RomeoStevens comments on A variant on the trolley problem and babies as unit of currency - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Solvent 08 January 2012 08:13AM

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Comment author: wedrifid 08 January 2012 01:00:50PM *  2 points [-]

You are offered a magical box. If you press the button on the box, one person somewhere in the world will die, you get $4000, and $6,000 is donated to one of the top rated charities on GiveWell.org. According to the $800 per life saved figure, this charity gift would save five lives, which is a net gain of four lives and $6,000 to you. Is it moral to press the button?

Yes. Sure, it increases the population, which is a shame, but I can do plenty of good with that $6k (including buying delicious cookies and or donating to the SIAI.)

Comment author: RomeoStevens 08 January 2012 08:49:16PM 5 points [-]

Increasing the population is not a shame if the average human is wealth producing. Which they are.

Comment author: Kingreaper 08 January 2012 09:21:17PM 4 points [-]

This is true IFF you value wealth above all other measures.

If you value net-happiness for example, it's not true.

Comment author: Raemon 08 January 2012 11:30:46PM *  2 points [-]

I think if you value net-happiness it's still not a shame, although it may be a shame if you value median-preference-satisfaction.

Comment author: Kingreaper 10 January 2012 06:40:57PM -1 points [-]

There are arguments that valuing net-happiness IN OUR CURRENT WORLD means you'd want to increase the human population.

However, in an arbitrary world, where wealth-production correlates with human population, there's no reason to assume that net-happiness would also correlate with wealth-production.

IOW: his conclusion (it's not a shame) has a truth value that depends on value system, but his reasoning is true only if you have one, very specific, value system (you value near-future-wealth-production as your terminal value)

Comment author: wedrifid 09 January 2012 01:21:58AM 0 points [-]

Or, for that matter, if you value probability of human life not going extinct.

Comment author: billswift 09 January 2012 12:47:31PM 0 points [-]

Wrong.

Subsequently, Kahnemann and Deaton have found that while life satisfaction, a judgment about how one's life is going overall, does continue to rise with income, the quality of subjective experience improves until an annual income of about $75K and then plateaus. They conclude that "high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness [i.e., subjective experiential quality], and that low income is associated both with low life evaluation and low emotional well-being."

What's average world income? About $8K per year! The typical experience of a human being on Earth is "low life evaluation and low emotional well-being" due to too little money. How many times does global GDP need to double in order to put the average person at Kahnemann's $75K hedonic max-out point? Three and change. But life satisfaction ain't worth nothin', and it keeps rising. And, of course, rising income doesn't just correlate with rising happiness, but with better health, greater longevity, more and better education, increased freedom to choose the sort of life one wants, and so on. If it's imperative to improve the health, welfare, and possibilities of humanity, growth is imperative.

Why Economic Growth Totally Is Imperative

Comment author: juliawise 10 January 2012 12:58:24AM 2 points [-]

This quote does not mean "anyone earning less than happiness-plateau-level money has a life not worth living".

Comment author: Karmakaiser 09 January 2012 07:28:44PM 0 points [-]

Do you know how the $75,000 was reached? More specifically, I'm wondering where holder of the $75,000 is located. Is it specifically an amount of 75k where life satisfaction plateaus or is it a certain standard of living that would require more or less funds if the random plateaued person was in a different city? If they both earn the same amount, does someone from Oklahoma City have an equivalent amount of satisfaction as one in Palo Alto?

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