How to avoid being murdered

economist.com

42 points·feelthepain··7 comments

"Liechtenstein recorded no murders at all in 2012, but its population could fit in a football stadium."

Bad timing, couple of days ago the ceo of a bank in liechtenstein was murdered and they didn't catch the murderer.

This article is so lightweight and is written in such a linkbaity style that it's hard to take it seriously.

The article says you have a 1 in 16,000 chance of being murdered in a given year. To put that into perspective, think about "the 1%". If there's a 1 in 100 chance of you being rich, then the chance of you being murdered is 160 times more rare.

(I'm uncomfortable constructing an argument using relative comparisons like that. It feels like a logical fallacy, though I'm unsure which.)

As a long time Economist reader, I can offer with some confidance that their tone in this article isn't likely to suggest disrespect, but is indicative of a sarcastic tone that they're well known for. I suspect their intent was to highlight the morbid and impersonal nature of these reports, and not give actual advice.

I'd readily concede that they forgot the wink at the end.

Why is such a dumb link-baity article on the frontpage? Yeah 500K people get murdered every year, but how about:

- How to avoid getting killed in a car accident ? (1.2M yearly worldwide fatalities)

- How to avoid heart disease ? (7M deaths)

- How to avoid strokes ? (7M deaths)

- How to avoid cancer ? (600K US alone)

Living a human life has risks, you can't avoid them all...

tl;dr:

- Be female

- Be over 30

- Stay single

- Alienate your family

- Live in Lichenstein

...then you might have a chance of survival. :-)

- Hide the liquor.

Be Sexy lady.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com