FuturePundit reports on research which suggests that smoking removes 10 years from your life expectancy. It’s nice to see a number on this; it isn’t like this is a counterintuitive finding. But this sort of quantification is important. I don’t smoke, and I never have, but my experience in college was that people who smoked found it pleasurable and a social lubricant. There’s some value in that. On the other hand, unlike alcohol consumption, smoking seems to have uniformly deleterious health effects, so the utilitarian calculus is more straightforward. Greasy food, alcohol, sweets, smoking, etc. So many things which humans crave, enjoy, and take pleasure in are “bad” for you. Why?
Do the extra years between 70 to 80 in expected life span matter that much? They do to me. I don’t smoke, avoid greasy foods, don’t consume much that is heavy on sugar (though I don’t have a sweet-tooth, so it isn’t hard) and drink alcohol in moderation. On the other hand, what if I was missing out on a lot of pleasure? Perhaps we should consider it a quality vs. quantity choice; I’m not a particularly “sensory” person for whom tastes and physical experiences rank highly. The “rational” trade off is then rather easy for me compare to someone else. For a specific example men who develop Type II Diabetes can lose 5-10 years in life expectancy. To reduce my likelihood of developing this chronic disease I’ve basically cut all refined sugar out of my diet, and am very moderate in the amount of fruit I consume. I’m doing other things obviously, but for me losing sugar is not a major headache, I was never a connoisseur of sugar. Perhaps there are individuals in the world who would trade 5-10 years for dessert every day?
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