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The "car accidents" fallacy. 1. "New thing X puts us at risk of losing Y lives every day." 2. "We lose Y lives to car accidents every day". 3. "Ergo, X is ha
by scrollaway 7y ago
The "car accidents" fallacy.
1. "New thing X puts us at risk of losing Y lives every day."
2. "We lose Y lives to car accidents every day".
3. "Ergo, X is harmless!"
Except you now have 2Y lives lost every day.
Furthermore, car accidents kill an insane amount of people, and cars suck. This is not the bar.
- ShorsHammer 7y agoOnce covid-19/sars-cov-2 is over would you support the same levels of lockdown for car accidents and flu/viral pneumonia? Many more lives could be saved with the same political will and public support you find on this issue. These lockdowns can clearly prevent the spread of existing diseases and save magnitudes more lives as presented by the article along with the inevitable traffic statistics to come out showing the effects. I'm wondering how someone here supporting lockdowns can justify not repeating it once this pandemic is over? Is ten young healthy lives taken by cars not worth one old ill one taken by a disease?
- scrollaway 7y agoI wouldn't justify a lockdown for cars because there are other ways to beat cars than locking everyone in their homes. Point: I don't have a car, yet I'm locked in my home right now. Hmmmmm. And yes, I would support forbidding cars altogether for most things they're used for today that can be done with different vehicles.
- frank2 7y agoWould you support forbidding cars in neighborhoods designed around the car, e.g., most American suburbs planned after 1950, or would you limit the ban to neighborhoods planned after the start of the ban?
- scrollaway 7y agoIs my opinion on the exact details of the implementation of a non-existant car ban really that relevant?
- frank2 7y agoI just wanted to see if you have thought through the implications of what you advocated.
- scrollaway 7y agoYou could've just asked :) And yes I have; I've been advocating something similar for years.
- clairity 7y agothe fallacy is couching it that way. no one says “it’s harmless!”, but rather, they ask “is this more or less dangerous, and is it more or less costly?” so it’s absolutely a credible gauge of risk, or more colloquially, a bar. that’s how we figure out an appropriate response, by looking at what we’ve done in similar situations. and yes, it absolutely sucks that we accept a million deaths a year worldwide due to cars. same for the flu. we should absolutely try to raise that bar.
- scrollaway 7y agoI don't think it's a good gauge, because established variables are never evaluated the same way as new variables. This is true in many fields. For example, if you said 30 years ago that everyone should carry all the counter-privacy implications of a smartphone in their pockets at all times, how do you think people would react? Is it reasonable to expect people to freak out en masse about it today? No it's not. Why is a bigger question but i suspect you instinctively know that I'm correct here. Does that mean smartphones are a net good on privacy? No. The negatives still exist even if people accept them. Does that mean the negatives outweigh the good, and we should all throw away our smartphones? No, I don't think so either. The positives are massive. But introducing them today would give us the opportunity to address the privacy issues ahead of time.
- jsight 7y agoI completely agree. I often use the car accidents as a statistical bar. Its really a big part of what made me realize how serious covid19 would be if we didn't adjust pretty aggressively. The numbers really could have eclipsed car deaths and that is already a huge number. I don't think that is going to happen now, though, thankfully.