From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Apr 06 2003 - 21:57:42 MDT
--- Reason <reason@exratio.com> wrote:
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-extropians@extropy.org
> > [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]On Behalf Of Mike Lorrey
> >
> > Money being a representation of human labor, and the average human
> life
> > being worth about $6.5 million, according to insurance actuaries
> (don't
> > know if this applies only to Americans or not), if the post-war
> economy
> > expands by $6.5 trillion more than it would have otherwise without
> > cheap oil, then that is worth 1,000,000 lives lost in this war for
> a
> > break even. If only 100,000 lives are lost, that is a 1000% return
> on
> > investment. If Iraqi lives are worth half that, economically, then
> it
> > is a 2000% ROI.
>
> Hold hard here, though. We know things that the insurance actuaries
> don't;
> singularities, immortality, transcendence to higher forms of mind,
> etc. At
> least some of these human lives are actually worth a (probably
> countable)
> infinity of dollars. Therefore no death is justified from this
> perspective.
THis is an inaccurate conclusion. Even given singularities,
immortality, and transcendance, you are forgetting to discount future
year dollars. Discounting accelerates to higher percentages as you go
deeper into the event horizon. You are making the same mistake that
Zeno made.
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
"Pacifists are Objectively Pro-Fascist." - George Orwell
"Treason doth never Prosper. What is the Reason?
For if it Prosper, none Dare call it Treason..." - Ovid
__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Apr 06 2003 - 22:04:48 MDT