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Our Newfound Fear of Risk

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Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#121

Post by sliverstorm »

pzuraq wrote: post #104
indefatigable wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet Germany has institutionalized the same mentality on a more abstract level. "Global warming might be happening, shut down the energy industry!" "We can't use nuclear power, someone might get cancer ! Keep mining coal and etching solar panels!"

That's a ridiculous comparison, The fact of the matter is that those decisions are completely logical. Whether or not global warming is happening, we will run out of fossil fuels and fissionable material eventually. Solar is renewable, self sustaining. By building out solar Germany is reducing there dependence on foreign countries and securing there future; Possibly helping to reduce global warming is just icing on t…

Solar is renewable, self sustaining

The sun is, but what about the raw materials needed to make the panels?

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#122

Post by sliverstorm »

mikeash wrote: post #28
newobj wrote: post #11

Related: at the PARK this weekend, and heard all the following utterances in the span of ten minutes from some parents: "NO RUNNING!" "IT'S DANGEROUS HERE" "YOU'RE GONNA GET HURT" "NO RUNNING!" Talk about instilling fear and creating risk aversion. Sometimes you just have to let a child find out for themselves what's safe and what isn't. What you can get up and dust yourself off from and what you can't. It's hard to…

I was going out for a walk with my daughter the other day and had the following conversation with my wife: Her: Don't let her run on the sidewalk. Me: What? Why? Her: She's not wearing pants, just a dress. Me: ...OK... what exactly is the relationship between these two things? Her: There's nothing covering her knees, she'll hurt herself if she falls on the sidewalk. I couldn't even fathom the connection without havin…

I don't recall pants ever helping in that regard.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#123

Post by pzuraq »

anigbrowl wrote: post #112
pzuraq wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than a knee jerk reaction though, there are a lot of reasons to speed up the switch to solar and renewables. Global warming may have been a catalyst, but it was going to happen eventually and they figured sooner rather than later.

Yes, but if you want to do something about global warming it'd be a lot smarter to keep the nuclear power stations running and take coal plants offline instead. Nuclear power has a spotty safety record overall, and the consequences of a mistake can be acutely disastrous, but coal is likewise a chronic disaster.

Agreed, I'm all for nuclear power personally and that is a somewhat less logical position, but the irrational fear of nuclear power is more of a worldwide phenomenon than a German one. All I'm saying is I think comparing American fear-culture to Germany's decision to quickly move to solar is at best apples to oranges and at worst completely nonsensical.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#124

Post by sliverstorm »

alayne wrote: post #40
_mvuc wrote: post #9

When you treat adults like children, and children like babies, you get exactly that. And that's why a hundred years ago 14-year olds were captaining their own ships, and today you have 40-year olds who can't do their own laundry or balance a checkbook.

I'm sorry, but I'm going to call bullshit unless you can actually cite a reference showing some significant number of 14 year old ship captains in 1913.

David Farragut comes to mind, although I don't know if the plural (i.e., many 14 year olds) applies.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#125

Post by VladRussian2 »

zaphar wrote: post #117
deerpig wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been a number of studies -- middle class children in Western countries now never go more than a couple of meters from their front door on their own. Growing up in the late 60's in New England, my parents kicked us out of the house in the morning during summers and no one thought twice about us unless we didn't show up for dinner. Children in American live under house arrest, they are used to having people…

I'm raising 5 of them in the States right now. I freely ignore most of these social mores. In our neighborhood my kids are among the most popular playmates. They actually went out and found friends so most of the children in the area know them. We don't trap them in the house and in fact frequently force them to leave so they aren't glued to the computer or Netflix. We've had broken bones, cuts, scrapes and other inj…

sounds like negligent parents waiting for a CPS visit to happen to enforce those social mores :) Fortunately, you seems to live among similarly "negligent neighbors".

