I have a very strong feeling that, if the presence of a fireplace were shown to reduce John’s life expectancy by 10 minutes he would indeed make no adjustments in his behavior, if the reduction in life expectancy were 10 years he would never go near a wood fire again, and intermediate values would result in monotonically decreasing levels of use.
Your feeling sounds needlessly insulting; perhaps that was triggered because it was poor form John to insist on exactitude? Exact numbers being impossible to come by, we do still all already reduce our life expectancies regularly when driving, flying, eating ice cream, spending time in higher-crime areas… Yet if you were to point out that “OMG, driving to the library can kill you!” it would be a technical truth drowning in connotational falsehood. When trying to balance rare dangers against common benefits, asking for the danger to be at least approximately quantified is the only rational thing to do.
I have a very strong feeling that, if the presence of a fireplace were shown to reduce John’s life expectancy by 10 minutes he would indeed make no adjustments in his behavior, if the reduction in life expectancy were 10 years he would never go near a wood fire again, and intermediate values would result in monotonically decreasing levels of use.
Your feeling sounds needlessly insulting; perhaps that was triggered because it was poor form John to insist on exactitude? Exact numbers being impossible to come by, we do still all already reduce our life expectancies regularly when driving, flying, eating ice cream, spending time in higher-crime areas… Yet if you were to point out that “OMG, driving to the library can kill you!” it would be a technical truth drowning in connotational falsehood. When trying to balance rare dangers against common benefits, asking for the danger to be at least approximately quantified is the only rational thing to do.