The value of human life?

[Boneasse]

I hope this thread, doesnt fall in a flamewar...

Don't worry, I won't hesitate to use the report button, if it gets too violent.

 

[moretimethansense]

I charge a flat rate of £500 a head or £2500 if they'd be well gaurded, plus 40% if you want them alive.
Age, gender and political stance matters not in this buisness.

In all seriousness I don't hold too much value for human lives, that doesn't mean I don't care, but there has to be a reason for me to.

 

[spartan231490]

I don't believe that a human life is any more valueable because it is younger, killing an innocent is killing an innocent and that's all there is to it. on a somewhat disturbing side note, my psychology proffessor/textbook say that based on hazard pay, and other situations where people risk thier lives for money, the average human life is worth 10 million dollars. One human being may accomplish more with thier life than another, but that doesn't mean that the life is more valuable either. The reason killing children and women is seen as more heineous is because our culture associates those groups with innocence, not because they are seen as more valuable.

 

[SilverUchiha]

I argue that all life is equal when simply determining what they are: Old, young, man, woman, white, black, purple, etc. I think what truly determines value is what one does with their life.

Those who are young, just born, babies, etc... They are highly valued only because they have yet to do anything and anyone who gets them can mold them however they please (or attempt to, I suppose). But that doesn't mean they are worth the most either. The old have YEARS of experience. Perhaps very enlightening information or wisdom to share that could be of value in dire straits.

And that doesn't mean that those in the middle are worthless either. Their actions drive the world all day, every day. They are the current world leaders. They are the heroes who save lives. They are the people who have a simple day-job that, while seemingly irrelevant in the big scope of things, can make a difference in a single person's life.

Honestly, I don't think there is a way to determine value of another person fairly...

... unless they do bad things. Then I suppose they are worth less because of the harm they do to society. But that's about it.

 

[tofulove]

Sorry but that's not how science works. Einstein was a genius, but by now someone else would have found his theory. Even more so in a field such as cancer were you have many teams across the world painstakingly finding new knowledge to help fight it. Also scientists never work alone nowadays so someone else could easily continue his or her work.

Think of what you would lose, 1000 beautiful infants, all the grief their family would be put though, for just a tiny delay in the march of science.

well to be blunt, the world is way to crowded, if you want to live in a world worth living in, kill 4 billion people, so i can give rats ass about a thousand more worthless mouths to feed. that 50 year old man happens to be a man of value. in those thousand babies, most of them are going to turn out as fuck tards never doing any thing in the life worth while. thats not life, thats cattle. in this over populated world, you might as well be cattle, unless your a truly gifted person who can not readily be replaced. sorry hun the life of 1000 life forms with the value of that of farm animals in society is not the worth the life of one man that made a difference to those cattle. and that is what we are in the big picture, lose your emotional attachment to the subject, most people in this world to YOU, are nameless faces who are only cogs in the large picture, if one of them dies, the machine will find a new one, unless that part is hard to find. this is about the value of life, most peoples lives have no value to society beyond taking the role of a small part of the function of society, sure the have place and fulfill a roll, but that roll can be done by the other 6+ billion people in this world. so in reality, most people have no value what so ever, unless its you and the people you care about.

I feel sorry for you that you believe that. All humans are valuble in their own way, from the lowliest street child to the President of the U.S. Every person is unreplaceable and so any loss is tragic. May I suggest that you open your eyes to the people around you, then you might realise what the "cattle" truly are.

the world is seen in to ways, logical or emotionally, the world is a tragedy to those who feel, a comedy to those who think. to bad your value for life is what keeps the quality of life in the shitter, if you want a world worth living in, you need to kill most of the people. so if you value life, you value quality of life, if you value quality of life you than see the logic of ending meaningless life, if that string of logic goes against you. your not working for your best interest of life. i want whats best for every one, im will to be in the that 4 billion, cause i know when the human race has drastically shranked, the quality of life would be drastically increased for those who lived, and for a short period of time, the huge stores of food would levitate the work burden on the work force, allowing another renaissance to take place. black plaque led to the renaissance, the flue pandemic of 1918-1919 help paved the way for the innovation of the late late 30's 40s 50's. stagnation does no one good, its the eb and flow of population levels that allow glimpses of free time for real innovation to take hold. the smartest person in the world can be a poor farmer, he wont innovate nothing cause he has no free time, thats why most innovations came from the wealthy, they had the luxury to sit around and think. with great population losses + rebound of population growth stimulates society as a hole and allows the time for more people to sit around and think as well as the luxury to pursue trade skills that will give there children the opportunity to sit around and think.


p.s, open my eyes, not sure about you but i was raised in poverty, and currently live in lower middle class. spend a life time in a world of poverty and tell me those lives have value, cause they don't, they go hungry what food they have is unhealthy, there depressed sad and many if not most are drug addicts, and that little slice makes up most of the worlds population.

i know from personal experience what its like to go hungry, what its like to be rob cause the guy down the street was hungry / wanted drugs. live that life and tell me about the value of life. cause most of it has no value, hungry depressed and little opportunity to better your self isn't life, its mindless living.

