Comment by M95D | Hacker News Reader

Comment by M95D | Hacker News Reader

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"Physically preventable" is a moving target. The more resources are invested in preventing currently preventable deaths, the more farther away the target moves, because more and more causes of death become preventable. So, this is a false argument. There's no preventing all preventable deaths.

Let me give you a different argument: what would it take to prevent absolutely ALL car-related deaths? Before you answer, be aware that even ambulances that mostly save lives sometimes cause deadly accidents.

How many deaths would be prevented in the long term (let's take 2000 years, equal time period since Roman Empire until today) if we choose to go to space and accept a big increase in death risks for those pioneers, instead of preventing deaths on earth?

How about this argument: How many improvements in medicine that make those deaths preventable today came from United States, Canada, South America or were funded by those states? If sailors from the middle ages didn't risk their lives to cross the ocean and discover America, would we have today's medicine, 500 years later? How many lives would have been lost without it?

Do you genuinely believe that when people say "we have very pressing issues about preventable human suffering", that they're saying "we should literally bring all forms of suffering to absolute zero before we do literally anything else"?

Personally I simply don't know of anybody who actually hold that view, because it's obviously a nonsensical way to approach the issue. I do however keep seeing people strawman it into existence to dunk on it with the exact points you typed out here. What is being achieved by insisting that perfection is impossible, therefore we shouldn't try at all? Just the comfort of not having to think too hard about it?

How else should anyone answer that? Whatever improvement are done (and you can't deny that there are continuous improvements), a person with that view will always find that "more" could be done. They don't actually say that they want perfection, but actually that's the same as always saying "more could be done".

We are already preventing 99% of preventable deaths. As you say, most ‘preventable deaths’ we prevent just turn into a new later more creative preventable death. In many cities you can be homeless and have better mortality prevention than a medieval king.

I don’t know how people think that we’ll draw a line somewhere clear. It is (and should always be) a moving target.

I think most progress has this moving goalpost. Because of this, we need to multitask as a civilization. We can’t just focus on ‘safety is number 1’… because we’ll never do anything else.

> We are already preventing 99% of preventable deaths.

How did you measure this?

Honestly a mental swag. To put actual numbers in it, life expectancy was 20 years, now 80 years.

That means roughly 0.9% chance a of death per year now, vs 3.4% ancestrally. Thats 73% of deaths avoided per year. I think that compounds year over year since those people who would otherwise have did are also alive to avoid more deaths.

So, even at the indisputable low end… 73%.

Your claim above:

> We are already preventing 99% of preventable deaths.

Makes an implicit claim of optimality on an absolute basis. What you posted here doesn't even try to prove that claim, at best it only proves a relative improvement.

I have to say, this just reads as a thought-terminater happening on your end - we evidently live in a world where even people who strongly believe more should be done to stop human suffering ARE RIGHT NOW engaged in doing all kinds of other stuff not directly going towards preventing that, including assigning non-negligible amounts of resources to said stuff. Obviously the opposition is a question of the relative perceived scale of the expense of X to other problems Y, rather than literally wanting an indefinite Achilles-and-turtle race to perfection.

It's not that we can't do more than one thing, it's that if we are gonna devote massive amounts of resources to some grand scale project, there are disagreements about what's more pressing.

Now personally I do believe becoming interstellar should be one of our shared goals, and that it will be good for us (and the rest of the biosphere) long term. However, I really think that "nevermind the starving kids they will die anyway, it is what it is, focus on space instead" is gonna actively deteriorate our chances of ever getting anything done because it comes off as deeply detached and cruel.

You know what would be a tangible benefit of automated asteroid mining? Making child-powered cobalt mines obsolete in a flash, and full-stopping the environmental devastation of stripmining on earth. These are vastly better selling points than "there is no such thing as zero suffering".

> this just reads as a thought-terminater happening on your end

That's exactly what it is. Not just that "more could be done" is always true, but it's irrelevant at the same time, because what they propose - taking resources from space agencies and sending truck-loads of food - won't do any good to those children. It will probably just fuel more war and terrorism and more schemes to divert those money to opaque bank accounts in some tropical country.

> It's not that we can't do more than one thing, it's that if we are gonna devote massive amounts of resources to some grand scale project, there are disagreements about what's more pressing.

