4 ms·

We are talking about excess deaths, not injuries. It feels like the direction you are taking is going further and further away from the original point, and you

We are talking about excess deaths, not injuries. It feels like the direction you are taking is going further and further away from the original point, and you are misrepresenting what I have said to fit your argument. I did not say that injuries did not go up. I did not say that the rate of deaths did not go up. I did not say that the rate of deaths did not “show in the stats” (unless by that you mean “was not statistically significant”). I don’t need a model for the injuries question because that isn’t the point we’re arguing, but I might suggest something like “after 9/11, people took out more comprehensive health insurance policies, and so made claims for smaller injuries than they would have in previous years”. A suitable model for explaining excess deaths might be something like “after 9/11, people chose to drive instead of fly, and driving is more dangerous per mile than flying is, resulting in excess deaths”. I’m not sure if that is your exact model, but it’s typically what people mean, happy for you to correct. The problem with that model is that there’s no statistically significant increase in miles driven either. I can’t think of a model which would explain a higher fatality/injury rate per mile driven. Out of interest, what would be your model for explaining why there were more injuries per mile? If you found a single story of someone deciding to drive instead of take a plane in October 2001 because of 9/11, and that person died in a car crash, would that be enough for you to be satisfied that I am wrong?

lmm 2y ago
> The problem with that model is that there’s no statistically significant increase in miles driven either. I can’t think of a model which would explain a higher fatality/injury rate per mile driven. > Out of interest, what would be your model for explaining why there were more injuries per mile? Well, is there a statistically significant difference in the injuries per mile? Or even a difference at all? That the difference in injuries was statistically different and the difference in miles driven wasn't does not imply that the former changed by a larger proportion than the latter. Pretty much everyone including all of the papers we've talked about assumes there was an increase in driving. Do you actually think driving didn't increase? Or is this just another area where these concepts of "statistically significant" and "excess" are obscuring things rather than enlightening us? > If you found a single story of someone deciding to drive instead of take a plane in October 2001 because of 9/11, and that person died in a car crash, would that be enough for you to be satisfied that I am wrong? I'm interested in knowing whether deaths actually increased and by how much; for me statistical significance or not is a means to an end, the goal is understanding the world. If we believe that driving did increase, then I don't think it's a reasonable null hypothesis to say that deaths did not increase, given what we know about the dangers of driving. Yes, it's conceivable that somehow driving safety increased by exactly the right amount to offset the increase in driving - but if that was my theory, I would want to actually have that theory! I can't fathom being satisfied with the idea that injuries somehow increased without increasing deaths and incurious not only about the mechanism, but about whether there really was a difference or not. All of these things - miles driven, injuries, deaths - should be closely correlated. If there's evidence that that correlation actually comes apart here, I'm interested. If the correlations hold up, but the vagaries of the statistics are such that the changes in one or two of them were statistically significant and the other wasn't, meh - that happens all the time and doesn't really mean anything.
- d1sxeyes 2y ago
  The study does not quote miles driven in their specific sample so I can’t talk to this or answer your question directly, and the national numbers don’t cover injuries. The numbers in the survey are also a bit vague about injuries, and include “possible injuries”, “injury with severity unknown”, and they are taken separately from incapacitating injury data. The data on injuries is objectively lower quality than the data on deaths, and anyway deaths was the focus of the original question, so I’d rather avoid getting sidetracked. To respond to your question (admittedly not to answer directly), nationally there was indeed an increase in miles driven, an additional 59 billion miles in 2002 compared to 2001, and indeed there was an increase in deaths. I would also expect an increase in injuries as well. Looking at this in isolation, you can say “oh so because of 9/11, people drove 59 billion more miles which resulted in more deaths and injuries”, but in my opinion real question if you want to understand the world better is “how many more miles would folks have driven in 2002 compared to 2001 in case 9/11 never happened”. We obviously can’t know that, but we can look at data from other years. For example, from 1999 to 2000, the increase in miles driven was 56 billion, from 2000 to 2001, the increase was 50 billion and from 2002 to 2003 the increase was 34 billion, from 2003-2004 the increase was 75 billion. Miles driven, injuries, deaths, are indeed all closely correlated. But so is population size, the price of oil, and hundreds of other factors. If your question is “did more people die on the roads in 2002 than in 2001”, the answer is yes. Again, I assume that the same is also true of injuries although I can’t support that with data. That wasn’t OP’s assertion though, OP’s assertion was that closing down airspace does not lead to zero excess deaths. My argument is that the statistics do not support that conclusion, and that the additional deaths in 2002 cannot rigorously be shown even to be unusually high, let alone caused by 9/11.
  - lmm 2y ago
    > That wasn’t OP’s assertion though, OP’s assertion was that closing down airspace does not lead to zero excess deaths. My argument is that the statistics do not support that conclusion, and that the additional deaths in 2002 cannot rigorously be shown even to be unusually high, let alone caused by 9/11. What we can show rigorously and directly is a tiny subset of what we know. If your standard for saying that event x caused deaths is that we have a statistically significant direct correlation between event x and excess deaths that year, you're going to find most things "don't cause deaths". Practically every dangerous food contaminant is dangerous on the basis of it causes an increase in x condition and x condition is known to be deadly, not because we can show directly that people died from eating x. Hell, even something like mass shootings probably aren't enough deaths to show up directly in death numbers for the year. I think it's reasonable to say that something we reasonably believe causes deaths that would not have occurred otherwise causes excess deaths. If you actually think the causal chain breaks down - that 9/11 didn't actually lead to fewer people flying, or that actually didn't lead to more people driving, or that extra driving didn't actually lead to more deaths - then that's worth discussing. But I don't see any value in applying an unreasonably high standard of statistical proof when our best available model of the world suggests there was an increase in deaths and it would actually be far more surprising (and warrant more study) if there wasn't such an increase.

