Play Nice Lives Matter - The hypothetical game of ethics

[EasternTiger]

You just select 2 billion of the most competent, conscientious, industrious, orderly, productive, creative, intelligent, rich, and of course, all the instagram models.

Believe me, none of us on John Galt's Fantasy Island will miss the lefties, or even Gethelred.

 

[Gethelred]

The technology you are using to comment here is an example of the intellectual achievement that could be lost.

As much as it might burn your tongue to say it, the life for humans in this nation has never been better.

Not to mention our medical technology.

What are you even saying here?

The reset button for the planet has already completely ruined all of this for us. We do not have the access to rare earths or mass produced objects, and everything is going to have to be made by those who are left.

I mean, it's all gone, already. Why are you clinging to the trappings of the past?

Let's start with medicine. You need designs to build most of what we can do. Those designs are gone; you would need someone to study each and every machine for every day of the year for them to remember how to make them from scratch without access to the rest of society. Or, we could teach the principles, and the extreme basics, and the science of it - the knowledge - and let them apply it as suits best.

 

[Gethelred]

You just select 2 billion of the most competent, conscientious, industrious, orderly, productive, creative, intelligent, rich, and of course, all the instagram models.

Believe me, none of us on John Galt's Fantasy Island will miss the lefties, or even Gethelred.

Come on, ET, you'd miss me. You'd be sipping champaigne in sub-Saharan Africa, mourning that bloke who gave you s**t before it all went down.

 

[Taylor]

What are you even saying here?

The reset button for the planet has already completely ruined all of this for us. We do not have the access to rare earths or mass produced objects, and everything is going to have to be made by those who are left.

I mean, it's all gone, already. Why are you clinging to the trappings of the past?

Let's start with medicine. You need designs to build most of what we can do. Those designs are gone; you would need someone to study each and every machine for every day of the year for them to remember how to make them from scratch without access to the rest of society. Or, we could teach the principles, and the extreme basics, and the science of it - the knowledge - and let them apply it as suits best.

You had a great idea of creating a reserve of knowledge that could teach. How would you think that best? The nerd in me likes a hologram that grows ever so bitter after hundreds of years

 

[Gethelred]

You had a great idea of creating a reserve of knowledge that could teach. How would you think that best? The nerd in me likes a hologram that grows ever so bitter after hundreds of years

Voiced by John Cleese.

I prefer a library myself, filled to the brim with books on every subject we've ever devised and every piece of fiction we've ever written, with the librarians as the new keepers of knowledge and the arbiters of truth.

 

[Taylor]

Voiced by John Cheese.

I prefer a library myself, filled to the brim with books on every subject we've ever devised and every piece of fiction we've ever written, with the librarians as the new keepers of knowledge and the arbiters of truth.

That's a good idea, as long as people are still taught to read.

 

[Taylor]

That threshold for knowledge and power might lead people who can read to distort it into some bible of sorts that validates their position as monarch

 

[Jello_B]

...

So what precisely are we arguing about? Are you trying to persuade me to take your point of view?

I don't like some of the things about the world we live in now, which is part of what your hypothetical poses (in this thread with the click-bait name). Are you interested in responses to your scenario, or what it exposes about the people who choose to comment on it?

For me, what your scenario exposes is the underlying fact that most people value some lives above others. I think that's wrong. Do you not agree?

? If the worlds population is reduced by this amount the damage is done. Priorities would be rebuilding and you would want doctors and scientists etc to ensure the best chance of success.

 

[Gethelred]

? If the worlds population is reduced by this amount the damage is done. Priorities would be rebuilding and you would want doctors and scientists etc to ensure the best chance of success.

Not necessarily. You need food, shelter, and organisation immediately; everything else can be redeveloped later. And the new society would already have a leg up in that they would broadly possess knowledge concerning how to do things.

Keep it simple, and hand people the basics.

 

[Frank Bunn]

If we agree that the lottery is the fairest, how do we ensure the survival of our collective achievement as a society? How do we have support for people who might have lost everyone?

These are the same sort of discussions that start out with square wheels and result in the invention of a suspension system to make that work.

No. I don't agree about the lottery. How about my highest IQ idea?

 

[RobbieK]

No. I don't agree about the lottery. How about my highest IQ idea?

"In their darkest moments, IQ tests became a powerful way to exclude and control marginalised communities using empirical and scientific language."

The IQ test wars: why screening for intelligence is still so controversial

The legitimacy of the IQ test is still hotly debated.

theconversation.com

Justify to me that that is not what you would be doing if you were to determine which 2 billion people lived based on their IQ results.

