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rationalnoodles comments on Rationality Quotes Thread December 2015 - Less Wrong
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Yes, it's still a bias.
The difference is, if they fail, you can always buy a new appliance. You can't buy a new body.
For some underwhelming value of "always", and anyway appliances aren't all that engineering makes.
Off the top of my head, cases when "harms take longer to show up & disprove than benefits" outside medicine included leaded gasoline, chlorofluorocarbons, asbestos, cheap O-rings in space shuttles, the 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the use of two-digit year numbers...
Look at Feynman's analysis. I'd say this is a good example of disproportionate channeling of optimism.
Yes. My point was that disproportionate channeling of optimism isn't something specific to medicine (let alone to evidence-based medicine).
EDIT: Hmm, I guess I originally took "disproportionally" to mean "compared to how much other things channel optimism" whereas it'd make more sense to interpret it as "compared to how much medicine channels pessimism".