Except that the expected cost is way, way lower than 310 Billion per year. It's actually more like 100 billion per year. 3.1 Trillion is the total amount the US spends on healthcare, and as discussed in the trump thread, it's mostly that high because you are completely awful at it. But The afforadable care act is much, much cheaper than that.
And, unsurprisingly to everyone who lives outside the united states, the expected costs are *falling*, not rising.
I keep hearing the claim that socializing healthcare would reduce the total cost. But no one has explained the mechanism by which this price reduction would supposedly occur.
Your link says *premiums* are falling, but premiums are just one of many costs associated with healthcare. The link also attributes some of the cost "savings" to inaccurate CBO estimates that are being revised in light of better data. I'm not sure you can call those real savings.
There are a number of reasons it tends to fall. One is this:
Let's say you need a surgery of some kind. Let's say a hip replacement.
You are in utterly no position to bargain. If someone tells you it costs 20 grand, well, that's the cost. You need it; it's not like you're buying a beta lotus, which you can bargain on, you're buying something essential for you to function.
On the other hand, if you have a system like medicarein AU, someone else is doing the bargaining for you. The government tenders out to all the makers of new hips, and of those that meet the quality standard, everyone knows the winner is likely to be the cheapest*.
Winning the contract to replace all those hips is worth a ton of money, so all the companies are strongly motivated to provide their actual best price. It's a standard economy of scale; If I know I'm selling a thousand hips a year for 5 years I can gear up to sell them much much more efficiently.
That's a great story, but unfortunately stories don't prove anything when we're talking about a system as complex as economics. I can tell a different story about the hip market and get to the exact opposite conclusion. Neither of our made-up stories proves anything (although I happen to think mine comes closer to reality):
Let's say you need a surgery of some kind. Let's say a hip replacement.
You are in utterly no position to bargain with any individual maker of replacement hips. But you are in a position to chose between the, say, five or ten different hip providers out there. If low price is what matters to you, you'll choose the lowest-price option available. The hip providers know this, and this means every hip provider has a strong incentive to offer its "best price" in order to take the business that would otherwise go to its competitors. If one provider tries to artificially hike up its prices, no one will buy from them and they'll lose money to their competitors.
On the other hand, if you have a system like medicarein AU, someone else is doing the bargaining for you. The government picks for you which hip you'll get. If the government is perfectly efficient and not corrupt, then this could be the best and cheapest hip provider.
Winning the contract to replace all those hips is worth a ton of money and grants the hip maker a government-sponsored monopoly over the entire market, so all the hip companies are strongly motivated to do everything they can to win the contract while getting the highest possible price for their product. This might include things like donating money to corrupt politicians who will make sure they win the contract. It also includes other tactics like regulatory capture. The ability to "cheat" the competitive bidding process is one reason why the US pays such an exorbitant amount of money for the military. Think Cheney and Halliburton, but now spilling over into the world of healthcare.
Also, what happens if the hip provider wins the contract and just decides to jack up prices later? I guess we go to their competitors? Wait, they don't have any competitors because we gave a single company a complete monopoly over the hip market and drove all the competitors out of business.
It's also long-term cheaper because prevention is much much cheaper than cure. If you can catch a condition at the MD stage rather than the emergency room, you save a whole ton of money, and get the person to be a more productive member of society into the bargain.
Source? Preventing something that kills you fast so something can kill you slow later might ultimately be much more expensive. Again, stories don't prove anything.
Except that the expected cost is way, way lower than 310 Billion per year. It's actually more like 100 billion per year. 3.1 Trillion is the total amount the US spends on healthcare, and as discussed in the trump thread, it's mostly that high because you are completely awful at it. But The afforadable care act is much, much cheaper than that.
And, unsurprisingly to everyone who lives outside the united states, the expected costs are *falling*, not rising.
I keep hearing the claim that socializing healthcare would reduce the total cost. But no one has explained the mechanism by which this cost reduction would supposedly occur.
Your link says *premiums* are falling, but premiums are just one of many costs associated with healthcare. The link also attributes some of the cost "savings" to inaccurate CBO estimates that are being revised in light of better data. I'm not sure you can call those real savings.
EDIT: Question, for balance purposes, what do you think of this card?
Primal Spell 1U
Sorcery (Common)
Draw two cards, then discard two cards.
Dredge 2 (If you would draw a card, instead you may put exactly two cards from the top of your library into your graveyard. If you do, return this card from your graveyard to your hand. Otherwise, draw a card.)
The network spat this out for a common sorcery in blue with dredge. This idea of dredge in blue is fun to play with, but I am curious as to how we should price card draw paired with dredge because of the powerful interactions. Let me know what you think. For example, I can restrict it so that cheap draw and dredge don't show up together. Not sure about the best course of action though.
Probably fine for Limited and Standard. Likely bannable in Legacy and Modern. Not sure whether it would have a big impact on Vintage.
It's basically an activation of Bazaar of Baghdad that has Dredge. Those things are very synergistic together. But it has the drawback of costing mana, which can be tough for the kinds of decks that would want it. If it cost 2U it would probably be safe.
Haha, Someone is so weak though. "That player discards a card."
Yes, you don't actually get to choose the card as worded, but it's still insanely powerful. A bear that generates a ton of repeatable card advantage. It's comparable to something like Dark Confidant and would be borderline bannable in most constructed formats.
We could have agreed on the opposite if we wanted to.
