is rotten to the core, let's just skip the part where you say things based on it and get to the next statement that hasn't been made irrelevant.

Drolyt wrote:so what he is actually saying is that thinking Rupert Murdoch's life has some value is morally abhorrent.

Minor quibble: you need to be careful with the phrase 'some value', because it can be deceptive. This argument has always clearly been about net value, and when you say things like "some value" it's not clear whether you mean a small net positive or whether you mean there exists at least one positive contributing factor. Saying that Rupert Murdoch has done more good than harm for the world is laughably false and horrible. Saying that Rupert Murdoch has done some good in some way to some one is almost certainly true, but totally irrelevant.

Drolyt wrote:So with nothing but appeals to emotion DSMatticus has proven that there is no "inherent value of human life".

Drolyt wrote:Seriously though, although DSMatticus has not actually said how he measures the worth of a human being it is pretty clear that he is using a sort of utilitarian values judgment. Causing pleasure makes you worth more, causing pain makes you worth less.

I'm not actually using any particular value function, because specifying such a function is a daunting and almost impossible task and even if I did specify it we would get sidetracked disagreeing on it. The reason I went straight to almost hyperbolically terrible people is because you will agree they are terrible. No matter what value function you use to evaluate Hitler, there are only two possible outcomes: 1) it agrees that Hitler's net value is negative, or 2) it's not a value function anyone should take seriously.

Drolyt wrote:If someone has negative worth does that mean we should have them hanged, drawn and quartered (hint: there is a reason I'm not proposing a more humane method of execution)?

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. What is important is that we make the choices today that will lead to a better tomorrow.

Like everything else in your post, I'm forced to try and figure out whether you are really this dumb or if you are making an effort at misdirection. Nothing about "this person has negative net worth" is a prescription for action. This is genuinely economics 101 bullshit. You evaluate the desirability of actions based on expected net change relative to alternatives. It's totally possible to imagine a situation in which some dude murders ten children and then saves one. If you agree that murdering children is at least as bad as saving them is good, there's no doubt his net contributions are in the negative (assuming he's otherwise a fairly ordinary dude, at least). But it's still a worse outcome to stop him after he murders the ten children but just before he saves the one.

And somehow, this seems to be the direction the conversation is going. And that's fine, because this thread is awful and I don't care what it gets derailed to. But it is a derail, and the only successful argument Drolyt made in the context of the original point is that maybe he didn't mean the terrible thing he said - maybe he was just an idiot. I'm sure that was worth the thread.

Kaelik wrote:

Drolyt wrote:Seriously, I never said I believed that humans have inherent worth. I never mentioned souls or anything supernatural. I have no idea why you are putting words in my mouth.

You fucking idiot, this is what you said:

what I object to is [X] not that human life has some value in and of itself.

What the fuck do you think inherent fucking means?

Not objecting to something is not the same as agreeing with it. Learn to read.

DSMatticus wrote:There are only two possible conclusions, neither of which is good for you. The first is that you are an idiot, and that you made wings out of your stupidity and flew across the gap like some sort of retarded Icarus. The second is that you are backpedalling and fabricating a stupid interpretation that you can make the new target of your vague objection, so you can disavow the stupid, terrible things you previously said.

No. You do not get to assert this without a fucking argument. And no, your previous paragraph does not count as an argument. All you did was state that there were only two possible interpretations and that one was stupid. You did not connect my argument to to your hypothetical and you did not explain why it was an incorrect interpretation. You just keep insisting that you are right without evidence.

Drolyt wrote:so what he is actually saying is that thinking Rupert Murdoch's life has some value is morally abhorrent.

Minor quibble: you need to be careful with the phrase 'some value', because it can be deceptive. This argument has always clearly been about net value, and when you say things like "some value" it's not clear whether you mean a small net positive or whether you mean there exists at least one positive contributing factor. Saying that Rupert Murdoch has done more good than harm for the world is laughably false and horrible. Saying that Rupert Murdoch has done some good in some way to some one is almost certainly true, but totally irrelevant.

You are still equating worth with some kind of cosmic tally of good and evil deeds without justifying it in any way. For the record though, I mean net worth.

Drolyt wrote:So with nothing but appeals to emotion DSMatticus has proven that there is no "inherent value of human life".

Drolyt wrote:Seriously though, although DSMatticus has not actually said how he measures the worth of a human being it is pretty clear that he is using a sort of utilitarian values judgment. Causing pleasure makes you worth more, causing pain makes you worth less.

