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DeVliegendeHollander comments on Open thread, Mar. 23 - Mar. 31, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Does the harm of smoking scale linearly? I went from about 15 cig a day to about 3, without any effort, at some point it just made me feel sick and nauseous if I wasn't having it with/after coffee. Consider the problem 80% solved? Stupid question, but why do people talk about the harm of smoking in general, instead of weighting it with dose? Because most people cannot before a pack a day? I too was on my to that if not for the new nausea effect. One study suggests linearity for one effect at least for men but probably nobody has a firm idea whether overally all of the effects are linear or not, but why shouldn't they be? At this point the only reason to not stop completely is that coffee generates a strong smoke craving.
See this Hanson post. Quote "MRFIT randomized multifactor trial of 8000 smokers. After 6 years one half quit 49% (vs. 29%), and after 16 years had an insignificant 6% lower mortality (11% less heart disease, and -15% less lung cancer)."
Thank you
The search term "pack years" may be helpful to you. Dose is definitely considered important.
Incidence of some cancers is described fairly well by a multistage model of carcinogenesis, which posits that a cell has to go through multiple pre-cancerous stages before it becomes a cancer. Suppose the model is true. If smoking accelerates the transition at multiple steps on the path to carcinogenesis, then smoking's effect on cumulative cancer incidence can be super-linear.
Not my clever idea, sadly, I got it from another paper.