We couldn't do that AND have a sensible discussion. If we want to have a meaningful conversation, then we have to agree inconstant is worse than constant.
If our goal is to find truth, then we must follow the tenets of logic.
Yes, if our mutual goal is to find truth. But there is no reason it "must" or "should be" our goal. We have chosen to care about finding truth, but we could have chosen to do otherwise. There is nothing inherently "good" or "correct" about our decision, and nothing "bad" or "wrong" with choosing to care about other things instead.
Perhaps we can rephrase all moral statements as "if you want [Y] then do [X]," but a Christian would say that moral statements have the additional special property that all entities will a soul will inescapably come to the conclusion that they should have wanted Y.
A Christian could feel all entities with a soul inescapably come to the conclusion that "2+2=4," does that make it moral?
The word "feel" in your statement is a little confusing. The Christian isn't making a claim about what they "feel," the Christian is purporting to make a factual claim about what actually happens to creatures with souls after they die. I happen to think the Christian is wrong, but they're still purporting to advance an objective factual claim, not a matter of subjective feeling.
Morality adds a "good" and "bad" dimension, so in order to transform "2+2=4" into an objective moral statement, we would need to add that all entities with a soul inescapably come to the conclusion that believing "2+2=4" is "good" (perhaps because God always punishes those who do not believe 2+2=4, or because he always rewards those who do believe 2+2=4, or because some other property of the soul necessarily compels this conclusion).
How can non-theists draw an intrinsic distinction between moral and non-moral if-then statements? What makes the exhortation to wear a jacket fundamentally different from the exhortation not to kill?
For a theist the difference would be between spiritual consequences and physical ones. Things with nonphysical "if..then" clauses and consequences would be "moral."
But, really all this is saying is a subsection of "if..then" clauses and consequences can be labeled "moral."
Nontheists -normally- use "moral" for "if...then" clauses and consequences that deal directly with suffering. The bottomline being -like all words- it's just a label that refers to something. And, like words such as "alive," the line between what counts and what doesn't is blurred and subject to personal axioms. This doesn't mean nothing is "alive," it just means the discussion continues about what exactly is "alive."
This shows that the term "alive" like the term "moral" does not have an objective definition. It is a useful subjectively-defined term that we humans use to categorize things. But "aliveness" is not an objective property of anything. It's a descriptive term humans invented and defined.
To say "nontheists -normally- use "moral" for 'if...then' clauses and consequences that deal directly with suffering" only reinforces my point that non-theist morality is entirely subjective. First of all, even if all Moral statements are about suffering, why should the "direction" of Moral statements necessarily point away from suffering rather than toward it? Moreover, why must morality have anything to do with suffering at all? This is just an arbitrary determination that humans have made, but there is no objective reason why it must be so.
To put it another way, there is nothing objectively "special" or "privileged" about moral statements, and there is no way to prove that any true "if...then..." statement is "better" than any other. Compare the statements "if you want to maximize human flourishing, you should not kill innocent people" with the statement "if you want to maximize human suffering, you should kill as many people as possible." How can we establish that one statement is "good" and the other "bad?"
There is nothing intrinsically worse about violating one statement than the other.
I would disagree with this. The consequences can be "worse." Logic might not find anything 'intrinsically worse' with violating one statement than the other, but logic doesn't find not violating one 'intrinsically worse' then violating one. Logic doesn't care about anything, and is incapable of saying if ANYTHING is 'worse' than anything else, even if one violates its own tenets and the other doesn't. Only we are. Intrinsically in this very dissection we are both saying: "My argument is more constant with logic and empirical evidence than yours, and -therefore- is "better." In order to use logic, we must make value judgments and 'care,' otherwise we would be as ineffectual as BS's omniscience computer. Thus, one can certainly say something is "worse" than something else.
In fact, to even have this dissection we MUST.
We are having this discussion because we both happen to care about logical consistency and we happen to agree that it is a valuable or useful thing to us. Nothing objectively compels us to agree about this, nor is there any objective standard by which logical consistency is "good." Therefore we can only say by fiat or by subjective agreement that logical consistency is "better" or "good." We could have agreed on the opposite if we wanted to. There is no universal or absolute sense in which logical consistency is "good."
If that's the case, then I think you're forced to concede OP's point, which is that the non-theist view of morality is much weaker than the Christian view of morality. Christian morality purports to impose certain inescapable, objective duties on all humankind. Failure to comply with one's moral duty will necessarily have consequences. You would apparently concede that moral statements do not impose objective duties on anyone (they may impose subjective duties if society decides to enforce them). If that's true, there's no objective force that compels moral compliance; there's nothing transforming "is" statements into "ought" statements.
Don't you see how these statements refute what your saying? "Failure to comply with one's moral duty will necessarily have consequences."
That's the heart of what we're debating about "should."
We're on the same page that "should" is simply a shorthand way of saying a complicated "if.. then." And, even in an 'absolute morality' system -like Christian- that's all it is: "You should do this, because if you don't God will be sad, and you don't want God sad." Morality must work within logic, thus "should" must have a logical analog, and it does. That's the very reason why things like Euthyphro's dilemma have meaning.
Moral/religious systems ALL have negative consequences for doing 'bad' and positive ones for doing 'good.' That's how they ALL work: "You should do [X], BECAUSE if you do [X] then [Y] will happen. You shouldn't do [A], BECAUSE if you do [A] then [C] will happen."
