It's a very dangerous path to take when discussing statistics.
Statistics let you evaluate many things, including if the "cure" is worse than the "disease".
In this case, terrorism has killed 5,000 people in 148 years. The "war on terror" has killed 4,486 Americans in Iraq and 2,259 Americans in Afghanistan alone. Source: http://icasualties.org/
That's at least 6,745 Americans killed in a little over a decade to fight something that has killed 5,000 Americans in 148 years.
I'm purposely only mentioning American deaths to show how starkly idiotic what we're doing is.
So is it okay to take 5 good organs from a single man to save 5 lives? For me, morality comes first, then you use statistics to choose what's good for you, not me. I will decide on my own.
300bps pointed out that means justify ends. If there were more terrorists caught than people dying in car accidents, that would justify NSA activity in his eyes. (If it wouldn't, he would not defend his stats-based argument.)
I point out that with right statistics one can justify anything. E.g. giving up one man's life for 5 lives is measurable and sounds solid. Why don't we do that? Because we all have this gut feeling that some things are plain wrong.
I think what you meant to accuse me of is "ends justify means" but you're obviously a non-native English speaker so it's understandable. However, you are incorrect that I was saying "ends justify means". Instead I'm saying, "some ends justify some means". There's no legitimate point in attempting to ascribe a black and white philosophy to me.
If there were more terrorists caught than people dying in car accidents, that would justify NSA activity in his eyes.
Not even close. You have to admit that you completely made that up and ascribed it to me when I had never said it. However, I will say that if 310 million Americans per year were dying of terrorism I would think NSA activity might be justified.
You completely misread. Pretend you're looking at a theoretical 'wrong cure' for a problem. The first thing you should do is check if such a cure even works at all. Then you need to decide if it works well enough that you are willing to do something wrong.
300bps never said that you should automatically accept any wrong cure that works. Working is only one requirement.
HN has a nesting limit for comments (for probably good reasons), so replying here. Yes, I get your point.
> If there were more terrorists caught than people dying in car accidents, that would justify NSA activity in his eyes.
Ok, then our interpretations simply disagree, and that's OK. (edit here I mean that I do not believe that citing stats implies that were they reversed, NSA activity would be justified. I do not believe such a set of beliefs/etc. leads to inconsistency.)
I simply think that stats can be used to illustrate absurdity etc., but not necessarily to justify something. It is a slippery slope, but I believe it's a rather long slope ;) Indeed,
> E.g. giving up one man's life for 5 lives is measurable and sounds solid. Why don't we do that?
Here you are ignoring the slope entirely. What you're saying sounds like act utilitarianism. There are many types of utilitarianism and, more generally, "using the ends to [partly] justify the means" falls more broadly into consequentialism (utilitarianism being a subset of consequentialism.)
If we e.g. take rule utilitarianism, then your given example/situation computes differently. Indeed, this very example you cited is used to illustrate the difference [1].
All I'm saying is, there are many shades of gray. :) Just because you use stats to illustrate a point doesn't mean you're then bound by consistency to kill all lonely people to harvest their organs.
Statistics let you evaluate many things, including if the "cure" is worse than the "disease".
In this case, terrorism has killed 5,000 people in 148 years. The "war on terror" has killed 4,486 Americans in Iraq and 2,259 Americans in Afghanistan alone. Source: http://icasualties.org/
That's at least 6,745 Americans killed in a little over a decade to fight something that has killed 5,000 Americans in 148 years.
I'm purposely only mentioning American deaths to show how starkly idiotic what we're doing is.
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