I’m not sure it’s appropriate to consider the money the average human will accept for a micromort as a value that’s actually useful for making rational decisions, because that’s a value that’s badly skewed by irrational biases. Actions are mentally categorized into those the thinker does and doesn’t believe (on a subconscious level) to possibly lead to death. I doubt the average person even considers a “risk” factor at all when driving their car or walking several blocks to the car (just a time factor and a gasoline factor), unless their trip takes them through a “bad” neighborhood, in which case they’ll inflate their perceived risk severalfold without actually looking up that neighborhood’s crime rates (moreso if they know someone who was hurt in a manner similar to that). They’re probably quite likely to consider a “getting a ticket” risk factor, however. It’s sadly true that most people believe themselves invincible and completely ignore many categories of existential risk, thinking only of the “flashier” risks and likely inflating their likelihood. And if you told someone that you would give them $100 and then use a fair RNG and shoot them either on a 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100,000 chance, I doubt you’d get very different responses.
And I’m going to be so bold as to declare that it’s impossible for ANY individual to accurately judge the relative likelihood of two things to kill you without looking it up; “which is more likely” is doable but “is it twice as likely or three times” is not.
edit: The end result of everything I just said is that the “value” being assigned to a micromort is probably more a reflection of how the EPA ran their test than what people really value; they’d get a different result evaluating people’s aversion to micromorts via car crash and people’s aversion to micromorts via being mugged, and either would be skewed if they first spent a half hour talking about ways to mitigate such a risk (thus reminding you it’s there).
I’m not sure it’s appropriate to consider the money the average human will accept for a micromort as a value that’s actually useful for making rational decisions, because that’s a value that’s badly skewed by irrational biases.
Right. This is why coming up with your own value is a good thing to do. (I didn’t talk much about it in the post because it’s highly personalized; I didn’t want to work through it for all sensible utility functions, and describe how to pick the parameters, and because I didn’t want to do it for all of them I didn’t want to describe it for just one, because that wouldn’t be appropriate for a majority of readers, I suspect.)
Actions are mentally categorized into those the thinker does and doesn’t believe (on a subconscious level) to possibly lead to death.
Yep, which can cause people to behave suboptimally. One of the main values of this sort of analysis is it gives you a “risk cost” to put together with a “time cost” and a “gasoline cost.” The weekly game night that I drive to costs me $1.40 in risk, $3.20 in gas, and about $6 in time- so the risk is actually a pretty small factor there, but it could tip the scales for marginal activity. (You do need to look up the mortality numbers- which can have a non-trivial cost- but doing research when it’s worth it is a part of careful decision making.)
The end result of everything I just said is that the “value” being assigned to a micromort is probably more a reflection of how the EPA ran their test than what people really value; they’d get a different result evaluating people’s aversion to micromorts via car crash and people’s aversion to micromorts via being mugged
I’m not sure how the EPA runs their numbers, but the way I got mine was by calculating the value of my life (on the margin). I think people can give reasonable answers for things like “how much longer would your life have to be to compensate you for a 5% decrease in consumption?”, which is less subject to biases than visualizing particular causes of death.
I’m not sure it’s appropriate to consider the money the average human will accept for a micromort as a value that’s actually useful for making rational decisions, because that’s a value that’s badly skewed by irrational biases. Actions are mentally categorized into those the thinker does and doesn’t believe (on a subconscious level) to possibly lead to death. I doubt the average person even considers a “risk” factor at all when driving their car or walking several blocks to the car (just a time factor and a gasoline factor), unless their trip takes them through a “bad” neighborhood, in which case they’ll inflate their perceived risk severalfold without actually looking up that neighborhood’s crime rates (moreso if they know someone who was hurt in a manner similar to that). They’re probably quite likely to consider a “getting a ticket” risk factor, however. It’s sadly true that most people believe themselves invincible and completely ignore many categories of existential risk, thinking only of the “flashier” risks and likely inflating their likelihood. And if you told someone that you would give them $100 and then use a fair RNG and shoot them either on a 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100,000 chance, I doubt you’d get very different responses.
And I’m going to be so bold as to declare that it’s impossible for ANY individual to accurately judge the relative likelihood of two things to kill you without looking it up; “which is more likely” is doable but “is it twice as likely or three times” is not.
edit: The end result of everything I just said is that the “value” being assigned to a micromort is probably more a reflection of how the EPA ran their test than what people really value; they’d get a different result evaluating people’s aversion to micromorts via car crash and people’s aversion to micromorts via being mugged, and either would be skewed if they first spent a half hour talking about ways to mitigate such a risk (thus reminding you it’s there).
Right. This is why coming up with your own value is a good thing to do. (I didn’t talk much about it in the post because it’s highly personalized; I didn’t want to work through it for all sensible utility functions, and describe how to pick the parameters, and because I didn’t want to do it for all of them I didn’t want to describe it for just one, because that wouldn’t be appropriate for a majority of readers, I suspect.)
Yep, which can cause people to behave suboptimally. One of the main values of this sort of analysis is it gives you a “risk cost” to put together with a “time cost” and a “gasoline cost.” The weekly game night that I drive to costs me $1.40 in risk, $3.20 in gas, and about $6 in time- so the risk is actually a pretty small factor there, but it could tip the scales for marginal activity. (You do need to look up the mortality numbers- which can have a non-trivial cost- but doing research when it’s worth it is a part of careful decision making.)
I’m not sure how the EPA runs their numbers, but the way I got mine was by calculating the value of my life (on the margin). I think people can give reasonable answers for things like “how much longer would your life have to be to compensate you for a 5% decrease in consumption?”, which is less subject to biases than visualizing particular causes of death.