my mother told me “you should call [your friend who’s there] and ask him if he’s all right”, and I answered “there are 10 million people in London, so the probability that he was involved is about 1 in 30,000, which is less than the probability that he would die naturally in...”; my mother called me heartless before I even finished the sentence.
Your math is right but your mother has the right interpretation of the situation. If your friend is dead, calling him does neither of you any good! This is a 29,999 out of 30,000 chance to earn brownie points.
A different approach might be to do the math on how likely it is that someone the friend knows was involved in the incident. Or maybe just call to discuss the possible repercussions and the probable overreactions that the local government will have.
However, for most of my own friends, if I did call them in exactly such a situation, they’d tell me almost exactly what army1987 said to their mother. Unless they happened to be dead or lost a friend to the event or something.
Your math is right but your mother has the right interpretation of the situation. If your friend is dead, calling him does neither of you any good! This is a 29,999 out of 30,000 chance to earn brownie points.
A different approach might be to do the math on how likely it is that someone the friend knows was involved in the incident. Or maybe just call to discuss the possible repercussions and the probable overreactions that the local government will have.
However, for most of my own friends, if I did call them in exactly such a situation, they’d tell me almost exactly what army1987 said to their mother. Unless they happened to be dead or lost a friend to the event or something.