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Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

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Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#61

Post by rdl »

jessriedel wrote: post #42
aaron695 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if you truly meant one life saved fair enough. So you'd have to deducted the people killed in making sites like these first. So a web site is possibly $40,000. A humans life in the US is probably worth around $2,000,000. So it might cost one 50th of a humans life to create a site like this. I'd guess not, but the figures are complicated, the site is used for other things for starters. I'd suspect a suicide help…

1. Human lives are valued at between $6 and $8 million in the US. This is not what can be produced in the average human life, which is probably more like $1 million as I estimated recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5543848 . Instead, it's how much it costs to save a human life on the margin, which is the applicable number here. 2. My impression from previous things I've read is that suicide lines are…

The figure I've seen is $2-4mm (based on payouts from life insurance by the government, etc.), but this was a few years ago, so maybe inflation.

Obviously there are huge differences between humans.

Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#62

Post by tibbon »

ghc wrote: post #56
untog wrote: post #5

Don't wish to make light of this at all, but I do wonder- how often does this happen? After all, "shots fired" is not an uncommon thing in many cities in the US. I just wonder whether we will look back in 12 months time at the "week of hell" and realise that it was actually just a week in which we found all the things that usually go on every week that we don't hear about.

Gun violence is a very uncommon thing in Boston or Cambridge...it's big news here every time it happens. Now outside the city, in the areas where poor people live, it's a different story...but MIT and Harvard are located in some of the wealthiest, safest areas of Cambridge.

Agreed. I generally feel incredibly safe around Cambridge in general- let alone on Boylston St near the library, or anywhere on MIT's campus. At most I'd expect to have something stolen, car broken into or a common mugging around there- not a random shooter running around.

Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#63

Post by Kudzu_Bob »

untog wrote: post #54
michaelochurch wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wonder whether we will look back in 12 months time at the "week of hell" The mid-April week has always had a higher-than-normal rate of manic-type (e.g. spree killings) violence, and there are a lot of theories about it (spring inciting grandeur in unstable men) but no one knows why. Those are very rare, high-visibility events, though. Overall, that time is no more dangerous than any other. (There's only about…

I've certainly read before that it being tax day brings out the 'crazies', which makes at least some semblance of sense.

April is the cruelest month.

Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#64

Post by rdl »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #31
untog wrote: post #5

Don't wish to make light of this at all, but I do wonder- how often does this happen? After all, "shots fired" is not an uncommon thing in many cities in the US. I just wonder whether we will look back in 12 months time at the "week of hell" and realise that it was actually just a week in which we found all the things that usually go on every week that we don't hear about.

When I was at MIT, I don't recall a single on-campus shooting.

A fair number of muggings with knives/guns in Cambridge, though. (I had someone pull a knife on me near the Harvard Bridge Boston side late at night).

"On campus" is kind of a more vague thing with MIT than with some other schools, since it was in the 1990s and before a very open campus in the middle of a city, with a few major roads running through it.

Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#65

Post by [deleted] »

ghc wrote: post #56
untog wrote: post #5

Don't wish to make light of this at all, but I do wonder- how often does this happen? After all, "shots fired" is not an uncommon thing in many cities in the US. I just wonder whether we will look back in 12 months time at the "week of hell" and realise that it was actually just a week in which we found all the things that usually go on every week that we don't hear about.

Gun violence is a very uncommon thing in Boston or Cambridge...it's big news here every time it happens. Now outside the city, in the areas where poor people live, it's a different story...but MIT and Harvard are located in some of the wealthiest, safest areas of Cambridge.

[deleted]

Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#66

Post by Anechoic »

ghc wrote: post #56
untog wrote: post #5

Don't wish to make light of this at all, but I do wonder- how often does this happen? After all, "shots fired" is not an uncommon thing in many cities in the US. I just wonder whether we will look back in 12 months time at the "week of hell" and realise that it was actually just a week in which we found all the things that usually go on every week that we don't hear about.

Gun violence is a very uncommon thing in Boston or Cambridge...it's big news here every time it happens. Now outside the city, in the areas where poor people live, it's a different story...but MIT and Harvard are located in some of the wealthiest, safest areas of Cambridge.

Just for the record, Roxbury and Dorchester are part of Boston proper, and gun violence is those neighborhoods are unfortunately too common:

http://www.universalhub.com/crime/dorchester.html http://www.universalhub.com/crime/roxbury.html

(I have family in Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan)

Generally speaking, the areas around MIT and Harvard are relatively safe, although muggings and petty theft aren't unheard of. Things have been a lot better since they cleaned up Central Square in the 1990's.

Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#67

Post by HarryHirsch »

homosaur wrote: post #20
hiddenfeatures wrote: post #4

I find it very interesting, that there are such websites. I wonder whether it works, but I guess that if only one life is saved by a notice on a website, that is enough

At my old uni, you could submit a cell number to an emergency alert system and you would get texts if something like this went down. I'm guessing MIT has something similar although not sure if this system is part of it. I'm sure someone will clarify soon.

My uni has just that, and the nagging question I keep asking myself is just how much money are they spending on that service that is profoundly useless. When there is an emergency the police show up damn quick, and there is nothing to be gained for people on the other side of campus to receive a text that building X is on fire. I feel the money would be of more use elsewhere.

Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#68

Post by sopooneo »

ghc wrote: post #56
untog wrote: post #5

Don't wish to make light of this at all, but I do wonder- how often does this happen? After all, "shots fired" is not an uncommon thing in many cities in the US. I just wonder whether we will look back in 12 months time at the "week of hell" and realise that it was actually just a week in which we found all the things that usually go on every week that we don't hear about.

Gun violence is a very uncommon thing in Boston or Cambridge...it's big news here every time it happens. Now outside the city, in the areas where poor people live, it's a different story...but MIT and Harvard are located in some of the wealthiest, safest areas of Cambridge.

I agree that most of Cambridge and much of Boston are very safe and gun violence would be big news. But there are neighborhoods of Boston (ie officially part of Boston) that have shootings frequently. They are never reported unless there are deaths, and even then many people don't take notice.

Note that the following link only include incidents in which bullets actually hit people. http://www.bpdnews.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Shooting...

Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#69

Post by lysium »

aaron695 wrote: post #38
hiddenfeatures wrote: post #4

I find it very interesting, that there are such websites. I wonder whether it works, but I guess that if only one life is saved by a notice on a website, that is enough

Well if you truly meant one life saved fair enough. So you'd have to deducted the people killed in making sites like these first. So a web site is possibly $40,000. A humans life in the US is probably worth around $2,000,000. So it might cost one 50th of a humans life to create a site like this. I'd guess not, but the figures are complicated, the site is used for other things for starters. I'd suspect a suicide help…

Are you kidding us?

You cannot compare 'human lives' by comparing dollars. And surely, the site does not "cost" one 50th of "a" human life.

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