 

[Koroviev]

The value of human life--any life, for that matter--is subjective. I value my life quite highly, but others might value it at less. I don't think you can objectively identify a certain value as it concerns human life.

 

[JoJo]

the world is seen in to ways, logical or emotionally, the world is a tragedy to those who feel, a comedy to those who think. to bad your value for life is what keeps the quality of life in the shitter, if you want a world worth living in, you need to kill most of the people. so if you value life, you value quality of life, if you value quality of life you than see the logic of ending meaningless life, if that string of logic goes against you. your not working for your best interest of life. i want whats best for every one, im will to be in the that 4 billion, cause i know when the human race has drastically shranked, the quality of life would be drastically increased for those who lived, and for a short period of time, the huge stores of food would levitate the work burden on the work force, allowing another renaissance to take place. black plaque led to the renaissance, the flue pandemic of 1918-1919 help paved the way for the innovation of the late late 30's 40s 50's. stagnation does no one good, its the eb and flow of population levels that allow glimpses of free time for real innovation to take hold. the smartest person in the world can be a poor farmer, he wont innovate nothing cause he has no free time, thats why most innovations came from the wealthy, the had the luxury to sit around and think. with great population losses + rebound of population growth stimulates society as a hole and allows the time for more people to sit around and think as well as the luxury to pursue trade skills that will give there children the opportunity to sit around and think.

Quality of life is better world-wide than it's ever been, yes there's still places like Africa and parts of Asia where there is a lot of poverty but things are slowly improving. There is always hope, I would recommend looking at the world more postively.

I may be able to return later but I have to go put my sister Rosie to bed now, so nice discussing this with you.

-JoJo

 

[Marik2]

That's an anime, but it serves my purpose

At about 14 minutes in, the protagonist Edward Elric tells the makeup of your average human adult life. He's telling a girl that her boyfriend will never be brought back from the dead, a lesson he learned. He even goes to say that all of those components can be bought with a child's allowance; "humans can be made on the cheap." I don't know if this is something the author just pulled out of his ass, or if it's honest scientific fact. It doesn't matter.

What are we? Just a bunch of different cheap chemicals loosely held together by skin and bone? I'd like to think I'm made up of more than that. What makes a human life have incomparable worth is his compassion - not the ability to think, because then we would be overly complex computers; not the ability to move and walk and feel basic emotions like fear, because then we would be animals.

Some men might be worth less than others. I won't say that isn't true. However, not one person on this forum or anywhere can place a real value on human life. I've given my thoughts on what makes us valuable, because we are in fact worth something more; the measure of that worth is not up to us. It may not be up to anything, depending on your beliefs, but to say which of us is valuable and which of us aren't is just egotistical.

Still, I realize that at times a person may hold the lives of people in their hands. A general in a war, for instance, must at some point be ready to send men to their deaths so others may live. This has happened often in history. I can't place a value on this - is it right? Is it wrong?

Is it worth pondering if it's going to happen anyway?

I like your views, we need more people like you in this universe instead of all the pessimists, nihilists , and misanthropes.

I hope this thread, doesnt fall in a flamewar...

Don't worry, I won't hesitate to use the report button, if it gets too violent.

Threads with these kinds of questions mostly end up in a shouting contest .

Mostly due to the misanthropes, nihilists, and pessimists in this site.

 

[Linoleum Boy]

70 000$ (70 grand) according to Mel Gibson in Payback

 

[Nouw]

Younger>Older

It's even in the media! And yes it is sad to place value over one group of human life over another but younger in the long term have more opportunities to help society.

 

[WOPR]

*snip*

If I just say "I don't value human lives because we're expendable and another commodity that gets replaced 2 per second but no one has the balls or mind to see that and say it because death is a scary thing"

will I be considered or just trolled/flamed like normal for actually approaching something from all angles?

...and if you don't think you're a number when's the last time a college asked your NAME instead of your SS#?

 

[Hazzaslagga]

anyone who is older has kived more of life than one who is younger thus if you had to save one i'd say save the younger as it is more years saved of life in total.

