But we make those choices every single day, gathering data about it doesn't change that fact.
Most people who die in a car crashes would have been saved if we made the speed limit 25mph and enforced it with speed cameras, but that would be inconvenient for everyone else. There are plenty of very rare diseases that kill people each year, we don't spend as much money on them because it isn't worth it to just save a few lives each year relative to what we could be spending it on. Many flu deaths could be prevented each year if we just closed down every nonessential business during flu season, but we are OK with some people dying so we can gather socially, even if we don't have to.
I think doing cost benefit analysis for deaths and lost years of life would be great, and would allow us to make more logical decisions. Of course no one wants their child or family member to die, but the reality is that if you want to setup society to just stop deaths at all cost, you are going to have a pretty miserable population. And if you don't do any cost benefit, you will actually be allowing more people to die by spending money in places where it isn't the most effective.
Most people who die in a car crashes would have been saved if we made the speed limit 25mph and enforced it with speed cameras, but that would be inconvenient for everyone else. There are plenty of very rare diseases that kill people each year, we don't spend as much money on them because it isn't worth it to just save a few lives each year relative to what we could be spending it on. Many flu deaths could be prevented each year if we just closed down every nonessential business during flu season, but we are OK with some people dying so we can gather socially, even if we don't have to.
I think doing cost benefit analysis for deaths and lost years of life would be great, and would allow us to make more logical decisions. Of course no one wants their child or family member to die, but the reality is that if you want to setup society to just stop deaths at all cost, you are going to have a pretty miserable population. And if you don't do any cost benefit, you will actually be allowing more people to die by spending money in places where it isn't the most effective.