On 09/17/09 08:47, Warp wrote:
> Neeum Zawan<m.n### [at] ieeeorg>  wrote:
>>          And yes, the number of confirmed dead is on the order of 100. But if
>> you're a parent, death isn't the only concern. Being kidnapped for a few
>> days is bad enough.
>
>    Even if we considered being kidnapped (in any way or form) to be about
> equally probable as getting killed in a car accident (if we count also
> getting injured in car accidents, which can also be quite traumatic, the
> number probably goes way up, but as far as I understand it, just the
> death statistics are high enough to easily keep in par with the kidnapping
> statistics), some other considerations should also be taken into account:

	Which gets to the main crux of the problem: Every society has 
acceptable and unacceptable deaths/related problems.

	Dying in a car accident, where no one was drunk and it was just an 
"honest mistake" is more desirable than dying via being kidnapped, or 
sexually assaulted while kidnapped.

	I'm willing to bet families who've lost children to simple "honest" 
accidents recover much quicker than those who've had their children 
killed/molested by kidnappers.

	So if you view things in terms of "risk", realize that in most parents' 
minds ("right" or "wrong"), they *are* going for something less risky, 
because one death is not as bad as the other one. It makes sense to 
allow the likelihood of that death to go up if it will reduce the 
likelihood of the really bad kind.

	You can see this in many aspects of society.

	Take iatrogenesis. It's essentially having adverse effects to your 
health because of "complications" while receiving treatments. It could 
include errors by doctors, medication errors, catching other diseases 
while staying in the hospital, and more. If you count it as a "cause of 
death", it's the third highest cause of death in the US.

	More people generally die in the US simply by catching diseases while 
at hospitals than from, say, diabetes. (Well, roughly the same number).

	Now I believe that if significant resources were allocated to address 
iatrogenesis. the number of deaths could be reduced by a lot - perhaps 
even down to half. And I doubt you'd even need *that* many resources to 
significantly tackle this problem.

	But society has deemed dying by being kidnapped, or by a terrorist, as 
much worse. Hence, it makes the tradeoff and allocates 
disproportionately more resources to those than to tackle this problem.

	Same applies to trying to tackle traffic fatalities, and many more. 
Health care, anyone? 		

	Of course, what I'm saying isn't an invariant. Other societies will 
view all this differently, but will probably have other inconsistencies 
related to deaths that may not be present in the US. And these change 
over time. I believe that society _can_ be convinced in changing these 
variables.

>    The risks may be about the same, but the consequences of avoiding the
> risks are much worse in the case of kidnappings than in the case of car
> accidents. The "solution" to the former is to drive the children everywhere.
> This decreases significantly the amount of exercise they get, which is a
> huge growing problem in the US. Even when they grow older, they will have
> learned the bad habit to drive everywhere, and it's unlikely they will get
> rid of that bad habit, thus worsening the problem of not getting exercise
> throughout their adulthood.
>
>    Also driving them everywhere is way more expensive, and this money wasted
> on gas and car maintenance is always away from something more useful and
> educative (such as healthy hobbies).
>
>    Not to talk that growing in a constant state of fear is not healthy.
>


	Which is all acceptable compared to being kidnapped. The goal isn't to 
reduce fatalities. It's to reduce "really bad" fatalities.



-- 
ASCII and ye shall receive.

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