
Micromort - benbreen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort
======
kubanczyk
I hate the units which you cannot easily add: 10 micromorts + 10 micromorts =
19,999999 micromorts

500 milimorts + 500 milimorts = 750 milimorts

Playing russian roulette using a sixshooter loaded with 3 rounds is 50% chance
of death. It's 75% if you do another try. "Adding" another try does not
translate to "adding" the metric. It just adds confusion.

~~~
anamexis
While that is annoying, I would argue this isn't an issue with the units, but
just a fact about how probability works.

Setting aside micromorts, you can't say a 50% chance of death + a 50% chance
of death = 100% chance of death, either.

~~~
kubanczyk
Nah, it is a issue with units for me. Speaking primitively: % and ‰ look
weirdly and add weirdly - they are easy to remember.

But when some unit looks like a meter or gram (especially using the micro-
prefix here), it should behave accordingly.

~~~
periodontal
Of course, even your example units don't always behave like you want. For
velocities, 150 megameters/second + 150 megameters/second ≈ 240
megameters/second.

~~~
all-fakes
Sorry, can you explain why the velocities should add that way? I've always
just seen velocities add like regular old vectors, so this looks very strange.

~~~
identity0
Relativity. If they could add that way, you would get 300 megameters/s, which
is breaking the speed of light.

------
dang
See also, from 2013:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6266462](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6266462)

and from 2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10571077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10571077)

and a day later, the unfortunately unnoticed
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10584488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10584488).

------
hankchinaski
this is an interesting take on covid and how it's put into perspective with
other things using micromorts
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/well/live/putting-the-
ris...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/well/live/putting-the-risk-of-
covid-19-in-perspective.html)

from NYT: _Converting this to micromort language, an individual living in New
York City has experienced roughly 50 additional micromorts of risk per day
because of Covid-19. That means you were roughly twice as likely to die as you
would have been if you were serving in the U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan
throughout 2010_

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
And Bill Gates and I have an average net worth in the billions of dollars.

Point is that we know Covid has _very_ different risk profiles based on who
you are. Saying "That means you were roughly twice as likely to die as you
would have been if you were serving in the U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan
throughout 2010" probably _underestimates_ your risk if you live in a nursing
home, but it vastly, vastly overestimates your risk if you're 20 and in good
health.

~~~
maest
If you're interested in your own, personal, risk, then you can keep applying
factors relevant to your situation and get a more refined estimate.

I don't see that as an issue with the measure.

Moreover, average micromort increase in a population is a useful metric, in
the same way GDP is a useful metric, even if your individual productivity is
very different.

~~~
keeganpoppen
it's not a criticism of the measure, it's a (correct) criticism of people
using averages in misleading/wrong ways.

though i'm actually a big fan of this unit (e.g. as an expression of the
relative risks of various activities), it's clear from the comments section
that when people are presented with a simple number they tend to treat the
underlying reality that it reflects as simple too. this is FAR from the only
domain where people reduce complicated things to scalars, and then do
atrocious, hideous, unspeakable things to those scalars (take standard
deviations, %changes over time, and the like), and then make claims about
reality based on the results of those mathematical perversions (i take
particular aim at the social sciences here. sorry. they certainly don't have a
monopoly on statistical innumeracy, but their domain is just more rife for
this sort of abuse).

------
JNRowe
[only kinda related, but...]

Micromorts feature a fair amount on Tim Harford's excellent More or Less¹
show. It strikes me that people who like the micromort as a topic would
probably find the podcast generally interesting too.

 _Edit_ : After following dang's links to previous micromort discussions I see
that other people will bring up More or Less in these threads too ;)

1\.
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd)

------
vorpalhex
The value here I mostly see is comparative - would you rather smoke N
cigarettes or have Y steaks? That kind of tradeoff comparison tends to be what
people are better at, and is what tends to modify my own behavior the most.

~~~
dandare
I was surprised to see that 1 cigarette equals to about 140 charcoal-broiled
steaks. From this point of view, you should never ever in your life worry
about eating charcoal-broiled steak.

~~~
abathur
Unless you don't smoke, I guess? :)

~~~
Dick_Snitzel
Quoting: 'Did you also consider your impact on others?'

Cos: 'Stress results...often... in a kind of enviousness'? (-;

------
JamesBarney
Also see the related concept for life expectancy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microlife](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microlife)

------
_dwt
I think about this sometimes from a slightly different angle - not the
"expected value" number of deaths, but rather the (utilitarian?) math of
actions which affect a huge number of people a little bit each. If you waste,
say, 5 minutes each of a million people's time, in some sense that's almost 10
years of life lost. I think about this a lot when there are discussions about
whether performance matters any more in software.

