Comment by onion2k
10 years ago
To be honest, if packing a parachute takes an hour longer and increases the chance of living by 100* I'd say that's worthwhile. But then, I also wouldn't call 1/10000 an especially high risk. We face those sorts of odds just driving a car and they don't put many of us off[1].
If the probability of death from packing a parachute quickly were 1/100 then I think your argument would break down somewhat. Like I said, you should spend the appropriate time on something depending on the costs and risks associated with it. "Do everything fast" is wrong, but so is "Do everything slow".
[1] In 2003 the annual risk of being killed as a car user were 1/15261. http://www.medicine.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/Risk/trasnsport...
Here are some stats measured in micromorts[1]:
Skydiving (US): 9 out of a million chance of death per jump
Skydiving (UK): 8 out of a million chance of death per jump
... where 1 micromort = 1 in a million probability of dying
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort#Leisure_and_sport
Yeah, sky diving is relatively safe. It's BASE jumping and wing suiting where most deaths occur, but they are often all lumped together.