The system you're trying to claim a moral system 'must be' doesn't make sense, and no one has ever claimed to have one. The very reason we are having this debate is because no one literally accepts "You should do good for goodness sake." If we did, this conversation would be moot.
This is where a concept along the lines of "objectively intolerable" or "universally subjectively intolerable" would come into play. A Christian would make a statement along the lines of: "all creatures with a soul, by their intrinsic nature, will necessarily come to the conclusion that immoral actions are intolerable (i.e. when they face judgement in the afterlife), and therefore all creatures with a soul necessarily should act morally." In other words, there is some inescapable distinction that God or the universe will always draw between moral and immoral actions, and this distinction compels all humans to ultimately determine that the moral choice is "good" while the immoral choice is "bad."
Perhaps we can rephrase all moral statements as "if you want [Y] then do [X]," but a Christian would say that moral statements have the additional special property that all entities will a soul will inescapably come to the conclusion that they should have wanted Y. How can non-theists draw an intrinsic distinction between moral and non-moral if-then statements? What makes the exhortation to wear a jacket fundamentally different from the exhortation not to kill?
In other words, the fact that people can freely reject logic (or mathematics, which is a subset of logic) doesn't have any bearing on the validity of logic. This is because logic does not impose any duties or requirements on anyone. Logic doesn't care whether anyone "follows it" or "believes in it."
Morality, on the other hand, purports to impose duties and requirements on people. Unlike pure logic, morality says people "should" and "shouldn't" do certain things. If people are free to reject morality, then in what sense can we say a moral duty or requirement exits? What do ideas like "should" and "shouldn't" mean if people are free to simply ignore them?
So, your assertion is a statement like: "if you want [survival/flourishing of the species], then [behave morally]" -which I hope we can both agree is a moral statement- DOES care if people "follows it" or "believes in it?" Because I don't think it does.
We are in agreement that a statement of the form "if you want [survival/flourishing of the species], then [behave morally]" does not care whether people follow or believe in it.
However, the statement of the form "one ought to [behave morally]" could be interpreted to impose an absolute duty and to "care" whether people follow or believe in it.
If you agree with me that all "ought" statements of the form "one ought to [do X]" really just reduce to instrumental statements of the form "if one wants [Y] then [do X]" then we're on the same page.
However, I would argue that these kinds of truths are not "moral truths" the way OP (and most people) talk about morality. For example, under our framework, the statement "if you don't want to get cold, you should wear a jacket" is as much a moral truth as "if you want humankind to flourish, you should not kill innocent people." There is nothing intrinsically worse about violating one statement than the other. We as a society might choose to punish violations of the latter and not the former, but there is nothing objective or universal that says it must be so. There is no intrinsic requirement or duty associated with either statement.
If that's the case, then I think you're forced to concede OP's point, which is that the non-theist view of morality is much weaker than the Christian view of morality. Christian morality purports to impose certain inescapable, objective duties on all humankind. Failure to comply with one's moral duty will necessarily have consequences. You would apparently concede that moral statements do not impose objective duties on anyone (they may impose subjective duties if society decides to enforce them). If that's true, there's no objective force that compels moral compliance; there's nothing transforming "is" statements into "ought" statements.
In the non-theist view of morality it's possible for someone to live a completely immoral life and "get away with it"; in other words, suffer no negative consequences. There is no objective system of justice imposed by the universe, by Karma, or by God. That's what Dahmer's quote is getting at. "If I can get away with it, why shouldn't I do it?"
[This also means there's no correct answer to the question of what you "should" do in the case of the Trolley Problem. You can give answers like "if you want to maximize human flourishing, do [X]" but the problem doesn't specify that you need to care about human flourishing. If nothing objectively requires you to care, then there's no "should." Any answer to the trolley problem is potentially valid, depending on what the person answering the problem happens to care about. Thus the statement "I would not push the fat man onto the tracks because I want the trolley to kill as many people as possible" would be a perfectly valid logical answer to the Trolley Problem.]
Not unlike how people on this forum care about logic and try to get others to care about and follow its tenets. Logic itself doesn't require this devotion, but people feel the need to give it such anyway.
If moral consequences only exist when people convince each other to care about morality, then these consequences necessarily cease to exist when no one cares. For example, if everyone in your society believes slavery is good, there is no reason why you should feel obligated to oppose slavery. You might decide you want to oppose slavery, perhaps because you believe getting rid of slavery will improve "human flourishing" in your society, but there's no particular reason you must care about human flourishing. And even if you do care about human flourishing, there's no reason why you must bear the personal costs of opposing slavery and freeing your slaves. You might decide you don't care about human flourishing as much as you care about your own personal comfort, in which case you're free to act "immorally" without facing any consequences.
We must be using different dictionaries:
"Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within the other person's frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another's shoes." [1]
We can imagine Dahmer (or a Dahmer-like character) with the ability to fully experience "empathy" as defined above, who simply doesn't care about the other person's suffering. This definition of empathy is not sufficient to render bad actions "universally subjectively intolerable."
Even if this definition were sufficient, it's gutting any meaning of the phrase "universally subjectively intolerable." That phrase refers to something that is intolerable from every possible subjective perspective. This includes the subjective perspective of people like Dahmer who lack empathy. You're changing the parameters of the question by granting Dahmer the ability to feel empathy.
Regardless, I will assert that Dahmer had a moral learning disability; he was not a moral guru. His inability to understand morality doesn't somehow invalidate morality, anymore than the existence of someone with sever Dyscalculia invalidates mathematics.
