The Inconvenient Math of Mortality: A Behavioral Bioethics

The Inconvenient Math of Mortality: A Behavioral Bioethics 1 Part 1: The Prisoner of Choice: How the Two Selves Betray Our Living Wills 2 Part 2: When Compassion Clashes with the Oath: Physicians as Arbiters of Static Justice 3 Part 3: Longevity's Hidden Tax: The Dynamic Justice of Intergenerational Caregiving 4 Part 4: The Economic Calculus of Cruelty: Distancing, Blindness, and the Revenges of the CAFO 5 Part 5: The Rainbow Bridge and the Feedback Loop: Climate Risk and the Poverty of Persuasion ← Series Home Key Takeaways Compassion loop: Interdependence between climate risk awareness and emotional response Poverty of persuasion: Behavioral bias against investing in motivation over technology Future Earth ethics: Justice for generations we cannot touch Behavioral barriers: Overcoming short-term comfort for long-term moral action The Abstract Reality of Future Earth The final ring in the universe of bioethics is Future Earth—everything that lives and dies in the future. Though we cannot touch future generations, they loom large in the present imagination, particularly in the context of climate risk. As the planet warms, we envision future lives becoming increasingly difficult, plagued by more severe calamities and food shortages. This imagination generates feelings of responsibility and, crucially, compassion. ...

The Inconvenient Math of Mortality: A Behavioral Bioethics 1 Part 1: The Prisoner of Choice: How the Two Selves Betray Our Living Wills 2 Part 2: When Compassion Clashes with the Oath: Physicians as Arbiters of Static Justice 3 Part 3: Longevity's Hidden Tax: The Dynamic Justice of Intergenerational Caregiving 4 Part 4: The Economic Calculus of Cruelty: Distancing, Blindness, and the Revenges of the CAFO 5 Part 5: The Rainbow Bridge and the Feedback Loop: Climate Risk and the Poverty of Persuasion ← Series Home Key Takeaways Distancing institutions: Physical and psychological separation from animal suffering Willful blindness: Active choice to avoid seeing cruelty Tragedy of the commons: Economic incentives for factory farming Dynamic justice: Long-term feedback loops between humans and animals The Moral Contradiction of Compassion Humans share an innate capacity for compassion, yet we simultaneously inflict vast and pervasive cruelty upon animals. This contradiction is particularly evident in industrial settings, where animals like pigs live and die in “hellish places” known as concentrated-animal-feeding operations (CAFOs). While we recoil at the thought of cruelty, we consume products derived from it without much hesitation—a process enabled by suppressing the negative emotion of compassion. ...

The Inconvenient Math of Mortality: A Behavioral Bioethics 1 Part 1: The Prisoner of Choice: How the Two Selves Betray Our Living Wills 2 Part 2: When Compassion Clashes with the Oath: Physicians as Arbiters of Static Justice 3 Part 3: Longevity's Hidden Tax: The Dynamic Justice of Intergenerational Caregiving 4 Part 4: The Economic Calculus of Cruelty: Distancing, Blindness, and the Revenges of the CAFO 5 Part 5: The Rainbow Bridge and the Feedback Loop: Climate Risk and the Poverty of Persuasion ← Series Home Key Takeaways Longevity’s paradox: Longer lives may not mean healthier lives due to caregiving burdens Nash equilibrium: Fair income distribution between generations Caregiving tax: Hidden costs of elder care on younger generations Dynamic justice: Long-term feedback loops in demographic policy The Cost of a Longer Sunset The increasing human lifespan is celebrated universally as a triumph of public health, yet it masks a complex economic reality. Our collective life expectancies are rising rapidly, but the essential question remains: Are we living healthier as well as longer lives, or are our additional years spent in poor health?. Health expectancy, derived by dividing total lifetime income by life expectancy, suggests that a longer life is not automatically a healthier or happier one; extended longevity can, in fact, lead to a decline in health expectancy if income is static or if the burden of care increases. ...

The Inconvenient Math of Mortality: A Behavioral Bioethics 1 Part 1: The Prisoner of Choice: How the Two Selves Betray Our Living Wills 2 Part 2: When Compassion Clashes with the Oath: Physicians as Arbiters of Static Justice 3 Part 3: Longevity's Hidden Tax: The Dynamic Justice of Intergenerational Caregiving 4 Part 4: The Economic Calculus of Cruelty: Distancing, Blindness, and the Revenges of the CAFO 5 Part 5: The Rainbow Bridge and the Feedback Loop: Climate Risk and the Poverty of Persuasion ← Series Home Key Takeaways Physician as arbiter: Silent bargaining between compassion and the Hippocratic Oath Nash Solution: Mathematical compromise in end-of-life decisions Patient strategies: Enhancing bargaining position through advance directives Static justice: Fair compromise between competing interests The Moral Fork in the Road The moral life of the physician is often defined by the tension between duty and mercy. Consider Dr. Smith, standing at the bedside of a terminally ill patient who desperately asks to be allowed to die. One side of Dr. Smith is governed by compassion, a deep feeling of sharing the patient’s suffering coupled with an active desire to relieve that misery. The other side is governed by the Hippocratic Oath, which has been internalized as an absolute commitment: “I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect”. This creates an emotional and ethical conflict, forcing Dr. Smith—the “two-headed physician”—to determine not just the manner, but the very timing of the patient’s death. ...

The Inconvenient Math of Mortality: A Behavioral Bioethics 1 Part 1: The Prisoner of Choice: How the Two Selves Betray Our Living Wills 2 Part 2: When Compassion Clashes with the Oath: Physicians as Arbiters of Static Justice 3 Part 3: Longevity's Hidden Tax: The Dynamic Justice of Intergenerational Caregiving 4 Part 4: The Economic Calculus of Cruelty: Distancing, Blindness, and the Revenges of the CAFO 5 Part 5: The Rainbow Bridge and the Feedback Loop: Climate Risk and the Poverty of Persuasion ← Series Home Key Takeaways Time inconsistency: How preferences change over time, splitting the self into young and old versions Living wills dilemma: Which self’s preferences should govern end-of-life decisions? Behavioral bioethics: Integrating psychology into ethical decision-making Justice within individuals: Internal negotiations between competing selves The Internal Contradiction of the Self The experience of addiction, whether to tobacco or gluttony, presents an acute moral paradox that begins not with society, but within the individual. Consider the smoker who “grinds his cigarettes down the disposal swearing that this time he means never again” to smoke, only to be found hours later “looking for a store that’s still open to buy cigarettes”. Similarly, the glutton eats a high-calorie lunch, regrets it instantly, resolves to compensate, yet repeats the high-calorie meal that evening, knowing and accepting the coming regret. These behaviors, often cyclical and autonomous to the habit itself, suggest a fundamental internal division. If an individual seems to act against their own long-term, articulated self-interest, who is truly in command of the person? ...