In US, driving takes 51min/day, & causes 40K of 2.8M deaths.
That’s 3.5% of time, but only 1.4% of deaths. So relative to its place
in our lives, driving is not that dangerous.
What a flawed argument. A death while driving and 20 years old isn’t
the same as one of those 2.8M deaths from people at the end of their
lives.
And perhaps the deaths are relatively low because there are rules and
regulations and you have to get a license. If only there was a thing
that only the USA didn’t have strong regulations for, and the rest of
the world does have which we can compare. oh
no
Is he...comparing the percentage of a day that is spent by an individual driving to the percentage of deaths that are driving-related? Like...what is that even supposed to mean?
He is trying to say the danger is overblown (I think), and we shouldn't regulate driving as a special exception. It is mega libertarian contrarianism. Normally when you try to point out overblown dangers, you pick something like death by terrorism (which is indeed a low risk, and the whole TSA stuff is not worth it (if you would spend that money in counter terrorism and police work, you stop more terror for example, as no terror attack has been foiled by the TSA iirc), there is a different reason for the TSA however, it does make people feel safer, which also has value, but I'm ranting and basically channeling Bruce Schneier atm). This is just another attempt to find an overblown risk which he can have 'contrian opinion' on. But in this case it is mega stupid, and he is using bad statistics which say nothing.
He also is profoundly obnoxious. 'you can't compare those stats' 'yes I can, I just did'. Thank god nobody takes him seriously as a thinker. [Oh no x2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hanson)
E: [He keeps digging, but in a mega pretentious way](https://twitter.com/robinhanson/status/1161429837367693312), it is funny that it seems everybody reacting to him is saying he is a doofus.
**Robin Hanson**
Robin Dale Hanson (born August 28, 1959) is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He is known as an expert on idea futures and markets, and he was involved in the creation of the Foresight Institute's Foresight Exchange and DARPA’s FutureMAP project. He invented market scoring rules like LMSR (Logarithmic Market Scoring Rule) used by prediction markets such as Consensus Point (where Hanson is Chief Scientist), and has conducted research on signalling.
***
^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&message=Excludeme&subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index) ^| [^Source](https://github.com/kittenswolf/WikiTextBot) ^]
^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.28
Did you know that even though people constantly criticize drunk driving, it's actually responsible for less than one third of motor vehicle deaths? Obviously we should legalize it, it can't be that bad.
i know it’s a pretty un-pc thing to say and i expect downvotes, but
this is why we should abolish hospitals. you’re something like 5× more
likely to die in a hospital bed than in your own bed.
This is great
>>>Stands to reason we should ban hospitals to prevent all these deaths
>>No it doesn't
>[Keep going...](https://twitter.com/dylanmatt/status/1161406594422312960)
**Hospital-acquired infection**
A hospital-acquired infection (HAI), also known as a nosocomial infection, is an infection that is acquired in a hospital or other health care facility. To emphasize both hospital and nonhospital settings, it is sometimes instead called a health care–associated infection (HAI or HCAI). Such an infection can be acquired in hospital, nursing home, rehabilitation facility, outpatient clinic, or other clinical settings. Infection is spread to the susceptible patient in the clinical setting by various means.
***
^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&message=Excludeme&subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index) ^| [^Source](https://github.com/kittenswolf/WikiTextBot) ^]
^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.28
No, there are lots of big areas of life where we hurt each other
lots, but have low regulation.
Well, guns, yes. And particulate pollution and carbon emissions. I’ll
grant those (and argue for much stronger regulation in those areas).
What other areas?
>If your point is that we should be more aggressive about enforcing laws against domestic violence, stalking, etc, or that we should have mandatory comprehensive sex-ed, including relationship health,
Oh you sweet summer child.
>>I think that's the way everyone is reading your post! If, instead, your claim is that other areas of life (I've ID'd guns, some pollution, and interpersonal violence as examples) have a similar dynamic and could be better regulated, then we agree. But you might want to clarify.
>That's because "everyone" on Twitter presumes that every tweet is trying to take sides in current political/cultural wars.
They presume that because you're constantly trying to take sides in current political/cultural wars.
>Robin is not saying the regulations on those things should be greater -- or that regs on driving should be lower.
>He's just posing an interesting question: why the difference?
Oh grow up.
Many seem to presume that unless one can only activities only
influence death rates when particular deaths can be attributed to
particular activities. But in fact, overall death rates are influenced
to a great degree by our behavior, so most all activities matter for
death.
You said “bonus bad statistics” not “bonus /r/ihadastroke”
It is hard to believe this isn’t some kind of self-parody.
The obvious answer here is to make other life activities far more
dangerous to balance. The Purge 4: The Hansoning.
(N.B. I do not endorse a policy of having an annual 8-hour period
where economists who pollute the world with half-baked provocations can
be literally hunted in the streets.)
> (N.B. I do not endorse a policy of having an annual 8-hour period where economists who pollute the world with half-baked provocations can be literally hunted in the streets.)
On the one hand, this would be awful.
On the other hand, if people are willing to pay more money for the right to hunt Robin Hanson in the streets than Robin Hanson is willing to pay to not be hunted like an escaped wild animal, we could be looking at a considerable consumer surplus.