Nor does people giving contradictory answers invalidate logic.
Crashing00 made a similar point on the previous page. Let me quote my response here:
[R]ationality does not demand that you care about it. No one claims that the existence of rationality imposes any duty on anyone to do anything.
But morality, by making "ought" statements, is purporting to impose duties on people to act a particular way. If people are perfectly free not to care about these duties and not act the way they "ought" to act, then the word "ought" is meaningless. If there is no particular reason a person "ought" to care about and follow moral rules, then why do we call them moral rules?
In other words, the fact that people can freely reject logic (or mathematics, which is a subset of logic) doesn't have any bearing on the validity of logic. This is because logic does not impose any duties or requirements on anyone. Logic doesn't care whether anyone "follows it" or "believes in it."
Morality, on the other hand, purports to impose duties and requirements on people. Unlike pure logic, morality says people "should" and "shouldn't" do certain things. If people are free to reject morality, then in what sense can we say a moral duty or requirement exits? What do ideas like "should" and "shouldn't" mean if people are free to simply ignore them?
Why would "perfect understanding" include a feeling of empathy?
Because empathy is a subcategory of understanding; mainly, an understanding of the emotions of others.
Empathy is not just "understanding the emotions of others," it is understanding and caring about the emotions of others. Someone could fully understand the emotions of others and simply not care.
What you're saying is: if we somehow modified Dahmer's subjective emotional experiences, we could make harming others intolerable to him. But that is the opposite of saying that harming others is "universally subjectively intolerable." Instead, harming others is only subjectively intolerable to people who subjectively experience an emotional reaction that makes harming others intolerable to them. Other people (like Dahmer) do not experience this type of emotional reaction and do not experience harming others as subjectively intolerable. We would have to change Dahmer's subjective outlook in order to make harming others intolerable to him. This proves that harming others is not universally subjectively intolerable.
Complete knowledge of the outcomes of our evil actions could easily be "universally subjectively intolerable."
If Dahmer didn't just have a superficial understanding of the outcome of his actions, and really and truly understood -on a deep level- those outcomes (outcomes like the emotions his actions caused in others), I don't think it's unreasonable to believe he would feel remorse for what he did.
Certainly it could cause him to feel remorse, but there's no reason it must. For something to be "universally" intolerable, it's not sufficient to say it "could" be intolerable. "Universally subjectively intolerable" means intolerable to every conceivable subjective observer.
Complete knowledge of the outcomes of our evil actions could easily be "universally subjectively intolerable."
Probably not intolerable to Dahmer. He witnessed firsthad a large part of the suffering his actions caused, and it didn't seem to bother him.
It didn't bother him because he lacked empathy. You know, "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another." If he were to have that understanding -that knowledge- I think it's safe to say it would bother him.
I'm pretty sure giving him perfect understanding -including empathy- and then making him analyze the full consequences of his actions would be rather intolerable. I would even call it "universally subjectively intolerable."
Why would "perfect understanding" include a feeling of empathy? Certainly it would include perfect knowledge of what the other person is experiencing. But empathy is knowledge plus a certain type of emotional reaction to that knowledge.
What you're saying is: if we somehow modified Dahmer's subjective emotional experiences, we could make harming others intolerable to him. But that is the opposite of saying that harming others is "universally subjectively intolerable." Instead, harming others is only subjectively intolerable to people who subjectively experience an emotional reaction that makes harming others intolerable to them. Other people (like Dahmer) do not experience this type of emotional reaction and do not experience harming others as subjectively intolerable. We would have to change Dahmer's subjective outlook in order to make harming others intolerable to him. This proves that harming others is not universally subjectively intolerable.
Just what exactly do you expect the politicians to do?
Like, is Hillary Clinton going to send the military into China and force them to stop industrializing? There's nothing to be done.
Exactly, the pollies aren't equipped to deal with this. I don't think they ever will be. Just look at the gun debate in the US for an example of politicians being unable to change things that obviously need reform.
The gun issue is a matter of Constitutional law in the US, not a matter of politicians being unable to get anything done. Even if 100% of politicians agreed that gun rules need to change, it would require a Constitutional amendment before they could make any major reforms.
1. Show climate change is happening.
2. Show humans activities are a significant cause of climate change.
3. Show it's not too late.
4. Show that it's feasible to regulate global emissions.
5. Show it would do more good than harm.
A lot of people I know think much the same as you on this topic, although I differ a bit.
I think points 1 & 2 whilst debateable to some, are a certainty in the world of science.
We know there are natural phenomena relating to global warming, but when you compare the man-made reasons with historical ice cores, it's pretty clear the natural phenomena haven't been all that different in the time of the human race.
That's why I regard this as "probably proven."
But our understand of climate is imperfect (to put it mildly) and our models are oversimplifications by necessity. We're dealing with an extremely complex and chaotic system when we're talking about weather. Answering the question "what is causing climate change?" is similar to attempting to answer the question "what caused the US to go from essentially nothing in the 19th century, to a world economic power?" We can posit plausible explanations, but at the end of the day these are emergent properties of highly complex and nonlinear systems. It's very hard to draw reliable arrows of causation.
To me, it seems likely that climate change is largely caused by humans. But there could be other screwy things going on that we don't understand very well right now. Changes in solar output, long-term weather cycles causing a "reverse ice age," who knows?
