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0 pointstim3336y ago0 comments

I'm one of those who would fly it. It's about figuring probabilities rather than gut feel. The odds of me dying riding a motorcycle which I do sometimes are like 10,000x those of dying in any airliner crash.

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perl4ever6y ago

You seem to be confusing "known unknowns" with "unknown unknowns". I find this unaccountably irritating because everybody intuitively knows the difference, and that it's huge, except when they pretend to be "rational".

What's the probability of something happening when the probability you are given is probably wrong?

tim333OP6y ago

I'm more just dividing the historical statistics eg.

>commercial airlines in the United States between 2000 and 2010 was about 0.2 deaths per 10 billion passenger-miles

and

>390 motorcyclist deaths per billion vehicle miles

dividing gives 19500x per mile. Though I do more miles by air. It's all a bit approximate.

asenk6y ago

1. You can't claim your risk of dying using a particular method of transportation is above another method just by looking at per mile death rates unless you travel a similar distance in both, or say it in a context of making a decision of using one or the other to travel from place to place (although to be precise the length of the trip depends somewhat on the used method).

2. The commercial airlines figure which you've used is not from using the particular method of transportation, 737 max, which the use of you are justifying with the comparison.

3. If you wear a helmet, don't ride drunk, don't speed and otherwise follow traffic rules it will make riding a motorcycle a lot safer than average.

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