Can we get the spinny-thing-of-death back?
The Merry Go Round?
Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
71–80 of 275 posts
Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your child could have slipped when getting off a train and permanently injured themselves, or in any other number of ways. Low probability high severity events trigger a cognitive bias that makes people attempt to make things '100% safe'. There are two problems with that. 1: nothing can ever be made 100% safe so those low probability high impact events still happen from time to time. 2: making things safe hits a stee…
To put it bluntly, the increased happiness of millions of children is worth a couple children's health, or even lives. That's a tough sell, but that sounds reasonable (well, I can talk, I don't have children). This is basically the same reasoning Yudkowsky presented with his dust speck vs torture argument argument: a sufficiently widespread benefit, however small, will outweigh a sufficiently improbable horrible even…
Well, I have a dozen kids, and I agree.
Of course, part of the reason for so many kids is to minimize the percentage of my family that would be lost if one did die. My wife's uncle had the postcard family, one boy and one girl in a cute little city house with a picket fence. The daughter died, and the father completely fell apart. He lost 100% of his daughters. It is too late for him to create a replacement.
Most families today are tiny. I think this has affected our perception of loss. The risk of 100% loss has become so great that people can't allow the risk of traditional play.
Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
#73A recent episode of 99% Invisible: Play Mountain looked at how the playground got to be safe and boring. "A two-year-old boy named Frank Nelson was climbing a 12-foot-tall slide in a Chicago park when he slipped through a railing and hit his head so hard that it caused permanent brain damage. The park system of Chicago was sued and had to pay out millions of dollars to Nelson’s family. At that time, in the late 70s,…
You hit the nail on the head. From the article: >“Many agencies fear being sued if a child gets hurt,” said Teri Hendy, the president of an Ohio-based playground consultancy, Site Masters. Ms. Hendy blamed outdated federal rules on playground design developed decades ago by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. She favors more flexible guidelines, arguing that playgrounds don’t have to be boring to be safe. We got…
Playgrounds are still really fun for kids and they aren’t maimed as often. I think this is fine. Even with modern safe playgrounds it is stressful keeping young kids from hurting themselves.
Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
You hit the nail on the head. From the article: >“Many agencies fear being sued if a child gets hurt,” said Teri Hendy, the president of an Ohio-based playground consultancy, Site Masters. Ms. Hendy blamed outdated federal rules on playground design developed decades ago by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. She favors more flexible guidelines, arguing that playgrounds don’t have to be boring to be safe. We got…
The reality is different though. There is nothing in this world quite so soul crushingly painful as having your child die while doing something that the parent and perhaps people in general, consider to be 'safe.' For me, it took some time to fall madly and deeply in love with my spouse, and to my surprise I developed that attachment instantly to my children. That same sort of passion that you would do anything to ke…
“The reality is different though.
There is nothing in this world quite so soul crushingly painful as having your child die while doing something that the parent and perhaps people in general, consider to be 'safe.'”
Actually there is and by several orders of magnitude more painful, and it is this: Watching these same parents scream safety, proclaiming the presciouness of their children while simultaneously condemning entire populations to death by their implicit support of wars, racism, and the governments responsible. Granted it may not be as immediately appearant of a reaction than say watching your child suffer, but while experiencing the death or suffering of a child may heal with time, the systemic effects of these masses of “concerned parents” lingers on with us forever.
Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
#75The only anecdote I can share about this comes from the time my family was touring a local day camp. On the tour, they showed us everything: archery, fishing, swimming, ropes, and everything else you could think of. At one point, we came to a massive, 10 foot high pile of dirt. The kids immediately ran for the dirt pile and the parents' reactions were a 50/50 mix of "Awesome" or "What are you building here?" I knew t…
Me and a mate used to go out into the local woods, find little streams, and dam them.
That was by far my favorite childhood activity. I must have built dozens of dams on various creeks over the years.
Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
#76A recent episode of 99% Invisible: Play Mountain looked at how the playground got to be safe and boring. "A two-year-old boy named Frank Nelson was climbing a 12-foot-tall slide in a Chicago park when he slipped through a railing and hit his head so hard that it caused permanent brain damage. The park system of Chicago was sued and had to pay out millions of dollars to Nelson’s family. At that time, in the late 70s,…
And yet, if you look, dangerous still lurks. Sharp metal, no failsafes if a critical part fails, “V-like structures which could snag an arm, etc. Now, to be fair, when a critical part fails, the systems are sturdy enough that the whole thing wouldn’t normally come crashing down.
Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
#77I was a stupid kid that fell from a high slide. My parents apparently made a sizable donation after I landed with no harm other than a scare because of the special tiles laid under it. Rather than paying for lawsuits, I'm happy to be able to tell a story to the contrary of many in this thread, with a happy ending and money going to the playground. My parents are great and I hope to live up to this one day.
Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Me and a mate used to go out into the local woods, find little streams, and dam them.
That was by far my favorite childhood activity. I must have built dozens of dams on various creeks over the years.
I only fell through the ice once going over our makeshift bridge/dam... great times indeed :)
Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your child could have slipped when getting off a train and permanently injured themselves, or in any other number of ways. Low probability high severity events trigger a cognitive bias that makes people attempt to make things '100% safe'. There are two problems with that. 1: nothing can ever be made 100% safe so those low probability high impact events still happen from time to time. 2: making things safe hits a stee…
To put it bluntly, the increased happiness of millions of children is worth a couple children's health, or even lives. That's a tough sell, but that sounds reasonable (well, I can talk, I don't have children). This is basically the same reasoning Yudkowsky presented with his dust speck vs torture argument argument: a sufficiently widespread benefit, however small, will outweigh a sufficiently improbable horrible even…
I think that's kind of missing GP's point that, while
> the increased happiness of millions of children is worth a couple children's health, or even lives.
might be totally true, it's borderline-impossible to convince concerned (or worse, bereaved) parents of this in many cases, for human, not utilitarian, reasons.
Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
#80For anyone in the bay area, I found a playground with adult sized monkey bars a few weeks ago. You know, the old school steel pipe structures from the good old days.... Some kind soul even place-marked it on Google Maps. I present, the Kennedy Middle School (Cupertino) Monkey Bars:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/KMS+Monkey+Bars,+Cupertino...