I received the following letter last week and the author gave me permission to quote without using his name. The latter two seem to be more or less results of aging or long-term behaviors like excessive eating or smoking, for example. I feel the same reasoning could be used to tell people not to worry about walking in a bad part of the city because your chances of dying from cancer are higher than getting shot.
It seems like a non-sequitur to me. This is not to say that I think people should be very worried about shark attacks, just that the statistical probability analysis comparing these events is missing something.
The second thing is the uncertainty of some risks as opposed to others. I think most people would have found it irrational to say, for example after the attack on Pearl Harbor, that people should be more worried about automobile safety and cancer than Japanese acts of war because their likelihood at that point of dying in an attack was much lower. People worried about it because there was uncertainty about further attacks, a time sensitivity to stop aggression as early as possible, and the possible defeat of the US in a war.
Am I missing something here? I appreciate your time and any thoughts you may have on this. I look forward to reading more of your writings! X was referring to this article by Charley Hooper and me.
The sensible way to think about risk is per unit time, whether it be an hour, a day, or a year. Why do think that? You make a good point. The way to compare risks there is not to see Pearl Harbor as a one-off event but to put it in context. What was the probability of further attacks? What was the chance the United States would have been defeated in war and what would have been the consequences of that? What that basically says is that it makes sense to look at the whole thing, not just a piece.
