(A possible world in which some life-saving agency prefers to save 901 able-bodied people and allows 1000 disabled people to die might also might include significant consequences
You didn't really propose the counterfactual. But beyond that, the essence of my metric is that a world which adds 2 years to the lives of 1000 triple amputees compared to a world which regenerates the limbs of 500 of those triple amputees, but fails to extend their lifespans by two years. I don't pretend to know at exactly what numbers preference becomes confusing for most people, but I know for darn sure that most people will risk death in operations to improve or preserve their functioning. How do you include that fact in a metric other than by showing a positive value for positive outcomes?
How do you include that fact in a metric other than by showing a positive value for positive outcomes?
By extrapolating from the choices of the people involved? It seems to me that people with no legs have just as much interest in staying alive as people with two legs. That doesn't mean they have an interest in staying no-legged rather than becoming two-legged; but I don't consider "give Bob his legs back" equivalent to "kill Bob and save Alice, who has legs", either.
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.