Let’s talk about something fun… death. Yours, to be specific. Or, more precisely, the odds of when and how you will die, which we bet you do not think about at all! Reality doesn’t give a damn so here we go.
Most people maximize a comfortable little illusion: the reaper has a schedule that’s much busier with other people than with them. If you were to ask just about anyone what they think their life span is likely to be, they would probably say a bit longer than most. Even though they don’t have any real reason for thinking that, they think it anyway.
Studies have shown that people believe they are healthier, safer, and more resilient than the “average person.” This might not seem too far-fetched, but if you think about it, it’s actually mathematically impossible. Not everyone can be above average. Dispite how we like to tell ourselves we are.
This idea convinces people they’ll never get cancer, never be in a car accident that kills them, and never find themselves on the wrong end of chance. Sure, other people get sick. Sure, other people have heart attacks at 50. Other people get wiped out by freak accidents, but not us. Fear literally allows us to not be afraid. If you truly knew how fragile your existence was, you would never leave the house. But this overconfidence comes at a cost. It makes us terrible at assessing real risks.
How We Get Risk All Wrong
Human beings are notoriously bad at assessing danger. We panic about what is all over the news, not over what actually kills us. We worry about shark attacks while heart disease actually kills us. While plane crashes are rare, more people die in car crashes.
Let’s do a thought experiment: suppose cigarettes are completely safe except one pack out of every 18,750 contains a cigarette with a stick of dynamite in it. Light it up, and boom!! Instant decapitation. If this was the case, people would lose their heads every day in public, in front of aghast onlookers. It would be a global crisis. Governments would intervene.
Smoking bans would skyrocket. But this wouldn’t change the number of deaths. Even that scenario wouldn’t change the body count from the slow and subtle reality of this disease: lung cancer and heart ailments. The only difference? The deaths would be sudden and impossible to ignore.
This is how human perception works. We don’t fear what’s most likely to kill us. We fear what’s most visible. The more exaggerated and uncontrollable a risk looks, the more frightening it seems. We worry about people who commit terrorist attacks and fail to worry about drunk drivers. That’s why people think they might die in a plane crash but don’t think it’s a big deal to eat junk food.
The Fallacy of Survivorship
The U.S. military was losing a lot of aircraft during World War II. They examined the planes that made it back from the fight and saw the bullet holes were mostly in ones wings and body, along with those pesky tail fins. The logical solution? Reinforce those areas with extra armor.
Enter mathematician Abraham Wald. They Were Only Studying the Planes That Came Back. “He noted the obvious: they were only studying the aircraft that returned.” The planes that received damage to their cockpit or engine never got to come back. If they really wanted to save more planes, they needed to reinforce the areas that weren’t showing bullet holes; because those are the areas that, when hit, meant trouble.
This same flawed thinking infects everything. People like to think there was once a golden period of music – perhaps the 60s or 70s. But that’s just exaggeration. After all, we only remember the good songs. All that forgettable garbage has been purged from memory either by the people or the musicians themselves. We celebrate those who made it and ignore those who didn’t. We deceive ourselves in this way into thinking we are invincible. We only look at the winners, the survivors, the lucky ones. We tell ourselves that will be us. Until it isn’t.
The Math of Your Own Mortality
Every decision you make has a cost that micromorts and microlives are brutal reminders of. A micromort is a one-in-a-million chance of dying. It’s accurate way to quantify risk, not just a vague concept. Want to take a leisurely 230-mile drive? That’s one micromort. How about Smoke five cigarettes? Another one micromort. Going skydiving? Seven micromorts. The more micromorts you rack up, the closer you get to death. However, the fun part is that most people get micromorts in a situation with thinking much just because you don’t feel in danger. The same person with no qualms about taking a motorcycle ride gets 10-micromorts per trip event. will freak out and panic at the thought of flying when commercial air travel is so safe, it hardly registers a blip.
MICROMORT CALCULATOR
Experiment with different activities to understand how they impact risk and potential time lost or gained.
Calculate Your Risk
But on the upside, there’s a measure called microlife, which is a measure of life expectancy that actually works for you (if you’re lucky). Every microlife you gain is about 30 minutes added to the life expectancy. Exercise for 20 minutes? You will gain two microlives. How about eat a serving of fruits or vegetables? That’s another microlife. Cut out processed junk and alcohol? You get more microlives. But just as you can gain microlives, you can lose them. Two hours of sedentary behavior? That’s minus one microlife. A lifetime of smoking? Obviously you’re hemorrhaging microlives by the day. There are just two choices; you are either throwing yourself closer to the grave or pulling yourself back from it.
MICROLIFE CALCULATOR
Experiment with different activities to see how they add or subtract from your lifespan in microlives.
Calculate Your Lifespan Impact
The problem is, most people don’t like this kind of math. It’s too cold, too unforgiving. It doesn’t allow for excuses. It doesn’t take into consideration that you were “too busy” to work out or that “one more drink” didn’t feel like it did damage. The Micromort-microlife system really clears up how we can be our own worst enemy.
You don’t get to just hope for a long life. Just because you feel healthy doesn’t mean you can assume you will beat the odds. The math doesn’t care about feelings. It only cares about choices. And eventually, it adds up.
You Can’t Cheat Death, But You Can Do the Math
So, what’s the takeaway here? It’s simple. You’re not special. You are not immune to statistics. No matter how much kale you eat, how many CrossFit classes you do, and how much sanitizer you drown yourself in, you are still an expiry date walking. It is acceptable to hope for a long life, but it is unreasonable to think that life is will give you one. The universe doesn’t owe you time. It hands out death to anyone and you pretending otherwise won’t change a thing.
Micromort Detailed Scorecard
But maybe, just maybe, accepting this reality is freeing. Not a great idea – but perhaps becoming aware of how bad we are at assessing risk can help us choose better. Maybe that just means realizing that avoiding a flight out of fear while inhaling processed crap every day doesn’t make any sense. Perhaps we should be accountable for the types of risks we take, not just the complications we cause. Perhaps it means enjoying the time you have when you have it. Because whether you like it or not, the clock is ticking.
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