Please pardon the off topic.
I had not heard of saw blade painting before so had to search images for that. Was it some sort of folksy arty thing?

Please forgive my pedanticism here but I can't let this pass. While I totally agree with lives being precious as a society we don't regards lives as priceless.

Kinda. This area is big in the timber industry so it is just the medium she chose. Lots of it they got for scrap price so it was convenient.

Just received this "Notice to Airmen" about effect of COVID on Air Traffic Control (ATC).

Here's the link to the map showing impacted facilities, updated daily.

https://www.faa.gov/coronavirus/map/

Also, note, it isn't a dire as it sounds. Pilots are used to flying at non-towered airports or airports that have tower services only part of the time. I haven't flown into a towered airport in years personally. Also, if you click on the affected airports you'll see that most are operating normally.

I got the picture.

Lookout on the ground, ol Dadhawk is ah comen in hot!

:eyebulge:

That's probably more accurate than I want to admit.

Going all "Amish" but in the wrong thread!!

I never learned how to do it the modern way but I did find our moving one for us a few times. Do I get points for that?

tu hilo nuestro hilo

Well, we can explore this further. It'll be fun.

Two things that jump out to me in your argument is the presupposition that my use of priceless is the same as yours, and the second, is the addition of "as a society", which I did not qualify. Let's tackle the former point first.

Priceless can have many different meanings to different people. A common definition is so precious that its value cannot be determined. Even though we can concede that there would be some maximal value that must exist, it still may be impossible to reasonably find that value. Moreover, the value may be possible for society, but impossible for the individual or for a certain individual. There are thought experiments philosophers use to explore these concepts. These challenge our ideas of consequentialism vs Kant's categorical imperative.

The popular Trolley Problem goes like this: there is a trolley baring down on five people tied to the tracks; you can change the tracks, so the train misses the five people, saving their lives, but it will kill a single person tied to the other track; is it moral to save five lives to kill someone who would not have died? Consequentialism says yes. Kant would say no. What would you say?

The second part of this paradox is to ask yourself the following: if you were for consequentialism then would you still be for that scenario unfolding if it wasn't a stranger on the tracks who you chose to die, but you on the tracks or perhaps your child on the tracks that you or someone else chose to die? Would you be just as likely to save five if it was your life or your child's life on the line?

People respond to this paradox with a broad range of answers and emotions. It is clear that not everyone holds life equally. Some people are much more tied to the outcome of themselves or their offspring with concentric circles of priority emanating beyond them encompassing their family then friends then acquaintances then group then state then country and so on. Other people might feel much more altruistic to put others before themselves, so their response will always favor what they determine is the maximum well-being of all. Regardless, all of this makes it difficult to determine a value for life.

That isn't to say it isn't done, but the argument is that the value is not homologous to all people. Someone could argue that what I am saying is no different to the value of anything like a car; a car might have some minimum utility to someone who doesn't like the make and model, color and features, yet someone else can find it perfect, so they would assess its value higher, and someone may value that car much, much higher if that was the VIN they tracked down, as the family POS they grew up in that they intend to procure. This is true, but the range is much different, and it gets much more extreme with human lives. We can try to set a generic value to life like we would a solder in the military, but that becomes complicated in certain examples. In the Trolley Paradox, what if the one person is the person who discovers the cure for cancer or is the president/prime minister, or what is the five people were all convicted, unemployed felons, and the one person was a law-abiding, school teacher?

Transitioning, the latter point is a distinction that is important because most people would respond to the Trolley Problem differently. Specifically, most people would find it difficult to throw the switch to kill themselves or their child, especially without knowing the characters of the individuals they could be saving. Their life, or the life of their child, is much more priceless to them. Some might truly consider it priceless, and they would let a million die or a billion die in their place. This is why I didn't qualify the valuation of a life to the opinions of society, and it is perhaps why you did add that qualifier. I understand, that in the context of the rest of the subject matter (weighing reopening the economy to human lives), it is reasonable to assume that the perspective of the conversation is coming from society, but I specifically did not add that qualifier because the tragedy we are facing is unquantifiable from the perspective of those who have suffered a loss--priceless.

Thank you for your reply.

I am familiar with the Trolley Problem.
It was with a little bit of excitement I purchased a book (Would You Kill the Fat Man? by Edmonds) dedicated to the Problem. I was a little disappointed in that the book was a history/discussion of said problem without giving a definitive answer. Stupid me, I was expecting the answer.

In the context of your statement "priceless" I read only one meaning/interpretation.
"Even though we can concede that there would be some maximal value that must exist," reads like an affirmation of my statement that broad scale "priceless"-ness doesn't exist. That's why we have triage. "As a society" we say we are not going to spend unlimited amounts of money on health care.

Sure but that happens all the time regardless of covid.
In no way am I trying to lessen the tragedy to individuals but personal tragedy is personal unless it becomes newsworthy.


:)

It was affirmation of your interpretation from a literalist perspective of joining price and less. Again, the common definition of priceless is below and provides meaning in the example sentence. If nothing is priceless in the literal interpretation of the word then the word has no meaning or usage that makes sense. Often conjunctions form words that are vastly different in definition than their parts.

https://youtu.be/hElOag-1a0k

I think the point being made is that we have two tracks with a trolley bearing down on hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, who will surely die. Some people would rather the trolley take those people out instead of going down the other track. What’s down the other track? It is a change of lifestyle for them like having to wear a mask in social situations to not getting to go to the movies to having less income to losing one’s job to losing half of one’s savings to losing one’s small business to going bankrupt. On one side we have thousands of people who have died and those that don’t want to die, and we have the millions of family and friends the dead have left behind who are trying to plead their case for the priceless ones they have lost whom they can’t replace, and on the other side, we have millions trying to plead their case that they want to maintain their quality of life.

The scenario actually reminds me of the north and south at a period in US history where one side wanted to rape, murder, torture and enslave a race of people, and they were willing to be insurrectionists and kill their countrymen to maintain their standard of living, and on the other side was people just wanting to live and those who supported their inalienable rights. In some ways, I shouldn’t be surprised many Americans struggle with this type of moral paradox. Not saying you do; you were just being pedantical.

As an aside, my family has the Trial By Trolley game as one of those in our game night rotation. Sad to say, I have discovered several scenarios where my children are willing to throw my under the virtual trolley.

Does not bode well for my later years.

Unfortunately, we live in a society that places a financial value on everything, including a human life. When I worked in the pharmaceutical industry, a common analytical tool used to set prices for life-saving drugs was "cost per quality adjusted life year saved". There were specific numbers ascribed to the 'value' of a human life, and to the value of extending lifespan (in diseases such as cancer) with drugs that added time if not outright curing the condition.

While philosophers and economists can debate until the end of time the 'value' of a human life, and whether or not it is truly 'priceless', I would argue that it's irrelevant. What is indisputable is that each human life is irreplaceable. Economists will argue that you can always make more people to replace those lost, and therefore continue to create economic value, etc. I think a mark of a civilized society would be to realize that each individual life cannot be replaced. You can always make more people, but you can never make another you, or someone you care about.

Regarding the pandemic, economies can always be rebuilt. New jobs can always be created in the future. Money not made today can be made tomorrow. But when a person dies, it's forever. They can never be brought back. I would hope that would matter more, and the priority should be to save as many lives as possible. Sadly, the culture, society, and government in the U.S. doesn't think that way (though maybe there's a hope of a bit more compassion under the Biden administration).

For people who would balk at this, and scream that 'jobs' and 'personal liberties' should come first and before saving lives, I would ask, would you feel the same way if it's your own life on the line, or that of a family member? Because in the pandemic, it is.