MicromortsBy Veronica Tang
|
|
0 micromorts
Stubbed toes, LSD, papercuts, and cigarettes.
Mathematically defined as the one-in-a-million chance of death, micromorts were created to measure the “riskiness of various day-to-day activities.”
And since no activity is without risk, zero micromorts should not exist. After all, what would a life without risk look like? Isolation in a padded room, trapped behind bulletproof glass in a museum? Simply put, disconnected. Disconnected from this reality, at the very least. Even getting out of the bed at twenty years old is one micromort. That is to say, one out of a million twenty-year olds die getting out of bed.
But because micromorts are a mathematically defined unit, zero does, in fact, exist. The micromorts of any given activity is calculated by taking the number of deaths due to said activity, dividing by the population in question, and multiplying by one million. Therefore, if any one activity has never killed a single member of the population, say, stubbing a toe, the micromorts of that activity is 0.
By that argument then, the risks of taking LSD and dying from a papercut are equivalent. Am I the only one who thinks that is stupid? Even better, they are both equal to zero.
You see, this is the result of an unfortunate oversight. Smoking a single cigarette will not kill you immediately, but enough cigarettes will eventually do the trick. Some say to add one micromort for every 1.4 cigarettes you smoke – how the hell does that even work – while some particularly picky statisticians measure chronic risks with microlives, units of risk representing half an hour of change in life expectancy. But these are even more dubious, because they are calculated with rough estimates based on the assumption that, for small enough risks, the change in life expectancy is roughly linear.
Ronald A. Howard is a professor at Stanford and holds a Bachelor of Science degree from MIT. Fat lot of good it did him, because this is anything but a science.
The final flaw lies in the definition of risk – one assumes that all we have to risk is life, that our perception of risk is based on the possibility of death. But I’d like to argue that as humans, we have much, much more to lose than just our lives. Or else the concept of sacrifice would be foreign to us.
Victoria Leigh Soto is an American teacher who was murdered in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting while protecting her students. But to act in such a way that puts herself at risk? The only explanation in game theory is that she acted irrationally.
9 Micromorts
Skydiving in the U.S. is about 9 micromorts per dive.
Wendy wanted to go with Peter. To see the land he spoke of, to be a child forever in Neverland. But how could she, when she did not know how to fly?
“I’ll teach you,” he said, and he held her hands as he drew her to the window.
“Oh, how lovely to fly.”
“I’ll teach you how to jump on the wind’s back, and then away we go.”
J.M. Barrie described it as “heavenly”, and I can’t help but wonder what it feels like too. I imagine that flying or skydiving must feel a little bit like skating: weightless, exhilarating, the physical embodiment of a dream. I gave up my white leather skates nearly a decade ago, but even now, the jumps and spins that were once second nature to me remain in my body as residues of a past life, ingrained in my muscle memory. From time to time I dream of it still, the comfort of ice beneath my feet, wind in my face, and the world blurring past my watering eyes.
“So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land.”
They say it is the thrill that is addicting. Thrill? What thrill? Only nine in a million die. How can there be a thrill? Where does the adrenaline come from in that place of utter safety?
Realistically speaking, most of us will never encounter any activity with more than three digits of micromorts – in this day and age, we have learned to live without fearing for our lives, learned to live in complacency. Because what dangers can compare to the challenges our ancestors faced? We do not live in caves, run from predators, or scavenge for food. The circumstances that forced us to evolve into the species we are today no longer exist. Indeed, the tiny range of micromorts we live our lives within have ensured the unchanging nature of Homo sapiens sapiens.
But though the risk of dying for the modern human is remarkably small, death will come for each and every one of us eventually. Will she come as the Morrígan, phantom queen of the Irish Ulster Cycle, covered head to toe in the feathers of a crow? Until then, we entertain ourselves with illusions, foolishly believing that by hurtling through the air or by balancing on metal blades, we can challenge death itself.
Peter held the arrow that felled Wendy in his hand. “She is dead,” he said uncomfortably. “Perhaps she is frightened at being dead.” I’d like to think that, for a moment, Tinker Bell might have felt a twinge of regret. But J.M. Barrie knows best, and according to him, “fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for only one feeling at a time.”
Victory, then. Just victory, intertwined with death inside the fairy’s mind.
22 Micromorts
22 micromorts per day. All causes of death. In general. In the United States, at least.
Here is a number that quantifies the risk of dying in any given day. Do we do this out of fear, to try to predict what we cannot control?
They say this is from “all causes.” Then theoretically, this is a summation, no? People who died from shark attacks plus the people who died from drowning minus the people who died from both. There, now it follows Inclusion-Exclusion Principle. But where are the people who died from heartbreak? From loneliness? From unrequited love? Oh, hang on, it’s right here: the risk of suicide is 0.3 micromorts per day. For non-natural causes in general, 1.6 micromorts per day.
