It's likely that you live in an area with similar mortality risk from air pollution. Is there a reason not to move to an area with lower risk from air pollution?
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Loneliness is quite damaging to someone’s health. Why are you irrationally suggesting to him to dump all his social ties and net raise his risk of disease and death?
:)
Air pollution causes ‘excess deaths’ in the sense that people die of air pollution related diseases at some rate instead of dying of something else, generally a short time later. There’s a very different risk assessment between long term choices that have a remote effect on the likely ultimate cause of your inevitable death, versus the probability of premature death through a sudden violent traumatic event.
Yes, I'm being "irrational" by some viewpoint, I know that.
I get your point, however, no offense intended, this type of questioning is kinda asinine. One risk is immediate (right now), and to a relative extent, an easy choice to mitigate. The other risk is long term (maybe never), and mitigating the risk is much more costly (uprooting family, moving, finding a new residence... with today's prices).
> It's likely that you live in an area with similar mortality risk from air pollution.
They're not really equivalent, unless you've got a high-risk condition like asthma.
Statistically speaking, a 100% chance of losing one year of lifespan (out of the 76 years an American can expect) is a greater mortality risk than a 1% chance of instant, immediate death.
In fact, if you're aged 26, a 1% chance instant death has half the mortality risk - and the older you get, the better it looks.
However, if you look at humans' revealed preferences, people would much rather lose one year of lifespan than take a 1% chance of losing their entire remaining lifespan.
Mortality risk isn't a very good predictor of human preferences, it turns out.
Let's look at money. Would you rather have a 1% chance of losing a million dollars today, or a 100% chance of losing $20k when you're 76?
Statistically speaking, a small chance of losing everything today is actually worse than a guaranteed chance of losing a smaller amount later.