Before debating skills vs. equipment, please consider Risk Compensation

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... if only that were true.

The reality is that if you go off and do something stupid ... and injure or kill yourself ... the chances are quite high that you or the surviving members of your family will do your utmost to find some legal way to make it somebody else's fault.

That's a separate societal problem - structuring our legal system so it's not a lottery for enriching fools. Human nature isn't going to change either way - people in some of the most authoritarian nanny states still find ways to live AT the limit of their risk tolerance.

 

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It would.

It actually wouldn't. You can't restrict stupid actions without similarly suppressing the creativity and innovation that moves humanity forward. You can't create a one sided bell curve, because most of the innovation looks just like stupidity until it pays off.

 

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Just because your car has airbags that does not necessarily equate to more dangerous driving.

Actually, it does. You may not perceive that to be the case, but when people's driving habits have been subjected to objective measurement, with the same driver driving cars equipped with ABS and those without, it's been shown that's exactly what happens, even though the test subjects, when confronted with the data, denied it just as firmly as you are.

 

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If I am perceive that the Spare Air "solves my OOA problem," I may engage in riskier behaviour than if I didn't carry the Spare Air, making me actually less safe with it than without.

That assumes your perceptions are distorted.

The data indicates it would make you no more or less safe. The insurance companies stopped discounting for ABS, but they didn't add a surcharge for it. That indicates that their actuarial studies validated drivers' ability to accurately asses risk and alter their driving to create an risk increment equal to the decrement created by ABS without exceeding it.

 

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I don't really agree with that. Technical dive training and cave training has made me a much more proficient open water diver,

Which raises an interesting point - the risk reduction from training or equipment may cause one to dive such that their MAXIMUM risk is still at their personal risk tolerance, but almost no one spends 100% of their diving in their maximum risk circumstances. For the remainder of their time diving, their risk is reduced. I don't know any cave divers who've given up open water diving completely.

The diver with a pony who may extend his turnaround point from 20 minutes to 25 minutes, nonetheless has a reduced risk of dying from a catastrophic air supply failure 15 minutes into the dive. Thus, statistically, the net overall risk across all diving activity is reduced.

 

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Interestingly enough, personal responsibility and risk compensation are both reasons why New Hampshire doesn't have a mandatory seat belt law for adults.

That, and the feds changed their minds.
Originally, they promised not to mandate airbags if a certain percentage of the states passed seat belt laws, hoping all 50 would scramble to meet the deadline. When the threshhold was reached and states like NH decided they didn't need to act, Washington considered using the withholding of highway funds to get the rest in line, then decided it would be easier just to go back on their promise and require airbags anyway.

 

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thats not true, not at all, that is NOT the reason for hampshirites laws ... nor is it the reason some of the others have a no helmet law ...
however, it IS what they want you to perceive ...

Actually, in the case of NH, it may be a major motivator - theirs is one of the most libertarian state governments in the country.

On the other hand, Ohio's helmet law was overturned by a substantive due process challenge.

 

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With all due respect (and completely off topic) that is not how Darwin saw it. Darwinian evolution has to do with the a change in the frequency of a particular trait (we now call gene) in the breeding population, which may have nothing to do with living or dying.

It has everything to do with living long enough to reproduce and not dying before successfully breeding. That, and/or the ability to make sure your offspring do the same.

 

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If I may hijack a thread I started... Mike Judge says otherwise and I agree with him. Darwin says the fittest will survive. Smart != Fittest.

For most of primate evolution, smartest has been a good approximation of fittest, at least until we created societies that protect the stupid from their own choices.

 

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because most people don't seem to have a very high opinion of the value of a buddy.

Or is it that they don't have a high opinion of the quality of available buddies?