> (N.B. I do not endorse a policy of having an annual 8-hour period where economists who pollute the world with half-baked provocations can be literally hunted in the streets.)
Of course not, we're just asking an interesting hypothetical question about policy when we consider the possible benefits of having an annual 8-hour period where economists who pollute the world with half-baked provocations can be literally hunted in the streets.
smh everybody always wants to find something to get outraged about
I love Fermi calculations! It turns out that my odds of death in a given minute of driving are very close to zero. Let's take the simplifying step of setting that probability to zero. So let's model my life expectancy while driving using an appropriate survival function, i.e., a flat line at 1.0. Hence we conclude that my life expectancy while driving is infinity.
I mean, okay, it's a rough approximation! But that shouldn't matter. I can be wrong by an arbitrary finite amount with no effect whatsoever.
You hear me, Hanson? I'm immortal while driving. Fight me!!!
Given that I'm blocked by Hanson on twitter I have to infer that I also hate Fermi calculations
(half true, I've been mad at the Fermi paradox forever, and that's probably the most famous example of the Fermi method)
Oh yeah I saw that, it's also the context for my "blocked by Hanson on twitter" joke: Hanson wants to believe people who don't like him/he doesn't like just don't like Fermi calculations
I would say that the math there is astonishingly bad, but at this
point I’m no longer astonished by any kind or degree of intellectual
dishonesty from Hanson.
[It's one of the best made skits of all time and it actually happened at an actual political convention. I love it so much. I can't count how many times I've watched and rewatched it](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/cq002a/robin_hanson_who_needs_drivers_licenses_anyway/ewv39rd/)
Recently I saw it described as "Political Tim and Eric" or (more likey) "Libertarian Eric Andre" and I think that kind of nails it. It has that same alienating quality with the timing and cartoonish-but-not-quite-cartoonish way they all talk that winds up leaving you feel just totally dissociated.
OMG that is hilarious! I can tell already this is going to be one of those videos I can come back to a hundred times and laugh every time.
Edit: I have watched it ten times so far. I have laughed hard every time.
I don’t understand this. It looks like he’s posted hundreds of tweets
in response to people’s opposition to his reasoning, and all he’s doing
is pissing people off and convincing them he’s a stubborn idiot.
if i had to speculate i'd say the initial post was a typical contrarian ego "look how smart, objective, and unorthodox i am" identity thing, and everything following it is just defending that ego/identity.
to get super wishy-washy speculative armchair psychology bullshitty, i think it makes a lot of sense in a narcisstic framework: the initial post was fishing for people to [tell him how smart and insightful he is](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_supply), but when [the response wasn't as he expected, he was forced to take defense and lashed out](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_rage_and_narcissistic_injury).
I went to a talk he gave and he was *extremely* reactive answering any question, giving none of them any reflection time and seeming very defensive. I'm sure he enjoys doing statistics and being around people he trusts, but as a public figure he comes across petulant and immature.
My impression of status among his fans is that they are the equivalent of gym forum obsessives. They aggressively affirm each others' fixation on a fantasy of force multiplication, and force multiplication is the only thing that matters so AI is the crown jewel because, theoretically, it multiplies everything. So, they must be philosophers of force multiplication: x + y = infinite change in xy direction. Add a little projective identification and you get the culty ones. I think that's the underlying structure of the fantasy, that and (of course) fear of death / the afterlife, like every other religion.
So as a community they sort of have to pretend that there are big smart people who are "on to something", otherwise their anxiety increases. But they are too dumb and too lazy to pay attention to the incremental progress in a field, so they bite on the big shiny objects.
I mean, isn't Eliezer's explicit life story that he was massively depressed and unable to do anything constructive until he found a way to work on something with outsized importance?
I feel like an idiot to be taking this seriously in any way, but… I
have a lingering bonus annoyance with the use of data here. For Hanson’s
argument to even get in the door, it needs to be the case that:
(total deaths in cars / minutes in cars) < (total deaths / total
minutes lived)
This is the fact that would imply driving to be a relatively safe
activity. Hanson instead (sort of) shows that:
(total deaths caused by cars / minutes in cars) < (total deaths /
total minutes lived)
In order for this to mean anything, we would have to believe that
people pretty much never die in cars for reasons other than traffic
accidents. If, to the contrary, people die of stuff like heart attacks
and overdoses in cars at about the baseline rate, then the total death
rate in cars already equals the baseline death rate and any rate of
deaths due to accidents that is above zero indicates surplus danger.
So, if driving in cars prevents non-car-related death, there
is something to talk about. Otherwise, this whole thing is useful mostly
as a neat teaching example for my research methods undergrads next
month.
> (total deaths in cars / minutes in cars) < (total deaths / total minutes lived)
>
>This is the fact that would imply driving to be a relatively safe activity
This inequality is probably true, but it does not follow from it that "driving is a relatively safe activity". The great majority of deaths are caused by diseases of old age: heart attacks, cancer, strokes, lung dysfunction, Alzheimer's, and so on. Old, sickly people also spend a lot less time driving than the rest of the population. So it's entirely possible that if you pick a person in a car at random and a person not in a car at random, the first guy is less likely to die.
