> During the last decades most people living in the "first world" (however you define it today) lost ability to rationally think about small additional chances

> During the last decades most people living in the "first world" (however you define it today) lost ability to rationally think about small additional chances of dying. I disagree. What do we have the technology for, if not to prevent dying? Why are we destroying the planet (I hope we can agree that having technological comfort requires quite a bit of material processing), if not for that? To me, to use the technology (which has downsides) to just have more "easy" or extra enjoyable life seems more childish than to use the technology to prevent dying (or in general, improving the living conditions). We can think of the tradeoff in terms of carbon emissions. Consider a coal miner. What would be better for him, to give him couple extra exotic vacations with airplane, or to close the mine and let him do something healthier, like installing solar panels? I argue that the latter is a better life. It's also interesting to note that many cities over the world experienced much cleaner air during the shutdown. I am not exactly sure what they have given up, but sounds like a pretty good deal to me.