4 ms·

Odds of dying in a car accident are 1/606 but I assume you don't avoid transportation. There's a 1/1,700 chance you'll die from dealing from steps. I assume you

Odds of dying in a car accident are 1/606 but I assume you don't avoid transportation. There's a 1/1,700 chance you'll die from dealing from steps. I assume you don't also avoid those. http://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/mortality-risk http://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/mortality-risk I had PRK done because the idea of LASIK freaked me out more and there were more side effects. The procedure feels pretty benign although there is a long healing time. I assume that most of the problems occur because people don't take proper post-surgery care.

pinum 10y ago
First, I agree with your assessment of the risks and I do intend to consider surgery if my myopia worsens enough to justify it. However, I don't think it works to compare the odds here. People accept the dangers of traveling by road vehicles because it's drastically superior to the alternatives. If there were an option that was less convenient/more annoying than a car, but just as fast, almost as flexible, and much safer (glasses/contacts vs surgery)... I think a lot of people would take it. (I realise this is not a perfect analogy.) Secondly- and I realise this sounds a bit dramatic, and quite insensitive towards blind people- but I would not want to live my life without vision. If I get smashed by a truck and killed, that sucks but I'm probably not going to have to deal with it for long. If I go blind, that's something I have to deal with for the rest of my life and which prevents me from doing almost everything I enjoy doing. I do accept that people don't tend to judge risk in a rational way. A plane crash is a much scarier concept than a car crash, even though it happens far less often, because * plane crashes involve many people at once * they are far more likely to be fatal when they do occur * in some cases you will know you are doomed to crash many minutes before you actually do * a passenger has zero control over that situation BUT, despite this, most of us happily accept air travel because it's vastly better than any alternative. The benefits of eye surgery, in most cases and for many people, are far more marginal than the advantage a car or plane gives you. I would therefore say it's quite rational for someone to decide it's not worth the risk.
Grishnakh 10y ago
Those risk numbers aren't really valid for everyone, for all activities. The steps thing, for instance, is BS for most people; steps are a serious danger, of course, to elderly people, which is why the mortality number is so high for them. For healthy adults under retirement age, the risk isn't remotely as high. Similarly, your risk of dying from getting hit by an asteroid are actually pretty significant according to some sources. Do you know how many people in history have actually died from an asteroid strike? Probably zero, at least in the last couple millenia, and almost certainly zero in the last century. But the risk is still pretty high because if a giant earth-killer asteroid hits the planet, we're all dead, or a city-killer asteroid could cause massive devastation. A small one hit a Russian city a few years ago and 1000 people were injured. According to Wired, your risk of dying from an asteroid is higher than by lightning strike: https://www.wired.com/2013/02/asteroid-odds/ https://www.wired.com/2013/02/asteroid-odds/ So you have to take some of these with a grain of salt. Car accidents, like the steps thing, probably also affect different places differently. Cars are much more deadly in some 3rd-world nations, for instance; does that 1/606 statistic include those? And death rates per mile traveled are probably higher in some places than others (rural vs. urban). And they're also probably higher for drunk drivers (though obviously the drunks do kill innocent people too), and possibly lower for small children (because they're better protected in car seats).

pinum 10y ago

First, I agree with your assessment of the risks and I do intend to consider surgery if my myopia worsens enough to justify it. However, I don't think it works to compare the odds here. People accept the dangers of traveling by road vehicles because it's drastically superior to the alternatives. If there were an option that was less convenient/more annoying than a car, but just as fast, almost as flexible, and much safer (glasses/contacts vs surgery)... I think a lot of people would take it. (I realise this is not a perfect analogy.) Secondly- and I realise this sounds a bit dramatic, and quite insensitive towards blind people- but I would not want to live my life without vision. If I get smashed by a truck and killed, that sucks but I'm probably not going to have to deal with it for long. If I go blind, that's something I have to deal with for the rest of my life and which prevents me from doing almost everything I enjoy doing. I do accept that people don't tend to judge risk in a rational way. A plane crash is a much scarier concept than a car crash, even though it happens far less often, because * plane crashes involve many people at once * they are far more likely to be fatal when they do occur * in some cases you will know you are doomed to crash many minutes before you actually do * a passenger has zero control over that situation BUT, despite this, most of us happily accept air travel because it's vastly better than any alternative. The benefits of eye surgery, in most cases and for many people, are far more marginal than the advantage a car or plane gives you. I would therefore say it's quite rational for someone to decide it's not worth the risk.

Grishnakh 10y ago

Those risk numbers aren't really valid for everyone, for all activities. The steps thing, for instance, is BS for most people; steps are a serious danger, of course, to elderly people, which is why the mortality number is so high for them. For healthy adults under retirement age, the risk isn't remotely as high. Similarly, your risk of dying from getting hit by an asteroid are actually pretty significant according to some sources. Do you know how many people in history have actually died from an asteroid strike? Probably zero, at least in the last couple millenia, and almost certainly zero in the last century. But the risk is still pretty high because if a giant earth-killer asteroid hits the planet, we're all dead, or a city-killer asteroid could cause massive devastation. A small one hit a Russian city a few years ago and 1000 people were injured. According to Wired, your risk of dying from an asteroid is higher than by lightning strike: https://www.wired.com/2013/02/asteroid-odds/ https://www.wired.com/2013/02/asteroid-odds/ So you have to take some of these with a grain of salt. Car accidents, like the steps thing, probably also affect different places differently. Cars are much more deadly in some 3rd-world nations, for instance; does that 1/606 statistic include those? And death rates per mile traveled are probably higher in some places than others (rural vs. urban). And they're also probably higher for drunk drivers (though obviously the drunks do kill innocent people too), and possibly lower for small children (because they're better protected in car seats).