It's not the lack of compassion, it's the lack of substance.
And I suppose it strikes me as lacking compassion and/or humility to come and use HN as a platform to recycle the same obvious idea, when the story is about a death. It would be different if it were about a tire blowing out.
Everyone knows how these statistics work on a macro level. That's not worth commenting here on HN, and especially not on this story.
I read dang's comment before posting. It still didn't help -- I can't come up with a mental model that generalizes the criticism into actionable rules for improved discussion (except as noted below).
>Everyone knows how these statistics work on a macro level. That's not worth commenting here on HN, and especially not on this story.
If statistical comparisons were obvious, and people didn't overreact with unjustifiable countermeasures, then indeed it wouldn't be important to make the point. But the world we live in is one where nuclear deaths are scarier than heart disease deaths, and shark attacks more than auto collisions.
I think you're committing the fallacy of "my social circle doesn't make that mistake, therefore it's not worth pointing out."
I can agree that users should be more careful about making the common point when others have made it, though -- I had a reply on this thread about "Uber flouted the $150 license" that I deleted when I saw others made a more informed response to the same point.
It's not the lack of compassion, it's the lack of substance.
And I suppose it strikes me as lacking compassion and/or humility to come and use HN as a platform to recycle the same obvious idea, when the story is about a death. It would be different if it were about a tire blowing out.
Everyone knows how these statistics work on a macro level. That's not worth commenting here on HN, and especially not on this story.
I just think we could do better.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16621716