Okay. No argument.

What about "Increasing the number of violent deaths?" Can that be justified by economic growth? Example: raising interstate speed limits to 75 from 55 increased auto accident deaths by more than 3,000 per year. But it speeds up trucks, reducing the cost of shipping.

On the other hand, economic growth provides more funding for medical research and hospitals. Those, in turn, save thousands more lives. Can this effect of economic growth justify the deaths of ~100 coal miners per year, without which we wouldn't have the cheap energy that allows the tax base that funds NIH?

Yust vundering,
RBK

Just adding to Robin's point, China's GDP is growing at the cost of 16 coal miners a day, for a grand total of 6000 deaths per year. And I don't think that their survivors are getting the benefit of improved hospital care, or life insurance, as the PRC is even more of a haves and have-nots kind-of-place than the U.S. of A.

On a related note, I always thought it was Pin-o-shay.

I'm conflicted about this sort of thing. On one hand, I tend toward an instinct to do the kind of domino-effect utilitarian analysis that Robin's attempting. On the other hand, any such attempt inevitably leads to something along these lines. So maybe a pre-supposition is just as well.

P.S., I am amused that the References in Popular Culture section of the Brain in a vat Wikipedia entry starts with the following:

'Note that these are all references to the "brain in a vat" thought experiment, as described above. For a list of media that simply feature brains in jars, see Media featuring brains in jars.'

I don't think this is about utility or deaths or even violent deaths. For all I know, total violent deaths may have decreased during those 17 years. For me, it's about state terror. Maybe that is about utility, but at some macro-political level at which it's value is BAD.

Still, I think we also deal with this in less simple forms. Consider homicides vs "deadly interventions" in New York City.

First of all, I simply have to applaud TK's reference. Great page. I just wasted about an hour...

I should also point out that my comment really wasn't a veiled attempt to push an agenda, nor an [inevitably futile] attempt to analyze the dominos. My actual position is that moral questions are ill-defined; absolute statements almost always imply their own opposite. So, I'm not trying to argue that murder is justified -- instead, I'm (Socratically) arguing that sharp and coherent moral reasoning doesn't exist.

Murders can't be justified merely by economic growth.

i think this is immune to socratic rearrangement and the reason is that a dead person is provably dead, but the likelihood, the extent, and the real source of future economic gains are all virtually unprovable. meanwhile, there are corpses.

also i don't think high quality people kill for money. they kill because they are f*ckers. in my mind, it is a separate thing.

(h)