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Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

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Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#471

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

mirchibajji wrote: post #443
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are definitely onto something. Humans are horrible at estimating risk, but are forced to do it all the time. In some cases, it is a very clear miscalculation resulting in overdoing it one way or another. Sometimes it is just dumb luck. I think this is the wrong way of looking at this. Most people believe that lightning does not strike people that often. This does not give one has carte blanche to prance around th…

Going back to the context of the thread: Not every risk has to be codified into the law, or enforced by the government. Should we make it illegal to prance around with a metal rod in their own backyard, just in case? Making a risk illegal does not magically improve safety, and there is a non-zero probability of the "enforcement" making things worse.

I am with you and, in a sense, you are preaching to the choir. If system setup was up to me, maybe with few notable exceptions, all new laws would require a sunset provision to force bad laws out of existence. I am certainly not arguing that just making things illegal improves safety ( and even when it does, I am not stoked about it ).

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#473

Post by eweise »

Gigachad wrote: post #272
eweise wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its easy to go places like the beach, camping, skiing, fishing, golfing, etc. Basically all the things I like to do except biking and hiking which I can do from my house.

These are all occasional things. Day to day life is better car free. And then when you want to go out you can rent a car. Or even own one. You don’t have to use a car for every single activity just because you sometimes go skiing.

This is every weekend. Also, kid soccer practices are about four times a week and too far to walk or bike. Soccer games on the weekend can be 60 miles away. The grocery store is eight miles away.

I sense that the no car advocates are single people living in cities. I lived car-free back on those days. But once you have a house and a family, a car is a basic necessity. Its financially impossible to raise a family in a city on the US west coast, with the same standard of living as suburbia.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#474

Post by xyzelement »

Gigachad wrote: post #386
mtrower wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you want to do things like bring groceries home (more than you can carry in your two hands), or something novel like, say, building materials. People do do those sorts of things, you know. Or are you telling me that day to day life is better if I'm not a woodworker? More food for thought: how cold does it have to get, with how much snow on the ground, before walking can be reasonably said to be unattractive to…

When I’m doing a big shop I just get it delivered to my door. Costs from $2-$10AUD. I’m not claiming there are no things where a car is useful. But having to drive regularly is depressing. My life improved so much when I moved out of the suburbs and in to a walkable area. Sitting in traffic twice a day was sending me insane. While walking makes me feel better.

Yes - definitely. But you're a single guy, right?

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#475

Post by msla »

cryptonector wrote: post #149
kwhitefoot wrote: post #26

The US seems to be the only country that has this problem. Children here (Norway) walk to school on their own at the age of five or six, some of them take buses. "Ashley Smith, a foster dad, testified about being investigated for neglect because one afternoon his daughter, 8, was doing her homework on the front lawn. A passerby reported an “unsupervised” child (not knowing Ashley was actually inside). The upshot: “We…

The U.S. federal government gives the States' child protection service agencies money grants that are conditional on those agencies actually taking children from their homes. You get what you subsidize, and if you subsidize petty tyranny, you'll get petty tyranny.

Anyone who wants to spank their children is rather perverted, of course: We all know what it means when an adult spanks an adult.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#476

Post by s1artibartfast »

stdbrouw wrote: post #430
s1artibartfast wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think there is a real issue on what people perceive as society's role and what parent's role is. Not only that, but you a society has become obsessed with risk mitigation over the last several decades. The problem is that people are poorly equipped to estimate risk with very low occurrences against low or unclear cost. You see it in all facets of society with a platitude of better safe than sorry. It shows up in i…

I'd be wary of putting all of these examples into the same box, though. If kids can't play outside anymore because of overprotective parents or an overprotective society, that feels to me like a net negative. If newspapers are afraid to publish because they are fearful of libel suits, then we might miss fact-checked stories that are in the public interest, and it's not clear that that's a good trade-off. On the other…

To be clear, my central point is that people cannot differentiate between the exceedingly low risks with cost and real risks that should be addressed.

I'll speak to your points on the medical area because it's the area that I'm most passionate about and think I'm the most informed. I'm not talking about medical checklist s. I'm talking about increased licensure. An example would be pushes to increase the academic training of nurses. Nurses with four-year degrees marginally better outcomes than nurses with two-year degrees. At face value that sounds like people will get better care. What's not discussed is that this means nurses are more expensive so hospitals have less nurses. Another example is mini drugs that are over-the-counter in most countries require a prescription in the US. At face value this sounds safer as it allegedly reduces misuse. However, it adds hundreds of dollars in cost for a doctor's visit to get a $5 pill, and means many people that need it won't get it.

