On 6/7/22 12:45, Mary B wrote:
On Tue, Jun 7, 2022 at 11:30 AM Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Sent from my iPhone
> On Jun 7, 2022, at 11:47 AM, Mary B <mary.h.barnes@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> If IETF is making decisions based on risk of death, then they should be changing the food offerings at breaks (i.e., get rid of the cookies and sodas with HFCS) (and there's already a document wtih some helpful guidelines for providing healthy food ;).
There are lots of things that will likely shorten your life if you make a habit of them, but which have a negligible effect on most people’s life expectancies if they only do them rarely. That’s an entirely different kind of risk than getting shot.[MB] It is different in that you have a choice whether you want to die because you eat garbage versus being shot.
That choice is a very important difference. An individual has a
lot of control over how many cookies they eat and how many sodas
they drink at IETF meetings. But if they need to attend the IETF
meeting (say for work) they have little effective control over
their risk of getting shot.
And the fact that IETF serves cookies at its meetings should not
be used as an excuse to dismiss the risk of violence to its
attendees.
But, we were talking about risk of death and keeping people safe and healthy.
No, *we* were talking about the risk of being shot, which is a very different kind of risk than, say, eventually succumbing to renal failure from type 2 diabetes from having eaten too many cookies at IETF meetings.
And, statistically, your risk of death from a gunshot from a mass shooting event (which is 1% of gun deaths in the US) is much lower than other causes
If you get shot, you probably don't care whether it's from a mass shooting event or from some other cause. As you implicitly point out, there are many more deaths from firearms in the US than from mass shooting events. So why would we only consider mass shooting events in this discussion?
"If we overestimate our risk in one area, it can lead to anxiety and interfere with carrying out our normal daily routine. Ironically, it also leads us to underestimate real risks that can injure or kill us."
I agree with that statement. But that's not a justification for
dismissing risks out-of-hand, or with handwaving arguments.
Keith
