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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

#111

Post by nl »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #95
nl wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. No, that is incorrect. The program would be regarded as successful if it rescued one child at any cost. It is possible that there are more effective ways, but the existence of those possibilities does not preclude a less effective way of being…

Finally, on a personal note I believe attempting to argue that returning a kidnapped child to their parents may NOT be regarded as a success because of the "cost of the initiative" is morally indefensible. But surely this isn't the case or each of us would personally have to dedicate all of our own time and money to finding every missing child, correct? Why aren't you using your salary to run ads on Facebook with the…

But surely this isn't the case or each of us would personally have to dedicate all of our own time and money to finding every missing child, correct?

No.

"Success" in this case is defined by reuniting a parent with a child. Using monetary conditions to weigh that is immoral IMHO.

However, there is no implication that anyone should spend their money in this (or any other) way. Indeed, I don't believe that there is any moral imperative to implement this on their website. That is a personal decision and is best left to the person making it.

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#112

Post by xenophanes »

icebraining wrote: post #97
xenophanes wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they won't, he knows something is up. Did they never let him outside in public, never go to school, never have contact with anyone who could help? If so, he was basically just locked in the basement, the whole thing about saying he was sent there didn't actually matter.

I don't mean flat-out deny, There's a reason why simple social engineering works with a very high degree of success, and manipulating small children who have trust in his kidnapper (which isn't rare, since they're often family members) is even easier.

Which is why I suggested raising less gullible, passive, compliant people. Gullibility is a problem, here and elsewhere.

I think raising people to be good, independent non-gullible people is a better approach than sticking trackers on them.

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#114

Post by sliverstorm »

inportb wrote: post #51
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?

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.

Everyone is unique, in a sense. The real trip-up in that logic is, just because something is one-of-a-kind doesn't mean it has infinite value.

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#115

Post by tlrobinson »

sliverstorm wrote: post #39
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…

Your parent is not arguing that kidnappings by non-strangers are insignificant; rather, that public service announcements about such kidnapping are unproductive. Whether this is actually the case, I have no idea.

And your parent was providing an example where public service announcements about such kidnappings could have been productive.

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#116

Post by tlrobinson »

fludlight wrote: post #93
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…

It would be more effective to have the FBI do face recognition on everyone's vacation photos on Facebook. Assuming that the kidnappers want to raise the kid as their own, they are bound to post pictures of him. This won't work for the 75% that chimeracoder alleges are murdered, but it might for the scenarios like the one you described. Why would a kidnapper would post pictures of a child they kidnapped on FB? Crimina…

chimeracoder was saying 75% of kids who are murdered after being kidnapped are murdered within 3 hours of being kidnapped.

i.e. in conditional probability notation, P( A | B and C) = 0.75 where A = murdered within 3 hours of being kidnapped, B = kidnapped, and C = murdered.

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#117

Post by PKop »

nl wrote: post #111
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally, on a personal note I believe attempting to argue that returning a kidnapped child to their parents may NOT be regarded as a success because of the "cost of the initiative" is morally indefensible. But surely this isn't the case or each of us would personally have to dedicate all of our own time and money to finding every missing child, correct? Why aren't you using your salary to run ads on Facebook with the…

But surely this isn't the case or each of us would personally have to dedicate all of our own time and money to finding every missing child, correct? No. "Success" in this case is defined by reuniting a parent with a child. Using monetary conditions to weigh that is immoral IMHO. However, there is no implication that anyone should spend their money in this (or any other) way. Indeed, I don't believe that there is any…

attempting to argue that returning a kidnapped child to their parents may NOT be regarded as a success because of the "cost of the initiative" is morally indefensible.

You're saying that any and all possible attempts at finding / returning a child would have zero costs associated, or that whatever the negative cost is irrelevant and should be disregarded. Imagine the government shifts a massive amount of spending towards finding missing children, and suspends the 4th amendment, hires a massive army of investigators and searches door to door to find missing children. Of course this is an exaggerated scenario but it's at least arguable that the negative costs associated with this plan could outweigh the benefits, and that this would be morally undesirable. I don't think there is ever a scenario where costs can be completely ignored / discounted to obtain any amount of beneficial outcome. If you agree with my point in the extreme case, but not in the original scenario, then the disagreement is one of degree not principle. i.e. "well it depends on the costs.." Exactly.

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#118

Post by geargrinder »

Looking beyond the merits of this particular use, this is a great idea for creating valuable backlinks to your site. I wonder what Google thinks of backlinks on 404 pages? I suspect it treats them the same as links from other pages. 404s appear when there is a bad link, and Googlebot follows all links, good and bad, so there is quite a potential here for increasing your backlinks if you can get your code on somebody's site. Wordpress plugin, perhaps? :-)
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