5 ms·
My great love is travelling (mostly outside the EU/US) and this often involves countries where swimming in random bodies of water is part of the standard itiner
by andybak 5y ago
My great love is travelling (mostly outside the EU/US) and this often involves countries where swimming in random bodies of water is part of the standard itinerary.
I'm sure I'm not particularly unusual in this respect. Most of friends have similar preferences.
- awestroke 5y agoGood for you
- andybak 5y agoDid you respond sarkily because you thought I was bragging or something? I'm not sure I understand why I provoked this reaction from you.
- ubermonkey 5y agoDoing that sort of travel is, for most citizens of the industrialized west, pretty unusual.
- Aeolun 5y agoJumping into random bodies of water in the industrialized west is not unusual at all however.
- jcims 5y agoYeah my girls loved swimming in my in-laws pond behind their house. This ruined that. Statistically almost zero chance it will happen, but the ghost of the idea is there. Especially when you see micrographs of the little demon: https://www.newsweek.com/brain-eating-amoebae-strike-again-time-minnesota-351958 https://www.newsweek.com/brain-eating-amoebae-strike-again-t...
- lukas099 5y agoI guess I should count myself lucky for the 'dangerous' things I got to do as a kid; it seems to be a thing of the past.
- jcims 5y agoMaybe I overstated, they still swam, just a bit more freaked out.
- rootusrootus 5y agoIf you wanted to define 'survivorship bias' with a simple example, this would do it.
- MathCodeLove 5y agoThis really is a poor example. The vast majority of children who grew up doing "dangerous" activities are still alive and well. Survivorship bias is more often used when the chance of surviving is statistically lower than most people realize.
- emteycz 5y agoIt's still survivorship bias. They're only happy about it because nothing bad occurred to them, while there really are kids that got sick and I bet they're much less positive about these dangerous things they got to do.
- MathCodeLove 5y agoI didn't say it wasn't, just that it was a poor example of it as the vast majority of kids ended up okay.
- tata71 5y agoOr Mercury handling, for another.
- 5y ago
- 2143 5y agoIf they can afford to, they probably will. Lots of Westerners travel to Asia/Africa/middle East/Latin America. (And yeah, sometimes they catch diseases). Also, you have to think whether people who normally live in those countries (non westerners) get exposed and face the consequences regularly.
- andybak 5y agoI'm genuinely confused by this. Most of my friends (pre-covid) would holiday fairly regularly outside of Eurpope. We're not especially wealthy or unusual as far as I know. I can't think of many people I know who only holiday in the EU. South-East Asia is a hugely popular destination. Do we know different demographics?
- tata71 5y agoJust "having friends who holiday" is, alone, a separating factor, mate.
- andybak 5y agoOnly if you interpret me as in somehow trying to deny the existence of people poorer than me, which is not at all what I'm saying. This has all gone a bit off track. To bring this back to the original context: > Doing that sort of travel is, for most citizens of the industrialized west, pretty unusual. "Pretty unusual" is what I'm disputing. I'd say it's far from "pretty unusual" for average, regular people to go on holiday outside Europe.
- ncmncm 5y agoGoing on holiday and swimming in the ocean is one thing. Swimming in remote freshwater ponds is wholly another.
- andybak 5y agoI can think of at least two holidays where I swam in freshwater.
- ncmncm 5y agoI do not doubt that. Meanwhile, I didn't. At issue is how common your experience is. We know it is not universal, p=1. We know it is not nil, p=0. So, is it close to 0.5? 0.1? 0.01? My guess is it is between 0.1 and 0.01. "Strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government!"
- PragmaticPulp 5y agoI doubt it, because I do the same type of travel and many (or often most) of the other people at those locations are also from the “industrialized west”
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoYes, this is called "selection bias". Only one person I've ever met has ever done anything like this, let alone regularly.
- andybak 5y agoWith "this" being "gone on holiday outside Europe"? Or are you from the States? I wonder if this whole disagreement is actually about the fact that Americans tend to travel abroad less than those from other Western countries.
- amackera 5y agoThen you are exposing yourself to a potential prion transmission vector, though it's probably an incredibly low risk.