Can't just ignore a project because it's not "pressing". And, btw, it IS pressing. We have 50 year of oil left with no alternative that is nearly as good as diesel. Do you tink that mankind can support a grand scale project after that?

> [...] is gonna actively deteriorate our chances of ever getting anything done because it comes off as deeply detached and cruel.

More cruel than it is now? More cruel than current wars and genocide (you know which ones, I won't name them). People already don't care, except for having their iSomething to brag about. How many children were exploited for all the copper in those devices? Did the buyers care? How many people went to buy FairPhone instead?

I think a big project like this is the only thing that can still unite most of the people. I hope China does it first so we could have a race again, like it happend in the 60's.

> You know what would be a tangible benefit of automated asteroid mining? Making child-powered cobalt mines obsolete in a flash, [...]

Yes, but people still won't care.

> Now personally I do believe becoming interstellar should be one of our shared goals, and that it will be good for us (and the rest of the biosphere) long term. However, I really think that "nevermind the starving kids they will die anyway, it is what it is, focus on space instead" is gonna actively deteriorate our chances of ever getting anything done because it comes off as deeply detached and cruel.

Your intuition is correct, but there's even more reasons that that. I will use a movie clip to introduce what I would try to do if "we" "decided" to set off on an unnecessary interstellar voyage prior to taking care of people (particularly children) here on Earth first:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdcE3VyKv5U

And why would I do this?

a) bfytw - https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=BFYTW

b) Some other reasons that are more well thought out

Humans would be well advised to not forget (or, learn in the first place) that it is MUCH easier to wreck things than it is to build them. I recommend "measuring twice and cutting once", as my grand daddy always told me.

PS: I should really try to be not such a pessimist/asshole, so I will also include this clip from the same movie as a counter-balance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et4sMJP9FmM

(Note: I am a different Human than the one you are replying to - apologies for interjecting.)

> "Physically preventable" is a moving target.

So are rockets and artillery shells, but check this out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome

Humans can be very clever and generous ($60,000 USD per interceptor missile, hoo baby!! Is "democracy" not the greatest thing ever!!!???) when they set their minds to something. Unfortunately, delusion, untruthfulness, deceit, misdirection, etc are also somethings, and apparently very desirable somethings, seemingly irresistible to some.

> The more resources are invested in preventing currently preventable deaths, the more farther away the target moves, because more and more causes of death become preventable.

Something seems off here - when you say "farther away", what is the unit of measure? To make sense (if you can pardon the colloquialism) of this argument, I think it would help if you gave a quantitative example to prove that your fact is actually factual. My intuition is that you may be conflating [1] physical death (concrete) with causes of death (abstract).

> So, this is a false argument.

A problem for you - some of us know of this phenomenon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism

...and not just abstractly. There is a very interesting tangential conversation related to this seemingly [1] minor distinction - perhaps some day (some) Humans will have such conversations.

I suspect this ("this 'is' [1] a false argument") may be another one of those not actually factual facts.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/287539/whats-a-w...

> There's no preventing all preventable deaths.

Here I cannot disagree, because you are necessarily correct. But think about it from this perspective:

a) if preventable death was about to pay a visit to your (or your family's) doorstep, would you like for someone to stop in and stop it?

b) During the COVID pandemic / mass psychological phenomenon [1] a few years back, were you pro-vaxx or anti-vaxx?

> Let me give you a different argument: what would it take to prevent absolutely ALL car-related deaths? Before you answer, be aware that even ambulances that mostly save lives sometimes cause deadly accidents.

I do not know the answer to this question; I would (speculatively) classify it as unknowable.

I might ask you a similar question about children dying globally from malnutrition.

Or, I might also ask you if there are certain meaningfully important conclusions (relevant to the discussion we are having) that necessarily logically follow from this question or my inability to answer it, what your motive is for asking it (assuming you have one [1]), etc.

Or, I might also ask you whether you believe atoms existed before they were discovered to exist.

> How many deaths would be prevented in the long term (like 2000 years, time period about as long as form Roman Empire until today) if we choose to go to space and accept a big increase in death risks for those pioneers, instead of preventing deaths on earth?

Again (imho): unknowable.