 

[Frank Bunn]

"In their darkest moments, IQ tests became a powerful way to exclude and control marginalised communities using empirical and scientific language."

The IQ test wars: why screening for intelligence is still so controversial

The legitimacy of the IQ test is still hotly debated.

theconversation.com

Justify to me that that is not what you would be doing if you were to determine which 2 billion people lived based on their IQ results.

IQ tests are probably the most reliable indicator of future success of individuals. It is possible to measure IQ of individuals across different cultures.

Any discussion of whether certain cultures/races have higher or lower IQ than others is taboo, and also irrelevant to this discussion.

I don't think the article agrees with your premise. It has a bob's worth each way, saying IQ tests might be biased towards white people - and also that IQ tests can be used to identify highly cognitively able children from ethnic minorities.

 

[RobbieK]

IQ tests are probably the most reliable indicator of future success of individuals. It is possible to measure IQ of individuals across different cultures.

Any discussion of whether certain cultures/races have higher or lower IQ than others is taboo, and also irrelevant to this discussion.

I don't think the article agrees with your premise. It has a bob's worth each way, saying IQ tests might be biased towards white people - and also that IQ tests can be used to identify highly cognitively able children from ethnic minorities.

I posted the article for two reasons:

1. It was a good balanced piece about the validity and usage of IQ tests.
2. It was the source of the line I quoted.

I didn't want it to argue my case for me. I didn't actually make a case, I simply asked you to make yours.

I don't see how you can just say that discussion of cultural/racial variance in IQ testing is irrelevant to this discussion. You are have suggested that in this situation we should use IQ as a metric for deciding which 5.8 billion people on the world to kill. If your metric for killing people has a cultural bias, and I think it does, I would like to know why you think that is a reasonable metric.

I find it interesting/alarming how readily people present eugenicist arguments in their answer to this question.

 

[Taylor]

IQ tests are flawed.

The theory that you can sort people by IQ is sound.

The issue is finding the tool to do that adequately and objectively.

 

[Gethelred]

IQ tests are flawed.

The theory that you can sort people by IQ is sound.

The issue is finding the tool to do that adequately and objectively.

Not really. Everything I've seen over the course of my studies - which include the psychology of crime and of teaching - has indicated that IQ is an immensely fraught metric as far as it goes. Most of the management stuff I studied advocated emotional intelligence over IQ most of the time as a better predictor of success, but even that was seen as not above suspicion.

Mostly, trying to put people on a bell curve from intelligent to less intelligent is subject to value assumptions by the person making the test. Spatial awareness, subject knowledge, general knowledge, learning style, comprehension, natural and taught reasoning skills, social cues; all of it can be measured, but the weighting as to how they are valued shifts between methods and tests.

For the purposes of this scenario, putting survival on IQ without a specific test and specific metrics is a terrible idea. With the metrics being weighted, one would need to get consensus on whether the weighting is fair across the entirety of humanity, and that is an exercise doomed to fail.

 

[Taylor]

Not really. Everything I've seen over the course of my studies - which include the psychology of crime and of teaching - has indicated that IQ is an immensely fraught metric as far as it goes. Most of the management stuff I studied advocated emotional intelligence over IQ most of the time as a better predictor of success, but even that was seen as not above suspicion.

Mostly, trying to put people on a bell curve from intelligent to less intelligent is subject to value assumptions by the person making the test. Spatial awareness, subject knowledge, general knowledge, learning style, comprehension, natural and taught reasoning skills, social cues; all of it can be measured, but the weighting as to how they are valued shifts between methods and tests.

For the purposes of this scenario, putting survival on IQ without a specific test and specific metrics is a terrible idea. With the metrics being weighted, one would need to get consensus on whether the weighting is fair across the entirety of humanity, and that is an exercise doomed to fail.

I think the testing has to be redesigned to be able to put a person from any culture through it and get an accurate reading, because there absolutely are people who would be described as sitting on the low end of the bell curve who are very mentally capable but there are also people who genuinely don't have the tools in the tool box.

And again, that doesn't diminish their value as a person but it does diminish their capability to be a valuable member of society by limiting their options for involvement.

There's actually a live experiment on this called Project 100,000

 

[Gethelred]

I think the testing has to be redesigned to be able to put a person from any culture through it and get an accurate reading, because there absolutely are people who would be described as sitting on the low end of the bell curve who are very mentally capable but there are also people who genuinely don't have the tools in the tool box.

