satt 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: satt 03 March 2012 03:45:19PM 0 points [-]

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 [...] And trans fat ban [...]

The lack of these bans doesn't mean people don't really care about lifespan; it could just mean they value something else more, such as the autonomy represented by being able to smoke cigarettes or eat trans fats. Or (as implied by some of this comment's siblings) they don't think those measures work well enough to justify whatever the bans' anticipated downsides.