I'm not actually using any particular value function, because specifying such a function is a daunting and almost impossible task and even if I did specify it we would get sidetracked disagreeing on it. The reason I went straight to almost hyperbolically terrible people is because you will agree they are terrible. No matter what value function you use to evaluate Hitler, there are only two possible outcomes: 1) it agrees that Hitler's net value is negative, or 2) it's not a value function anyone should take seriously.

You don't get it, the reason you haven't come up with a value function isn't because it is hard, but because it is impossible to derive such a value function. Any function you come up with is fucking arbitrary. Prove me wrong, give a fucking example.

Drolyt wrote:If someone has negative worth does that mean we should have them hanged, drawn and quartered (hint: there is a reason I'm not proposing a more humane method of execution)?

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. What is important is that we make the choices today that will lead to a better tomorrow.

Like everything else in your post, I'm forced to try and figure out whether you are really this dumb or if you are making an effort at misdirection. Nothing about "this person has negative net worth" is a prescription for action.

Then what the fuck is the point? This is why I said the concept was meaningless.

This is genuinely economics 101 bullshit. You evaluate the desirability of actions based on expected net change relative to alternatives. It's totally possible to imagine a situation in which some dude murders ten children and then saves one. If you agree that murdering children is at least as bad as saving them is good, there's no doubt his net contributions are in the negative (assuming he's otherwise a fairly ordinary dude, at least). But it's still a worse outcome to stop him after he murders the ten children but just before he saves the one.

Are you really this stupid? If you evaluate actions solely on the outcome your stupid human worth function is worthless.

Drolyt wrote:Not objecting to something is not the same as agreeing with it. Learn to read.

You fucking idiot. I made a post criticizing you for holding two mutually contradictory positions and you responded by clarifying that you objected to worth not the inherent value of human life specifically to clarify that the inherent value of human life is what you do believe.

I said, "That doesn't conflate with all your "please don't torture or kill people, because that is bad" inherent human worth shit."

Your direct response was not declaring that you didn't believe in the inherent value of human life. Instead you said, "I can say that the concept of "worth" is meaningless while still seeing value in human life." You then, later in the same paragraph, clarified the difference between worth and the value you see in life, which is inherent. You lying shitbag. Now of course, you also ignored the obvious fact that worth and value are identical, but that is because you are also stupid.

Kaelik wrote:

Drolyt wrote:Not objecting to something is not the same as agreeing with it. Learn to read.

You fucking idiot. I made a post criticizing you for holding two mutually contradictory positions and you responded by clarifying that you objected to worth not the inherent value of human life specifically to clarify that the inherent value of human life is what you do believe.

I said, "That doesn't conflate with all your "please don't torture or kill people, because that is bad" inherent human worth shit."

Your direct response was not declaring that you didn't believe in the inherent value of human life. Instead you said, "I can say that the concept of "worth" is meaningless while still seeing value in human life." You then, later in the same paragraph, clarified the difference between worth and the value you see in life, which is inherent. You lying shitbag. Now of course, you also ignored the obvious fact that worth and value are identical, but that is because you are also stupid.

You amaze me. Can you not see that the reason I worded it that way (I literally said that I could believe that, not that I did) was because it was a hypothetical, not a statement of my position? I mean, why the hell do you think I presented a third option in the very next sentence? Because it was all hypothetical, I was just laying out ideas. Have you never been in a debate where people try to lay out ideas instead of shouting "no you're wrong!"?

Drolyt wrote:Have you never been in a debate where people try to lay out ideas instead of shouting "no you're wrong!"?

I've seen a lot of debates where people say "X could be true" in response to someone pointing out that two things they have previously said are incompatible. The thing in common with all of them is that it is a fucking weasel who believes it, and wants other people to believe it, which is why they said it, but they have no fucking basis for asserting it so they weasel around.

Kaelik wrote:

Drolyt wrote:Have you never been in a debate where people try to lay out ideas instead of shouting "no you're wrong!"?

I've seen a lot of debates where people say "X could be true" in response to someone pointing out that two things they have previously said are incompatible. The thing in common with all of them is that it is a fucking weasel who believes it, and wants other people to believe it, which is why they said it, but they have no fucking basis for asserting it so they weasel around.

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?

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."

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. It may be difficult to express how exactly you value another person or why, or to what extant that you value one person over another, but everyone exists today because some other human being valued their existence sufficiently to see them fed, clothed, and cared for until they came of age to do those things for themselves. It is the consideration for human life (at least in the abstract) that lies at the heart of such arguments as the pro-choice/anti-abortion debate and the death penalty...and that is generally where people start talking about the worth of human lives.

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.