Very plausibly none of these possibilities would meet the lexical threshold, except with very very low probability.
I’m confused. :) War has a rather high probability of extreme suffering. Perhaps ~10% of Russian soldiers in Ukraine have been killed as of July 2022. Some fraction of fighters in tanks die by burning to death:
The kinetic energy and friction from modern rounds causes molten metal to splash everywhere in the crew compartment and ignites the air into a fireball. You would die by melting.
You’ll hear of a tank cooking off as it’s ammunition explodes. That doesn’t happen right away. There’s lots to burn inside a tank other that the tank rounds. Often, the tank will burn for quite awhile before the tank rounds explode.
It is sometimes a slow horrific death if one can’t get out in time or a very quick one. We had side arms and all agreed that if our tank was burning and we were caught inside and couldn’t get out. We would use a round on ourselves. That’s how bad it was.
Some workplace accidents also produce extremely painful injuries.
I don’t know what fraction of people in labor wish they were dead, but probably it’s not negligible: “I remember repeatedly saying I wanted to die.”
These people almost never beg to be killed
It may not make sense to beg to be killed, because the doctors wouldn’t grant that wish.
I don’t expect most war deaths to be nearly as painful as burning to death, but I was too quick to dismiss the frequency of very very bad deaths. I had capture and torture in mind as whatever passes the lexical threshold, and so very rare.
Also fair about labor. I don’t think it really gives us an estimate of the frequency of unbearable suffering, although it seems like trauma is common and women aren’t getting as much pain relief as they’d like in the UK.
I’m confused. :) War has a rather high probability of extreme suffering. Perhaps ~10% of Russian soldiers in Ukraine have been killed as of July 2022. Some fraction of fighters in tanks die by burning to death:
Some workplace accidents also produce extremely painful injuries.
I don’t know what fraction of people in labor wish they were dead, but probably it’s not negligible: “I remember repeatedly saying I wanted to die.”
It may not make sense to beg to be killed, because the doctors wouldn’t grant that wish.
Good points.
I don’t expect most war deaths to be nearly as painful as burning to death, but I was too quick to dismiss the frequency of very very bad deaths. I had capture and torture in mind as whatever passes the lexical threshold, and so very rare.
Also fair about labor. I don’t think it really gives us an estimate of the frequency of unbearable suffering, although it seems like trauma is common and women aren’t getting as much pain relief as they’d like in the UK.
On workplace injuries, in the US in 2020, the highest rate by occupation seems to be around 200 nonfatal injuries and illnesses per 100,000 workers, and 20 deaths per 100,000 workers, but they could be even higher in more specific roles: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/work/industry-incidence-rates/most-dangerous-industries/
I assume these are estimates of the number of injuries in 2020 only, too, so the lifetime risk is several times higher in such occupations. Maybe the death rate is similar to the rate of unbearable pain, around 1 out of 5,000 per year, which seems non-tiny when added up over a lifetime (around 0.4% over 20 years assuming a geometric distribution https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1-(1-1%2F5000)^20), but also similar in probability to the kinds of risks we do mitigate without eliminating (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5y3vzEAXhGskBhtAD/most-small-probabilities-aren-t-pascalian?commentId=jY9o6XviumXfaxNQw).