Point 3 is a tricky one, and much more opinion biased. I think it is too late, simply because even if we do act now on a global scale, the sheer number of humans on the planet means it will gradually become much harder to keep emissions down, if not impossible. Given inaction at present, I think we gonna be getting sunburnt.
If it's too late, then why implement costly policy changes like regulating CO2 emissions? You still seem to act like this would be a good idea.
Point 4 is very difficult. The old notion of, "we'll change when they change" has so far been the status quo. To me this one is far harder to find a solution for any other. It's a shame, because it's obvious there are many leaders in the world who feel very passionate about this topic, but seem to be impotent at effecting change.
In the history of mankind, how many policies have ever been successfully enacted on a global level? I think the answer is basically zero.
Point 5 is where the discussion can get ugly in my mind. Are you a socialist or a capitalist?
I'm a realist. It doesn't really matter whether I think socialism or capitalism is the better way of running an economy -- people react to economic incentives the same way regardless.
I honestly think something like a global limit on fossil fuel sources of power could be one of the ways to really effect change.
How would it effect change if, as you say, we're too late?
If every country was contracted to have a certain percentage of clean power generated by a certain time, especially in the first world, it might actually make a difference. But then of course the miners would chuck a fit, export-style economies like Australia would nose-dive and no ones happy... so there's that.
Any time you artificially make something (e.g. fossil fuels) more expensive, this will reduce economic output. That's not always a bad thing, sometimes it's worth incurring this cost. But it's critically important to remember that this cost exists and needs to be factored in when making policy decisions.
The relevant question is whether the benefit of reducing fossil fuel use outweighs the economic cost. If, as you say, it's too late to fix the problem, then I don't see why we would want to incur the economic costs of restricting fossil fuels.
People are squeamish for a reason. If you ever want nightmares, do some reading about Fukushima and how loooooooooooong this nightmare will last.
Hint: Our great-great-great-great-grandkids will still have to deal with it. And while they're at it, they'll be living on top of giant water tanks full of radioactive sea water used to cool the reactors. If you're not well informed of this stuff, do some digging.
Lets say we have a huge Fukushima-like disaster every year. Kills 1,000 people and contaminates a radius of 20km. That's still a tiny number of lives lost and a tiny fraction of the earth's land-area destroyed when compared with the projected future damage from climate change.
No energy source is perfect right now. All we can do is pick the best option.
Isn't it? "Logically" doesn't necessarily mean "add up the lives lost and lives saved". It is an assumption on your part that those are the only variables which matter. More than that, it is the very assumption the fat man scenario was written to question.
Alright, help me out than. Other than the emotions evoked, what's the fundamental difference between the original Trolley Problem to the Fat Man Trolley Problem? I thought -more or less- the only difference between the two different variants was the 'ick' factor of physically pushing someone to their death over the more 'sanitized' version of just flipping a switch. However, the more I read and post on this thread the more I realize just how little I understand the Trolley Problem's meanings and implications.
Maybe someone could just recommend a book or something for me to read? Because I'm pretty sure -at this point- the only thing I'm adding to this conversation are questions and a display of ignorance. I don't mind asking them or looking stupid, but I don't want to bother anyone if this is something I can take care of on my own.
I think realizing one's ignorance and biases is the point of the trolley problem.
Whether the Original Trolley Problem is the same as the Fat Man Trolley Problem is not a question with a known answer. It's meant to generate debate about what matters when figuring out moral questions. If you think that the number of lives involved is all that matters, then you'll think the answers are the same. If you think other factors also matter, then you might not think the answers are the same.
Some differences between the two Problems that may or may not be relevant:
In the Original problem you are the trolley conductor. In the Fat Man problem you are a bystander. The conductor may have different moral rights and responsibilities than a bystander.
In the Original problem all six people involved are already standing on tracks, which presumably means they have chosen to place themselves in "harms way" to some extent. The fat man is not standing on the track and has not chosen to place himself in harms way.
One involves physical pushing, the other involves impersonally flipping a switch.
Personally I answer the two problems the same way, and I would take the action that results in fewer deaths. But I have no way of proving my viewpoint is somehow the "right" answer.
One thing I think you're neglecting, bitterroot, is the existence of nuclear energy. We could, today, go through and replace basically every coal power plant worldwide with a nuclear one, and cut carbon emissions significantly. Granted, there's a decent upfront cost of building all of those nuclear power plants, but they also have a lower sustained maintenence cost.
Why don't we? People are *extremely* squeamish about nuclear power. There have been basically three significant nuclear meltdowns in the history of using it as a power source (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukashima), and yet people are concerned about it disproportionately to how likely it is to happen. Especially given that two of these events were many years ago (and our techniques at containment and maintenance have improved since) and the third was based off of another significant and rare disaster.
I agree with you, that, in theory, we could do this. But your post also explains exactly why this isn't a feasible option in practice - pervasive, idiotic fear of nuclear power.
My analysis is based on the dichotomy between the two most likely options for actual real-world policy: (1) do nothing; or (2) restrict carbon emissions with regulation.
Global warming is forecasted to kill and displace many people. But regulating emissions, especially in the developed world, would slow the pace of economic growth and innovation.
Well. If you worry about famines then drought affecting enormous parts of arable land should be a concern. More so than such vague metrics as "innovation". I fear you're really just throwing out a bunch of unquantifiable buzzwords. I mean, our "energy problem" is already solved. We know that we're using resources at a rate that is self-destructive. Sitting around with a gangrenous leg because maybe one day there might be a pill that cures it is foolish when all that can be done is an amputation.
