Holy crap. I live in NYC, where I walk everywhere, drink, and fly several times per year. Apparently I'm screwed.
As long as you aren't taking canoes!
if you can swim and you aren't in the middle of the ocean you are ok...
Micromort
31–40 of 102 posts
Re: Micromort
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are assuming a linear relationship between alcohol and risk of death. There is absolutely no reason to think that.
What would you propose instead? Isn't it obvious that alcohol can cause certain fatal diseases in proportion to consumption?
You mean what sort of relationship between alcohol and death do I propose? One that isn't a neat mathematical line for sure, particularly since it seems possible that moderate amounts of alcohol are actually beneficial.
If the relationship were linear, then you could spread that 500 milliliters out over 100 days and see the same effect, which is plainly ludicrous. The rate of alcohol consumption plays a large role, a single binge can kill you, slow and steady drinking can plausibly extend your life. A single extra drink is also going to do way more harm to a long-term alcoholic than it will to a young healthy Mormon; that Mormon is at absolutely no chance at getting cirrhosis, the risk to the alcoholic is non-zero.
The relationship between alcohol and mortality is something that you could probably fill damn near half a medical library with. "half a liter is a micro-mortality" is silly oversimplified nonsense. It might work for radiation exposure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model) but it is nonsense for alcohol.
Re: Micromort
#33The discussion here is interesting. One of the reasons I hardly ever submit Wikipedia articles to Hacker News is that very few Wikipedia articles have gone through enough thorough editing to be worth discussing among the professionally edited sources submitted here. I'll note for the record, as a Wikipedian, that the article talk page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Micromort
for the article kindly submitted here suggests that the article still needs A LOT of work (as most Wikipedia articles doe) and that some of the statements now in the article may be flat wrong, misrepresenting the micromort concept as it was pioneered by Ronald A. Howard. See his presentation on microrisk analysis
http://ise.tamu.edu/isen627/Slides/25%20Life%20and%20Death.p...
for a possibly more sophisticated, exact, and accurate view of the issue.
The online mathematics lesson "Understanding uncertainty: Small but lethal"
http://plus.maths.org/content/os/issue55/features/risk/index
is also good for practicing understanding of micromorts.
Re: Micromort
#34Here is great video by Cambridge Ideas about the risk of dying from various activities (measured in micromorts):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1PtQ67urG4
The professor's conclusion is that one of the biggest risks is being too cautious.
Re: Micromort
#35It should be noted that used in Thinking Fast and Slow context this micromort induce can be used to show how much we human have very hard time grasping low probability events. All the lottery and insurance business is just a scam against us taking advantage of this miss computation of micro risks.
Insurance isn't a scam. You pay a little extra to ensure that you can get the money before you would have saved it (assuming you put your entire ensurance premium into savings) in the event that you (or your family, in the case of life insurance) need it. Sure, in infinite (or sufficiently high) number of lives/events, you'll always end up behind, but that doesn't mean it's a scam.
Re: Micromort
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you assume there must be a threshold? If you had two identical groups of a million people each and one group received 0.5 liters of wine per person, would you really be shocked that the group that got the wine had a single extra death?
I would be shocked to see any statistically significant [1] difference. The things about alcohol that kill you are cumulative. 3 drinks isn't going to kill your internal organs, not even 1 in a million times. [1] I would be shocked if, give two groups of a million, both groups had the exact same number of deaths in a predetermined time period. 1 death difference between two groups that large is pure background noise.
You're dodging the question. You can achieve statistical significance by using a large sample size, iff there is a real effect.
If we had 10e20 people in each group and gave an extra 0.5 liters of alcohol to each one, would you be shocked that a millionth of them died?
Re: Micromort
#37It should be noted that used in Thinking Fast and Slow context this micromort induce can be used to show how much we human have very hard time grasping low probability events. All the lottery and insurance business is just a scam against us taking advantage of this miss computation of micro risks.
Insurance is not intended to pay out more money than you put in, it is intended to prevent gambler's ruin.
Some extra money when you are in trouble is worth more than the money itself, it is also worth the trouble it gets you out of.
Re: Micromort
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would you propose instead? Isn't it obvious that alcohol can cause certain fatal diseases in proportion to consumption?
You mean what sort of relationship between alcohol and death do I propose? One that isn't a neat mathematical line for sure , particularly since it seems possible that moderate amounts of alcohol are actually beneficial . If the relationship were linear, then you could spread that 500 milliliters out over 100 days and see the same effect, which is plainly ludicrous. The rate of alcohol consumption plays a large role,…
Is there some amount of cigarettes that is beneficial too?
So long as the line is going up and to the right, it's specific shape only matters if you want to debate the micromort value, not whether the concept exists.
Re: Micromort
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would be shocked to see any statistically significant [1] difference. The things about alcohol that kill you are cumulative. 3 drinks isn't going to kill your internal organs, not even 1 in a million times. [1] I would be shocked if, give two groups of a million, both groups had the exact same number of deaths in a predetermined time period. 1 death difference between two groups that large is pure background noise.
You're dodging the question. You can achieve statistical significance by using a large sample size, iff there is a real effect. If we had 10e20 people in each group and gave an extra 0.5 liters of alcohol to each one, would you be shocked that a millionth of them died?
I am not dodging the question; my answer is yes. Applying a LNT model to alcohol exposure is silly.
Do you really think that a Mormon drinking 3 glasses of wine in his life has a one in a million chance of losing his liver?
Re: Micromort
#40It should be noted that used in Thinking Fast and Slow context this micromort induce can be used to show how much we human have very hard time grasping low probability events. All the lottery and insurance business is just a scam against us taking advantage of this miss computation of micro risks.
Insurance isn't a scam. You pay a little extra to ensure that you can get the money before you would have saved it (assuming you put your entire ensurance premium into savings) in the event that you (or your family, in the case of life insurance) need it. Sure, in infinite (or sufficiently high) number of lives/events, you'll always end up behind, but that doesn't mean it's a scam.
Do you agree that we are very bad at evaluating very low probabilities (below .1%)?
Then how much would you bet on the hope that insurance companies are not taking advantage of this psychological weakness for their benefit?