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MixedNuts comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (2012) - Less Wrong
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How do you feel about news about large numbers of people being saved?
I seem to underweight such news, mostly because of the difficulty of speculating on what "would have happened", although another contributory factor is that such news is rare and frequently suffixed with a number of disclaimers about how it could still happen somewhere else, etc. etc. (Yes, I am glad that the Fukushima nuclear reactor didn't end up exploding; but other reactors in other parts of the world are at least as old and prone to breaking down if they're looked at wrong.)
I was thinking in terms of cures or vaccines for diseases. So we know a lot of people died, and will continue to die from other diseases, but these bits aren't new, while the reduction in death toll is. (Bonus: they're also a lot less rare than I thought.)
Hm. Well, this I have not thought about in detail, but my immediate emotional reaction is "so what?" which is not really helpful to me on any count.
This is probably exacerbated by the aforementioned difficulty in determining "could have beens". I will sit on this question overnight and see what happens.