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Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

notfound.org

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Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#51

Post by inportb »

sliverstorm wrote: post #41
paulhauggis wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you are saying that the effort is futile because they won't find them anyway. It doesn't matter of they are "incredibly rare". We are talking about human lives here. If it saves one life, it's worth it.

We are talking about human lives here. If it saves one life, it's worth it. Ah, one of my favorite arguments. The good 'ol, "there is no price which is too high to save a life (period, full-stop)". Do you actually believe that? Really? Or am I just reading you wrong here?

We think human lives are priceless because we like to believe that everyone is unique. There is no warranty replacement for children born defective; nor could you replace them when they break, go missing, etc.

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#52

Post by catastrophe »

sliverstorm wrote: post #41
paulhauggis wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you are saying that the effort is futile because they won't find them anyway. It doesn't matter of they are "incredibly rare". We are talking about human lives here. If it saves one life, it's worth it.

We are talking about human lives here. If it saves one life, it's worth it. Ah, one of my favorite arguments. The good 'ol, "there is no price which is too high to save a life (period, full-stop)". Do you actually believe that? Really? Or am I just reading you wrong here?

You don't have a child, do you? Are you an only child? Would you admit it now if you are?

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#53

Post by adaml_623 »

chrislloyd wrote: post #24

They certainly arn't shying away from controversy. I got an ad[1] for Madeleine McCann[2]. [1] http://cl.ly/image/1a280E0N3a2I [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Madeleine_McCa...

Well realistically they would be courting extreme controversy if they went on record saying they believed that Madeleine hadn't been abducted.

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#54

Post by rooshdi »

hermannj314 wrote: post #36
mnicole wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this makes me a terrible person or someone with a bad photographic memory, but I literally cannot recall any missing person's face that I've seen on a billboard, a website, a milk carton, etc. even if I saw them daily. Worse, the more sites that adopt this concept, the less likely I am to remember those faces and - out of how plain awful and sad it is it is - the less likely I am to even want to spend time look…

We've come a long way from annual telethons or weekly tithings to every spare second of everything in our lives needing to be philanthropized - including 404 pages! You know those pages in books "this page intentionally left blank" - think of all the children we could save!!!! Over-exposure will only serve to desensitize us to worthy causes. Everything in moderation.

I would argue the opposite. A lot of people don't pursue worthy causes because they're unaware of causes worth pursuing. Plus, it's only on the 404 page.

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#55

Post by khuey »

catastrophe wrote: post #52
sliverstorm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about human lives here. If it saves one life, it's worth it. Ah, one of my favorite arguments. The good 'ol, "there is no price which is too high to save a life (period, full-stop)". Do you actually believe that? Really? Or am I just reading you wrong here?

You don't have a child, do you? Are you an only child? Would you admit it now if you are?

Why does it matter if he has a child? Because it makes a purely emotional argument less effective on him?

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#56

Post by xenophanes »

r00fus wrote: post #42
sachingulaya wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine growing up had an older brother who was abducted. His mother quit her job and spent the next 5 years looking for him. Eventually, she found him. She called her mother's home and her son picked up the phone. He had been abducted by his uncle and told that his mother had sent him to live with his extended family. No one suspected it. Now, I know n=1 is not a good sample size, but to downplay the signif…

Some way to tag your children (see Woz's attempts) are probably going to be more successful than alerting random people.

Or how about raising children self-confident enough to make a phone call home and demand to talk to their mother directly after a couple weeks.

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#58

Post by scott_s »

fusiongyro wrote: post #49
zmj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please read this: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=psychology-... > When people are asked to trade their sacred values for values considered to be secular—what psychologist Philip Tetlock refers to as a “taboo tradeoff”—they exhibit moral outrage, express anger and disgust, become increasingly inflexible in negotiations, and display an insensitivity to a strict cost-benefit analysis of the exchange. W…

An interesting article about human behavior. How nice. However, I don't see a categorical disproof in there of the idea that saving lives is something worth spending time and money on, so could you take a minute and connect the dots for us plebs? Thanks.

I assume zmj's point is that we implicitly make this trade-off all the time. For example, cars could be safer, but then they would be more expensive. Anytime we opt for a cheaper car with less safety features, we are making a cost-benefit analysis involving our own lives and the lives of the people who will travel in our car. (Who are probably the most important people to us.) There becomes a point where the actual gains in life-saving potential is negligible, and we don't think it is worth the cost. But we rarely state it that way.

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#59

Post by vectorpush »

mikeash wrote: post #37
autophil wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If even ONE SINGLE CHILD is found and returned back into the loving arms of a parent due to a repurposed 404 page, the initiative is a great success. Don't you think?

That would depend entirely on the cost of the initiative and what other things, including potentially more effective ways of rescuing kidnapped children, could be done instead.

That would depend entirely on the cost of the initiative and what other things,

Um, obviously. The point is that the cost is just about nothing, especially if your current 404 is an apache default or a joke page. Nobody is suggesting some type of moral obligation, but if a repurposed 404 does bring a missing child home, the cost was clearly worth it.

including potentially more effective ways of rescuing kidnapped children, could be done instead.

It's a goddamn 404 page; it's use does not preclude any other methods of recovering kidnap victims.

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#60

Post by icebraining »

xenophanes wrote: post #56
r00fus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some way to tag your children (see Woz's attempts) are probably going to be more successful than alerting random people.

Or how about raising children self-confident enough to make a phone call home and demand to talk to their mother directly after a couple weeks.

And they would let him, why?
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