i am one of those people who think that we should allocate resources against causes of death in close proportion to the number of lives claimed. my guess is that many other engineering types also take this position.
recently however, i have come to worry that this position lacks empathy. especially in light of recent mass shootings in the US, i am forced to consider that some types of deaths have far worse second order effects than others. if ten people die on different days out in the woods, ten sets of family and friends are devastated. tragic, but if ten students are killed at school in the same day, it seems that the lasting damage is far more severe and widespread.
to some extent you can say that's just because people are emotional/irrational and they are blocking optimal allocation, but maybe the optimal solution does need to take into account how people feel about things. maybe things like terrorism and mass shootings are actually a lot more harmful than the numbers suggest.
The issue is more that due to highly asymmetric reporting, people wrongly estimate what the risks to themselves and loved ones are. This means that we don't act rationally in our own interests, to best avoid harm. I think most parents would care more about road safety, carbon monoxide poisoning, mental health, etc. than about terrorism or school shootings, if they were aware of the statistics.
Yeah, and people likewise discount the deaths caused by cancer and heart disease because these are diseases of old age. People generally think humans aren't supposed to live forever, so they see old people dying of these diseases as "natural".
"Natural" perhaps. "Not really possible to prevent" is something like a steelmanned version of it; maybe something like an artificial heart could keep people alive, but maybe such people's bodies are usually worn down enough that the best medicine in the world couldn't keep 90% of them alive for 5 more years.
This brings me to the question: What are the data on deaths in certain age brackets? If, say, media coverage was proportional to the number of people under 18 or under 25 who died, or perhaps some sum of "f(age(person))" where e.g. f(under 18) = 1, f(18-25) = 0.9, f(65+) = 0.01... then that would be a very striking result. (I guess if the smallest weight is 0.01, then no disparities exceeding 100x, such as the terrorism ~4000x disparity, can be explained.)
Unintentional Injury is cause #1 for ages 1-44. Suicide is #2 for 15-34, #3 for 10-14, and less for higher ages. Homicide is #3 for 15-34 and 1-4 (!), and #4 for 5-14. Cancer is #2 for 5-14 and 35-44, #4 for 1-4 and 15-34. Congenital Anomalies is #1 for <1, #2 for 1-4, and #3 for 5-9. Terrorism isn't listed, although if it were counted it might go under homicide. Heart Disease is #5 or less for 0-34, and #3 or higher starting at 35+.
If you figure that the news media only cares about young people, it goes some distance towards explaining matters...
