The value of a life
From Replacing Guilt, “The value of a life”:
If you have money and want to save lives, you had better put a price on life.
One day, we may slay the dragons that plague us. One day we, like the villagers in their early days, may have the luxury of going to extraordinary lengths to prevent a fellow sentient mind from being condemned to oblivion unwillingly. If we ever make it that far, the worth of a life may be measured not in dollars, but in stars.
And the value that a life will have then, is the value that a life has now.
Lives should be treated as priceless, but it’s instrumentally rational to assign a value to a life in order to effectively do the most good. The gap between the value and the price is a measure of the difference between the universe that is, and the universe that should be.
Flashcards
What is the setup for the button thought experiment?
Imagine a button which, when pressed, picks a random number between one a million. If that number is one, it kills a randomly selected person. How much money would someone have to pay you to press that button?
Why should you press the button that has a one in a million chance of killing someone for $10$$?
Because you can save roughly 10 people for every one person that is killed.