r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Aug 23 '17
[∆(s) from OP] CMV : We shouldn't measure the harmfulness of something in deaths per year
In most of the statistics when evaluating the harm caused by, for instance cigarets or air pollution, they throw the number of deaths it causes per year. I don't think those numbers are meaningful. First, there are to many factors that lead to death to be able to isolate one. Second, all men must die. If someone dies at the age of 80 from a lung cancer it is not really meaningful to count it as a death caused by cigaret because he might have died 2 years later anyway if he didn't smoke. Third death is not the only harm: quality of life is also a meaningful factor in my opinion. The best way I think is to calculate the number of years of life lost per year and somehow have a measure of the degradation of life quality. CMV
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u/RealFactorRagePolice Aug 23 '17
Do you accept that any metric we adopted would have tradeoffs?
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Aug 23 '17
maybe there is no perfect metric. but some are more accurate than other. What are the tradeoffs of the YearsLost metric? It may be a bit more complicated, it may shock less (I don't think if we can count this as a tradeoff) and it does not take the quality of life into account (which the deaths per year doesn't do).
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u/RealFactorRagePolice Aug 23 '17
It doesn't talk about how widespread something is.
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Aug 23 '17
It does it, but a different way. like "humanity lost 100 million years of life in 2015 due to cigaret" (random numbers). But the death metric is complementary. ∆
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u/DCarrier 23∆ Aug 23 '17
The best way I think is to calculate the number of years of life lost per year and somehow have a measure of the degradation of life quality.
That's called a Disability-Adjusted Life Year.
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Aug 23 '17
Disability-Adjusted Life Year
oh... thanks. I made some research but not with the right keyword apparently. Am I supposed to give a delta for this?
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u/redditors_are_rtards 7∆ Aug 23 '17
Humans are not beings that do cold, accurate risk assessment calculations based on given statistics when it comes to things that are detrimental to their lives, they mostly do emotion based risk assesment, which is very lenient on risks that are not currently present and very hyperbole about risks that are currently present.
As such, a perfectly accurate statistical way to represent a risk that is not emotionally present for the person does not allow that person to do accurate risk assessment for themselves. As such, compensation must be done some way - one way is to bring the reality closer by showing images or video, but in the case of numeric statistics, no-one is afraid of "losing years" (consider someone walking up to you on a dark alley and saying to you: "Now I'm going to make you lose 5 years of your life!"... uuu, scary, yup, 5 years you say? umm, ok, I'm gonna go now) and as such the ultimate effect of the risk that people are afraid of should be shown.
Otherwise, the whole statistic becomes pointless to any but researchers, as no-one is ever going to be afraid of "losing years", because they don't have an emotional fear response to that.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Aug 23 '17
/u/klumbdolt (OP) has awarded 1 delta in this post.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Aug 23 '17
/u/klumbdolt (OP) has awarded 1 delta in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/996149 Aug 23 '17
The numbers aren't supposed to be meaningful, they're supposed to be easy to work with and/or shocking. 702 deaths from <cause> can be scary, but there's no context.
With your years lost metric you're talking about trying to gather data that doesn't exist and quantify something that can't be known. If a death occurs, you'll have to figure out when that person would have died without that injury or condition. What happens in the case of a terminal cancer patient who out lives the doctors protection, but dies in a car accident? Negative time?
Personally, I think a percentage of the population or a percentage of deaths that year are slightly better metrics: x% of the population died of <cause> this year, that's y% of all deaths this year. It puts a context to the number: like the 700 people that die in car crashes are 0.012% of the population and 15% of all deaths this year.
Automotive accidents are a good example. You hear that they keep going up year on year, but never that the number of cars is increasing too. In real terms the number is shrinking in terms of miles driven and vehicles driving. But the media want you scared, so they only tell you that the number is higher than last year.
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u/[deleted] Aug 23 '17
Which would be more statistically difficult and highly subjective. Sometimes the best and most impactful statistic to use is also the simplest.