gjm comments on Open thread 7th september - 13th september - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Elo 06 September 2015 10:27PM

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Comment author: gjm 10 September 2015 08:08:21PM 0 points [-]

The Pr(get killed) figures were intended to be long-term. "If I stay here, there's a 10% chance that eventually I'll get killed". Delaying departure by a few months wouldn't make a very big difference to that.

("Long-term" is relative, of course. For a country in as much turmoil as Syria, who knows what might be happening in 10 years?)

I agree that scenarios like mine are made much less plausible if it's only Europe that has disproportionately many men turning up.

Comment author: Lumifer 10 September 2015 08:15:26PM *  3 points [-]

Delaying departure by a few months wouldn't make a very big difference to that.

I guess we have a different understanding of what makes a bona fide refugee.

In my opinion, a refugee is someone who is forced to flee because of imminent danger. "A few months" make a huge difference.

"I live in a bad place, I'd better move, but a few months here or there won't make much of a difference" creates a migrant, not a refugee.

Comment author: gjm 10 September 2015 10:06:07PM 0 points [-]

OK, so for me someone who leaves a place because they aren't safe there is a refugee rather than a migrant (or: as well as a migrant, but I would generally prefer to use the more informative term) even if the danger isn't imminent.

If I live in a community where people of my ethnicity or religion or eye colour or whatever are being murdered at a rate that means I'll probably last five years, that's a serious threat and I need to get the hell out of there even though a couple of months' extra time there doesn't make a huge difference to the likelihood of death.

Comment author: Jiro 11 September 2015 04:02:59PM 2 points [-]

This depends on what "huge" means. If you're not likely to live five years, your chance of death in a few months isn't huge in comparison to 100% or 50%, but it's still huge in comparison to the average person's chance of death.

Comment author: gjm 11 September 2015 07:34:05PM -1 points [-]

Sure. I wasn't the one who characterized my scenario by saying "a few months here or there won't make much of a difference". Nor does anything in that scenario require that to be true.