For all intents and purposes, I said a health care system where the population lives 80 years and 10% of them are disabled was better than one where the health care system cost the same and the population lives 80 years but 20% of them are disabled.
Well, what you said was:
lifespan metric is weighted by degree of full functionality, that is various deficits [...] would all and each reduce the weighting of years of life in the metric.
That's a weighting applied to individuals, implied to be used when making individual decisions. And you clarified:
But all other things being equal, and in the highly artificial situation that only one of Bob and Alice would be saved, it seems more reasoanble to pick the more functional than the less functional.
And my point was to investigate the value-system behind that claim. Why value "functionality" in terms of physical disabilities — and not in terms of any of the other things that people have made this decision on — such as social status, reproductive potential, earned income, skin color, belovedness by others, moral virtue, or purity of soul?
And my point was to investigate the value-system behind that claim. Why value "functionality" in terms of physical disabilities — and not in terms of any of the other things that people have made this decision on — such as social status, reproductive potential, earned income, skin color, belovedness by others, moral virtue, or purity of soul?
First, I never based it on PHYSICAL disability. For me, the paradigm disability is reduced mental status, with vegetative state being worth nothing in terms of keeping alive. But why limit myself to ment...
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.