There isn't going to be an easy solution.
I am being intentionally vague so as not to burden this conversation with a bunch of math.
Let me just try to communicate my point in clearer prose: Energy is an input into almost every economic good. If we reduce the number of available energy sources (i.e. by outlawing or restricting fossil fuel use) this will tend to increase the cost of energy. Increasing the cost of energy increases the cost of virtually every other economic good. Higher costs for virtually everything results in less total economic output.
"Innovation" we will define as new discoveries or advancements in science and technology. Incentives to innovate come from one of two sources: (1) the private sector economy, or (2) public funding of research. If total economic output is reduced because all costs in the economy are higher, then the private sector has fewer resources to devote to R&D. Likewise, a reduction in economic output results in less tax revenue, which also reduces available sources of public funding for research. If fewer resources are being devoted to "innovation," then we should expect the pace of innovation to be slower than it otherwise would be.
This means that regulating fossil fuel consumption may result in it taking longer for humans to develop better, cheaper sources of clean energy. It also means that everything, including food, will be more expensive. This will tend to cause an increase in worldwide rates of malnutrition and starvation.
So it is a balancing or optimization problem. Will the economic effect of regulating fossil fuel be more harmful than the environmental harm we avoid by imposing the regulation? I don't know, but I know this is not a trivial question to answer.
That's a great story, but unfortunately stories don't prove anything when we're talking about a system as complex as economics. I can tell a different story about the hip market and get to the exact opposite conclusion. Neither of our made-up stories proves anything (although I happen to think mine comes closer to reality):
Let's say you need a surgery of some kind. Let's say a hip replacement.
You are in utterly no position to bargain with any individual maker of replacement hips. But you are in a position to chose between the, say, five or ten different hip providers out there. If low price is what matters to you, you'll choose the lowest-price option available. The hip providers know this, and this means every hip provider has a strong incentive to offer its "best price" in order to take the business that would otherwise go to its competitors. If one provider tries to artificially hike up its prices, no one will buy from them and they'll lose money to their competitors.
On the other hand, if you have a system like medicarein AU, someone else is doing the bargaining for you. The government picks for you which hip you'll get. If the government is perfectly efficient and not corrupt, then this could be the best and cheapest hip provider.
Winning the contract to replace all those hips is worth a ton of money and grants the hip maker a government-sponsored monopoly over the entire market, so all the hip companies are strongly motivated to do everything they can to win the contract while getting the highest possible price for their product. This might include things like donating money to corrupt politicians who will make sure they win the contract. It also includes other tactics like regulatory capture. The ability to "cheat" the competitive bidding process is one reason why the US pays such an exorbitant amount of money for the military. Think Cheney and Halliburton, but now spilling over into the world of healthcare.
Also, what happens if the hip provider wins the contract and just decides to jack up prices later? I guess we go to their competitors? Wait, they don't have any competitors because we gave a single company a complete monopoly over the hip market and drove all the competitors out of business.
Source? Preventing something that kills you fast so something can kill you slow later might ultimately be much more expensive. Again, stories don't prove anything.
I keep hearing the claim that socializing healthcare would reduce the total cost. But no one has explained the mechanism by which this cost reduction would supposedly occur.
Your link says *premiums* are falling, but premiums are just one of many costs associated with healthcare. The link also attributes some of the cost "savings" to inaccurate CBO estimates that are being revised in light of better data. I'm not sure you can call those real savings.
Probably fine for Limited and Standard. Likely bannable in Legacy and Modern. Not sure whether it would have a big impact on Vintage.
It's basically an activation of Bazaar of Baghdad that has Dredge. Those things are very synergistic together. But it has the drawback of costing mana, which can be tough for the kinds of decks that would want it. If it cost 2U it would probably be safe.
Yes, you don't actually get to choose the card as worded, but it's still insanely powerful. A bear that generates a ton of repeatable card advantage. It's comparable to something like Dark Confidant and would be borderline bannable in most constructed formats.
Yes, if our mutual goal is to find truth. But there is no reason it "must" or "should be" our goal. We have chosen to care about finding truth, but we could have chosen to do otherwise. There is nothing inherently "good" or "correct" about our decision, and nothing "bad" or "wrong" with choosing to care about other things instead.
The word "feel" in your statement is a little confusing. The Christian isn't making a claim about what they "feel," the Christian is purporting to make a factual claim about what actually happens to creatures with souls after they die. I happen to think the Christian is wrong, but they're still purporting to advance an objective factual claim, not a matter of subjective feeling.
Morality adds a "good" and "bad" dimension, so in order to transform "2+2=4" into an objective moral statement, we would need to add that all entities with a soul inescapably come to the conclusion that believing "2+2=4" is "good" (perhaps because God always punishes those who do not believe 2+2=4, or because he always rewards those who do believe 2+2=4, or because some other property of the soul necessarily compels this conclusion).
This shows that the term "alive" like the term "moral" does not have an objective definition. It is a useful subjectively-defined term that we humans use to categorize things. But "aliveness" is not an objective property of anything. It's a descriptive term humans invented and defined.
