MixedNuts comments on Prediction is hard, especially of medicine - Less Wrong

47 Post author: gwern 23 December 2011 08:34PM

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Comment author: taw 16 February 2012 05:28:13PM 4 points [-]

Most people don't spend their own money on saving their grandparents, they spend other people's money. Don't act surprised that other people's willingness to throw tens of millions at your grandfather's last year is not unlimited.

Also if people really cared about how long other people in their country lived, total cigarette ban would be a super simple and super cheap way to start (especially since e-cigarettes are an existing and viable low-cancer substitute - people want the psychoactive bits not the tar). And trans fat ban - or at least strict labeling requirement (which would amount to the same, since nobody want that, and trans fats don't have any special taste or anything, they're just industrial poison in food). Or throwing some money at making roads safer (most accidents happen on small fraction of bad spots). And in countless other ways. Throwing ridiculous amount of money at people when they're oldest is stupid way to achieve an already stupid goal.

Comment author: MixedNuts 16 February 2012 06:00:28PM 2 points [-]

"Total cigarette ban" doesn't mean "Very few people smoke", it means "Almost all smokers redirect their money to the black market; hope you like financing terrorist groups".

France has thrown lots of money at making people drive safely, it's working (and fines are a big part of it so there's money recovered that way) but it doesn't seem miraculously impressive. Making roads themselves safer tend to encourage reckless driving so it's not obvious there are big gains here.

Comment author: taw 16 February 2012 11:56:27PM 3 points [-]

France has thrown lots of money at making people drive safely, it's working (and fines are a big part of it so there's money recovered that way) but it doesn't seem miraculously impressive.

Here's list of countries by traffic fatalities per capita, per vehicle, and per distance travelled. Disparity is just ridiculously huge compared to death cares from just about any other cause, even between seemingly similar countries.

Making roads themselves safer tend to encourage reckless driving so it's not obvious there are big gains here.

Except there's no serious evidence for that, and massive counter-evidence (see table above).