From: dolan@noarlw.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: Re: The wages of Stupidity are Death
Date: 20 Aug 92 19:37:30 GMT

Sho claims that smoking is self destructive, and that
self-destructiveness is not equivalent to stupidity, and seeks thereby
to counter my claim that smoking among the t.b crowd is stupidity.

To which I must respond:

The connection of cigarette smoking to lung cancer was well documented
before I left high school in 1961, and has been constantly brought to
public awareness daily ever since at least in the United States.

Most of t.b being under the age of 31, those of you who smoke have been
told SINCE BIRTH that doing so will kill you or maim you in all the many
ways so eloquently mentioned by mathew.

Ignoring information that can save ones life, that has been present and
loudly apparent so long as one has been alive, and allowing oneself to
become addicted thereby, and making rationalizations thereafter for not
taking steps to break that addiction, is stupidity.  No kinder term will
do.

mjd comes up with one of the oldest, and least valid, rationalizations
for failing to take himself in hand and break his addiction ever heard:
too many other things in my life are more dangerous than smoking, and
you don't advise me to cease participating in them. He gives the
example of living in West Philadelphia with its attendant risk of being
murdered. He thereby proves to be not just a self justifying addict,
but innumerate to boot.

The United States has about 250,000,000 citizens, and they suffer about
300,000 smoking related fatalities a year. I don't have figures for
_West_ Philadelphia, but my dictionary puts the population of
Philadelphia at 1,688,210 as of the census before its publication, so
lets go with that.

Now      1,688,210            x
        ----------       = -------
        250,000,000        300,000

Gives 2025 and a fraction as the number of annual smoking related deaths
per year expected in Philadelphia.

The US also enjoys on the order of 25,000 homicides per year; may be twice
that if that's just the handgun figure, but the point will be easily made
in either case.

Now      1,688,210            x
        ----------       = -------
        250,000,000         25,000

gives 168 and a fraction homicides expected in Philadelphia per year.  More
likely it is double that, as cities are in general more homicidal places
than the average of the nation, but let's plow on.

To be more dangerous than smoking, living in Philadelphia would have to
be 2025/168 = 12 and a fraction times more dangerous than is now the
case, or, if each of the above doublings is allowed, at least three
times more dangerous.

Thus, ON THE EVIDENCE, smoking is FAR AND AWAY the most dangerous
single risk to which mjd voluntarily exposes himself.

But, like most smokers and every addict I've ever met, he responds with
delusions and attacks on the messenger when the point is made obvious,
rather than with the rational behavior of a person unenslaved.

No, bc, mjd's response to mathew was not superior to yours.  It was merely
an even more pitiful example of self-delusion and rationalization.

Bizarre behavior may not equate to stupidity, but in this case I fail
to see the element that sufficiently differentiates the two.

And excusing it as "merely self-destructive" misses the point, Sho.

Kent, the man from xanth.
--
Telling you that you don't owe a lung to Ligget and Meyers, whatever
they may try to tell you to the contrary, however little they want you
to consider the facts and hurt their profit margins by saving your own
life.