Today in reading about transhumanism, I ran across this quote from David Friedman
which contains a personal anecdote about how he went to the doctor for a routine checkup and the doctor took an x-ray and said:
I looked at her in surprise. “You used to say you wouldn’t cut off my head unless the x-ray showed it would save my life. Why are you doing it now?”
She explained that an x-ray uses so much radiation that anyone whose head was cut off would die no matter how great the benefit to me.
And I wanted to say “Wait what no it doesn’t you can look it up” but I had to keep reading before I could do that
Exactly, having their head cut off will kill the person.
It makes no sense whatsoever, though. Having their head cut off isn’t going to kill you, unless you’re just going to immediately bleed to death. The x-ray is going to kill *you.* And then you’re going to die as soon as the x-ray kills you, which is what you were worried about.








