If only 100 barrels of oil ends up being worth a human life, clearly we ought to invade Iran. Or Equatorial Guinea if we can only scrape up a couple of million dollars for the coup.
I’d quibble about “clearly,” even in context. Wars are just too damn random.
Nothing against cost-benefit analysis in the abstract, but, in practice, invading a country seems like one of those very complicated choices that may inherently risk some major, major unintended consequences. I’m mostly thinking negative, but I suppose this would go both ways—unexpected ultimate positive consequences might be possible as well, but still hard to calculate at all.
I am not entirely convinced that a foreign-backed violent coup, even against a truly heinous dictator, is necessarily a good idea. This seems like one of those cases for ethical injunctions, because the visible upside is so clear (the dictator is gone), but the downside is more complicated: violent coups, for whatever reason, very rarely end up producing good governments.
The premise was that human life is ethically cheap, and the conclusion wasn’t that backing a coup was a good idea, but that outright invasion would be.
Personally, I don’t think that the cash value of the oil (discounted as normal) is greater than the cash cost of the war plus the reconstruction needed to get the oil. I could be wrong on my estimates, because I don’t think the relative monetary cost is a significant factor in the moral calculus, so I didn’t spend much time or effort estimating the values.
I looked at it considering that the coup attempt never started, and figured that he was claiming that someone dropped a tip and stopped it.
I don’t know if ~80 people could complete a coup; it would seem that if the military is loyal to the existing regime, it would fail, and if the military was disloyal no mercenaries are needed.
Nope, wasn’t accusing you of anything. I was just amused by the point that anyone who wants to save as many lives as possible, but has only a finite amount of oil, must be able to state some consistent value of human life in terms of barrels of oil, since otherwise you could rearrange the oil to save more lives.
If only 100 barrels of oil ends up being worth a human life, clearly we ought to invade Iran. Or Equatorial Guinea if we can only scrape up a couple of million dollars for the coup.
Incidentally, there appears to be an important list of unsung humanitarian heroes here.
I’d quibble about “clearly,” even in context. Wars are just too damn random.
Nothing against cost-benefit analysis in the abstract, but, in practice, invading a country seems like one of those very complicated choices that may inherently risk some major, major unintended consequences. I’m mostly thinking negative, but I suppose this would go both ways—unexpected ultimate positive consequences might be possible as well, but still hard to calculate at all.
I am not entirely convinced that a foreign-backed violent coup, even against a truly heinous dictator, is necessarily a good idea. This seems like one of those cases for ethical injunctions, because the visible upside is so clear (the dictator is gone), but the downside is more complicated: violent coups, for whatever reason, very rarely end up producing good governments.
The premise was that human life is ethically cheap, and the conclusion wasn’t that backing a coup was a good idea, but that outright invasion would be.
Personally, I don’t think that the cash value of the oil (discounted as normal) is greater than the cash cost of the war plus the reconstruction needed to get the oil. I could be wrong on my estimates, because I don’t think the relative monetary cost is a significant factor in the moral calculus, so I didn’t spend much time or effort estimating the values.
I’m not sure how to interpret Eliezer’s “unsung humanitarian heroes” comment other than as an endorsement of the coup attempt.
Or maybe I’m just missing some sarcasm.
I’ll take option B, in the form of reductio ad absurdum, on the claim that a human life is worth 100 barrels of oil.
I was baffled by that too. They attempted to overthrow a nasty dictator . . . but they did it for the oil money they’d get from the new government.
I believe your sarcasm detector may be improperly calibrated.
I believe Eliezer is more concerned with whether the coup would have led to an increase in utility than the motives of the plotters.
I looked at it considering that the coup attempt never started, and figured that he was claiming that someone dropped a tip and stopped it.
I don’t know if ~80 people could complete a coup; it would seem that if the military is loyal to the existing regime, it would fail, and if the military was disloyal no mercenaries are needed.
By the same logic, doesn’t everyone who steals X money, where X happens to be higher than the value of life, become a humanitarian hero?
By which I mean that I don’t understand your point. You seem to indirectly accuse me of commiting a fallacy, yet I don’t know which one.
Nope, wasn’t accusing you of anything. I was just amused by the point that anyone who wants to save as many lives as possible, but has only a finite amount of oil, must be able to state some consistent value of human life in terms of barrels of oil, since otherwise you could rearrange the oil to save more lives.
I am probably becoming a bit paranoid lately.