Conversation

kinda sucks that space flight is still basically dangerous... we're so used to air travel being safer than driving we forget that if you turn it up to 11 it gets dangerous again
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though I've never actually been happy with the mental model that says air travel is safer than driving... there's something off about that way of looking at it
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I think they use some metric like fatalities per passenger mile or something... possibly if you did fatalities per passenger hour, it would be not look so great, since you log a lot more miles when you fly
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But fatalities per mile is the correct measure. If I decide to go to Philadelphia, I choose between flying and driving, but the distance remains fixed. Roughly the same by air or ground. There are few times when someone has a fixed time for travel but a variable distance.
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You might be choosing between flying or not going at all and doing zoom or a phone call... it's a rational comparison but not necessarily a reasonable one. And there's no "correct" measure here, it depends on the situation model
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But still, if you are deciding on whether to Zoom, you'd compare fatalities per mile, because the distance is fixed. There's no absolutely "correct" measure, but fatalities per mile traveled makes more sense than fatalities per hour in almost every scenario.