I certainly agree that governmental gridlock and dysfunction exist. However, that alone doesn't explain why large infrastructure projects like rail cost $5 to 10x more in the US when they do make it through the process. Infrastructure projects have vastly higher headcount then even in the EU. You have paid professionals whose job it is to make sure that Builders don't step on endangered animals. This obsession with preventing the risk ignores the fact that it would be both cheaper and better for the animals assume some will die and spend part of the money you would be paying to prevent that on actually helping them.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#477

Post by s1artibartfast »

chx wrote: post #432
s1artibartfast wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think there is a real issue on what people perceive as society's role and what parent's role is. Not only that, but you a society has become obsessed with risk mitigation over the last several decades. The problem is that people are poorly equipped to estimate risk with very low occurrences against low or unclear cost. You see it in all facets of society with a platitude of better safe than sorry. It shows up in i…

> . It shows up in new parents who don't introduce their children to family for risk of covid. This is asinine. Just because politics tells you everything is normal, everything is decidedly not normal. COVID is still an endemic and very serious disease. Dropping mask mandates were a seriously and deadly mistake.

My point was not to debate the seriousness of covid but talk about relative risk. If you think covid is very serious and it's perfectly logical to take some precautions with your child.

To my point, there is a huge difference between taking your child to a sports game and introducing it to one or two people over the course of a year. If you magically knew there is a 1 in 10 chance your child would die, of course don't do it. The question is when would you start to do it. One in a million chance, one in a billion? At some point the logic of better safe than sorry works against you.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#478

Post by ryandrake »

ichugwindex wrote: post #448
ryandrake wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally, the parent should at least be able to sue the busybody for damages in this case. If no evidence of wrongdoing is found, the busybody should be identified so the parent knows who to take legal action against.

Wouldn't that create a bad incentive to not report crime then? Seems like the right response is to have the police/CPS act properly than to try and hold Karen's accountable.

It would definitely disincentivize false reporting, and make people think twice if they are not sure. Which would be good incentives. We have far too many people calling the police casually for non-emergency reasons and as a bad faith way to bring violence to someone they don't like, like SWATing. Every month another E-911 dispatch center complains they're overloaded. There's a subset of Americans who simply can't mind their own business and feel they have to go out and bully people, and the lack of accountability and consequences just encourages them.

Yes, there may be a handful of real crimes that go unreported, but I'm kind of neutral on that. It's not the public's job to tattle on each other by triggering a potentially deadly police response. Having strong accountability for the reporter would mean only the most serious, obvious, violent crimes get reported.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#479

Post by ethbr0 »

makeitdouble wrote: post #464
ethbr0 wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it would have combated spam effectively, which would have directly decreased the power of Gmail. But it would also have, more importantly, created a revenue stream and normalized microtransactions, which would have created an alternate business model to attention/advertising. Nobody likes paying for things... but I think the "free" future we're living in is pretty shitty compared to the way things were before.

This doesn’t compute to me… On spam: we’ve been receiving physical direct spam mail from the dawn of the modern postal service, and the delivery is paid by the sender. Same way on linkedin for instance, recruiters pay to reach inboxes. Same for many other platforms where spamming and shoving content in users’ feed is monetized by the platform itself. And that’s the bulk of the alternate business models and revenue st…

Did you use email ~2000? It was a nightmare in sheer spam volume. Zero cost of copying + zero cost of sending = send worldwide all by default, or as close to it as they could get.

I'm sure the amount of email that isn't even seen in modern webmail services would still boggle our minds.

And as far as I see it, platforms are part of the problem.

Marketplaces are better for the customer in the long run.

That is to say, shared infrastructure/basic utilities with many different independent vendors on top, each offering goods and services.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#480

Post by ethbr0 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #459
ethbr0 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would their opinions differ?

Because people have different opinions? And because college sometimes changes them? Mind you, I'm not necessarily with the GP. It seems like a question of only marginal relevance. But the parent reads like a low-effort dismissal that doesn't actually address the point.

I just can't see college-or-not influencing perceptions enough to be relevant.

As someone who grew up in the suburbs, and has since lived in a rough part of the city, it also resonated with my personal experience.

In the suburbs, nobody generally knows each other. In the city, due to density, you just have more neighborhood interactions.

Sometimes inner city interactions are uncomfortable or with crazy people, but they're generally non-violent.

If I had to peg percentages, I'd say:

Inner city: 30% awesome/interesting/helpful strangers, 55% ambivalent strangers, 10% unpleasant strangers, 4.5% crazy strangers, 0.5% potentially violent strangers

Suburbs: 15% awesome/interesting strangers, 70% ambivalent strangers, 15% unpleasant strangers, 0% crazy/potentially violent strangers

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