what if reducing the size of a ball point pen by half reduces the rate of death by ball point pens by 50%.

If the ball point pen was responsible for ~40,000 deaths per year (in the USA), and reducing its size by half did not meaningfully diminish its function as a pen for most users… I’d rather not kill an extra 20,000 people a year just to have a bigger pen.

	▲	simianwords an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I agree if this is true > and reducing its size by half did not meaningfully diminish its function as a pen for most users

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kelnos an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm not sure why you're responding to a measured, factual rate of death with some random weird thing that you just made up.

So ok, I'll do it too: what if reducing the size of a ball point pen by half reduces the rate of death by ball point pens by 0.01%? (Answer: you don't do it, because the benefit to doing so is low, and that measured effect could be well within the margin of error anyway.)

(And my weird made-up number sounds a lot more likely than your weird made-up number.)

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simianwords an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The reason I brought it up was because it is not meaningful to only compare relative decrease of deaths without understanding the extent of how many deaths they are responsible for.

If only a few people die due to car accidents and one is much more likely to die of other causes than cars, is it worth making cars that much more expensive to decrease the deaths by a bit?

The regulations in my opinion add up to 20-30% of the car price. And likelihood of death due to a car at an individual level decreases by .01% (maybe).

Imagine you were given two options:

- Car A at $45k USD

- Car B at $35k USD

And you are less likely to die with Car A. Is it super obvious that you will buy Car A? If so why doesn't everyone flock to Volvo cars which lead to ~45% fewer fatalities?

Why is this so obvious to you that this regulation is a good thing? The sibling is implying that I'm trolling or whatever but this is a legitimate question.

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CalRobert an hour ago | parent [-]

“ And likelihood of death due to a car at an individual level decreases by .01% (maybe).”

This is made up out of thin air.

	▲	simianwords an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Maybe I'm wrong but can you explain why people don't flock and buy only Volvo cars when (I fact checked this) they are 40% more safe than other cars?

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jacquesm an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

They're doing that all the time, check comment history.