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Comment by andybak | Hacker News Reader

My great love is travelling (mostly outside the EU/US) and this often involves countries where swimming in random bodies of water is part of the standard itinerary.

I'm sure I'm not particularly unusual in this respect. Most of friends have similar preferences.

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Doing that sort of travel is, for most citizens of the industrialized west, pretty unusual.

Jumping into random bodies of water in the industrialized west is not unusual at all however.

Yeah my girls loved swimming in my in-laws pond behind their house. This ruined that. Statistically almost zero chance it will happen, but the ghost of the idea is there.

Especially when you see micrographs of the little demon: https://www.newsweek.com/brain-eating-amoebae-strike-again-t...

I guess I should count myself lucky for the 'dangerous' things I got to do as a kid; it seems to be a thing of the past.

If you wanted to define 'survivorship bias' with a simple example, this would do it.

This really is a poor example. The vast majority of children who grew up doing "dangerous" activities are still alive and well. Survivorship bias is more often used when the chance of surviving is statistically lower than most people realize.

It's still survivorship bias. They're only happy about it because nothing bad occurred to them, while there really are kids that got sick and I bet they're much less positive about these dangerous things they got to do.

I didn't say it wasn't, just that it was a poor example of it as the vast majority of kids ended up okay.

Or Mercury handling, for another.

Maybe I overstated, they still swam, just a bit more freaked out.

if you know it's a ghost of an idea, then you should have the strength to overcome the irrational bias.

After all you almost certainly put them at more risk just driving them there.

Sure, its just like razorblades in the candy and roaming sex traffickers and all that stuff.

I didn't say they stopped swimming, but it just added some bullshit on top that I would have rather done without.

If they can afford to, they probably will.

Lots of Westerners travel to Asia/Africa/middle East/Latin America. (And yeah, sometimes they catch diseases).

Also, you have to think whether people who normally live in those countries (non westerners) get exposed and face the consequences regularly.

I'm genuinely confused by this. Most of my friends (pre-covid) would holiday fairly regularly outside of Eurpope. We're not especially wealthy or unusual as far as I know. I can't think of many people I know who only holiday in the EU.

South-East Asia is a hugely popular destination. Do we know different demographics?

The reference is to natural freshwater, especially if it is stagnant. Most travel clinics will give advice against swimming in ponds, etc.

The Amoeba is most problematic in warm fresh water bodies. However, a couple of years ago a woman got infected from a neti pot- scared the crap out of me[1]. I now always boil the water.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/woman-dies-from-brain-eating-am...

Just "having friends who holiday" is, alone, a separating factor, mate.

Only if you interpret me as in somehow trying to deny the existence of people poorer than me, which is not at all what I'm saying.

This has all gone a bit off track. To bring this back to the original context:

> Doing that sort of travel is, for most citizens of the industrialized west, pretty unusual.

"Pretty unusual" is what I'm disputing. I'd say it's far from "pretty unusual" for average, regular people to go on holiday outside Europe.

Going on holiday and swimming in the ocean is one thing. Swimming in remote freshwater ponds is wholly another.

I can think of at least two holidays where I swam in freshwater.

I do not doubt that. Meanwhile, I didn't. At issue is how common your experience is. We know it is not universal, p=1. We know it is not nil, p=0. So, is it close to 0.5? 0.1? 0.01? My guess is it is between 0.1 and 0.01.

"Strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government!"

I'll grant the freshwater bit pushes the probability down a fair bit.

But the comment that I was responding to was "Doing that sort of travel is, for most citizens of the industrialized west, pretty unusual." which seems to be more about "outside of Europe" than it was "and swimming in freshwater. That was the part I found strange. I think there's a couple of countries with much lower than average travel (the US already mentioned and I seem to recall that the French tend to stay within their own borders more than the average)

It's safe to say we know different demographics. I think this is more of an EU thing than a US thing. Also, likely an upper middle class or greater thing. I'm from the US and even pre-covid, most Americans in the bottom 80% of incomes are not "holidaying" anywhere, domestic or overseas on a regular basis. A large percentage of the remainder stick to the US for the majority of their vacations. Pretty much everyone I know(mostly top 20% earners) who travels overseas more than once a decade or so is foreign born, or at least 2nd generation, and traveling to visit family.

Apparently 42% of Americans have passports now, but it was about half that just a decade ago, and I'd attribute most of the growth to immigration, not vacations. Anecdotal, I'd say in SEAsia the "foreigners" I encountered were like 80% European. In Central America, the cheapest/shortest flight from the US, it was still like 50% Europeans. Whenever we're finally able to visit my wife's family again, she's goin to have to get special permission to take unpaid vacation time or else change jobs in order to be get enough time to make the trip to Asia worthwhile. That's pretty typical here.

Most of those passports are for flying to/from vacation destinations in Mexico, as well.

If a lower class person in the US goes to Europe or Asia, or really anywhere except other than the US, Canada, or sometimes Mexico at most, a lot of us of us will probably think of them as the particularly adventurous sort.

We do have a fair amount of people who go to Mexico, but even then, It's extremely common to not go.... anywhere, unless you have money, and especially not go anywhere regularly, mostly because it's expensive and nobody can afford time off work even if they could afford plane tickets.

It's semi-possible, but as far as I can tell lot of people don't really save up and make it a priority.

I doubt it, because I do the same type of travel and many (or often most) of the other people at those locations are also from the “industrialized west”

Yes, this is called "selection bias". Only one person I've ever met has ever done anything like this, let alone regularly.

With "this" being "gone on holiday outside Europe"? Or are you from the States?

I wonder if this whole disagreement is actually about the fact that Americans tend to travel abroad less than those from other Western countries.

Then you are exposing yourself to a potential prion transmission vector, though it's probably an incredibly low risk.

Good for you

Did you respond sarkily because you thought I was bragging or something? I'm not sure I understand why I provoked this reaction from you.

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