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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   4071 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 19, 2023

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Having values you are willing to die for is getting badly translated into Being willing to die for something gives it/you value.

  1. Human life has value: the economists put it at around $10 million per head, if we're talking about Americans.

  2. Things are worth what we sacrifice to get them.

Therefore it seems self-evident that a thing has value because someone is willing to die for it: that person, even if he's a deranged lunatic, has staked his life on that thing. The value of it has been upped to "one deranged lunatic" from whatever it was before.

Also, I know damn well that the Hock is dumb and that people becoming aware that I've completed the Hock is not going to do much for me. I think that the Hock is going to irreversibly alter my character and personality, though, and that's what I'm after. I'll carry myself differently (I hope) after surviving the Hock...

Therefore it seems self-evident that a thing has value because someone is willing to die for it: that person, even if he's a deranged lunatic, has staked his life on that thing. The value of it has been upped to "one deranged lunatic" from whatever it was before.

Correct, but note that deranged lunatics or careless idiots who win a Darwin Award are not worth the full 10 million. Those 10 million are a human living a productive life for as long as possible. And even then the transfer of value may not be successful; the manner of the dying may have more impact on the value of the final product than the nominal value of the man who died.

Therefore it seems self-evident that a thing has value because someone is willing to die for it: that person, even if he's a deranged lunatic, has staked his life on that thing. The value of it has been upped to "one deranged lunatic" from whatever it was before.

You're just wrong here. Compare: I love my dog, therefore, I would risk my life for him. to I don't love this dog, but I wish I did. If I risk my life for him, it will make it so. you have causality backwards. In the latter scenario, you are de-valuing your life down to what you value your dog. Not the other way around.

Human life has value: the economists put it at around $10 million per head, if we're talking about Americans.

This bit is a nonsequitor. Risking your life for something without value, doesn't give it $10m in value.

Between 2008-21, 379 people were killed during the act of taking a selfie. The combined value of these selfies is not $3.79 billion. If you were to somehow to collect all of them and try to auction them off, I'd be impressed if you made a few hundred bucks.

If you read this story of a man who fell out of a moving train while trying to lean out to take a selfie and think "God, what a fucking idiot - what a stupid, pointless way to die", then try to understand that that is exactly how we all feel about you.

That's the wrong way to think about it. You'd have to instead multiply it by the risk they took, or consider the value of all such risky selfies.

According to Skookum's logic, if you die for something, that thing therefore has value equal to a human life. Following this logic, a selfie of some random nobody is worth nothing - unless they die in the act of taking it, in which case it's worth $10 million.

Therefore it seems self-evident that a thing has value because someone is willing to die for it

A carjacker getting shot dead while trying to lift a lemon from a parking lot doesn't mean it'll go on auction for a cool $10 million.

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