lmm 2y ago

> The problem with that model is that there’s no statistically significant increase in miles driven either. I can’t think of a model which would explain a higher fatality/injury rate per mile driven. > Out of interest, what would be your model for explaining why there were more injuries per mile? Well, is there a statistically significant difference in the injuries per mile? Or even a difference at all? That the difference in injuries was statistically different and the difference in miles driven wasn't does not imply that the former changed by a larger proportion than the latter. Pretty much everyone including all of the papers we've talked about assumes there was an increase in driving. Do you actually think driving didn't increase? Or is this just another area where these concepts of "statistically significant" and "excess" are obscuring things rather than enlightening us? > If you found a single story of someone deciding to drive instead of take a plane in October 2001 because of 9/11, and that person died in a car crash, would that be enough for you to be satisfied that I am wrong? I'm interested in knowing whether deaths actually increased and by how much; for me statistical significance or not is a means to an end, the goal is understanding the world. If we believe that driving did increase, then I don't think it's a reasonable null hypothesis to say that deaths did not increase, given what we know about the dangers of driving. Yes, it's conceivable that somehow driving safety increased by exactly the right amount to offset the increase in driving - but if that was my theory, I would want to actually have that theory! I can't fathom being satisfied with the idea that injuries somehow increased without increasing deaths and incurious not only about the mechanism, but about whether there really was a difference or not. All of these things - miles driven, injuries, deaths - should be closely correlated. If there's evidence that that correlation actually comes apart here, I'm interested. If the correlations hold up, but the vagaries of the statistics are such that the changes in one or two of them were statistically significant and the other wasn't, meh - that happens all the time and doesn't really mean anything.

d1sxeyes 2y ago
The study does not quote miles driven in their specific sample so I can’t talk to this or answer your question directly, and the national numbers don’t cover injuries. The numbers in the survey are also a bit vague about injuries, and include “possible injuries”, “injury with severity unknown”, and they are taken separately from incapacitating injury data. The data on injuries is objectively lower quality than the data on deaths, and anyway deaths was the focus of the original question, so I’d rather avoid getting sidetracked. To respond to your question (admittedly not to answer directly), nationally there was indeed an increase in miles driven, an additional 59 billion miles in 2002 compared to 2001, and indeed there was an increase in deaths. I would also expect an increase in injuries as well. Looking at this in isolation, you can say “oh so because of 9/11, people drove 59 billion more miles which resulted in more deaths and injuries”, but in my opinion real question if you want to understand the world better is “how many more miles would folks have driven in 2002 compared to 2001 in case 9/11 never happened”. We obviously can’t know that, but we can look at data from other years. For example, from 1999 to 2000, the increase in miles driven was 56 billion, from 2000 to 2001, the increase was 50 billion and from 2002 to 2003 the increase was 34 billion, from 2003-2004 the increase was 75 billion. Miles driven, injuries, deaths, are indeed all closely correlated. But so is population size, the price of oil, and hundreds of other factors. If your question is “did more people die on the roads in 2002 than in 2001”, the answer is yes. Again, I assume that the same is also true of injuries although I can’t support that with data. That wasn’t OP’s assertion though, OP’s assertion was that closing down airspace does not lead to zero excess deaths. My argument is that the statistics do not support that conclusion, and that the additional deaths in 2002 cannot rigorously be shown even to be unusually high, let alone caused by 9/11.
- lmm 2y ago
  > That wasn’t OP’s assertion though, OP’s assertion was that closing down airspace does not lead to zero excess deaths. My argument is that the statistics do not support that conclusion, and that the additional deaths in 2002 cannot rigorously be shown even to be unusually high, let alone caused by 9/11. What we can show rigorously and directly is a tiny subset of what we know. If your standard for saying that event x caused deaths is that we have a statistically significant direct correlation between event x and excess deaths that year, you're going to find most things "don't cause deaths". Practically every dangerous food contaminant is dangerous on the basis of it causes an increase in x condition and x condition is known to be deadly, not because we can show directly that people died from eating x. Hell, even something like mass shootings probably aren't enough deaths to show up directly in death numbers for the year. I think it's reasonable to say that something we reasonably believe causes deaths that would not have occurred otherwise causes excess deaths. If you actually think the causal chain breaks down - that 9/11 didn't actually lead to fewer people flying, or that actually didn't lead to more people driving, or that extra driving didn't actually lead to more deaths - then that's worth discussing. But I don't see any value in applying an unreasonably high standard of statistical proof when our best available model of the world suggests there was an increase in deaths and it would actually be far more surprising (and warrant more study) if there wasn't such an increase.