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Melinda Gates at Stanford: "All lives have equal value"

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Re: Melinda Gates at Stanford: "All lives have equal value"

#61

Post by Swizec »

pron wrote: post #60
Swizec wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the value of life? Clearly we find the idea of financial value just a tad too cynical. Do we have any other measures? Something we can use to establish that all lives are in fact equally valuable? Also, as soon as we start claiming all life to be equally valuable we get into the moral issue of comparing somebody like Mother Theresa to someone like Ted Bundy and saying they were both equal in terms of value. I…

Why would you need to establish that at all? It is not a matter of fact, but a statement that serves as the basis of a moral standpoint. You can either choose to believe it, or not. As for Ted Bundy vs. Mother Theresa - ignoring the extremely complex philosophical question of the value of life - do you seriously think that's what Ms. Gates was implying? A philanthropist working to save lives in the third world says "…

> Why would you need to establish that at all?

Because otherwise the phrase has no meaning? So I'm going to decide I both believe it and think it's completely wrong. Now what?

Moral standpoints with no meaning are really weird, I might as well say "Potato" and claim it's something deep and philosophical that everyone should rally behind to liberate Africa from whatever is ailing it.

For instance, by donating potatoes.

The thing is, what does a graph with unlabeled axes tell you? Nothing, right? It's the same with undefined moral standpoints.

Re: Melinda Gates at Stanford: "All lives have equal value"

#62

Post by Muzza »

paganel wrote: post #32
confluence wrote: post #13

All lives don't have equal current value, but the do have equal eventual value - I'll explain that in a moment (please note: I mean financial/economic value as I believe the term "moral/intrinsic" value to be so vague and undefined as to be completely useless as a thought model or reasoning tool - I understand what Melinda means). This is empirically correct - a poor person in Africa is worth less than a rich America…

> This is why we should protect poor people This is paternalistic, and worse yet, it doesn't work, i.e. rich people "protecting" poor people. What indeed does work is a free market (and that includes a free jobs' market), meaning free access of all (rich and poor) to the benefits of exchanging goods and improving one's life. What the European Union (and to a lesser extent the USA) does now when it comes to Africa is…

> Imagine if those 2 million kids that get saved by the Gates Foundation instead of being forced to remain in conflict-prone Northern Nigeria or Kenya or Uganda were given the chance to come and work , legally, in Europe.

And I suppose the EU taxpayer will be footing the bill for all this imported poverty, and at the same he will be forced to endure a marked increase in social friction (ultimately ending in complete social chaos a la the no-go areas in the banlieues of France, Britain and Sweden).

Re: Melinda Gates at Stanford: "All lives have equal value"

#63

Post by andreasvc »

confluence wrote: post #39
michaelgrafl wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's some disturbing shit you've written there. You're disclaimer makes it even worse. I don't know what would be a constructive thing to say, except maybe that being a decent human being is based on believe and conviction, not logic. You either decide that every human being has infinite value (if you're inclined to attach a value to a human being), or you try to find reasons to diminish someone's value by slicing…

Oh I'm sorry - logic is clearly subordinate to fuzzy terms such as "belief" and "conviction" - I mean it's not like many bad things have come at the hands of belief or conviction - not at all. Logic has nothing to do with bringing the world out of poverty - people's gut reaction should instead be relied upon to make life or death decisions - Numbers? What's that? I mean there were the crusades - but really that was t…

> I mean it's not like many bad things have come at the hands of belief or conviction - not at all.

Similarly logic and rationalism can be condemned for excesses such as the French revolution. Of course you can retort "but those people were nuts," but overzealous rationalism is clearly just as dangerous as overzealous theology.

Re: Melinda Gates at Stanford: "All lives have equal value"

#64

Post by andreasvc »

batgaijin wrote: post #34

I hate the Gates foundation. You know what would help those kids a lot more than your medicine? Copies of all existing textbooks in an electronic format and access to all of our patents. When the polio vaccine was created the inventor refused to get a patent for it, saying no one has the right to own it just like no one has the right to own the sun. I just find it very hard to support the Gates foundation when I beli…

Why would you hate the Gates foundation for the state of affairs concerning intellectual property? There's a democratic process to change those laws, that change doesn't have to come from their foundation. I don't believe that dumping a load of textbooks and lifting some patents would do much in itself, that's just one of the barriers that's keeping the poor poor.