And again, that doesn't diminish their value as a person but it does diminish their capability to be a valuable member of society by limiting their options for involvement.

There's actually a live experiment on this called Project 100,000

Taylor, what specifically would it take for you to throw IQ out of consideration? Because from where I'm sitting, you're arguing that a test that is subjective (under all previous incarnations) can be used to make objective outcomes. This is bad science.

 

[RobbieK]

And again, that doesn't diminish their value as a person but it does diminish their capability to be a valuable member of society by limiting their options for involvement.

You keep making this point in this thread. I think it is totally contradictory.

It seems like you are paying lip service to the idea that "all human lives are of equal value", because repeatedly you immediately follow it up with a statement to the contrary, that value is related to how "useful" a person is and not all people are equally useful.

 

[Taylor]

Taylor, what specifically would it take for you to throw IQ out of consideration? Because from where I'm sitting, you're arguing that a test that is subjective (under all previous incarnations) can be used to make objective outcomes. This is bad science.

I am not saying we need to use IQ testing, I know they are flawed. Generally speaking the people that write the test score very well on it, it's why the player rating system in the AFL is also flawed, it's working back from perception to find a validation for it.

There are absolutely different intellectual capabilities in humans though and a test for that could be developed. It would need to be able to score the capability of a child or young adult born anywhere to anyone in an objective way.

The potential issue I would see with that is a test like that, assuming it is entirely accurate and the results are objective would be used to focus resources on the gifted students and justify the reduction in resources to less gifted students - they might even deny access to the higher education beyond a point without a score above a certain level.

Generally speaking things like that make me very uncomfortable.

 

[Taylor]

You keep making this point in this thread. I think it is totally contradictory.

It seems like you are paying lip service to the idea that "all human lives are of equal value", because repeatedly you immediately follow it up with a statement to the contrary, that value is related to how "useful" a person is and not all people are equally useful.

I'm quite consistent on it. All human life has value, some individuals have more value to their communities than others.

 

[RobbieK]

I'm quite consistent on it. All human life has value, some individuals have more value to their communities than others.

Does the fact that some individuals have more value to their communities mean they have more of a right to continue to live than anyone else?

 

[Taylor]

Does the fact that some individuals have more value to their communities mean they have more of a right to continue to live than anyone else?

Evidently. We impart women and children with that status in a disaster. The young are prioritised over the elderly in an emergency with limited resources. The healthy choice people are given organ donations over the unhealthy choice making people.

We make decisions on the worth of people over others all the time.

With the infinite resources all lives would be saved and be of equal worth, but that isn't the case now.

I haven't even raised the human lives ended before they start.

 

[Gethelred]

Evidently. We impart women and children with that status in a disaster.

... As a side effect stemming from our history as a feudal culture.

The young are prioritised over the elderly in an emergency with limiteresources.

That one's valid.

The healthy choice people are given organ donations over the unhealthy choice making people.

Unless said unhealthy person possesses money, and no-one beats an eye.

We make decisions on the worth of people over others all the time.

We shouldn't. That's what I've been saying, and what I'm going to keep saying.

With the infinite resources all lives would be saved and be of equal worth, but that isn't the case now.

... because conservatives cling to the values and hierarchies of the past, even when it doesn't help.

I haven't even raised the human lives ended before they start.

You have a strange need to bring up abortion often.

 

[Taylor]

... As a side effect stemming from our history as a feudal culture.
That one's valid.
Unless said unhealthy person possesses money, and no-one beats an eye.

We shouldn't. That's what I've been saying, and what I'm going to keep saying.

... because conservatives cling to the values and hierarchies of the past, even when it doesn't help.

You have a strange need to bring up abortion often.

Do hierarchies of competence exist?

 

[Gethelred]

Do hierarchies of competence exist?

Within a single generation, on any single moment? Yes. Over the course of time? No.

My problem with what you are and have suggested is that each human is represented by X. Some humans are x+1, and some x+2, but every human by default starts off at x. A human can be x+3 and have a single child who is x-1; a human can be x-2 and have 4 children who are x+1. A human also undergoes changes in societal value over the course of their lives; a mother who is a heart surgeon in her older years is more valuable then than she was when she was a single mother of two in her twenties. Susan Kiefal is more valuable now as the head of the High Court of Australia than she was as a high school dropout in her teens (check her out, she's come a long way).

Who are you to determine future competence based upon any single moment in time, much less kill people based on it?