[asveikau]

People think that a low percentage of an outcome means it won't happen. They are wrong.

And exactly as you say: if there is a large population of infected people, the absolute number of people who fit in these small percentage tragedies is actually large.

[jen20]

> People think that a low percentage of an outcome means it won't happen. They are wrong.

This was proven by the response to the polls (especially the FiveThirtyEight one) in the 2016 presidential election, surely?

[lgleason]

It may be inevitable either way. 100 years ago life expectancy was 46 years. Today it is well into the 70's. Before that, for most of human history that rate was much lower. Up until now, for the past 80 years (post antibiotics) the human race has been really lucky, but perhaps nature is deciding something different. I hope not, but I do wonder.

[asveikau]

I'm not sure what that has to do with my observation that "small percentage" events do occur in small percentages, and that they do occur in large absolute numbers when multiplied by sufficiently large numbers. My point is we shouldn't be dismissive about it not going to happen to "us", because it will happen to nonzero amounts of "us", and that's kind of the point of the mathematical reasoning.

But to your point: Someone else is disputing you on this, but I would say even that it's irrelevant what life expectancy was 100 years ago. Today in the present reality we are talking about mostly preventable death. I don't think we should be so arrogant to say that we can prevent misfortune all the time, but we're not talking about inevitability either. We have medical technology and progress for a reason.

[Kaiyou]

It has been refuted already, that the life expectancy was this low, with the explanation for the error being given as stillbirths affecting the average.

As far as I know, even 500 years ago it wouldn't have been that difficult to reach age 70 once you've survived your childhood.