Risto_Saarelma comments on Open Thread, November 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 02 November 2012 02:11AM

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Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 06 November 2012 07:53:38AM 6 points [-]

Fields Medalist Timothy Gowers reasons about medical risks.

The risk of death is put at one in a thousand, and this is where things get interesting. How worried should I be about a 0.1% risk? How do I even think about that question? Perhaps if my life expectancy from now on is around 30 years, I should think of this as an expected loss of 30/1000 years, or about 10 days. That doesn’t sound too bad — about as bad as having a particularly nasty attack of flu. But is it right to think about it in terms of expectations? I feel that the distribution is important: I would rather have a guaranteed loss of ten days than a 1/1000 chance of losing 30 years.

Comment author: MileyCyrus 06 November 2012 01:21:21PM *  8 points [-]

I found on this site that the average risk of death in the UK for a man between 45 and 54 is 1/279, much higher than 1/1000.

Shudder. The United States has 74,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan.. In 2011, 418 Americans died while deployed in Afghanistan. So roughly 1/180 chance of dying in Afghanistan if you're deployed there for a year. Being a man in your early fifties is not quite as dangerous as working in Afghanistan, but it's in the same ballpark.

Also, I had a nightmare last night where my mom decided to risk swimming on a beach that had a 1 in 1700 chance of drowning her. When I woke up, she was alive again. But then I read this article, and learned that she her chance of dying naturally next year is four times greater than her chance of drowning on that nightmare beach. And my dad's chance of dying is greater still. I'd better Skype them.

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