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by PhilWright 2515 days ago
I think the difference from a psychological point of view is that getting a drone drop randomly on your head feels, well random. Therefore it does not feel like you can do much of anything to avoid it, unlikely though it would be in practice. Getting killed by a terrorist or mass killer feels equally bad because it is random.

But something like sky divers getting killed does not bother me because I can avoid it, by not sky diving. Just like I can choose not to drive and so avoid almost any chance of being killed by another driver. It is the randomness and the fact you cannot avoid it that, I think, makes to less acceptable.

2 comments

I personally know someone who was killed by a UPS truck on his parking lot. Don't think randomness only happens to others.
But the example you use is exactly that: something happening to another person.
People who don't drive don't get killed by trucks?

That's news to me.

I was thinking trucks get into accidents with public transportation, as well as run over pedestrians and bicyclists.

The fact that it doesn't appear random doesn't mean it isn't.

Getting killed by medical malpractice is also random, yet we don't really fret over our extremely error prone medical system. We don't even argue for removing doctors working 24 hour shifts, while we wouldn't allow a street sweeper to do the same.