------
devmunchies
It would be more interesting to break these down. Example, _" Travelling 6
miles (9.7 km) by motorbike (accident) = 1 micromort"_

That can be broken down to motorcycle on the freeway (light traffic) vs
congested city vs _N_ traffic lights vs curvy mountain roads, riding around
sunset, etc.

Knowing how dangerous something is in aggregate is not as useful as the
specifics.

~~~
gxon
This is a problem for both the people who are and are not interested in
participating in extreme behavior.

Those who are will more likely have a false sense of lower risk than their
actions would subject them to. Those who aren't might be scared away by a
larger value than they would actually be subject to.

This could even become a self fulfilling prophecy where activities with high
average micromorts will only attract people more willing to engage in risky
behavior, thus inflating the tail of extreme behavior that causes most of the
mortality, increasing the activity's average micromorts over time.

------
hirundo
Does anyone remember the scifi short story where the whole economy is based on
micromort credits? E.g. a nice dinner might be 2 micromorts. To pay for it you
stick your finger in a device that does absolutely nothing 999,998 times out
of a million, and kills you the other 2 times.

Since everyone starts with the same number of credits, I suppose that's a sort
of equity.

~~~
sterlind
There was an episode of Sliders where you can withdraw however much money you
want from an ATM, but each dollar is a ticket in a euthanasia raffle to keep
overpopulation down. A little different from micromorts though.

~~~
gxon
Interesting. I've recently been thinking of something similar as a form of
population control in a post-aging world. Rather than individual resource
consumption, every time you reproduce, you jump forward in the euthanasia
line. I suspect this would not work very well.

There's got to be some more formal line of research or thought about
population management in a post-aging world.

~~~
ineedasername
Well the general Sci-Fi solution is some form of galactic expansion, sometimes
preceded by a massive die off before people get the point that their planet
has exceeded maximum capacity.

~~~
gxon
As per our current science, we're forever limited to our galactic local group.
Exponential growth tends to consume even very big things surprisingly quickly.

I also question whether a mass die off event on this planet won't lock us out
from ever rebuilding a spacefaring civilization. We've already used up all the
readily accessible fossil fuel that was necessary for us to get this far.

------
Lio
It's all very well talking about million to one chances but if you're a fan of
Terry Pratchett's Discworld you'll know they almost always happen!*

* [https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Million-to-one_chance](https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Million-to-one_chance)

------
GreeniFi
Not to be confused with _petite mort_

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_petite_mort](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_petite_mort)

------
ixtli
This was featured in a lovely QI bit from years ago:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brsn5Z_uVKk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brsn5Z_uVKk)
(Featuring trevor noah before he became internationally famous!)

------
bjourne
I wonder how many micromorts a shotgun to the head would be. A million? Ten
million? A hundred million? And what would the LD50 of micromorts be? 500k?

~~~
BenjiWiebe
A shotgun blast to the head is guaranteed fatal, so that would be 1 million
micromorts (guaranteed death).

~~~
slyall
People survive self-inflicted shotgun blasts. I understand because they flinch
as they fire and the shot is not "head on". A notibil eexample is from the
1990 Judas Priest lawsuit.

"[] placed a 12-gauge shotgun under his own chin and proceeded to fire the
weapon, dying instantly. [] followed, but survived the self-inflicted gunshot
wound with a severely disfigured face"

------
Symmetry
The first thing I did back in February with the Coronavirus was figure out how
much coming down with it would increase my yearly exposure to micromorts (it
doubled it). That was good for figuring out how afraid I should be compared to
other sources of danger in my life.

~~~
buhhh
That's great and all but did you also consider your impact on others? Also, I
sincerely doubt you were able to get an accurate picture of risk in February.

~~~
teeray
That is an interesting limitation of micromorts in this context—-they’re kind
of statistically focused on the individual.

I wonder if there’s some similar measure where we could basically treat
everyone as slightly radioactive. Entering an enclosed space would reduce the
maximum separation of everyone and increase the minimum possible exposure (and
by consequence, everyone’s chance of death).

Since we’d then have a useful quantity to measure and track, we could then do
accounting with our risk of death by COVID-19 (i.e. “I’m not going to the
store today because I’m over my exposure limit for the week”)

