I can’t visualise 1800 heartbeats, it seems so abstract and I know that my heartrate varies wildly depending on my emotional state and physical activity.
80 seconds however is something I can see every day. Why not go with that?
Then again, excellent initiative to visualise something like death probabilities. Our brains aren’t naturally rational, we have to help. I am convinced that with the right translations, like this, we can reuse existing neural structures.
Associating cigarettes with time might help me in reverse. Cigarettes disgust me. My self-image strongly states that I am a person who doesn’t do stupid things like smoke cigarettes. Would I smoke a pack of cigarettes per day? Hell no! Would I smoke three packs per day? That would be suicide.
But I do waste time. 80 seconds per cigarette works out to 30 minutes per pack. If I thought of wasting 30 minutes the same way I think of smoking a pack of cigarettes, I would waste a lot less time.
If smoking a pack only cost you 30 minutes, then you’d have to smoke a pack a day for 48 years to shorten your lifespan by just 1 year, which IIRC is a lower risk than smoking actually poses.
100,000 beats per day is ~70bpm, so 1800 beats is 25 minutes. I’ve just noticed that I don’t actually know how many cigarettes are in a pack—a dozen or so? - so that’s around 5 hours. 48 years of smoking would cost you a decade of expected life, which (again, IIRC) is in the right ballpark.
This does mean the conversion rate of wasted time: cigarette disgust is lower than the 80-seconds figure implies. I hope this does not too much undermine the idea’s usefulness to you.
If smoking a pack only cost you 30 minutes, then you’d have to smoke a pack a day for 48 years to shorten your lifespan by just 1 year, which IIRC is a lower risk than smoking actually poses.
The figure I was familiar with, and the one most frequent in the first page of Google results for each cigarette shortens your life by, is 11 minutes.
Let’s assume someone who didn’t stop smoked for 40 years—two packs a day. That’s 40 x 365 x 40 = 584,000 cigarettes. Divide that into 10 years worth of minutes, and it comes out as .9 minutes, assuming I set up the calculations properly.
This may imply that if we get decent anti-aging tech, smoking won’t be a serious risk.
Not necessarily; more likely, it just means that damage is cumulative over time. Most people don’t start smoking when they’re 45, so it’s not really a direct comparison.
Also, smoking seems to negatively affect brain health as well, which is problematic since reversing brain degradation might be harder then other types of anti-aging technology.
If someone smoked for 40 years and that reduced their life by 10 years, that 4:1 ratio translates to every 24 hours of being a smoker reducing lifespan by 6 hours (360 minutes). Assuming 40 cigarettes a day, that’s 360⁄40 or 9 minutes per cigarette, pretty close to the 11 given earlier.
On reading this in the Recent Comments sidebar, I thought “1 heartbeat = 1 second, 1800 seconds = half an hour” in less time than it takes me to tell left from right.
I can’t visualise 1800 heartbeats, it seems so abstract and I know that my heartrate varies wildly depending on my emotional state and physical activity.
80 seconds however is something I can see every day. Why not go with that?
Then again, excellent initiative to visualise something like death probabilities. Our brains aren’t naturally rational, we have to help. I am convinced that with the right translations, like this, we can reuse existing neural structures.
Associating cigarettes with time might help me in reverse. Cigarettes disgust me. My self-image strongly states that I am a person who doesn’t do stupid things like smoke cigarettes. Would I smoke a pack of cigarettes per day? Hell no! Would I smoke three packs per day? That would be suicide.
But I do waste time. 80 seconds per cigarette works out to 30 minutes per pack. If I thought of wasting 30 minutes the same way I think of smoking a pack of cigarettes, I would waste a lot less time.
If smoking a pack only cost you 30 minutes, then you’d have to smoke a pack a day for 48 years to shorten your lifespan by just 1 year, which IIRC is a lower risk than smoking actually poses.
100,000 beats per day is ~70bpm, so 1800 beats is 25 minutes. I’ve just noticed that I don’t actually know how many cigarettes are in a pack—a dozen or so? - so that’s around 5 hours. 48 years of smoking would cost you a decade of expected life, which (again, IIRC) is in the right ballpark.
This does mean the conversion rate of wasted time: cigarette disgust is lower than the 80-seconds figure implies. I hope this does not too much undermine the idea’s usefulness to you.
20 cigarettes in a pack, typically. A few brands have 25.
The figure I was familiar with, and the one most frequent in the first page of Google results for
each cigarette shortens your life by, is 11 minutes.That seems high.
Smoking shortens life by about ten years—but not so much if you stop by age 40. This may imply that if we get decent anti-aging tech, smoking won’t be a serious risk. How hard would the tech be to not be bothered by cigarette smoke?
Let’s assume someone who didn’t stop smoked for 40 years—two packs a day. That’s 40 x 365 x 40 = 584,000 cigarettes. Divide that into 10 years worth of minutes, and it comes out as .9 minutes, assuming I set up the calculations properly.
Not necessarily; more likely, it just means that damage is cumulative over time. Most people don’t start smoking when they’re 45, so it’s not really a direct comparison.
Also, smoking seems to negatively affect brain health as well, which is problematic since reversing brain degradation might be harder then other types of anti-aging technology.
I think there’s an error in your calculations.
If someone smoked for 40 years and that reduced their life by 10 years, that 4:1 ratio translates to every 24 hours of being a smoker reducing lifespan by 6 hours (360 minutes). Assuming 40 cigarettes a day, that’s 360⁄40 or 9 minutes per cigarette, pretty close to the 11 given earlier.
On reading this in the Recent Comments sidebar, I thought “1 heartbeat = 1 second, 1800 seconds = half an hour” in less time than it takes me to tell left from right.
How long does it take you to tell left from right?
Usually around one second.
You must be so smart. My stupid brain can handle ready-made 30min faster and more reliably than the conversion.
Mine too. What’s your point?