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Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

theguardian.com

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Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#301

Post by sodafountan »

msvan wrote: post #50

It turns out that if your suffering is spectacular enough, people will come save you. Maybe if we throw all the poor children of the world into caves people will start caring about them.

The difference is one is a very abstract and broad problem while the other is a very concentrated and narrow one. Humans have a hard time in the abstract. I do admit that the sensationalism of this event brought focus from the world but the same rules apply to someone who's stuck in a burning building or under a car or whatever, people will go out of their way to help when there's a well defined and immediate problem.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#302

Post by trissi »

BurningFrog wrote: post #286
abandonliberty wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet who shows up for the 3.1 million children who die of malnutrition every year? Every 3 minutes we lose more children then were in the cave. We can comprehend 13 people and the struggle against nature, while the scope of world hunger is far too complex and emotionally incomprehensible to mobilize enough people.

Globalization lifts 138k people out of extreme poverty per day. http://www.newsweek.com/now-good-news-poor-are-getting-riche...

But about 3 times as much new people are born, most of them in poverty....

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#303

Post by los_angeles »

abandonliberty wrote: post #255
bdz wrote: post #213

"If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost, just as many volunteers turn out. Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature—a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price. Weakness? It might be the unique strength that w…

Yet who shows up for the 3.1 million children who die of malnutrition every year? Every 3 minutes we lose more children then were in the cave. We can comprehend 13 people and the struggle against nature, while the scope of world hunger is far too complex and emotionally incomprehensible to mobilize enough people.

>Yet who shows up for the 3.1 million children who die of malnutrition every year?

Bill Gates and tens of thousands of aid workers globally. The Chinese Communist Party and businessmen who outsource labor from the overfed first world to the underfed third world are by far the biggest help. Also your aunt who volunteers at the soup kitchen. Often these efforts funded by donations or aid grants (tax money, paid by you and me) from our democratically elected governments.

>We can comprehend 13 people and the struggle against nature, while the scope of world hunger is far too complex and emotionally incomprehensible to mobilize enough people.

Most of us can comprehend two (or more!) things at once. People are extremely mobilized about ending hunger and we have made strides against this in the last century: https://slides.ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-food-provision/

A few hundred people showed up to the cave for a few weeks. Tens of thousands show up to fight hunger every day.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#304

Post by hajile »

abandonliberty wrote: post #255
bdz wrote: post #213

"If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost, just as many volunteers turn out. Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature—a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price. Weakness? It might be the unique strength that w…

Yet who shows up for the 3.1 million children who die of malnutrition every year? Every 3 minutes we lose more children then were in the cave. We can comprehend 13 people and the struggle against nature, while the scope of world hunger is far too complex and emotionally incomprehensible to mobilize enough people.

Do children eat dollar bills for dinner or are humans evil?

If there is no food to spare, then all the money in the world won't solve the problem. If there is food to spare and people let children starve to death, then people are evil. (edit: there technically exists a third potential that there is absolutely no means of delivering food, but at that point, any discussion is pointless)

EDIT: I suppose this idea makes people uncomfortable because it implies that those same people might be evil even though they don't see themselves as evil. We all want the world to be a better place, but we don't want to be inconvenienced. Rather than do something, we give a few dollars in hopes of absolution. Writing posts about starving kids is easy. Moving 100LB bags of food 12 hours a day in Sudan is much harder. "Be the change you want to see in the world"

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#305

Post by los_angeles »

trissi wrote: post #302
BurningFrog wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globalization lifts 138k people out of extreme poverty per day. http://www.newsweek.com/now-good-news-poor-are-getting-riche...

But about 3 times as much new people are born, most of them in poverty....

But a lower percentage are in poverty every year.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#306

Post by [deleted] »

chrisper wrote: post #263
_sbxe wrote: post #245

I feel like we all really needed this story. For once, there's nothing political or divisive. There's no one to be mad at. It's not "us or them". The world's top experts came together, volunteered for a dangerous mission, sacrificed, and pulled it off. Ra! Ra! Humanity! Feels like a brief moment of redemption.

>There's no one to be mad at. Except at the soccer coach who thought it was a good idea to endanger 12 children by going into a cave during monsoon season which also led to the death of an innocent person?

[deleted]

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#307

Post by dkural »

bitL wrote: post #282
abandonliberty wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet who shows up for the 3.1 million children who die of malnutrition every year? Every 3 minutes we lose more children then were in the cave. We can comprehend 13 people and the struggle against nature, while the scope of world hunger is far too complex and emotionally incomprehensible to mobilize enough people.

It's not just hunger. There is a failure on the part of their parents, i.e. by not being prudent and being selfish having kids they can't take care of; but one could argue that it's how "nature designed it" in order to increase genetic variability and a chance for the species to survive by pruning the traits not beneficial in changing environment, which we observe as inhumane deaths of small children. In the "civiliz…

Famine and malnutrition hits people with one children or many. Also, Subsaharan Africa, where hunger is highest per-capita, is not an "overpopulated" subcontinent, having roughly 990 million people, and a massive amount of fertile land, rainforests, natural resources. It actually has fewer people per square mile than most places. In fact arguably this is one reason for having higher mortality: People are spread over vast distances, so it's more expensive to build infrastructure to distribute food when one region is hit with a draught/famine, distribute healthcare, etc.

It's simply under-developed and has not become industrialized. When American or European children were dying at higher rates it wasn't because their parents were selfish. It reflected the rate of development of the continent.

Hunger was an issue after World War II in most of Europe, and the US came to their aid. The hunger there was not due to parents being selfish either.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#308

Post by tiatia123 »

And Musk hat to brag about building a submarine. Don't want to call him an idiot, but as a start explore the caves of Sagada in the Philippines. Then talk about escaping in such a flooded cave with a tiny submarine. https://wikitravel.org/en/Sagada

Diving in caves is dangerous as f.. and requires a special training. Not sure that cave diving is part of a Navy Seal training. I read the dive out of the cave takes five hours. Hands of to the SEALS and kids for pulling it off.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#309

Post by kazinator »

Jwarder wrote: post #299
_ylmx wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> concentration camps This does nothing, but underplay the significance of the holocaust.

But they are literal concentration camps. Concentration camps have existed before and after the Nazis; that's not some idea they invented. The horror of the Holocaust is focused around the death camps more than the concentration camps.

The phrase "concentration camp" in the English language no longer has any literal meaning that is simply composed of "concentration" and "camp". It refers strictly to the WWII Nazi concentration camps.

Anyone using the phrase and then insisting that the literal meaning was intended is thoroughly disingenuous. That speaker or writer is deliberately using the loaded term in order to troll the intended audience with a crystal clear Nazi reference.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#310

Post by c22 »

merpnderp wrote: post #272

I do my part in promoting captialism, which has done more to pull children out of poverty than any other program or charity in the world. Free market reforms in China and India have done just brain blistering amounts of good in reducing human suffering, from child malnutrition, suicide rates, longevity, and access to healthcare.

How do you tease apart the effects of capitalism and industrialism? Or are they inextricably linked in your world view?
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