Risky Business
I drove to Milwaukee the other day to visit Ideelz, and the original plan was that I'd drive back to Chicago first thing the next morning. Ideelz got sleepy pretty early though - we had a tough day, between all the skating, football, and basketball we played - and I decided to head back home after he went to bed. As I drove, dodging huge trucks and waving my fist at everyone who passed me, I got to thinking: is there a mathematical way to take circumstantial "irony" into account when assessing risk? Like, assuming I was just as likely to die in a car accident no matter when I left Milwaukee, should the added "tragedy" of dying due to a last minute change of plan have been a factor when I was making my decision? And (I'm looking at you, Keyhole), does risk analysis offer some mechanism by which to make that calculation?
Everyone always loves to talk about how their uncle was supposed to be on United 93 but wasn't, but what about the people who weren't supposed to be but were, either because they flew stand-by or because they changed their ticket a few days prior? Those deaths should feel more tragic, at least in an abstract sense, than the deaths of everyone else who was on the 9/11 planes by the same degree that the lucky uncle's survival is more of a relief than the survival of everyone who wasn't.
"Ironic" was a resonant song because it's hard to disagree that dying in a plane crash after a lifetime of avoiding air travel is worse than just plain dying in one. Same goes for, I dunno, dying on Christmas ("He died on Christmas!"), or having that one last fight with your spouse on the day of your anniversary. These sorts of coincidences make bad things seem even worse, but I wonder, exactly how much worse? And is there a way to take that into account when we're make decisions?
posted by Leon at 9:29 AM
1 Comments:
Everything you say makes perfect sense -- EVERYTHING -- but I think the phenomenon you're talking about SHOULDN'T be taken into account when assessing risk. (Am I taking this riff concept too seriously? Probably. :() Regarding the deaths of the stand-by passengers or the ticket-changers as more tragic is just the result of an irrational bias we have. Of course, no one HAD to be on that plane, or any plane. Except for the most dire and sudden emergencies, travel circumstances usual allow a lot of room for choice: flight time, airline, blah blah, you get the picture. If you really started looking into the backstories of all those passengers, they would probably all involved tragedies of "they almost weren't on that plane, but then they decided to be" variety.
It's asymmetric, though. Everyone who ever lived *except* for the people who were on the plane *weren't* on the plane, but the vast, vast majority had no connection with it whatsoever, and only in far-flung alternate universes would they have been there. For the few people who really do have an "almost on United 93" story, well, that's more relief-full than "almost not on United 93" is tragic, if you ask me.
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