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Comment by jna_sh | Hacker News Reader

Why do you perceive wearing a seatbelt on a flight and minimising time out of a seat as such a high cost/inconvenience? I hear this line of thought a lot, particularly nowadays around masking to avoid COVID, and I’m always intrigued by this idea that avoiding this tiny act that barely impacts you is somehow sticking a big middle finger up to fear

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Because there's millions of those tiny acts and I doubt you've read the risk analysis of each one to decide which fifty thousand to follow. But if you actually do consider them rationally and act on them then cool. Most people who say what you do however don't but rather act based on an irrational perception of risks usually due to things like media attention or misclassifying lack of control as risk.

I've met people who actually and rationally consider all the potential risks and I respect them. It's also an exhausting life to lead from my observation.

To be honest, time out of seat is a deliberate choice. My legs are long, and the seats are tiny!

I do wear a seatbelt when in seat, though more out of fear than expectation something like that will ever happen. It just seems like an incredibly stupid way to die, and mitigating it costs me nothing.

If humans beings were perfectly rational at all times everywhere then the world would look a lot different (and much less exciting I presume)

If human beings were even marginally rational most of the time it would look a lot different!

Solid.

Fear and greed drive markets - Anon.

And humans - Me.

> particularly nowadays around masking to avoid COVID

Ah ok, as I suspected a covid authoritarian that’s deluded and ruthlessly mocking ANY recognition of cost in the cost-benefit analysis of safety measures, meanwhile overestimating the benefit all together.

I don't believe I mocked anyone, maybe I mocked the idea that anyone who wears a seatbelt on a flight is gripped by fear. I apologise to the concept.

nah it's this covid authoritarianism that blows risks out of proportion and usually with scant evidence and does it in a categorical way that ignores impacts which often have WORSE harms than the thing they're trying to protect against

in the flight case, it could very well be that if you were able to count, there's more harm from DVT from sitting in a seat all flight, versus getting up to walk around regularly and potentially being hurt by turbulence

just a cursory search shows ~300 serious injuries in 30 years tracked by the FAA

Sure, but if someone told me they were getting up for a walk on a flight because they didn’t want to get DVT, I wouldn’t go on a tirade about how their life was ruled by fear. That’s what my original comment was intending to address.

but the point is that walking around a plane is relatively safe, and severe turbulence is rare, so much so that you'd probably better off walking around fairly regularly if only due to less DVT risk

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