alt Hacker NewsMy father grew up drinking a ton of alcohol and smoking, like his friends. Many of them are dead.
By your logic, we should keep drinking and smoking.
My father grew up drinking a ton of alcohol and smoking, like his friends. Many of them are dead.
By your logic, we should keep drinking and smoking.
Everyone dies eventually, so that means very little by itself. Did they die young? How much younger than their peers? Did they gain enough enjoyment from drinking and smoking to offset the fewer years of life (subjective, of course, but important to consider)?
Every intervention has a cost. Not all results will be worth the cost we pay for them. I think we are well past the point in Western society where we are giving up too much in order for too small a return, personally. With cars, but also just in general, people have lost the ability to do cost-benefit analysis and act as though every safety improvement is an unalloyed good. But they aren't, and I think that this thinking is making all of our lives significantly worse.