My reaction to the article was something like “yes, this all sounds plausible, but fireplaces are so awesome that I think they might be worth it anyway. Can you give me data on exactly how bad fireplaces are, so I can weigh their awesomeness against my decreased expected health, especially if I enjoy them in moderation?”
Also, this is an unfair test, since Sam is priming us to be aware of our emotions and override them with rationality.
Can you give me data on exactly how bad fireplaces are, so I can weigh their awesomeness against my decreased expected health
I have this niggling feeling that, were you to receive such unrealistic exact numbers, regardless of what they were you would say “Yup. Fireplaces are more awesome than that. I will continue to act exactly as before.”
I have a very strong feeling that, if the presence of a fireplace were shown to reduce John’s life expectancy by 10 minutes he would indeed make no adjustments in his behavior, if the reduction in life expectancy were 10 years he would never go near a wood fire again, and intermediate values would result in monotonically decreasing levels of use.
Your feeling sounds needlessly insulting; perhaps that was triggered because it was poor form John to insist on exactitude? Exact numbers being impossible to come by, we do still all already reduce our life expectancies regularly when driving, flying, eating ice cream, spending time in higher-crime areas… Yet if you were to point out that “OMG, driving to the library can kill you!” it would be a technical truth drowning in connotational falsehood. When trying to balance rare dangers against common benefits, asking for the danger to be at least approximately quantified is the only rational thing to do.
Do you still make that prediction about my behavior if the numbers I received suggested that 1 minute of fireplace use would decrease my expected lifespan by an hour? What if the numbers suggested that 1 min. of fireplace use would decrease my expected lifespan by a year?
I’m not asking for a precise number, just a rough order of magnitude. All I want to know is how much additional lifespan I am buying if I avoid fireplaces, the same way one might want to know roughly how much money one would save on gas by buying a hybrid car. I’m not upset with Sam Harris for not including this, but it would be a public service if he did, so his readers could weigh their utility for fireplaces against their decreased years of life, and individually decide whether they wanted to avoid them or not. If I were to guess, I’d say that most fireplace users end up dying from something other than fireplaces before fireplaces can kill them, so maybe Sam could say how many hours of fireplace use per week one can engage in before the probability of dying from fireplace use goes over .1%.
My behavior did not remain completely unchanged by the article. I don’t sit in front of fireplaces on a regular basis, but after reading the article, I will attempt to estimate health hazards from fireplaces if I notice that this changes.
his readers could weigh their utility for fireplaces against their decreased years of life, and individually decide whether they wanted to avoid them or not
Unfortunately, it’s not an individual decision, as the wood smoke goes into the surrounding environment and affects others.
My reaction to the article was something like “yes, this all sounds plausible, but fireplaces are so awesome that I think they might be worth it anyway. Can you give me data on exactly how bad fireplaces are, so I can weigh their awesomeness against my decreased expected health, especially if I enjoy them in moderation?”
Also, this is an unfair test, since Sam is priming us to be aware of our emotions and override them with rationality.
I have this niggling feeling that, were you to receive such unrealistic exact numbers, regardless of what they were you would say “Yup. Fireplaces are more awesome than that. I will continue to act exactly as before.”
I have a very strong feeling that, if the presence of a fireplace were shown to reduce John’s life expectancy by 10 minutes he would indeed make no adjustments in his behavior, if the reduction in life expectancy were 10 years he would never go near a wood fire again, and intermediate values would result in monotonically decreasing levels of use.
Your feeling sounds needlessly insulting; perhaps that was triggered because it was poor form John to insist on exactitude? Exact numbers being impossible to come by, we do still all already reduce our life expectancies regularly when driving, flying, eating ice cream, spending time in higher-crime areas… Yet if you were to point out that “OMG, driving to the library can kill you!” it would be a technical truth drowning in connotational falsehood. When trying to balance rare dangers against common benefits, asking for the danger to be at least approximately quantified is the only rational thing to do.
Do you still make that prediction about my behavior if the numbers I received suggested that 1 minute of fireplace use would decrease my expected lifespan by an hour? What if the numbers suggested that 1 min. of fireplace use would decrease my expected lifespan by a year?
I’m not asking for a precise number, just a rough order of magnitude. All I want to know is how much additional lifespan I am buying if I avoid fireplaces, the same way one might want to know roughly how much money one would save on gas by buying a hybrid car. I’m not upset with Sam Harris for not including this, but it would be a public service if he did, so his readers could weigh their utility for fireplaces against their decreased years of life, and individually decide whether they wanted to avoid them or not. If I were to guess, I’d say that most fireplace users end up dying from something other than fireplaces before fireplaces can kill them, so maybe Sam could say how many hours of fireplace use per week one can engage in before the probability of dying from fireplace use goes over .1%.
My behavior did not remain completely unchanged by the article. I don’t sit in front of fireplaces on a regular basis, but after reading the article, I will attempt to estimate health hazards from fireplaces if I notice that this changes.
Unfortunately, it’s not an individual decision, as the wood smoke goes into the surrounding environment and affects others.