Every time a child says, “I don't believe in fairies,” there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead. Clearly, Tinker Bell died from non-natural causes too. How unlucky! Only 1.6 out of a million.
48 Micromorts
48 micromorts per year. Murder and non-negligent manslaughter in the United States. Funny how this number is only 10 for the UK and 15 for Canada, huh?
By the same logic that we applied to Tinker Bell, according to FBI Table 16, Victoria Leigh Soto died from a gunshot. Not from agape, the unconditional love both Greeks and Christians dreamed of.
They say that when children die, Peter Pan goes part of the way with them so that they will not be afraid. I hope he taught them to fly, the twenty first grade children who died with Ms. Soto.
All children, except one, grow up. Well, I hope you shared your adventure with them too, Peter, because I don’t think they’ll grow up either.
“There never was a simpler, happier family until the coming of Peter Pan.”
430 Micromorts
All causes, the first day of life.
The first day of life is also the deadliest. Why do statistics hate children so much?
Peter Pan once ran away to live among the fairies in Kensington Gardens. “You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.”
I was born a month early with a full head of hair, but apart from that, nothing was wrong. Still, I get the feeling that I hated stats as much as they hated me, because danger emerged for the first time when I was seven, which is theoretically the safest age to be in the United States. It was either lose the skin on my arm or risk skin cancer, and I chose the latter, because I wanted to be free to move and breathe and laugh and dance. Thankfully, that gamble has paid off.
Wendy told her mother that a new fairy is born each time a new baby laughs. Just as there will always be new babies, there will always be new fairies. But of the 430 out of a million children destined to die within 24 hours of birth, how many live long enough to laugh?
37,932 Micromorts
Mt. Everest. 37,932 micromorts per ascent attempt.
The mountain has claimed the lives of many. 37,932 deaths for every million people that attempt the climb. Well, I suppose this is the tax they must pay to reach the top of the world. Cold, snow, oxygen-deprivation, exhaustion.
So beware all adventure seekers, unless you see the world the same way Peter does: “To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
500,000 Micromorts
What psychopathic maniac are we talking about here?
Only one thing comes to mind for a number this high, and it’s marrying Henry VIII. That, or flipping an ideal coin and shooting someone for every tails.
Boleyn and Howard lost their heads, Anne of Cleves he would not bed, Jane Seymour gave him a son - but died before the week was done, Aragon he did divorce, Which just left Catherine Parr, of course!
I was born the day Anne Boleyn should have died, on the 18th of May. I’ve always admired her daughter, the little red headed girl who would grow up to rule nations and defeat armadas. But really, it’s a pity, because Anne didn’t live long enough to see her daughter rule, to know her daughter was no queen consort but a queen in her own right.
At least they say Anne was happy in her final hours, that she laughed when she heard Henry brought in an expert swordsman from France for her beheading. “I heard say the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck.” She giggled and wrapped her hands around her throat.
To this day, I have no idea how she found the strength to laugh. How could anyone laugh in her place? Amidst the false accusations of incest and tales of her brother’s execution, where did she find the strength to waltz to the scaffold in grey damask and ermine fur?
Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that, whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never: and to me he was ever a good, a gentle and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me.
She wrote a poem in her cell before she died, but it was no love letter to her husband, no record for her king. In the end, she wanted nothing more than to die, to sleep in peace at last.
O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul.
1,000,000 Micromorts
… what is this, the heat death of the universe?
What is the deadliest thing you can think of? Drinking liquid nitrogen? Standing next to a nuclear bomb as it explodes? Severing your ribs from your spine and pulling out your lungs? Excellent choice, that last one. The blood eagle, a ritualized form of execution detailed in late skaldic poetry.
Technically speaking, we can’t say that any of these activities are one million micromorts. Probably close, but not quite. Maybe someone died of exposure before they died from having no ribs. One million micromorts is a guaranteed death sentence. No escape whatsoever.
When we are young, we overestimate the gift of life. We live as if we are immortal, because every step feels like a new beginning, and there will be a second chance for everything. When we are old, we underestimate the gift of life. Confined to a withering body and struggling with a fading mind, we can scarcely believe that the goings-on of this world once mattered to us.
In reality, life is not a gift, but a loan. What goes up must come down. The only activity with a risk of one million micromorts is living.
We are desperate gamblers, each and every one of us. Mathematically speaking, the odds are not stacked in our favor; at this point, the least we can do to ensure a positive expected value is to make the gain worth the risk. We trust so that there will always be someone waiting for us. We love so that we always have someone to wait for. We chase our dreams so that someday, the world will remember the risks we took and the sacrifices that we made.
"You know that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always love you, Peter Pan. That's where I'll be waiting.”
Stubbed toes, LSD, papercuts, and cigarettes.
