I reject whatever definition leads to this conclusion.
Let’s test it: I saw a random guy on the street with a cough today. I take as a given that there is a nonzero possibility that he’s dying of some treatable disease and money can save his life. If, as you allege, there’s a nonzero chance that his life is worth infinity, you should be willing to give him all your money on the off chance that he is that priceless person and he is dying from a treatable disease from which only money can save him. Nonzero times nonzero times infinity equals infinity, so contributing everything you have won’t quite balance the scales, but it’s a start. Deal? You can mail it to me, I’ll pass it along. (And of course, I might be lying and there was no guy, but there’s a nonzero chance I’m telling the truth, and another nonzero times infinity is still infinity.)
Great, looking forward to it!
I must not be following you. Let me make this simpler, to make sure we’re on the same page. We have two worlds A and B, which are identical except that in World A, a random person is dead while an effective and life saving charity has 1 trillion extra dollars that will be used to save lives at roughly $1000/life. Your position is that asking which world is better is absurd? It’s unanswerable absurd, not-good-enough-for-mu absurd? Is that really what you’re claiming?
Doctors charge money to save peoples lives, right? Hospitals charge money, food sellers charge money to people who are starving, foreign aid costs money, inoculations cost money. People in the real world put actual dollar values on the lives of random people, in order to calculate risk and safety and insurance. That’s not just a hypothetical thing that could happen, it does happen, it’s a totally mundane fact about the world: lives are assigned prices.
And your position, if I’m reading you right, is that despite that it actually happens daily all over the world, because this hypothetical world includes a random person’s death, you can’t even deign to unask the question of whether or not a world in which we can expect millions of lives to be improved is better than a world in which we don’t?
That, my friend, is absurd.