This is all meaningless, though, because the question we're actually interested in is whether getting into a car makes you more likely to die, other things being equal (or: does driving a car *cause* an increased risk of mortality). The answer to this question is almost certainly yes, because being on the road greatly increases your chances of dying in a collision but does precious little to suppress other causes of mortality.
I looked into this briefly, and it turns out that there isn't really usable data on whether the inequality is true or not. Consider that people who die in cars on the way to the hospital are in cars, whether they're driving or not.
But if you want, we can fix the issue entirely in our hypothetical by conditioning on age and health status.
(total deaths in cars / minutes in cars | age, health) < (total deaths / total minutes lived | age, health)
That inequality absolutely would not prove causation! But it's clearly a couple of steps more useful to discuss than the one Hanson does:
(total deaths caused by cars / minutes in cars) < (total deaths / total minutes lived)
tbh it's bad that cycling isn't more regulated in the sense that it means governments don't take the dangers they face seriously
adults only care now that teens on e-bikes are trying to kill us daily
I wouldn't say that cycling is underregulated so much as that existing rules of the road could (depending on where you are in the world) be better enforced and better provisions be made for cyclists to be separated on mixed-use thoroughfares from both cars and pedestrians.
For example, where I live I just don't use my bike that much because the roads just aren't built for cyclists, bike lanes are inconsistent and badly designed anyway, and (unlike **SOME PEOPLE**) I don't like taking up space on the pavement/sidewalk that should be reserved for pedestrians (it's not safe dumbasses, and it's not legal either: FOR A REASON!). On the other hand in one town I used to live of about the same size I cycled a lot because even though cycle lane provision was equally inconsistent the street layout made it a lot safer and less stressful.
With decent urban planning, on a bike you simply don't pose the same danger to others as you do in a car, and it requires a lot less training and practice to safely use a bike. And even then, if you *do* get into an accident of your own fault the vehicle you're on poses a much lower risk of injury or death to other people.
The other factor is that cars are so heavily regulated is high speed driving outside towns/cities or country lanes: in the UK at least, so long as you have a provisional driving licence you can drive anywhere except on a motorway as long as you have a qualified driver in the passenger seat, and on private land such as a farm there's no regulation at all besides registration of ownership.
> The other factor is that cars are so heavily regulated is high speed driving outside towns/cities or country lanes: in the UK at least, so long as you have a provisional driving licence you can drive anywhere except on a motorway as long as you have a qualified driver in the passenger seat,
There are so many parts of the UK where I'd be infinitely happier letting them drive on motorways than drive on the normal roads. Twisty turny car-width country lanes should not have speed limits that high, oh god.
What a flawed argument. A death while driving and 20 years old isn’t the same as one of those 2.8M deaths from people at the end of their lives.
And perhaps the deaths are relatively low because there are rules and regulations and you have to get a license. If only there was a thing that only the USA didn’t have strong regulations for, and the rest of the world does have which we can compare. oh no
i know it’s a pretty un-pc thing to say and i expect downvotes, but this is why we should abolish hospitals. you’re something like 5× more likely to die in a hospital bed than in your own bed.
You said “bonus bad statistics” not “bonus /r/ihadastroke”
It is hard to believe this isn’t some kind of self-parody.
The obvious answer here is to make other life activities far more dangerous to balance. The Purge 4: The Hansoning.
(N.B. I do not endorse a policy of having an annual 8-hour period where economists who pollute the world with half-baked provocations can be literally hunted in the streets.)
I would say that the math there is astonishingly bad, but at this point I’m no longer astonished by any kind or degree of intellectual dishonesty from Hanson.
This takes me back to the 2016 libertarian national convention where Gary Johnson got booed for not opposing driver’s licenses
I don’t understand this. It looks like he’s posted hundreds of tweets in response to people’s opposition to his reasoning, and all he’s doing is pissing people off and convincing them he’s a stubborn idiot.
oh my fucking god this dude is so fucking stupid
I feel like an idiot to be taking this seriously in any way, but… I have a lingering bonus annoyance with the use of data here. For Hanson’s argument to even get in the door, it needs to be the case that:
(total deaths in cars / minutes in cars) < (total deaths / total minutes lived)
This is the fact that would imply driving to be a relatively safe activity. Hanson instead (sort of) shows that:
(total deaths caused by cars / minutes in cars) < (total deaths / total minutes lived)
In order for this to mean anything, we would have to believe that people pretty much never die in cars for reasons other than traffic accidents. If, to the contrary, people die of stuff like heart attacks and overdoses in cars at about the baseline rate, then the total death rate in cars already equals the baseline death rate and any rate of deaths due to accidents that is above zero indicates surplus danger.
So, if driving in cars prevents non-car-related death, there is something to talk about. Otherwise, this whole thing is useful mostly as a neat teaching example for my research methods undergrads next month.
What’s next, having to have a licence to make toast in your own damn toaster?
I feel bad for buying Age of Em when I read stuff like this.
[deleted]