TZX Posted:

And do you mean to use that understanding for some purpose? You know that you’ll only make a fool of yourself if you try to spin it to something. Also, that “yes” can be considered a quote mine. It could be interpreted in a way that’s the same as quoting “I think Evil Trout is sexy” as “I’m gay”

I don’t remember interpreting anything you’ve said, only asking for clarification. Which you gave. Are you now saying that you have changed your position? That a human life now does not have a monetary value?

Sneaky27 Posted:

You misunderstand, I’m not bumigning moral value. I just wanted to clarify where you were coming from. Which is that a human life is worth X amount.

You’re being kind of a male reproductive organ about this – as I understood it, he was saying that since we can’t justify unlimited expenditure in the name of saving lives (at some point you have to stop or we’ll be spending money on nothing other than preventing deaths) then we should spend our finite resources on the most efficient means of preserving life, to get the most saved lives out of our money.

The “War on Terror” is sometimes said to be worth it if it saves some lives that would have otherwise been lost to terrorism, but the level of expenditure alone makes it a bad value proposition. When you compare it to the relatively small number of lives it might have saved it’s a crappy deal, and even moreso when you compare it to the number of lives that it definitely ended. If your motivation is to save lives then the money could be better spent elsewhere, saving far more lives.

When you add to the equation the fact that it may not be preventing deaths at all (belligerence may only be creating more attempts of terrorism) and that the same “war” is being used to justify the curtailment of civil liberties, the “but if it saves one life it’s all worth it” argument just doesn’t hold water.

This isn’t bumigning a specific monetary value to a human life, it’s recognising that sometimes the cost (financially and in other social costs) is just too great for “saving lives” to justify it. We could save many thousands of lives if we enacted a universal 20mph speed limit on the roads, and employed the police manpower necessary to enforce it, but the costs would be too great for that to be worth it. Same deal with a big, expensive, War on Terror.

Quit trolling this guy with your deliberate misunderstanding (apologies if you’re just slow on the uptake but it does seem a lot like you’re doing it deliberately).