Re: Melinda Gates at Stanford: "All lives have equal value"

#65

Post by [deleted] »

jonah wrote: post #31
adaml_623 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are misquoting her. She is in favour of contraception. That gives a woman control over whether her body will become pregnant. I think you should elaborate. Your view is not very clear.

Not really. Birth control reduces the number of people born. I'm not saying anything about motives or whether it's the right thing to do or not, rather simply pointing it out. http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/jul/11/ric... http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/Search.aspx?meta=MDCont...

[deleted]

Re: Melinda Gates at Stanford: "All lives have equal value"

#66

Post by andreasvc »

jonah wrote: post #31
adaml_623 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are misquoting her. She is in favour of contraception. That gives a woman control over whether her body will become pregnant. I think you should elaborate. Your view is not very clear.

Not really. Birth control reduces the number of people born. I'm not saying anything about motives or whether it's the right thing to do or not, rather simply pointing it out. http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/jul/11/ric... http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/Search.aspx?meta=MDCont...

Birth control doesn't have to reduce the number of people that are born. It means having a choice, which reduces the number of unwanted children or children who cannot be cared for, which can ultimately to a happier, more productive and reproductive population, given that the children who are born can be better nurtured.

Are you against birth control for religious reasons?

Re: Melinda Gates at Stanford: "All lives have equal value"

#67

Post by tzs »

batgaijin wrote: post #34

I hate the Gates foundation. You know what would help those kids a lot more than your medicine? Copies of all existing textbooks in an electronic format and access to all of our patents. When the polio vaccine was created the inventor refused to get a patent for it, saying no one has the right to own it just like no one has the right to own the sun. I just find it very hard to support the Gates foundation when I beli…

> You know what would help those kids a lot more than your medicine? Copies of all existing textbooks in an electronic format and access to all of our patents.

Dead kids can't read.

Re: Melinda Gates at Stanford: "All lives have equal value"

#69

Post by gjm11 »

jonah wrote: post #54
gjm11 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The document you cite as [1] does not, in fact, say anything even slightly like "people are just a drain on natural resources". Here are the first few things it says: (1) "Family planning saves the lives of mothers and infants." (2) It "can significantly improve the health of women and their families." (3) "It can save millions of lives per year." The page claims -- I don't know whether it's correct, but actually tha…

I wasn't trying to summarize anything - I just pointed out something that struck me as dissonant while looking at that info graphic. Personally, I think you're sounding defensive.

But the infographic neither says nor implies what you say they think. Where, please, is the dissonance between supporting contraception and thinking that people are valuable?

I don't know what you think I'm trying to defend, other than people being accused of inconsistencies that aren't really there. For the avoidance of doubt, though: I have no connection of any sort with the Gates Foundation.

Re: Melinda Gates at Stanford: "All lives have equal value"

#70

Post by dromidas »

mikedmiked wrote: post #41
kaptain wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Melinda Gates wasn't talking about economic value. I find it difficult to believe that most HN'rs take her statement to mean economic value since, as most people have been pointing out, all lives don't have equivalent financial worth. The rest of your point, I think, is a very interesting way to look at the value of human life, but it is a crude way of evaluating the worth of humanity purely in the context of financi…

(justification to read my post here: at the end I argue richer people have higher moral value!) Many of us think its 'brave' and 'correct' to say "all lives are equal value" in the moral sense. Its a 'sexy' thought to have as it seems liberal and its simple, but it is ultimately wrong. Our actions are what define us, so a person who performs good/selfless actions that benefit others should be defined as higher value…

The reason nobody can agree on the 'value of life' is because the value changes per context. Life has no intrinsic value of its own except to the person who currently owns it. When anyone says 'all life has value' they are talking spiritually, or religiously, and that is something that is just feel good hippy speak to make themselves look and feel better.

To truly speak of lifes value you have to break it down into contexts and agree that these contexts are necessary to be used in the comparisons: Economic, political, civic, leadership, educational, breeding value, looks, etc.

Once a set of contexts are agreed upon you have to weigh them based on a common base, like say Economic, take that as a 1.0. Someone might say that 'looks' is a 0.6 based on economic value, where as leadership or engineering may be 1.2.

Once these weights are set, apply values to the contexts, weigh them together to get an total value of the person's life. Then you can accurately judge their life value vs another. You could improve upon this by having negatives (murderous villains) that could affect total value, etc.

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