In the invisible handcuffs, I have a section about Richard Thaler, who wrote his dissertation on the value of human life. Right away, he figured out that his result was wrong. His advisor refused to speak to him and a colleague wrote a Wall Street Journal op ed. denouncing him.
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Julio Huato Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2013 5:24 AM To: Progressive Economics Subject: Re: [Pen-l] From a Bangladeshi friend on Matt Yglesias Chuck Grimes wrote: > There is no independent standard for stating the value of human life? Sorry, Chuck, but there's nothing in this world that is absolutely independent from all the rest. There's universal interdependence. So, the value of human life is the value of what we do with it. And the value of the things we do in/with our lives is the amount of our lives that goes into them. Valuing wealth is the same process by which we value ourselves, except that view from the reverse side. Of course, we can measure objects with objects and lives with lives. We do this all the time because we need to do it. At a deeper layer, the Object is the measure of the Subject. And the Subject is the measure of the Object. But at the deepest one, Protagoras was right: We (the reflective, thinking part of nature) are the measure of all things, ourselves included... which leads to "logical indeterminacy." We live with that. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
