The Six Billion Dollar Earplugs

We are equipped with five senses: Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. The thought of losing any of them is frightening. Setting aside the question of aging, even the thought of only diminishing any of our senses is unsettling. So, the question is, if a faulty product caused you to suffer an impairment of one of your senses, what kind of compensation would be appropriate?

- KEN C. POHLMANN

During my teaching career, for no particular reason, I would sometimes pose this dilemma to my class: Suppose a madman has locked you in a room. He demands that you declare your two most valued senses. Universally, the students specified sight and hearing. Then the madman gives you a terrible choice: he will take away either your sight, or your hearing. Only then will he set you free. What an impossible choice.

Each of us has our own answer, but the students consistently chose blindness over deafness. Many of them were musicians, so that might have biased their decision, but overall the reasoning was that deafness would be more isolating, and that is what the students feared the most. From my wholly unscientific survey, I concluded that of all the senses, hearing is the one we value the most highly. All of which brings us to the case of the six-billion-dollar earplugs.