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> “If the risk bops around a lot, and having a marathon shifts it from “quiet Sunday morning” to “run of the mill Tuesday” then no one needs to do anything.” I

by mlthoughts2018 7y ago

> “If the risk bops around a lot, and having a marathon shifts it from “quiet Sunday morning” to “run of the mill Tuesday” then no one needs to do anything.” I think you are assuming some kind of implied cost-benefit here that I don’t see, or at least why would it be delimited in units of effect size of other times of a week. Even if the effect is as small as shifting quiet Sunday to run-of-the-mill Tuesday, it still seems obviously worth it to remove that. I’d say the same about parades and other things like this. The debate would have no real connection to the effect size in units of other days’ traffic mortality spikes, ever. The debate would be how do we value subjective recreation things like parades or marathons, to justify any effect size of mortality, and then how does that relate to the actual effect size. Marathon vs. rush hour makes no difference to anyone. Why is rush hour the unit to care about? Marathon vs. no marathon assuming non-zero effect size of any kind is the discussion.

mattkrause 7y ago
I brought up rush hour because it’s an intuitive benchmark. If my relative risk changes a thousandfold over the day, then I don’t really care about a ~1 point increase; by living in a city, I’ve already tacitly accepted more risk. On the other hand, if it normally swings from 0.9-1.1, then the damn things are a menace (though still not a huge one in absolute terms) and maybe we ought to do something.
- mlthoughts2018 7y ago
  I still don’t agree. Why these thresholds? What if the behavior in question wasn’t marathons but instead was attempts at the Guiness Book of World Records record for largest number of people twirling umbrellas in a line while blocking traffic? Does that also need to show an effect size relative to rush hour or generic risk tolerance of some other situation? Why? Why would it be “worth” that particular amount of risk and not something much greater (if you love setting records) or much lower (if you think it’s totally pointless & blocking fire trucks for nothing).
  - mattkrause 7y ago
    Again, I brought up rush hour as a reference point (benchmark, calibration method, etc), not as a threshold. Surely you’ve seen the “Is four a lot?” meme (“Dollars? No. Murders? Yes”). That applies here in spades. And yes, I think the bar for some random record attempt would be a bit higher. Some of the comments in this thread seem to think the marathon is valueless. I disagree. The Boston marathon is a big deal locally—-even non-runners get excited about it, so it does contribute to civic pride or whatever, More tangibly, the marquee marathons (Boston, NYC, etc) bring in a fair bit of tourist money. If these things are unexpectedly very dangerous, then sure, let’s reconsider. If not, do you also want to replace Central Park with rounded, rubberized surfaces?

mattkrause 7y ago

I brought up rush hour because it’s an intuitive benchmark. If my relative risk changes a thousandfold over the day, then I don’t really care about a ~1 point increase; by living in a city, I’ve already tacitly accepted more risk. On the other hand, if it normally swings from 0.9-1.1, then the damn things are a menace (though still not a huge one in absolute terms) and maybe we ought to do something.

mlthoughts2018 7y ago
I still don’t agree. Why these thresholds? What if the behavior in question wasn’t marathons but instead was attempts at the Guiness Book of World Records record for largest number of people twirling umbrellas in a line while blocking traffic? Does that also need to show an effect size relative to rush hour or generic risk tolerance of some other situation? Why? Why would it be “worth” that particular amount of risk and not something much greater (if you love setting records) or much lower (if you think it’s totally pointless & blocking fire trucks for nothing).
- mattkrause 7y ago
  Again, I brought up rush hour as a reference point (benchmark, calibration method, etc), not as a threshold. Surely you’ve seen the “Is four a lot?” meme (“Dollars? No. Murders? Yes”). That applies here in spades. And yes, I think the bar for some random record attempt would be a bit higher. Some of the comments in this thread seem to think the marathon is valueless. I disagree. The Boston marathon is a big deal locally—-even non-runners get excited about it, so it does contribute to civic pride or whatever, More tangibly, the marquee marathons (Boston, NYC, etc) bring in a fair bit of tourist money. If these things are unexpectedly very dangerous, then sure, let’s reconsider. If not, do you also want to replace Central Park with rounded, rubberized surfaces?