soreff comments on Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease - Less Wrong

236 Post author: Yvain 30 May 2010 09:16PM

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Comment author: spencerth 31 May 2010 07:18:43PM 7 points [-]

Very good article. One thing I'd like to see covered are conditions that are "treatable" with good lifestyle choices, but whose burden is so onerous that no one would consider them acceptable. Let's say you have a genetic condition which causes you to gain much more weight (5x, 10x - the number is up to the reader) than a comparable non-affected person. So much that the only way you can prevent yourself from becoming obese is to strenuously exercise 8 hours a day. If a person chooses not to do this, are they really making a "bad" choice? Is it still their fault? In this scenario, 1/3 of your day/life has become about treating this condition. I doubt too many people would honestly choose to do the "virtuous" thing in this situation.

Second thing I'd like covered: things that were inflicted on you without your consent. How much blame can you take for, let's say, your poor job prospects if your parents beat you severely every day (giving you slight brain damage of some kind, but not enough for it to be casually noticeable), fed you dog food and dirt sandwiches until you were 18, or forced you to live in an area where bullets flew into your room while you slept, forcing you to wake up in terror? There's plenty of evidence for the potentially devastating and permanent effects of trauma, poor childhood nutrition, and stress. Sure, some people manage to live like that and come out of it OK, but can everyone? Is it still right to hold someone so treated /morally/ responsible for doing poorly in their life?

Comment author: soreff 31 May 2010 07:49:19PM 1 point [-]

One thing I'd like to see covered are conditions that are "treatable" with good lifestyle choices, but whose burden is so onerous that no one would consider them acceptable.

Excellent point. This can even be made considerably stronger: The whole health care debate was about ~15% of our economy (I'm writing from the U.S.). For any given individual, working a 40 hour week, the equivalent cost would be to burden them with ~15% of their working hours with some lifestyle choice (whether 6 hours per week of exercise or some other comparably time consuming action). Lifestyle changes can be damned expensive in terms of opportunity costs.