Hacker News Reader

Comment by smallgovt | Hacker News Reader

That's not my intention at all. I'm simply pointing out that both quality of life and quantity of life are valuable to most people.

View on HN

Again, with "quality" versus "quantity" it sounds like you're saying that there could be a lower quantity of people (some people die) in order to increase the quality of life for others.

If you're asking for my personal evaluation, yes, I believe that at a certain point, it's clearly worth trading quality of life for quantity of life. This applies to my own life. For example, I would rather take a 50% chance at survival versus living the rest of my life in abject poverty and emotional turmoil.

I'm going to guess that you're no where near having to actually make that decision for your self, thus you're comfortable making that statement on behalf of others.

I only speak for myself and would feel uncomfortable enforcing my values on others. That's why my comment posed this more as an open question and discussion.

So you'd rather be dead than poor?

If you find yourself taking this thought seriously and you're in the US, you can call 1-800-273-8255. Please take care.

Not the GP, but I'd rather be alive and rich than alive and poor, and I'd rather be alive and poor than dead.

But say I assign utilities like this:

Alive+rich = 5 Alive+poor = 1 Dead = 0

So 50% alive+rich, 50% dead has utility 2.5, while 100% alive+poor has utility 1.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com