Also: I (speculatively) smell misdirection, though I explicitly do not make an accusation of intent [1].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misdirection_(magic)

> How about this argument: How many improvements in medicine that make those deaths preventable today came from United States, Canada, or were funded by those states? If sailors from the middle ages didn't risk their lives to cross the ocean and discover America, would we have today's medicine, 500 years later? How many lives would have been lost without it?

This is a fine argument - I worry that you might "have us"[1], but I cannot be sure.

How about this argument: is there any necessarily and objectively true reason why the next time there "is" a "pandemic", I shouldn't do the literal opposite of The Expert's advice? Or for that matter, why I should even bother waiting for such an opportunity? After all, "shit happens" as they say.

Or, how about this argument: are we having a fun here today? Are all other Humans on this planet having a fun? Should we care about such things, and if so: why should we care about them?

-------------------

[1] https://youtu.be/lnA9DMvHtfI?si=ijz-tpHLuov0vSTT

OMG, that's a long reply... I'll try to answer, but I doubt I can cover all of it.

> [...]what is the unit of measure? [...] My intuition is that you may be conflating [1] physical death (concrete) with causes of death (abstract).

The context of my reply was this:

1>> Here's an idea: how about we start with a (at least seemingly) much smaller task: can we even try to genuinely be concerned about the (physically) preventable deaths of millions of people each year?

2>> So who’s to decide what we should sacrifice to keep others alive?

3>> The above poster specifically wrote "physically preventable"

There's no quantitative argument in there and it's not needed for the argument to work.

Example: A person has a car accident X miles away from the hospital. The traffic is bad. The ambulance is late. The person dies before reaching the hospital. IF there was an emergency hospital closer, or a highway nearby that leads to the hospital and improves the traffic in the area, that person could still be alive. That death could be prevented. Let's imagine that a hospital or highway is built. The ambulance arrives in time and saves his/her life. But then, accidents happen everywhere. With that hospital or highway built, a person that has the exact same accident, only this time is X miles away from the NEW hospital - that was previously unpreventable, no ambulance had a chance to get there in time - becomes preventable now with another hospital and/or highway. Because: we did it before, why not do it again?

> if preventable death was about to pay a visit to your doorstep, would you like for someone to step in and stop it?

Yes, obviously. No person that is emotionally involved would answer differently. Fortunately, the persons that make decisions in this matter are (usually) not emotionally involved. If they are, they (usually) take the morally corrupt way of improving services for their location, or situation, with resources that could better cover a larger area/population.

> During the COVID pandemic / mass psychological phenomenon [1] a few years back, were you pro-vaxx or anti-vaxx?

Niether. My opinion is that vccines should be free, people should be allowed to vaxx or not, but if they choose not to vaxx, and they get sick with the disease, they should pay the <cost of treatment> * <vaxx efficiency %>. AFAIK, this was never applied.

> I might ask you a similar question about children dying globally from malnutrition.

I'm not getting the point you are trying to make. All NASA's money would only save a few of them, while increasing truck accidents, polution, forests cuts for agriculture, and probably terrorism too. Child malnutrition is not preventable today in my opinion, not unless developed countries stop exploiting their countries - but that doesn't require NASA's resources.

> Should we care about such things, and if so: why should we care about them?

Some people care about the future and some don't. Some care about the future, but only the immediate future. Some care about the future for their remaining estimated life time (après moi, le déluge). Some care about the far future of humanity. I consider myself in the last category.

Concerning the far future of humanity, the more variation in everything, the better. Uniformity, global-<anything>, and Earth-only is very bad, because it all falls apart at the same time in the same way. We should colonise space, have other economic systems than capitalism around the world, have some kings, have some dictators, have rich, have poor, have safe cities, have death zones, have peace in some coutries, have war in others, have free mandatory vaxx in some places, have no vaxx at all in others. See what works and what doesn't. What good does it do if nobody vaccinates and we all die in the next pandemic and what good does it do if we all vaxx and the vaccine is bad and kills us all? What good is global peace if we don't invest in rocket engines, guidance systems, GPS and crypto, and what good is a global war that destroys the entire planet? I would like that future people have a choice, if what they want is to move to Mars.

[1] No, I'm not an AI.

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