 

[nuba km]

And also, are women worth more than men? We see in movies, documentaries and the news that it is sometimes portrayed as if women hold greater value than men, when they are killed/die. Their deaths are more "shocking" if you get my drift. Maybe that's because men are more often the perpetrators of such actions?

simple, if you make a female characters death the same as most male characters death (i.e. no one gives a crap 5 minutes later) feminists will call you sexist and say you are showing woman as unimportant.

OK so as to the main topic of conversation when several million of a species are dying every second we sort of too assign the value of a persons live to how helpful they could be to a species , that's why we laugh when a guy decides to rein-act back to the future but we weep when a genius dies.

 

[Ampersand]

I realize a lot of people like to say that life is worthless....to sound cool or existential or whatever, but out of all the people I've known in my life there has never been a single one that could ever be replaced.

the lives of your friends and family might be priceless to you, but life of some guy across the world wouldn't bother you a dam bit, nor would your life or the lives of your friends and family matters to some one across the world. ( unless that person happens to have real value, like a doctor a scientist a exceptional artist and so on. )

Yeh that's where your wrong. Sure some people mean more to me then others but there's not a person on earth that I wouldn't take a bullet for. The death of someone you've never met is almost as tragic as the death of someone close to you because you didn't know them and will now never know them, and that's your loss.

if thats the case, your probably suicidally depressed, or trolling. id die for many people, some random bloke of the street isn't one of them, unless they happen to be a highly valued member of society that not ezly replaced or one of the people close to me in my monkey-sphere.

on a side note, would you take a bullet for some guy in africa who personally killed 20 children in a genocide

Wrong again on both counts i'm afraid. I'm surprisingly emotionally stable compared to your average person.

On your side note: That's a more complicated question then you realize. If you choose to take a human life you bet your own life as well. The shot that killed that guy would be the first one he fired on the first child. So if you're asking me if i'd take that bullet the answer is obviously yes (before proceeding to break which ever arm he was holding his rifle with).

 

[Neo10101]

All lives have the potential to hold as great a value as anyone else, someone on their death bed who was a research physicist may discover the way to sole the energy crisis and world hunger, literally days before death. You never know.

 

[Atmos Duality]

The value to me is:
1) Context Sensitive
2) Mostly Subjective (if not for 1, it would be entirely subjective)

 

[tofulove]

That's a more complicated question then you realize. If you choose to take a human life you bet your own life as well. The shot that killed that guy would be the first one he fired on the first child. So if you're asking me if i'd take that bullet the answer is obviously yes (before proceeding to break which ever arm he was holding his rifle with).

in this situation, its taking a bullet for the man who already killed 20 children. would you die so that man may live longer.

 

[Danny Ocean]

Do all lives hold equal value, or are lives of the young and innocent worth more than that of the adult and old?

This is part of it:

Remember all the wonder you had at the world when you were young? The way you'd never stop asking 'Why?' even when your parents shouted at you to shut-the-fuck-up-you've-been-talking-for-40-hours? Remember how you could find immense pleasure from the simplest of things?

Remember your fist science classes? When everything was fun and new and amazing and brilliant? How about your first music, or art classes? Remember how you felt so proud of yourself when you did something great, like learn a new song or precipitate some crystals or paint your best painting so far?

How about that time at the beach when a gull stole your ice cream? Or that time you finally got to see the Grand Canyon? How about the moon launch, wasn't that amazing!? Don't forget your first kiss.

Remember how, when you were young, everything was new and fantastical. As you grow older, you run out of these first experiences of awe and bedazzlement. You stop asking why. Your cup is full, so to speak.

Young lives are worth more because they have much more potential, not to do things, but to be happy and love the life they're living. At the very least (if they don't achieve anything) they'll have the chance to enjoy the happiness of these kinds of moments.

At least that's what I think; of course, there are exceptions: there's the occasional adult who still retains that curiosity and flamboyancy. Those are the people who draw others to themselves like moths to a flame without even trying because, when it comes down to it, people just want to be happy.

 

[Spineyguy]

In terms of monetary value, Human life is something of a commodity, and holds various values depending on where you are in the world.

In terms of benefit to the wider universe, Human life is completely worthless. The value tends to become greater the closer to home you get. Values here are in arbitrary units.

Human life in the Universe = 0

Human life in the galaxy = 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001

Human life in the Planetary system = 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000001

Human life on the planet = 0.00000007 (or there abouts)

Human life in the UK = 0.0000006 (again, all values are approximate)

Human life in a city = 0.00005 (Based on estimated average city population in UK)