economic proof that at some point it is desirable to die

[thewake]

How can the cost of living another moment (barring shit that makes you ask for euthanasia) EVER outweigh the benefit, to ME?
I might outlive my usefulness to YOU, or the Machine, but that's notnthe same. Is it?

I wanna LIVE!

I find that trying to put an economic value on life hardly ever leads to 'good things'...

We put value on life all the time though. It's part of living. If every life was infinitely valuable, in our world of scarcity, we'd have an irresolvable problem of resource allocation.

Anyway, death is a dilemma that we all must face. But maybe at some point we just get weary of being alive. Even if we assume we might some day be immortal, might we still realize that our human existence wasn't meant to last forever? Maybe death is as natural as being born and no less or more desirable. It just is.

[rong]

Anyone?  ?  ?      Anyone?  ?  ?
   \

[Pæs]

We seem to be asking the tough questions ITT? Okay, let's go.

[LMNO]

Let me be more explicit...

In this case, because we can't really measure the value of a unit of life in dollars given our current means of measuring things, we have to just assume that there is a level of utility that exists and we could measure it if we had the ability to.

 

[Faust]

I'd like to invite everyone to the upcoming IPO of my life. I'm afraid we only accept bitcoin at this time.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Let me be more explicit, which may give all of you a lesson in microeconomics and marginal theory

This is gonna be good, I can tell.

I am actually squeeing.  Like OUT LOUD.

It's been a while since someone has come to teach us!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

How can the cost of living another moment (barring shit that makes you ask for euthanasia) EVER outweigh the benefit, to ME?
I might outlive my usefulness to YOU, or the Machine, but that's notnthe same. Is it?

I wanna LIVE!

I find that trying to put an economic value on life hardly ever leads to 'good things'...

We put value on life all the time though. It's part of living. If every life was infinitely valuable, in our world of scarcity, we'd have an irresolvable problem of resource allocation.

Anyway, death is a dilemma that we all must face. But maybe at some point we just get weary of being alive. Even if we assume we might some day be immortal, might we still realize that our human existence wasn't meant to last forever? Maybe death is as natural as being born and no less or more desirable. It just is.

How about we instead argue that death is desirable because without death there would be no evolution and therefore we wouldn't exist to be having this discussion or to have invented squishy, putative social sciences like economics?

-A Biologist

[LMNO]

Ooh!  Can we then argue that life itself is meaningless and has no inherent value, since the only true thing that's happening in the universe is the probabilistic movement of sub-atomic particles in the void?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Ooh!  Can we then argue that life itself is meaningless and has no inherent value, since the only true thing that's happening in the universe is the probabilistic movement of sub-atomic particles in the void?

As long as we're pretending that subjective experience doesn't exist, why not? Anything's fair game!

[thewake]

Anyone?  ?  ?      Anyone?  ?  ?
   \

He was actually giving a real econ lecture when they filmed that movie

----themoreyouknow!!--->

Ooh!  Can we then argue that life itself is meaningless and has no inherent value, since the only true thing that's happening in the universe is the probabilistic movement of sub-atomic particles in the void?

this is my fetish

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

How can the cost of living another moment (barring shit that makes you ask for euthanasia) EVER outweigh the benefit, to ME?
I might outlive my usefulness to YOU, or the Machine, but that's notnthe same. Is it?

I wanna LIVE!

I find that trying to put an economic value on life hardly ever leads to 'good things'...

Actually, there are cases where the "cost" of living longer outweighs the "benefit" to the person doing the living, it's just not this linear bullshit clownshoes threw together.

For these purposes, let's call "benefit" as "positive experiences of being alive" such as interacting with other humans in pleasant ways, thinking interesting things, masturbating, etc. "Costs" will be "negative experiences of being alive" such as physical pain, emotional pain, and burdens on other humans.

If you're in a coma, you are not enjoying any of the benefits of being alive. There is a chance that you could regain the ability to do these things at some future date, so your "benefit" isn't zero, but it's not very high. If you're in a very stable state, maybe the cost to other humans isn't that high, and you're not in physical or emotional pain, so it's kind of a 50/50. If you're on lots and lots of expensive life support, and the chances of a recovery are even closer to zero, that math changes.

If you've been shot in the face, the cost to you of continuing to live is extremely high. But even this extremely high cost could be outweighed by the benefits of surviving to do fun things again. If you are in agonizing pain due to a deteriorating, untreatable condition, you have an extremely high cost of continued living and minimal benefit (since you don't have years of potential life left to fight for).

Twin brothers who were born deaf stayed close throughout their adult lives. They enjoyed their life together and made the most of it. When they were both diagnosed with an incurable condition that would render them both blind, they chose euthanasia. The cost of continued living without being able to communicate with one another was too high for their tastes. Whether you agree with them or not, they did that calculus.

Of course, all of this is hanging out in dangerous waters. Do you want mentally ill people trying to do this math? (protip: depressed people can't do math). Do you want the government doing this math?

[Cain]

No, I want thewake doing the math.

Show us the math, thewake.  I want to see what kind of economic students the 584th ranked college in the USA is producing.  Teach us, oh wise one.

[LMNO]

Oh, SNAP!

[themanwhocreatedjazz]

To quote Joseph Jastrow 'Create a belief in the theory and the facts will create themselves'.

I don't know if this fits in with the serious debate going on, but I like the quote, and so should you.

[thewake]

No, I want thewake doing the math.

Show us the math, thewake.  I want to see what kind of economic students the 584th ranked college in the USA is producing.  Teach us, oh wise one.

what kind of math do you want me to do?

I mean, it's not like I can get the information out of someone's head and actually have real marginal benefit and marginal cost curves. The graph, while based on a few assumptions that can be shown to generally be true, is ultimately more or less a heuristic that can't take into account all the multitude of variables that actually exist in the real world and may, or may not, be measurable. I'm also assuming moments of life is normal good, which may be quite stupid. :P

Notice that I explicitly said we are unable to actually measure utility. We just know it exists.

To quote Joseph Jastrow 'Create a belief in the theory and the facts will create themselves'.

I don't know if this fits in with the serious debate going on, but I like the quote, and so should you.

This is a serious discussion?