Mathematically defined as the one-in-a-million chance of death, micromorts were created to measure the “riskiness of various day-to-day activities.”
And since no activity is without risk, zero micromorts should not exist. After all, what would a life without risk look like? Isolation in a padded room, trapped behind bulletproof glass in a museum? Simply put, disconnected. Disconnected from this reality, at the very least. Even getting out of the bed at twenty years old is one micromort. That is to say, one out of a million twenty-year olds die getting out of bed.
But because micromorts are a mathematically defined unit, zero does, in fact, exist. The micromorts of any given activity is calculated by taking the number of deaths due to said activity, dividing by the population in question, and multiplying by one million. Therefore, if any one activity has never killed a single member of the population, say, stubbing a toe, the micromorts of that activity is 0.
By that argument then, the risks of taking LSD and dying from a papercut are equivalent. Am I the only one who thinks that is stupid? Even better, they are both equal to zero.
You see, this is the result of an unfortunate oversight. Smoking a single cigarette will not kill you immediately, but enough cigarettes will eventually do the trick. Some say to add one micromort for every 1.4 cigarettes you smoke – how the hell does that even work – while some particularly picky statisticians measure chronic risks with microlives, units of risk representing half an hour of change in life expectancy. But these are even more dubious, because they are calculated with rough estimates based on the assumption that, for small enough risks, the change in life expectancy is roughly linear.
Ronald A. Howard is a professor at Stanford and holds a Bachelor of Science degree from MIT. Fat lot of good it did him, because this is anything but a science.
The final flaw lies in the definition of risk – one assumes that all we have to risk is life, that our perception of risk is based on the possibility of death. But I’d like to argue that as humans, we have much, much more to lose than just our lives. Or else the concept of sacrifice would be foreign to us.
Victoria Leigh Soto is an American teacher who was murdered in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting while protecting her students. But to act in such a way that puts herself at risk? The only explanation in game theory is that she acted irrationally.
9 Micromorts
Skydiving in the U.S. is about 9 micromorts per dive.
Wendy wanted to go with Peter. To see the land he spoke of, to be a child forever in Neverland. But how could she, when she did not know how to fly?
“I’ll teach you,” he said, and he held her hands as he drew her to the window.
“Oh, how lovely to fly.”
“I’ll teach you how to jump on the wind’s back, and then away we go.”
J.M. Barrie described it as “heavenly”, and I can’t help but wonder what it feels like too. I imagine that flying or skydiving must feel a little bit like skating: weightless, exhilarating, the physical embodiment of a dream. I gave up my white leather skates nearly a decade ago, but even now, the jumps and spins that were once second nature to me remain in my body as residues of a past life, ingrained in my muscle memory. From time to time I dream of it still, the comfort of ice beneath my feet, wind in my face, and the world blurring past my watering eyes.
“So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land.”
They say it is the thrill that is addicting. Thrill? What thrill? Only nine in a million die. How can there be a thrill? Where does the adrenaline come from in that place of utter safety?
Realistically speaking, most of us will never encounter any activity with more than three digits of micromorts – in this day and age, we have learned to live without fearing for our lives, learned to live in complacency. Because what dangers can compare to the challenges our ancestors faced? We do not live in caves, run from predators, or scavenge for food. The circumstances that forced us to evolve into the species we are today no longer exist. Indeed, the tiny range of micromorts we live our lives within have ensured the unchanging nature of Homo sapiens sapiens.
But though the risk of dying for the modern human is remarkably small, death will come for each and every one of us eventually. Will she come as the Morrígan, phantom queen of the Irish Ulster Cycle, covered head to toe in the feathers of a crow? Until then, we entertain ourselves with illusions, foolishly believing that by hurtling through the air or by balancing on metal blades, we can challenge death itself.
Peter held the arrow that felled Wendy in his hand. “She is dead,” he said uncomfortably. “Perhaps she is frightened at being dead.” I’d like to think that, for a moment, Tinker Bell might have felt a twinge of regret. But J.M. Barrie knows best, and according to him, “fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for only one feeling at a time.”
Victory, then. Just victory, intertwined with death inside the fairy’s mind.
22 Micromorts
22 micromorts per day. All causes of death. In general. In the United States, at least.
Here is a number that quantifies the risk of dying in any given day. Do we do this out of fear, to try to predict what we cannot control?
They say this is from “all causes.” Then theoretically, this is a summation, no? People who died from shark attacks plus the people who died from drowning minus the people who died from both. There, now it follows Inclusion-Exclusion Principle. But where are the people who died from heartbreak? From loneliness? From unrequited love? Oh, hang on, it’s right here: the risk of suicide is 0.3 micromorts per day. For non-natural causes in general, 1.6 micromorts per day.
Every time a child says, “I don't believe in fairies,” there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead. Clearly, Tinker Bell died from non-natural causes too. How unlucky! Only 1.6 out of a million.
