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Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

nytimes.com

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Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#81

Post by lazyasciiart »

bargl wrote: post #68
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> School shooting where 3 people die = national dialogue on gun control because it's outrageous. I'm sorry, what country is this? The one I live in its just "thoughts and prayers" when that happens.

I do not understand the attack on "thoughts and prayers." There are plenty of people sending "thoughts and prayers" who also support gun control. I get that it calls out the hypocrisy of Christians who don't support gun control, but it also seems like an overly broad attack. What does someone who both believes gun control is necessary and wants to send "thoughts and prayers" do? I think the idea of gun control is a t…

The attack is against high profile politicians who regularly act to block or dismiss gun control measures, but also reliably jump to announce that they are sending "thoughts and prayers" to the victims of gun attacks. I don't think this would be relevant in the case of an individual interaction. https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/20/us/thoughts-and-prayers-flori...

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#82

Post by throw7 »

I lived near and went to Action Park in New Jersey a couple of times. I was too young to ride the water speedboats and motor go-karts though... bah! Those were the days.

The issue is one of scaling risk as the knowledge and responsibility of the child increases. It's not surprising we have sued things down to the lowest/safest common denominator.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#83

Post by thrower123 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #59
umvi wrote: post #21

You're right - anything that provokes fear or outrage gets instant attention. Everything else doesn't. North Korea imprisoning a single idiot American who crossed the border = national dialogue because it's outrageous School shooting where 3 people die = national dialogue on gun control because it's outrageous. DUI accident that kills a family of 5 = small blurb in local news because it's not outrageous (even if it s…

> School shooting where 3 people die = national dialogue on gun control because it's outrageous. I'm sorry, what country is this? The one I live in its just "thoughts and prayers" when that happens.

It really depends on whether said shooters fit a profile that is conducive to the agenda. Most of the time, they don't, and are otherwise problematic villains, because they tick the wrong census boxes or a cursory search of their social media history reveals that they have the wrong political and social opinions. And so after a day or two the story is memory-holed.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#84

Post by sooper »

bargl wrote: post #68
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> School shooting where 3 people die = national dialogue on gun control because it's outrageous. I'm sorry, what country is this? The one I live in its just "thoughts and prayers" when that happens.

I do not understand the attack on "thoughts and prayers." There are plenty of people sending "thoughts and prayers" who also support gun control. I get that it calls out the hypocrisy of Christians who don't support gun control, but it also seems like an overly broad attack. What does someone who both believes gun control is necessary and wants to send "thoughts and prayers" do? I think the idea of gun control is a t…

My (non-US) understanding of the outrage is that they feel that the person saying it is not actually going to actually keep the victims in their thoughts and prayers...

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#85

Post by wallace_f »

zbentley wrote: post #79
loup-vaillant wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But is this really caused by grieving parents and not blood-sucking lawyers and idiotic bureaucrats?

I'm in Japan and there's a lot of dangerous playground equipment, hikes, stairwells, rooftop decks, onsens, alcohol that can be bought from vending machines, etc... And yet without all those 'experts'and authorities protecting society from these dangers, here it feels safety is many, many tiers better what we have in America.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#86

Post by TomMarius »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #67
dragontamer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your child could have slipped when getting off a train and permanently injured themselves, or in any other number of ways. But thanks to our laws, we don't have to worry about playground sets. Low probability / high impact events are a fact of life and are a valid cause for regulations. Worker safety laws in the early 1900s were such that people more regularly lost fingers or even limbs in heavy machinery. It still…

There's a difference between playgrounds and work environments: as far as I am aware, workers aren't any more miserable in safer work environment. Children in "safer" playgrounds, are . The value of life is not infinite. It is perfectly reasonable to sacrifice a few to improve the conditions of the many. Funnier, riskier playgrounds do exactly that. That said, the article stated the "safer" playground engendered more…

> The value of life is not infinite.

The whole western civilization is standing on the assumption that it is.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#87

Post by phkahler »

devchix wrote: post #9

A 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,…

So the reason they look the same is because designs became standardized to make it easy to meet requirements AND cost. There are still some really great things at some playgrounds. A park near me built a new playground and it has a post and rope dodecahedron that must be 15 feet high. Kids climb and sit at the top. Falling could be pretty bad, but it looks cool af and kids like it.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#89

Post by bugs_bunny »

Something1234 wrote: post #71
dllthomas wrote: post #17

Can we get the spinny-thing-of-death back?

The Merry Go Round?

I think he might be referring to the slide with 20 ft drops made with two pipes...as in the Darwinian versions shown here....

https://clickamericana.com/toys-and-games/dangerous-old-play...

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#90

Post by clairity »

speeder wrote: post #8

My second worst accident as a kid, was on a "safe" playground, when my finger got stuck on a hinge of a swing. My most daring stunts, were on "safe" playgrounds too, for example trying to make swings do a 360 (yes, I tried that, never succeeded). Both times what was going on my mind is that I wanted to do something fun, and the equipment looked like it would work for what I wanted... Ended once even accidentally disa…

> "...trying to make swings do a 360 (yes, I tried that, never succeeded)."

ha, my childhood friends and i used to try to do that too. we settled on swinging as high as we could and doing backflips out of the swing. i don't know how not one of us got injured that way.

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