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| Thread: Law and Rules |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 · «PREV |
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mvassilev
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posted February 05, 2010 03:49 AM |
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There is no possible way I can kill everyone who can kill me. Even if I start to, someone will definitely kill me first - either in self-defence or by law enforcement. Also, I don't want to - I find it advantageous to live in society. I'm not particularly strong or agile, and my eyesight is terrible. I probably wouldn't survive in the wild.
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JollyJoker
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posted February 05, 2010 07:26 AM |
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In that case it would be much better when 20 billion people lived starving in shoe boxes and poverty than 7 halfway fed, which seems strange.
It depends on the situation. If we were to kill half of the starving people and give their food to the other half, it would be a decrease in utility. However, if we were to prevent those starving people from coming into existence, it would not.
Life itself has value - in fact, it's the ultimate value because it allows enjoyment of all other values.
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Add to that, that every BIRTH will be a utility gain then, so you'd have to make sure that as many children would be born as possible
The goal is to increase every individual's utility - if the individual doesn't exist, then their utility can't increase, can it?
Illogical, sorry. Life allows the bad things also, so if it's the ultimate good value it's the ultimate bad value as well.
You acknowledge that as well: "The goal is to increase every individual's utility". If life was the ultimate value, then tghe goal had to be to increase life. Since the goal is increasing utility, the ultimate value is quite obviously not life but UTILITY. Would you contest that and WHY?
Second, you only STATE things, but you don't give reasons. You say killing part of the starving so that the rest would not starve anymore would decrease utility. But why is that? If you have X people, but food for only (X-Y) people, then utility is already rather low for everyone. With not enough food available, people will die anyway, eventually. Utilitywise, if no one does anything, utility will drop ever lower, until the first one starves to death. This will add momentary food for all, bettering the situation for the rest AND up the share for everyone remaining. Either it's now enough for everyone to survive, or the process will repeat itself. Note further that the situation doesn't allow creation of new life (except for food, which gets us in pretty troublesome waters).
Why would killing someone decrease utility?
Here is another question: Compare all cases. What is better, utilitywise? Can you compare them and say WHY one is better than the other or why they are equal?
a) society has 10 people; everyone has the same utility of 10
b) society has 10 people; one has utility 19, everyone else has utility 9.
c)society has 10 people; one has utility 1; 9 have utility 11
d) soeciety has 10 people; 9 have utility 5; 1 has utility 60
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mvassilev
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posted February 05, 2010 08:14 AM |
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JJ:
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Life allows the bad things also, so if it's the ultimate good value it's the ultimate bad value as well.
No. A state of death has a utility of zero. Anything while alive has a utility above that.
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If life was the ultimate value, then tghe goal had to be to increase life.
Perhaps I should have been more clear: one's own life is each person's greatest value.
As for the starving people, just taking that into account, and assuming that if food is not redistributed, some will die - then yes, it makes sense to kill some of them. (However, realistically speaking, it's still better not to kill them, because that creates a precedent that it is okay to kill, which is undesirable.)
As for your question, b>d>a=c - but utility isn't really quantifiable like that. Happiness is difficult if not impossible to measure. Moreover, it is difficult to compare two people's happiness. "Are you happy?" "Yes." "Yes." Who is happier?
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JollyJoker
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posted February 05, 2010 08:54 AM |
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JJ:
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Life allows the bad things also, so if it's the ultimate good value it's the ultimate bad value as well.
No. A state of death has a utility of zero. Anything while alive has a utility above that.
Anything while alive has a utility above zero? That would mean that life was ALWAYS better than death, wouldn't it? Which seems to be not really true, though.
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If life was the ultimate value, then tghe goal had to be to increase life.
Perhaps I should have been more clear: one's own life is each person's greatest value.
But then it would be wrong to risk life. Makes no sense: the potential loss will ALWAYS ne greater than the potential win, in that case, which seems, for example at odds with the mother/child relationship and a lot of other things. It means, that in an emergency situation EVERYONE would just think about themselves. I don't think that holds any water.
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(However, realistically speaking, it's still better not to kill them, because that creates a precedent that it is okay to kill, which is undesirable.)
Undesirable? That's an odd word. It would mean that people might not choose the best option utilitywise bcause they would fear a detrimental effect on future utility, right? But here we go and introduce a new element that says you may sacrifice utility now for better utility effect in the future. That's pretty relative, right? Depending on your reasoning and the projected time span everything and their dog may be undesirable then, even though it would up utility.
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As for your question, b>d>a=c
I think I asked for a WHY, didn't I. Could you please explain your ranking: what exactly makes b better than d, both better than a, and a equal c?
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mvassilev
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posted February 05, 2010 10:21 PM |
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That would mean that life was ALWAYS better than death, wouldn't it?
Yes.
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in an emergency situation EVERYONE would just think about themselves
Everyone doesn't - but just because people tend to act in a way they think will maximise their utility doesn't mean they succeed. The more rational a person is, the better they maximise their own utility.
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It would mean that people might not choose the best option utilitywise bcause they would fear a detrimental effect on future utility, right? But here we go and introduce a new element that says you may sacrifice utility now for better utility effect in the future.
Yes, this is a difficult question and I don't know what the answer to it is. I do think that to a certain extent, we can rely on individual decisions, because everybody values the future differently. In some cases, we can't. I have a friend who's been working on this issue for some time. If he comes up with an answer of some sort, it'll be interesting to see.
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Could you please explain your ranking: what exactly makes b better than d, both better than a, and a equal c?
The amount of average utility.
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JollyJoker
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posted February 05, 2010 10:34 PM |
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The amount of average utility.
Well, that's... bad. Because we seem to have different mathematics here: a, b and c have the same average.
However, d) has the highest average, and d) is seeing 9 out of 10 way below averagem while 10% of the population have way more than half the fun.
That's not convincing, to say then least.
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mvassilev
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posted February 05, 2010 10:38 PM |
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