48 Micromorts
48 micromorts per year. Murder and non-negligent manslaughter in the United States. Funny how this number is only 10 for the UK and 15 for Canada, huh?
By the same logic that we applied to Tinker Bell, according to FBI Table 16, Victoria Leigh Soto died from a gunshot. Not from agape, the unconditional love both Greeks and Christians dreamed of.
They say that when children die, Peter Pan goes part of the way with them so that they will not be afraid. I hope he taught them to fly, the twenty first grade children who died with Ms. Soto.
All children, except one, grow up. Well, I hope you shared your adventure with them too, Peter, because I don’t think they’ll grow up either.
“There never was a simpler, happier family until the coming of Peter Pan.”
430 Micromorts
All causes, the first day of life.
The first day of life is also the deadliest. Why do statistics hate children so much?
Peter Pan once ran away to live among the fairies in Kensington Gardens. “You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.”
I was born a month early with a full head of hair, but apart from that, nothing was wrong. Still, I get the feeling that I hated stats as much as they hated me, because danger emerged for the first time when I was seven, which is theoretically the safest age to be in the United States. It was either lose the skin on my arm or risk skin cancer, and I chose the latter, because I wanted to be free to move and breathe and laugh and dance. Thankfully, that gamble has paid off.
Wendy told her mother that a new fairy is born each time a new baby laughs. Just as there will always be new babies, there will always be new fairies. But of the 430 out of a million children destined to die within 24 hours of birth, how many live long enough to laugh?
37,932 Micromorts
Mt. Everest. 37,932 micromorts per ascent attempt.
The mountain has claimed the lives of many. 37,932 deaths for every million people that attempt the climb. Well, I suppose this is the tax they must pay to reach the top of the world. Cold, snow, oxygen-deprivation, exhaustion.
So beware all adventure seekers, unless you see the world the same way Peter does: “To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
500,000 Micromorts
What psychopathic maniac are we talking about here?
Only one thing comes to mind for a number this high, and it’s marrying Henry VIII. That, or flipping an ideal coin and shooting someone for every tails.
Boleyn and Howard lost their heads, Anne of Cleves he would not bed, Jane Seymour gave him a son - but died before the week was done, Aragon he did divorce, Which just left Catherine Parr, of course!
I was born the day Anne Boleyn should have died, on the 18th of May. I’ve always admired her daughter, the little red headed girl who would grow up to rule nations and defeat armadas. But really, it’s a pity, because Anne didn’t live long enough to see her daughter rule, to know her daughter was no queen consort but a queen in her own right.
At least they say Anne was happy in her final hours, that she laughed when she heard Henry brought in an expert swordsman from France for her beheading. “I heard say the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck.” She giggled and wrapped her hands around her throat.
To this day, I have no idea how she found the strength to laugh. How could anyone laugh in her place? Amidst the false accusations of incest and tales of her brother’s execution, where did she find the strength to waltz to the scaffold in grey damask and ermine fur?
Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that, whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never: and to me he was ever a good, a gentle and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me.
She wrote a poem in her cell before she died, but it was no love letter to her husband, no record for her king. In the end, she wanted nothing more than to die, to sleep in peace at last.
O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul.
1,000,000 Micromorts
… what is this, the heat death of the universe?
What is the deadliest thing you can think of? Drinking liquid nitrogen? Standing next to a nuclear bomb as it explodes? Severing your ribs from your spine and pulling out your lungs? Excellent choice, that last one. The blood eagle, a ritualized form of execution detailed in late skaldic poetry.
Technically speaking, we can’t say that any of these activities are one million micromorts. Probably close, but not quite. Maybe someone died of exposure before they died from having no ribs. One million micromorts is a guaranteed death sentence. No escape whatsoever.
When we are young, we overestimate the gift of life. We live as if we are immortal, because every step feels like a new beginning, and there will be a second chance for everything. When we are old, we underestimate the gift of life. Confined to a withering body and struggling with a fading mind, we can scarcely believe that the goings-on of this world once mattered to us.
In reality, life is not a gift, but a loan. What goes up must come down. The only activity with a risk of one million micromorts is living.
We are desperate gamblers, each and every one of us. Mathematically speaking, the odds are not stacked in our favor; at this point, the least we can do to ensure a positive expected value is to make the gain worth the risk. We trust so that there will always be someone waiting for us. We love so that we always have someone to wait for. We chase our dreams so that someday, the world will remember the risks we took and the sacrifices that we made.
"You know that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always love you, Peter Pan. That's where I'll be waiting.”
Veronica Tang is a junior at Harvard University, studying Computer Science and English. She adores differential privacy, cryptography, and mythology. She is also the co-founder of All Girls STEM Society. When she isn’t cranking out problem sets for her engineering classes, she can be found scribbling in notebooks by a window in Widener Library.