Once, we picked up an obviously lost dog on a mountain road and dropped it at the first fire station after the phone on its collar resulted in a voicemail. It was during our 1st year in the US and the thing "what if the dog was stolen and we stopped by police while the dog is in our car" didn't even cross our mind. Now after 13 years here, i'm wondering what i'd do if it was say a child (and there is no collar with the phone to leave voicemail) ...

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#126

Post by VladRussian2 »

sliverstorm wrote: post #121
pzuraq wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a ridiculous comparison, The fact of the matter is that those decisions are completely logical. Whether or not global warming is happening, we will run out of fossil fuels and fissionable material eventually. Solar is renewable, self sustaining. By building out solar Germany is reducing there dependence on foreign countries and securing there future; Possibly helping to reduce global warming is just icing on t…

Solar is renewable, self sustaining The sun is, but what about the raw materials needed to make the panels?

>The sun is, but what about the raw materials needed to make the panels?

like silicon?

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#127

Post by Amadou »

anigbrowl wrote: post #118
Amadou wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did that make any great change in public consciousness? Obviously not. It was Russia, not the US. If you aren't russian you are unlikely to have any idea how it went over. But more generally, "small" terrorist attacks happen way more frequently than the big ones, I expect that is because they are easier to pull off. White power types kill a handful of people each year in the US but you don't hear about them if you ar…

You're making my point for me. There are a fair number of small scale terror attacks, and they don't change things that much because they are small. I grew up in Ireland and the UK, I have had plenty of occasion to consider small-scale terrorism since it was a very frequent occurrence at that time.

I could have sworn your point was that small-scale attacks aren't going to happen because they aren't as scary.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#128

Post by enraged_camel »

kbenson wrote: post #38
rayiner wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet that much of the issue stems from the decline in birth rates among middle/upper middle class parents relative to the days of yore. When you only manage to pop out one or two kids, at great career sacrifice and monetary expense, each one seems to matter more than they did back in the day. Also, paradoxically, the safer things get the more people worry about the dangers that remain. This is rational. Say doing…

I would say it's got less to do with the perceived (even subconsciously) value of the children, and more the experience of the parents. For the first child, you're often hyper-conscious of threats and problems. With later children you've better assessed what's important to pay attention to and what isn't.

Anecdotally speaking, this is not true. My parents always joke that I was the "test subject" for their parenting experiments, and my (younger) sister is the one on whom they actually applied what they learned. Growing up, my life was pretty care-free. My sister on the other hand is definitely suffering from "helicopter parenting."

Gender probably has a lot to do with it. I'm a guy, so I don't have as much to worry about (whereas girls are perceived as more vulnerable to things like rape, etc.).

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#129

Post by sliverstorm »

VladRussian2 wrote: post #126
sliverstorm wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar is renewable, self sustaining The sun is, but what about the raw materials needed to make the panels?

>The sun is, but what about the raw materials needed to make the panels? like silicon?

Solar energy technologies, for example, will require half the current world supply of tellurium and 25% of the supply of indium, the report says.

http://www.euractiv.com/sustainability/rare-earth-shortage-h...

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#130

Post by Periodic »

mikeash wrote: post #30
_mvuc wrote: post #9

When you treat adults like children, and children like babies, you get exactly that. And that's why a hundred years ago 14-year olds were captaining their own ships, and today you have 40-year olds who can't do their own laundry or balance a checkbook.

I don't think there's that much of a difference between now and then, just people paying attention to different things. I know kids who were certified to fly airplanes by themselves at 14. We don't let them captain ships anymore, but that doesn't mean there aren't any capable teenagers anymore, they just do other things. There were plenty of useless humans around a hundred years ago as well. We don't hear about them…

There are have actually been a few young people sailing around the world solo in the last few decades[1]. I'm sure for each of those there are many who perform more mundane tasks or have jobs doing things like ferrying or tours. It's perhaps not as illustrious as it once was. Instead of captaining a ship we now have young people starting companies, trading one kind of venture for another.

1. http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/eco-tourism/stories/5-teens-who...

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