To say "nontheists -normally- use "moral" for 'if...then' clauses and consequences that deal directly with suffering" only reinforces my point that non-theist morality is entirely subjective. First of all, even if all Moral statements are about suffering, why should the "direction" of Moral statements necessarily point away from suffering rather than toward it? Moreover, why must morality have anything to do with suffering at all? This is just an arbitrary determination that humans have made, but there is no objective reason why it must be so.
To put it another way, there is nothing objectively "special" or "privileged" about moral statements, and there is no way to prove that any true "if...then..." statement is "better" than any other. Compare the statements "if you want to maximize human flourishing, you should not kill innocent people" with the statement "if you want to maximize human suffering, you should kill as many people as possible." How can we establish that one statement is "good" and the other "bad?"
We are having this discussion because we both happen to care about logical consistency and we happen to agree that it is a valuable or useful thing to us. Nothing objectively compels us to agree about this, nor is there any objective standard by which logical consistency is "good." Therefore we can only say by fiat or by subjective agreement that logical consistency is "better" or "good." We could have agreed on the opposite if we wanted to. There is no universal or absolute sense in which logical consistency is "good."
This is where a concept along the lines of "objectively intolerable" or "universally subjectively intolerable" would come into play. A Christian would make a statement along the lines of: "all creatures with a soul, by their intrinsic nature, will necessarily come to the conclusion that immoral actions are intolerable (i.e. when they face judgement in the afterlife), and therefore all creatures with a soul necessarily should act morally." In other words, there is some inescapable distinction that God or the universe will always draw between moral and immoral actions, and this distinction compels all humans to ultimately determine that the moral choice is "good" while the immoral choice is "bad."
Perhaps we can rephrase all moral statements as "if you want [Y] then do [X]," but a Christian would say that moral statements have the additional special property that all entities will a soul will inescapably come to the conclusion that they should have wanted Y. How can non-theists draw an intrinsic distinction between moral and non-moral if-then statements? What makes the exhortation to wear a jacket fundamentally different from the exhortation not to kill?
We are in agreement that a statement of the form "if you want [survival/flourishing of the species], then [behave morally]" does not care whether people follow or believe in it.
However, the statement of the form "one ought to [behave morally]" could be interpreted to impose an absolute duty and to "care" whether people follow or believe in it.
If you agree with me that all "ought" statements of the form "one ought to [do X]" really just reduce to instrumental statements of the form "if one wants [Y] then [do X]" then we're on the same page.
However, I would argue that these kinds of truths are not "moral truths" the way OP (and most people) talk about morality. For example, under our framework, the statement "if you don't want to get cold, you should wear a jacket" is as much a moral truth as "if you want humankind to flourish, you should not kill innocent people." There is nothing intrinsically worse about violating one statement than the other. We as a society might choose to punish violations of the latter and not the former, but there is nothing objective or universal that says it must be so. There is no intrinsic requirement or duty associated with either statement.
If that's the case, then I think you're forced to concede OP's point, which is that the non-theist view of morality is much weaker than the Christian view of morality. Christian morality purports to impose certain inescapable, objective duties on all humankind. Failure to comply with one's moral duty will necessarily have consequences. You would apparently concede that moral statements do not impose objective duties on anyone (they may impose subjective duties if society decides to enforce them). If that's true, there's no objective force that compels moral compliance; there's nothing transforming "is" statements into "ought" statements.
In the non-theist view of morality it's possible for someone to live a completely immoral life and "get away with it"; in other words, suffer no negative consequences. There is no objective system of justice imposed by the universe, by Karma, or by God. That's what Dahmer's quote is getting at. "If I can get away with it, why shouldn't I do it?"
[This also means there's no correct answer to the question of what you "should" do in the case of the Trolley Problem. You can give answers like "if you want to maximize human flourishing, do [X]" but the problem doesn't specify that you need to care about human flourishing. If nothing objectively requires you to care, then there's no "should." Any answer to the trolley problem is potentially valid, depending on what the person answering the problem happens to care about. Thus the statement "I would not push the fat man onto the tracks because I want the trolley to kill as many people as possible" would be a perfectly valid logical answer to the Trolley Problem.]
If moral consequences only exist when people convince each other to care about morality, then these consequences necessarily cease to exist when no one cares. For example, if everyone in your society believes slavery is good, there is no reason why you should feel obligated to oppose slavery. You might decide you want to oppose slavery, perhaps because you believe getting rid of slavery will improve "human flourishing" in your society, but there's no particular reason you must care about human flourishing. And even if you do care about human flourishing, there's no reason why you must bear the personal costs of opposing slavery and freeing your slaves. You might decide you don't care about human flourishing as much as you care about your own personal comfort, in which case you're free to act "immorally" without facing any consequences.
We can imagine Dahmer (or a Dahmer-like character) with the ability to fully experience "empathy" as defined above, who simply doesn't care about the other person's suffering. This definition of empathy is not sufficient to render bad actions "universally subjectively intolerable."
Even if this definition were sufficient, it's gutting any meaning of the phrase "universally subjectively intolerable." That phrase refers to something that is intolerable from every possible subjective perspective. This includes the subjective perspective of people like Dahmer who lack empathy. You're changing the parameters of the question by granting Dahmer the ability to feel empathy.
Crashing00 made a similar point on the previous page. Let me quote my response here:
In other words, the fact that people can freely reject logic (or mathematics, which is a subset of logic) doesn't have any bearing on the validity of logic. This is because logic does not impose any duties or requirements on anyone. Logic doesn't care whether anyone "follows it" or "believes in it."
