The way these are written, the answer will almost always be zero or one. What you need to do is ask what the trade-off should be to make it a hard question. How many days do you have to be confined to a hospital bed to make a day of self-expression not worth it? How badly must the supplement mangle your communication abilities before you stop taking it? How much moral imbalance is your happiness worth? How badly must pleasures corrupt society before you abandon them?
1.1:
All else being equal, I’d avoid expressing myself. If I can help stop the regime, it’s probably worth the hospital stay, but I’m not going to protest for fun.
1.2:
All else being equal, I wouldn’t take any supplements. I don’t really need to be any healthier. I’m just going to be on the computer all day anyway. Being unable to communicate normally would be a huge setback.
2.1:
All else being equal, I don’t care about justice. It can be useful to prevent crime and make people happy, but on its own it’s worthless.
2.2:
Does anarchy make people unhappy? If not, I’d give it to everyone.
I don’t really need to be any healthier. I’m just going to be on the computer all day anyway.
That just contradicts the set-up of the question, which was:
You are an Olympic athlete with a career-defining sponsorship from a major pharmaceutical corporation. They provide legal supplements that enable your world-class health
So you need to consider a different scenario that you can identify with.
The premise of the original question was that you are a top athlete who values competition and being top-ranked and winning. And you need the supplement to enable you to compete—it’s “career-defining” and “enables your world-class health”. Without the supplement, you won’t have your current career (or job).
Saying that you “don’t need to be any healthier” is just denying the setup of the question.
You’re basically saying you can’t answer the question as posed, because it describes someone who is too different from yourself, and you value different things from that someone and don’t want to become like they are. Which is a perfectly valid position. It means the question’s scenario isn’t useful to you, and you can come up with a different one if you like.
However, your original comment is phrased as if it were an answer to the original question, which it really isn’t.
It was an answer to the question that the original question was posed to answer.
Also, it’s quite common to have thought experiments where you’re told to assume all else is equal, even though the assumption is insane. I can’t just assume that I’m not going to go to jail for murdering the guy on the track. I merely assumed that I care about my physical ability the same as I do in real life. It might go against the premise of the question, but it’s the sort of “assume all else is equal” thing you’re generally supposed to do with these questions.
The way these are written, the answer will almost always be zero or one. What you need to do is ask what the trade-off should be to make it a hard question. How many days do you have to be confined to a hospital bed to make a day of self-expression not worth it? How badly must the supplement mangle your communication abilities before you stop taking it? How much moral imbalance is your happiness worth? How badly must pleasures corrupt society before you abandon them?
1.1:
All else being equal, I’d avoid expressing myself. If I can help stop the regime, it’s probably worth the hospital stay, but I’m not going to protest for fun.
1.2:
All else being equal, I wouldn’t take any supplements. I don’t really need to be any healthier. I’m just going to be on the computer all day anyway. Being unable to communicate normally would be a huge setback.
2.1:
All else being equal, I don’t care about justice. It can be useful to prevent crime and make people happy, but on its own it’s worthless.
2.2:
Does anarchy make people unhappy? If not, I’d give it to everyone.
That just contradicts the set-up of the question, which was:
So you need to consider a different scenario that you can identify with.
I’m going to do my job, and then play on the computer all day. Or are you asking how much I’d value physical ability if I valued physical ability?
The premise of the original question was that you are a top athlete who values competition and being top-ranked and winning. And you need the supplement to enable you to compete—it’s “career-defining” and “enables your world-class health”. Without the supplement, you won’t have your current career (or job).
Saying that you “don’t need to be any healthier” is just denying the setup of the question.
The real question is how much I value my health. If you tell me how much I value my health, then the original question goes unanswered.
As long as you’re telling me that I value my health, you might as well tell me how much, and just answer the question on your own.
You’re basically saying you can’t answer the question as posed, because it describes someone who is too different from yourself, and you value different things from that someone and don’t want to become like they are. Which is a perfectly valid position. It means the question’s scenario isn’t useful to you, and you can come up with a different one if you like.
However, your original comment is phrased as if it were an answer to the original question, which it really isn’t.
It was an answer to the question that the original question was posed to answer.
Also, it’s quite common to have thought experiments where you’re told to assume all else is equal, even though the assumption is insane. I can’t just assume that I’m not going to go to jail for murdering the guy on the track. I merely assumed that I care about my physical ability the same as I do in real life. It might go against the premise of the question, but it’s the sort of “assume all else is equal” thing you’re generally supposed to do with these questions.