I don’t see the relevance of this – can you elaborate?
You told us that the value of a year of our life is the value of a year of our work, which is in turn assumed to be $60k. We are also assuming we created 51 years of life in someone and that each of their years is worth at least 1⁄3 of the value of ours. You then directly divide one of these by the other in order to pull out “17x as much”. Either you are equivocating between two entirely different measures of value (in which case you can’t just divide one by the other and produce a meaningful scale factor) or “to a first approximation” the average amount yearly income over those 51 years for the hypothetical saved person must be $20k.
Essentially, this number (17x) that you produce is utterly meaningless. The post would be strictly better if you had just said “You can save 51 years of life for just $2k to $10k. That’s probably more important than most things you will do. How amazing!”
Either you are equivocating between two entirely different measures of value (in which case you can’t just divide one by the other and produce a meaningful scale factor) or “to a first approximation” the average amount yearly income over those 51 years for the hypothetical saved person must be $20k.
I was using two different measures of value.
Essentially, this number (17x) that you produce is utterly meaningless. The post would be strictly better if you had just said “You can save 51 years of life for just $2k to $10k. That’s probably more important than most things you will do. How amazing!”
My post addresses the differential in quality of life. The choice of a factor of 3x is somewhat arbitrary. But it arguably makes things more vivid than “51 years of life.”
I don’t necessarily stand by an upper bound of $10k on cost per life saved.
Yes. Creating arbitrary assumptions that are in opposition to each other is not necessarily outright fallacious but it is certainly something that requires some significant justification. There is a rather large ‘arbitrariness’ overhead for assuming two contradictory measures of value in a way that happens to be convenient for a desired agenda that is above and beyond the arbitrariness of the assumptions considered separately.
The calculations and conclusions in this post are presented as shutting up and multiplying value when they can more realistically be considered a work of creative fiction. “17x” here would be better off replaced with “Over 9000″ which at least has the correct connotations of “completely arbitrary large number that indicates that I think the value is significant but is meaningless as a quantisation of anything”.
Unfortunately talking about the Virtuous Cause seems to turn off people’s critical reasoning capabilities but that only works when preaching to the already converted. AMF is an actually high value cause. It doesn’t need sloppy and misleading calculation in order to justify it. That way people who aren’t already true believers may accept the argument rather than discarding it at the first unreasonable assumption they encounter.
I don’t see the relevance of this – can you elaborate?
You told us that the value of a year of our life is the value of a year of our work, which is in turn assumed to be $60k. We are also assuming we created 51 years of life in someone and that each of their years is worth at least 1⁄3 of the value of ours. You then directly divide one of these by the other in order to pull out “17x as much”. Either you are equivocating between two entirely different measures of value (in which case you can’t just divide one by the other and produce a meaningful scale factor) or “to a first approximation” the average amount yearly income over those 51 years for the hypothetical saved person must be $20k.
Essentially, this number (17x) that you produce is utterly meaningless. The post would be strictly better if you had just said “You can save 51 years of life for just $2k to $10k. That’s probably more important than most things you will do. How amazing!”
I was using two different measures of value.
My post addresses the differential in quality of life. The choice of a factor of 3x is somewhat arbitrary. But it arguably makes things more vivid than “51 years of life.”
I don’t necessarily stand by an upper bound of $10k on cost per life saved.
Yes. Creating arbitrary assumptions that are in opposition to each other is not necessarily outright fallacious but it is certainly something that requires some significant justification. There is a rather large ‘arbitrariness’ overhead for assuming two contradictory measures of value in a way that happens to be convenient for a desired agenda that is above and beyond the arbitrariness of the assumptions considered separately.
The calculations and conclusions in this post are presented as shutting up and multiplying value when they can more realistically be considered a work of creative fiction. “17x” here would be better off replaced with “Over 9000″ which at least has the correct connotations of “completely arbitrary large number that indicates that I think the value is significant but is meaningless as a quantisation of anything”.
Unfortunately talking about the Virtuous Cause seems to turn off people’s critical reasoning capabilities but that only works when preaching to the already converted. AMF is an actually high value cause. It doesn’t need sloppy and misleading calculation in order to justify it. That way people who aren’t already true believers may accept the argument rather than discarding it at the first unreasonable assumption they encounter.