We were discussing statistics when my American colleague told me about a story of his friend's family. Whenever they travel by air, they break the family up and take different planes. My American colleague thought that this made no statistical sense, that is, the chances of a plane to crash isn't going to change.
However, the chances for the whole family to perish from air crashes do become significantly smaller, considering that it takes all the planes the family members take to crash for the whole family to decease, and I guess this is what makes sense for that family. Yet I have another idea: it would be a tragedy for anyone of the family to survive the accidental death of other intimate members, and it is far more comfortable (at least for me) to go along with my family, alive or dead, which means, taking the same plane would be the 'rational' choice for me, as we can they live and die together.
My colleague laughed hard. He'd never looked at the problem from this angel before. But he admitted that my opinion made sense to him.
And so much as I'd like to generalize for the East and the West, this opinion might be just mine and mine alone. What do you think? Will you device a strategy to outlive your family, or would you rather be with them, for eternity?
1) Never be afraid of travelling by air - my college roommate is a pilot now, he told me that, EVEN if you WANT TO CRASH a plane, you HAVE TO do wrong actions for 10 more times and without any fix between each mistake! The protection for a plane is so robust.
2) I agree with you - the tragedy thing. Losing (someone you love) is rather much more terrible than surviving - I guess more Easterners would think this way (JUST GUESS)
3) However, no need to force travelling together if your family members want to go to different places :)
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Do you know that many international corporations have the same travel policy? If you're a manager, you need to make sure that your team won't be doomed by just one crash. And even if crash happens, you need to make sure that your team still have the ability to archive its goal. That most easy way to do that, is to put your team members on different planes.
It is said that, once there's a small country, who lost the whole national soccer team in one plane crash. That country just lost its ability to compete in any international soccer games for a few years. But what if they put their soccer team members on different planes? They would still have a soccer team, because a soccer team has redundancy by itself.
A Boeing 747 has 300% engine redundancy. It has 4 engines, and it still can fly when 3 of them are malfunctioning. There are safety regulations for commercial planes, to make sure that it won't crash even when many parts (including the pilots) are malfunctioning. You just don't have to worry about that.
I don't think your choice is rational, because you're trying to wipe out a whole family from the gene pool once for all, and this is irresponsible for your family.
The redundancy of your genes in your family members is to increase its survivability, and you just choose to not utilize that redundancy.
I know this :)
BTW: The country is NOT a small country, it's Italy. The crash is the famous "Superga air disaster"
Oh, I see...
That is why I don't like to travel by air......
I never trust those statistic things which claim that aircrafts are quite safe.
I just have a strong feeling that the accidents of train are even much less than those of plane. In addition, seldom do people die in train accident, unless there is a serious crash head to head.
So, I always enjoy travelling by train XDDD
Well, sometimes the emotional get wiped out of the gene pool (by their own doings), and sometimes the emotional wipe the rational out of the gene pool... I'm not sure which one is better, but certainly there are no 100% rational people in the world.
It's hard to imagine lovers who set apart to travel for the sake of safety concerns. So the point of family travelling together is "be together". There is no fun if thinking too much.
But for people gathered together for business or other reasons, esp. important people, yes, I think the football team story is a good lesson that it's better to be cautious to "reserve the spark of revelution" :P