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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35016 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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This is, incidentally, why EAs try to use QALYs in evaluating their impact rather than just mere 'lives saved.'

Quoted for truth. You can't even calculate QALYs lost to murder by just summing up victims' remaining life expectancies, either. Everyone afraid to walk down a street at night because it might be dangerous is losing QALYs. Every transit line that gets voted down because people are afraid to make it easier for criminals to reach their suburb is an ongoing cost in QALYs. Every child stuck playing inside after their parents saw a news story of a free-range kid murdered on the other side of the country is losing QALYs. Air pollution deaths are calculated in a "well, we can't directly trace this lung cancer to that coal plant, but we can poke some statistics really hard with a stick" fashion; if you don't do the same with murder then it's not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Very impactful paragraph, thank you.

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