lifespan metric is weighted by degree of full functionality, that is various deficits like unable to run, unable to walk, unable to talk, blindness, deaf, missing limbs, confined to nursing home, confined to hospital, would all and each reduce the weighting of years of life in the metric.
It seems to me that this sort of procedure has some problematic consequences in how it ranks possible futures. Consider these two possible futures:
A. Alice, an able-bodied person, lives for another year as such.
B. Alice lives for another year but loses the use of her legs this afternoon.
This procedure (correctly, in my view) prefers A over B. However:
C. Alice, who is able-bodied, lives for another year; while Bob, who has no legs, dies this afternoon.
D. Alice dies this afternoon; while Bob lives for another year.
The procedure prefers C over D as well. It is not clear to me that this is obviously the right answer. The procedure is asserting that saving Alice's life is more worthwhile than saving Bob's, by dint of Alice having legs.
Moreover, for any degree of "weighting by full functionality", the procedure prefers to save the lives of a smaller population of able-bodied people rather than a larger population of disabled people. If the "weighting" for loss of legs is, say, 0.9, then the procedure prefers to save the lives of 901 able-bodied people rather than save the lives of 1000 legless people.
It seems to me that such a procedure will — given constrained resources — prefer to maintain the health of the healthy rather than ameliorate the condition of the sick and disabled. While obviously we do not want a medical decision procedure that goes around allowing people to become disabled when it could be avoided (as in A and B), I don't think that we want one that considers someone's life less worthwhile because that person has already become disabled.
C. Alice, who is able-bodied, lives for another year; while Bob, who has no legs, dies this afternoon. D. Alice dies this afternoon; while Bob lives for another year.
The procedure prefers C over D as well. It is not clear to me that this is obviously the right answer. The procedure is asserting that saving Alice's life is more worthwhile than saving Bob's, by dint of Alice having legs.
A stronger signal comes from the age/life-expectancy of Alice and Bob. But all other things being equal, and in the highly artificial situation that only one of Bob and ...
In line with the results of the poll here, a thread for discussing politics. Incidentally, folks, I think downvoting the option you disagree with in a poll is generally considered poor form.
1.) Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
2.) Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
3.) A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
4.) In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.
If anybody thinks the rules should be dropped here, now that we're no longer conducting a test - I already dropped the upvoting/downvoting limits I tried, unsuccessfully, to put in - let me know. The first rule is the only one I think is strictly necessary.
Debiasing attempt: If you haven't yet read Politics is the Mindkiller, you should.