The Value of Life – Part 2

You still have to put a price tag on lives, and that price tag still has to somewhere between a few thousand dollars and a few million dollars.

Imagine a button which, when pressed, picks a random number between 1 and a million. If that number is 1, it kills a randomly selected person. How much would somebody have to pay you to press that button?

Many people react with disgust, saying they wouldn’t press such a button at any price. They say that the value of a life is nigh inconceivable.

And this intuition is correct!

But when somebody offers you ten dollars to press that button, press it anyway. Press it, and worry about it less than you worry about driving a car for a year (which, if I did my math right, is like pressing a button that has a one in ten thousand chance of killing somebody each year, in return for the convenience of driving [1] [2]). If you want to save the most lives, then you press that button for $10, and you put the money towards saving lives.

But don’t confuse the cost of a life with the value of a life!

In some parts of this world, it costs as little as a few thousand dollars to save a life. If you act like the price on a life is higher than a few thousand dollars, if you actually refuse a million dollars to press the button, or pay a billion dollars to save a single life, then there were other things you could have done to save more lives. If you want to save the most people, you must put a price tag on life according to the actual cost of saving a life.

But you don’t have to confuse the current cost of saving a life with the intrinsic value of a life.

There is a gap there. There is a gap between how much a life is really worth, and the price tag that you must assign. That gap is not there because your intuitions are wrong. That gap is there because our village is being plagued by a godamn dragon.

That gap is a direct measure of the difference between the universe that is, and the universe that should be.

That price difference, the difference between a few thousand dollars and a few thousand suns, is a direct measure of how fucked up things are.

Most people start with an intuition that they should refuse to press the button at any price, because lives are nigh invaluable. You can go to these people, and show them that in order to save as many lives as possible with a bounded amount of money, they must put a price on life. Most people, at that point, react one of two ways.

Some accept the logic and reject their intuitions. They see that, to save the most lives, they must use a price tag. It sounds repugnant to say that the pleasure experienced by a few million people drinking a can of soda is equivalent to the value of a life, but (they think) that’s exactly the sort of reasoning that leads someone to thinking that life is invaluable, which is a deadly misconception. And so, wanting to save as many people as they can with the money allotted to life-saving, they bite the bullet, and conclude that lives were never worth all that much anyway.

Others reject the logic, and continue to claim that life is invaluable, and then try to back up their intuitions with some strange version of ethics where saving as many lives as possible with the money available is not the right thing to do, for convoluted reasons.

But there’s a third option here! All these people have forgotten about the dragon!

It is possible to live in a universe where it is both the case that (1) lives are nigh invaluable, and (2) people are being annihilated constantly, against their will, in ways that can be prevented using relatively small sums of money.

The universe is not fair! Pressing the button for $10 is the way to save the most lives, and this very fact is a horrible thing. Lives are nigh invaluable, but you have to treat them as if they’re worth only a few thousand dollars.

This gap between price and value is unacceptable, but physics wasn’t written according to what we would accept. We live in a cold, uncaring universe; a universe beyond the reach of God.

One day, we may slay the dragons that plague us. One day we, like the villagers in their early days, may have the luxury of going to any length in order to prevent a fellow sentient mind from being condemned to oblivion unwillingly. If we ever make it that far, the worth of a life will be measured not in dollars, but in stars.

That is the value of a life. It will be the value of a life then, and it is the value of a life now.

So when somebody offers $10 to press that button, you press it. You press the hell out of it. It’s the best strategy available to you; it’s the only way to save as many people as you can. But don’t ever forget that this very fact is a terrible tragedy.

Don’t ever forget about the gap between how little a life costs and how much a life is worth. For that gap is an account of the darkness in this universe, it is a measure of how very far we have left to go.

I don’t want to turn this into a sermon. But some of you, seeing the great abyss between cost and worth clearly for the first time, may decide that this gap is worth closing, that our dragons are dragons are worth slaying. Some of you may be wondering, what now? What next? This last part is for you.

Know that there are those of us who fight.

Some of us work in the mines to make the dragon’s tax. Others prepare for the day we will confront the dragon — for the weapons we must bring to bear will be powerful indeed, and may prove difficult to aim.

And this is a fight you can join. For some of you, fighting means joining an effective cause. But for most of you, fighting means putting a low price tag on lives, and then honoring it — by purchasing lives wherever they are cheapest; by donating to highly effective causes. Remember that just as courage is about doing the right thing even though you’re afraid, caring is about doing the right thing even when you’re not overwhelmed by emotion.

If this is a fight you wish to join, then I urge you to remember the first lesson that the villagers learned: you must care for yourself before you care for others. You do not need to become destitute to struggle against the darkness in this universe. Any small amount of money or effort you can put towards saving lives is money and effort well spent. Pledging 10% of your earnings to an effective cause is a difficult achievement worthy of great acclaim.

If you are going to stand beside us in this fight, then I will welcome you no matter what — but I would rather you join us filled with hot fury or cold resolve, rather than with guilt or shame.

Oh, Death was never an enemy of ours!
We laughed with him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier’s paid to kick against his powers.
We laughed, knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars; when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.

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