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.
> 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.
[1]: http://martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/utilitarianism.html#Act_util...