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Comment by jschwartzi | Hacker News Reader

YLL is a horrifying metric because it values someone who is 20 over someone who is 60. The only argument I can see for its "usefulness" as a statistic is if you want to imply that the old are less useful than the young. This kind of statement about the bare utility of a human life is the same statement that underlies a lot of how we have treated the disabled or those on welfare in the past. And it only makes sense if you think about a human life in terms of its economic usefulness as some sort of cog in the economic machine that wears out and can be discarded safely after age 67.

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> YLL is a horrifying metric because it values someone who is 20 over someone who is 60.

Not to my father, who is in his late 60s and the most at-risk member of the family, and who has been more opposed to the lockdowns than any of us.

His calculation is that at some point - for the good of the family, long-term - the economic damage and delayed social development of his grandchildren outweigh his personal safety.

I have encountered very few older people who don't also think this way.

Not necessarily. In my persona value system I would much rather live 20 more years when I'm 20 over living those same years once I'm 60.

It makes sense if we consider the possibility of novel life experiences to be an important value of how we live life. If you've made it to 60 (a not uncommon life expectancy), you've had a chance to travel, have children, live through many different life occasions, etc. If you're 20, you've barely had two years as a legal adult where you could make something of your life. It has little to do with economic productivity.

The only argument I can see for its "usefulness" as a statistic is if you want to imply that the old are less useful than the young.

It's not about "usefulness", it's that saving the life of a young person produces a larger benefit in terms of expected future years of life. Take the extreme case: if a building is on fire and you can only rescue one person, would you be indifferent between saving the life of a 10 year old child versus a 90 year old with terminal cancer?

Someone who is 20 should be valued more than someone who is 60. Case in point, the deaths of the ~100,000 centenarians are going to be way less impactful than a disaster that wipes out the entire town of San Antonio.

Here is a choice for you:

1. You get killed at 20.

2. You get killed at 60.

Which option would you choose?

see my comment here for a different angle than just pure utility: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27080048

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