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> 50 million human years lost is a lot less relatable number and I'm not sure how to contextualize it. On way of contextualizing it that doesn't equate lives w
by da39a3ee 5y ago
> 50 million human years lost is a lot less relatable number and I'm not sure how to contextualize it.
On way of contextualizing it that doesn't equate lives with economic output is to divide by life expectancy: if life expectancy is 70 years then 50 million years lost ~= 0.7 million human lives that never happened, or 0.7 million healthy newborns that died preventable deaths.
- Taek 5y agoIn some sense that's not interesting though, right? A newborn that never made it also had very few resources poured into them. From a purely utilitarian perspective, the worst age to die is 20-22, when you've got an education and a long history of people devoting time to making you a productive member of society, but you've had no space to contribute anything back yet.
- da39a3ee 5y agoI think there's a straightforward counter to that: > From a purely utilitarian perspective, the worst age to die is 20-22, that's easily adjustable: if 95% of newborns become healthy 20 yr olds, then just multiply the number of newborns by 0.95. The harder part is estimating total number of years lost, but it doesn't sound particularly out of the ordinary for a research problem in statistics/epidemiology.
- Cogito 5y agoThe (terrible) thought experiment that perhaps gets the parent's point across: Which "costs" more, 100k 20-year-olds dying today, or 100k babies dying today? The 20-year-olds have already had a lot of time, money, and opportunity poured into them, while the babies have not.