- cross-posted to:
- usa@midwest.social
- cross-posted to:
- usa@midwest.social
A newborn baby has died in New Mexico from a Listeria infection that state health officials say was likely contracted from raw (unpasteurized) milk that the baby’s mother drank during pregnancy.
I don’t want to be an asshole, but no one can make a definitive statement like this (accurately). It’s incredibly subjective. Many years of pain and suffering, as well as increased resource drain, or nothingness. You can’t really compare those. You can’t really make any claim about non-existence.
If your argument is that more people is always better, I’d say that’s nieve and dangerous, but I guess it is a belief you could hold. In that case I’d say there will be plenty more children born. It’s not a concern. We’ve reduced deaths of infants/babies/fetuses pretty substantially.
I think we potentially can based on the proportion of people living in terminal pain and suffering – extra sanity damage the cause was easily preventable. If an overwhelming majority choose euthanasia or some sort of dignified pass, it’d be blatantly naive and foolish to continue to claim they’re incomparable. So, it can be a research question 😂.
To say it’s the same for people who are fully grown and have a life behind them are the same as a newborn baby is a bit simplistic at best. They aren’t even capable of understanding what it is to be alive, and there’s been almost nothing spent on them yet.
We could still look into people suffering chronically out of interest, but I wouldn’t say anything that comes from it can be compared to this. A baby has no concept of relationships, morals, religion, or anything else that ties them to the world. If they’re gone, the world continues on just like the day before (obviously except for the parents potentially, but they’re the ones that caused this).
I believe you’ve misinterpreted hitmyspot’s comment. If you think it’s worthwhile, perhaps you can describe exactly what the comparison is between, just so we’re operating on the same concepts so as to be on the same page.
I don’t think it’s worth arguing for arguing’s sake. So at the very least I hope to understand what distinctions you’ve made. If whatever it is is wholly subjective as you say then why refute the other person’s subjective view? What could make theirs more wrong or less valid than yours? 🤔
(I’m continuing to ask in the assumption that there is some shared basis in values or whatever that can make it a bit objective or intersubjective.)
The comparison being made is them growing up with these parents, and suffering the consequences of it, or them dying at birth and not suffering. I don’t think those are comparable (as in, you literally can’t weight them against each other). They have totally different ways you’d evaluate their value.
Them dying at birth has almost zero cost or consequence. How do you measure against nothing? Them surviving has many costs and benefits. You can weight them against each other to argue if it’s good or bad, but you can’t compare it against oblivion. It’s like temperature. You can say it’s hot or it’s cold subjectively, but you can’t compare it against a vacuum that literally doesn’t have temperature.