Sneaky test question

[Yvain Wintersong]

Recently I heard someone ask this question, entirely innocently:

Which is more important to you, money or health?

Before I tell you why I think most answers to this question are hopelessly naive, and explain why I think this question demands complex logical thinking, give it a shot. Which is more important?

[b3n|<3r|\|]

Oh I don't know. Because if you get an illness you need money to get a cure?

[Aurangzeb Khan]

Money - so I can live out my days in ceaseless debauchery so that I am gratified in every way possible and need not worry about contemplating my abject, base and futile nature.

[hypatias mom]

That sounds all well and good if you have the health to enjoy it, but health by itself is not everything either. Haviing enough to live on, to help others and put some aside, seems adequate. I think enough health to enjoy life and enough money to live on with perhaps some to spare seems to be a good combination. I am unwilling to choose, since both are important.

And, after all, money and health are not the most important things a person can possess. Health allows one the freedom to do what one would like, and money gives the tools to facilitate this, for yourself and others.

[b3n|<3r|\|]

Means to and end you mean? Good point.

[Liam conToketi]

...Well...with enough money...I could buy health...

[Erik Mortis]

Incurable cancer. AIDs. Various other things there is no cure for. MS. etc... Money may prolong your life, but will not cure the problem. You could have all the money in the world, and still find yourself to sick to enjoy it, or use it for any other reason then keeping yourself barely alive.

So. While money is nice, it is not guaranteed to keep you healthy, though it is a big help. Health, in this argument, is guaranteed. If you are healthy you could in theory get a job, assuming average intelligence and education (Or assuming I am still me). So I pick Health.

Assuming that it's an XOR situation, we have to assume that the lack of money will not decrease our health. Otherwise the argument is moot.

However, if we assume the health we have now, without any weird incurable diseases suddenly appearing, I choose money.

[Liam conToketi]

The way I read the question was assuming we are as we are now. Would you want to have wealth at your current health? Or would you want to never become sick again? I don't plan on terminal illness, so I chose money.

However, if choosing money implied lowered health, I'd choose health.

[Kaiser Hasan I]

Health, because its always important to have a Healthy Bank Account.

[hypatias mom]

One can be quite surprised at what comes in one's life. When I was the age of most of the Shirerithians, I never gave a thought to my future life and health, except to assume they would always be sound and good. Things have a way of changing when we least expect it. And to say one chooses health or wealth doesn't mean that either will automatically follow. I always chose health, but then lost it. I am struggling to regain it, but if someone had told me 30 years ago that I would be as I am now, I would have laughed with scorn or thought the bearer of that news sadly mistaken. One doesn't choose to lose either health or wealth, unless leading a life that would guarantee that loss, but one's circumstances can take one by surprise, and change one's path (and attitude).

[Yvain Wintersong]

I'd almost forgotten about this. The correct answer as I see it, and a few of you seem to agree, is to refuse to answer the question until it's phrased better.

Let's say I say "health is more important than money." So if you offered me ten million dollars to smoke one cigarette, I wouldn't take it? Of course not. Any sane person would take that offer.

Or let's say I say "money is more important than health." So if you offered me five dollars to inject myself with the AIDS virus, I'd say okay? Of course not. No sane person would take that offer.

So clearly both health and money are important, to some degree, to everyone. The trick is in comparing how important they are. If there was such a thing as "one unit of health" and "one unit of money", we could see someone who was willing to trade one unit of health for two units of money, and say "Oh, health is twice as important as money to him." But since there's no such thing as units of health or units of money, we can't make a direct comparison by asking which is more important. Not everything can be directly compared the second you think about it. Quick, which is more important - good weather or historical preservation?

A better question would be what your conversion rate is. Create a scale of health on which one hundred is an Olympic athlete and zero is clinically dead. Flesh out the scale a bit more and figure out some way around problems of marginal change. Now, how many dollars would I have to give you for you to be willing to drop one point on the scale for one year?

Maybe A would be willing to drop one point on the scale for fifty dollars, but B would require five hundred dollars. Then you could fairly say B cares more about health, relative to money, than A. This is the closest you can come to an answer to the original question.

Why does it matter? Because I am always hearing politicians messing this up. One politician says "We should repeal environmental laws, because the economy is more important than the environment." Another says "We should make more environmental laws, because the environment is more important than the economy." Then they each make spurious "arguments" to support their position, like "You are an anti-human extremist" or "You are in the pay of big polluters!".

Of course, what they should do in this situation is find a way to quantify environmental damage, and each state how many dollars of the economy they are willing to sacrifice to preserve one unit of environment. Then they can examine this particular environmental policy to see whether it is more or less cost-effective.

Think of this also whenever a politician says "We can never sacrifice freedom for security!" If he actually believed this, he would be against all laws of any sort. What he really means is "This law is selling too much of our freedom to buy too little security. But I will make an overblown sweeping categorical statement because it sounds impressive"

I bet you can think of many, many more examples.

[b3n|<3r|\|]

And the whole setup is just a trap to capture escaping logicians. None of the doors actually lead out.