Morality, on the other hand, purports to impose duties and requirements on people. Unlike pure logic, morality says people "should" and "shouldn't" do certain things. If people are free to reject morality, then in what sense can we say a moral duty or requirement exits? What do ideas like "should" and "shouldn't" mean if people are free to simply ignore them?
Empathy is not just "understanding the emotions of others," it is understanding and caring about the emotions of others. Someone could fully understand the emotions of others and simply not care.
Certainly it could cause him to feel remorse, but there's no reason it must. For something to be "universally" intolerable, it's not sufficient to say it "could" be intolerable. "Universally subjectively intolerable" means intolerable to every conceivable subjective observer.
Why would "perfect understanding" include a feeling of empathy? Certainly it would include perfect knowledge of what the other person is experiencing. But empathy is knowledge plus a certain type of emotional reaction to that knowledge.
What you're saying is: if we somehow modified Dahmer's subjective emotional experiences, we could make harming others intolerable to him. But that is the opposite of saying that harming others is "universally subjectively intolerable." Instead, harming others is only subjectively intolerable to people who subjectively experience an emotional reaction that makes harming others intolerable to them. Other people (like Dahmer) do not experience this type of emotional reaction and do not experience harming others as subjectively intolerable. We would have to change Dahmer's subjective outlook in order to make harming others intolerable to him. This proves that harming others is not universally subjectively intolerable.
The gun issue is a matter of Constitutional law in the US, not a matter of politicians being unable to get anything done. Even if 100% of politicians agreed that gun rules need to change, it would require a Constitutional amendment before they could make any major reforms.
That's why I regard this as "probably proven."
But our understand of climate is imperfect (to put it mildly) and our models are oversimplifications by necessity. We're dealing with an extremely complex and chaotic system when we're talking about weather. Answering the question "what is causing climate change?" is similar to attempting to answer the question "what caused the US to go from essentially nothing in the 19th century, to a world economic power?" We can posit plausible explanations, but at the end of the day these are emergent properties of highly complex and nonlinear systems. It's very hard to draw reliable arrows of causation.
To me, it seems likely that climate change is largely caused by humans. But there could be other screwy things going on that we don't understand very well right now. Changes in solar output, long-term weather cycles causing a "reverse ice age," who knows?
If it's too late, then why implement costly policy changes like regulating CO2 emissions? You still seem to act like this would be a good idea.
In the history of mankind, how many policies have ever been successfully enacted on a global level? I think the answer is basically zero.
I'm a realist. It doesn't really matter whether I think socialism or capitalism is the better way of running an economy -- people react to economic incentives the same way regardless.
How would it effect change if, as you say, we're too late?
Any time you artificially make something (e.g. fossil fuels) more expensive, this will reduce economic output. That's not always a bad thing, sometimes it's worth incurring this cost. But it's critically important to remember that this cost exists and needs to be factored in when making policy decisions.
The relevant question is whether the benefit of reducing fossil fuel use outweighs the economic cost. If, as you say, it's too late to fix the problem, then I don't see why we would want to incur the economic costs of restricting fossil fuels.
Lets say we have a huge Fukushima-like disaster every year. Kills 1,000 people and contaminates a radius of 20km. That's still a tiny number of lives lost and a tiny fraction of the earth's land-area destroyed when compared with the projected future damage from climate change.
No energy source is perfect right now. All we can do is pick the best option.
I think realizing one's ignorance and biases is the point of the trolley problem.
Whether the Original Trolley Problem is the same as the Fat Man Trolley Problem is not a question with a known answer. It's meant to generate debate about what matters when figuring out moral questions. If you think that the number of lives involved is all that matters, then you'll think the answers are the same. If you think other factors also matter, then you might not think the answers are the same.
Some differences between the two Problems that may or may not be relevant:
Personally I answer the two problems the same way, and I would take the action that results in fewer deaths. But I have no way of proving my viewpoint is somehow the "right" answer.
I agree with you, that, in theory, we could do this. But your post also explains exactly why this isn't a feasible option in practice - pervasive, idiotic fear of nuclear power.
My analysis is based on the dichotomy between the two most likely options for actual real-world policy: (1) do nothing; or (2) restrict carbon emissions with regulation.
I am being intentionally vague so as not to burden this conversation with a bunch of math.
Let me just try to communicate my point in clearer prose: Energy is an input into almost every economic good. If we reduce the number of available energy sources (i.e. by outlawing or restricting fossil fuel use) this will tend to increase the cost of energy. Increasing the cost of energy increases the cost of virtually every other economic good. Higher costs for virtually everything results in less total economic output.
"Innovation" we will define as new discoveries or advancements in science and technology. Incentives to innovate come from one of two sources: (1) the private sector economy, or (2) public funding of research. If total economic output is reduced because all costs in the economy are higher, then the private sector has fewer resources to devote to R&D. Likewise, a reduction in economic output results in less tax revenue, which also reduces available sources of public funding for research. If fewer resources are being devoted to "innovation," then we should expect the pace of innovation to be slower than it otherwise would be.
This means that regulating fossil fuel consumption may result in it taking longer for humans to develop better, cheaper sources of clean energy. It also means that everything, including food, will be more expensive. This will tend to cause an increase in worldwide rates of malnutrition and starvation.
So it is a balancing or optimization problem. Will the economic effect of regulating fossil fuel be more harmful than the environmental harm we avoid by imposing the regulation? I don't know, but I know this is not a trivial question to answer.