We'll have to answer the questions of "How much is a life worth monetarily", "How much is this specific life worth in relation to others (or monetarily)", "Does this specific situation justify the loss of lives; if so, how many lives and, specifically, whose?", and "Who gets the power to answer these questions?"
We will have to act on the answers to those questions.
I believe those questions open an answer space that would give power to greedy, selfish, callous or indifferent people and ideologies to kill or let others die.
I believe if we accept a utilitarianism as justification for death, we'll be inviting proponents of human actuarial science, realpolitik, genocide, sterilization and murder of certain demographics 'for the betterment of society' to kill for profit, power or any of the other reasons people have killed others in past.
I don't believe that people determine value well, so I don't buy into the utilitarian argument for much. I also haven't seen good evidence that we can accurately quantify the outcomes of situations used in the utilitarian calculus before they've happened. While I reject utilitarianism as a whole, I find applying the utilitarian principle to human lives to be particularly detached.
> If you don't believe life can be quantified, why don't we spend unlimited dollars saving it?
I realize the questions I listed above have been asked and answered, directly and indirectly, at different times and by different people. Those questions and answers have justified a disregard for life and atrocities against humanity.
I don't believe we should base policy on the answers to those questions.
Roads claim lives, buildings claim lives, products claim lives. We balance costs in all those areas too.
I believe failing to answer those questions openly is a greater harm; You have no sense of improving quality of life, or increase human worth if you pretend it's universally priceless. If you refuse to set the price, others will.
> we'll be inviting proponents of human actuarial science, realpolitik, genocide, sterilization
why do you believe this? this are extreme examples. Conflating fascism with utilitarianism seems borderline slanderous.
> don't believe that people determine value well
They aren't going to improve if there are barred from doing so. What fills the gap if analytical methods don't? Even science started from fanciful roots, could we have had modern medicine without medieval doctors cutting up cadavers?
> While I reject utilitarianism as a whole
do you mean 'don't'?
> justified a disregard for life and atrocities against humanity
You seem to have a sabotaged "brave new world" definition of utilitarianism.
> why do you believe this? this are extreme examples. Conflating fascism with utilitarianism seems borderline slanderous.
Those people already try to make a utilitarian argument for their actions and beliefs.
I didn't make up utilitarian genocide[0] to slander utilitarians.
> Two given examples of this form are the genocide of indigenous peoples in Brazil and the genocide of indigenous peoples in Paraguay.[4]
> This form of genocide was highly prominent during the European colonial expansions into the Americas, Oceania, and Africa. The colonial expansion into the Americas was markedly different in its approaches to the accumulation of wealth. The French colonization of the Americas through exploitation and the fur trade had a minor impact on the indigenous peoples. The Spanish colonization of the Americas however was devastating to the indigenous population, as was the British colonization of the Americas.[5] Dadrian has also given as further examples of utilitarian genocide the murders of Moors and Jews during the Spanish Inquisition and the killing of Cherokee Indians during the colonial expansion of the United States.[6]
From STERILIZED in the Name of Public Health [1]:
> If utilitarian pursuit of the common good required mandatory vaccination to inoculate against communicable diseases, it also necessitated “immunizing” the hereditarily defective in order to prevent the spread of bad genes. Once seen as integral to health prophylaxis and as a cost-saving recourse, sterilization programs intensified at a clipped pace across the country in the 1930s.15 By 1932, twenty-seven states had laws on the books and procedures nationwide reached over 3900.16 Not only did operations increase markedly during this decade, but some states, such as Georgia and South Carolina, passed legislation for the first time.17
> In California, at least into the 1950s, compulsory sterilization was consistently described as a public health strategy that could breed out undesirable defects from the populace and fortify the state as a whole. Convinced of its efficacy, sterilization proponents pushed for implementation of the law beyond the walls of state institutions. For example, in his Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine column “Social Eugenics” (which ran from 1936 to 1941), Fred Hogue claimed that “in this country we have wiped out the mosquito carriers of yellow fever and are in a fair way to extinguish the malaria carriers: but the human breeders of the hereditary physical and mental unfit are only in exceptional cases placed under restraint.”18 To rectify this situation, Hogue recommended broader intervention and argued that eugenic practices, above all sterilization, were essential to “the protection of the public health” and “the health security of the citizens of every State.”19 second edition of their popular textbook Applied Eugenics, Popenoe and colleague Roswell H. Johnson underscored that “if persons whose offspring will be dysgenic are so lacking in intelligence, in foresight, or in self-control that they do not control themselves, the state must control them. Sterilization is the answer.”
This is why I mention actuaries, realpolitik, genocide and sterilization: people in those camps often make utilitarian arguments for their causes.
> You seem to have a sabotaged "brave new world" definition of utilitarianism.
I've heard too many utilitarian arguments for sterilizing or eliminating the poor or other minorities pitched as efforts to maximize happiness.
Sometimes, they're pitched as efforts to maximize the happiness of those being killed or sterilized.
Often, it's "children brought up in poverty suffer, poor children are statistically likely to remain poor into adulthood and their kids will likely be poor; therefore, less children in poverty is better. Here is some napkin math to justify the sterilization of the poor" or "X minority group is a net-detriment to society, therefore less of X minority group would increase society's happiness and prosperity. Here's some napkin math on expulsion and death camps".
The internet is filled with people who make such arguments.
> do you mean 'don't'?
Utilitarianism is useful in some of the ways the market is useful. The market is great at evaluating goods, assets and labor, but it has a terrible track record when it comes to life and human rights.
> They aren't going to improve if there are barred from doing so. What fills the gap if analytical methods don't? Even science started from fanciful roots, could we have had modern medicine without medieval doctors cutting up cadavers?
The philosophies of medicine and healthcare address medical ethics while trying to answer the questions I listed in my OP with regards to medicine.
> No, but when asked about utilitarianism, you go to utilitarian genocide.
I was talking about utilitarianism with regards to quantifying human lives, not strictly utilitarianism in general.
I believe cases from the past where utilitarianism, with regards to quantifying human lives, was used to justify objectively bad things like genocide or sterilization deserve to be considered.
Again, these are my beliefs, I'm not out to slander others.
> And is the time-cube guy considered representative of science?
Given that people with power and authority have used the utilitarian principle to justify bad things, along with the prevalence of such arguments today, makes this an unfair comparison.
Timecube guy has no authority or serious adherents to his ideas.
> I believe cases from the past where utilitarianism, with regards to quantifying human lives, was used to justify objectively bad things like genocide or sterilization deserve to be considered.
There's bad utilitarianism, much like there's bad science; bad science isn't science at all.
That people claimed their intentions were pure doesn't mean we have to accept that they were, and that we might be skeptical towards claims of utilitarianism as justifications for inhumanities doesn't suggest much about utilitarianism itself to me.
> I'm not out to slander others.
What I mean by this, is if you characterise utilitarianism as a justification for the above, people who support utilitarianism appear to be supporters of a terrible ideology, whereas those are cases are all deeply flawed, and not a fair representative of utilitarianism.
> people with power and authority have used the utilitarian principle to justify bad things
The comment was a response to "people on the internet" supporting terrible utilitarianism. they also have little authority.
Terrible things where done by doctors in the past, this says little about modern medical practice.
Why? You just say it is. I see non-utilitarian math as horrifying. The "let nature take its course" school of thought.
> You believe you can quantify the worth of a life so that it is easier to justify taking it.
Says who? Are you talking about intent?
If life can be quantified, there is a justification.
If you don't believe life can be quantified, why don't we spend unlimited dollars saving it?