I imagine that in our evolutionary past, it was more important to be accepted by the group than to be right.

So, we are ready to believe (and say) any crazy thing (e.g., religion) if it brings us acceptance from the group.

I am not sure this property has clear ideological coloration.

"Kavanaugh profiling"

Our brains are almost incapable of conceiving of technological change.

How many of us can remember how we did things before the invention of the internet or the mobile phone?

Is this property unique to academic and progressive culture?

Does Trump seem like he is wrestling over questions related to good vs. evil?

Don't you think the MAGA people have settled many ethical questions all too easily?

It's a mistake anyone might have made.

Look at Epstein, for example.

DALYs are the sum of years lost to disability (YLD) and years lost to disease (YLL).

chds.hsph.harvard.edu/joint-modeli...

QALYs (quality adjusted life years) adjusts the DALYs for the quality of life.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16877455/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11910057/

I am imagining the back and neck pain score highly in the DALY score mostly because of back and neck pain reducing the quality of life.

Also, back and neck pain probably results in less exercise and thereby probably has some mortality knock on effect.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Looking at deaths instead of DALYs (Disability Adjusted Life Years) emphasizes diseases of the aging.

Still no homicide or terrorism on the list.

I am using 2018 so as not to consider Covid effects.

www.who.int/data/gho/dat...

Here are the DALY statistics for the US (pre-Covid).

Still no homicide or terrorism in the top 10.

Still mostly disease, much of it preventable. (Interesting how back and neck pain scores so highly.)

www.who.int/data/gho/dat...

(Note: Earlier version of this post was for Afghanistan.)

Blanket pardons are coming.

They are all counting on it.

If preemptive pardons were possible, they would have received them already.

One of the problems with most mortality statistics is that the only thing that can cause an additional death is birth.

Everything else just accelerates death.

It would be good to try to create a figure like this in terms of "avoidable life-years lost".

I suspect such a chart might look similar.

Theoretical economists have developed deep and valuable understanding.

However, problems arise when economists:

(1) believe their quantitative predictions;
(2) opine in public about what we should do.

Economic theory is an aid to thought, but quantitative predictive skill is not its forte.

Is there something I can read discussing this?

If we could define a util, and how many utils each person had in terms of well-being, I would think one might value one's life in direct proportion to the number of utils.

Is this elasticity included in social cost of carbon calculations?

I notice that Rennert et al (2022) assume direct proportionality.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Maybe the ratio of value of statistical life to income should be much higher for the billionaire, because, if eta>1, the billionaire would need a larger proportional increase to get the same increase in utility.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoelas...