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Our Newfound Fear of Risk

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Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#51

Post by enjo »

graeme wrote: post #47
alayne wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying there weren't overprotective parents before? This thread is full of a lot of confirmation bias / society is going to hell in a hand basket type of discussion. Boy, kids these days, right? I'd like to see some facts because I don't find it very credible.

Talk to some older folks. My dad describes walking to school with other schoolchildren in Montreal in the 1950s. They'd be alone, without adults, going miles. When playing, they were out dusk to dawn on city streets with no adult supervision.

That proves nothing other than your dad grew up in a particular way.

The question the post you were replying to posed was: is this actually a new phenomenon? Or is it simply good ole day syndrome?

I suspect it's more the latter.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#52

Post by jessaustin »

icegreentea wrote: post #41
mikeash wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the invasion was required, nothing required us to occupy the place for a decade and counting, turning it into a perpetual war. Hook up with the Northern Alliance, bomb the hell out of their enemies, set them up, leave. They can't hold on to power? Oh well. The point has been made. The country returns to dictatorship and chaos? Well, that happened anyway.

You may recall the last time something like that happened to Afghanistan, it led to the whole civil war that resulted in the rise of the Taliban and AQ in the first place.

Yes "adverse" consequences always occur in countries we don't understand and don't particularly care about, no matter what awful things we do to them. (Next door in Iran, how did that Mosaddegh coup turn out?) The only real argument is over how much wealth will be transferred to our military-industrial complex, and how many Senators will get to go on another junket as a result? On those questions, I vote "less" and "fewer".

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#53

Post by HPLovecraft »

graeme wrote: post #48
HPLovecraft wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

link to US government funding? Or are you referring to private funding by US citizens?

Private funding. It's well known the ira raised funds from easy coast cities.

"It is known." Yea im aware of that... The comment I was replying to gave the impression that it was the USG specifically doing the funding.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#54

Post by graeme »

enjo wrote: post #51
graeme wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk to some older folks. My dad describes walking to school with other schoolchildren in Montreal in the 1950s. They'd be alone, without adults, going miles. When playing, they were out dusk to dawn on city streets with no adult supervision.

That proves nothing other than your dad grew up in a particular way. The question the post you were replying to posed was: is this actually a new phenomenon? Or is it simply good ole day syndrome? I suspect it's more the latter.

Well, the whole city was the same. It wasn't just his parents. And any other adult of the same age I've asked has described similar experiences.

Now I see daycare children on leashes in Montreal. Quite often. That didn't happen in the 1950s.

This isn't something' easy to quantify, unfortunately.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#55

Post by aasarava »

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…

As a parent of young kids, I can attest that many parents in my peer group are constantly reminding their kids not to be careful NOT due to a fear of risk -- but rather from wanting to avoid an injury that's going inconvenience everyone.

If your child crashes his bike and gets a bloody knee on the playground, your relaxing afternoon at the park is most likely over and now you have a crying child, bloody clothes, a damaged bike wheel, and potentially another child who is now screaming because you have to leave the park to go find bandages. If your child breaks her arm, it's even worse -- off to the hospital you go, followed by a child who can't take a bath or get dressed by herself for a month.

Do some parents take this to an extreme and deny their kids some fun? Sure. But a lot of times, it's just about trying to maintain a level of mindfulness so that everyone can continue having fun for the afternoon.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#56

Post by XorNot »

I found this article trite. It's merging 3 disparate concepts which have complex explanations, and deciding instead it's to do with risk.

Militarization of the police force is a big one for example - that has practically nothing to do with risk and everything to do with politics and budgeting. It's "tough on crime" writ large, with people then demanding to see the results of all the money being spent which isn't needed - so enter military surplus and suddenly every small town has an APC and a SWAT team but absolutely no need for one (and usually insufficient training). And once you have those things, every problem starts to look like it needs a SWAT response since you've got to justify having them.

Of course that's just one facet of it, there are others but it's totally disingenuous to pretend its some irrational fear of risk driving any of this.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#57

Post by ryguytilidie »

XorNot wrote: post #56

I found this article trite. It's merging 3 disparate concepts which have complex explanations, and deciding instead it's to do with risk. Militarization of the police force is a big one for example - that has practically nothing to do with risk and everything to do with politics and budgeting. It's "tough on crime" writ large, with people then demanding to see the results of all the money being spent which isn't need…

Militarization of the police force is a big one for example - that has practically nothing to do with risk and everything to do with politics and budgeting. It's "tough on crime" writ large,

This seems like a contradiction. It has nothing to do with risk, yet the people who want it are the "tough on crime" type. Don't you think that those people see NOT being tough on crime as a risk?

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#58

Post by jessaustin »

RougeFemme wrote: post #25
001sky wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting question is to turn this point on its head. The conventional wisdom (before 9/11) was it was "too risky" to fight back against hostage takers on an airplane. That bit of social engineering led to a huge force multiplier when trained pilots turned civivian aircraft into cruise missles. So, the origins of 9/11 have to do with mis-understanding the real risks we face. The opposite of ignorance is educati…

Prior to 9/11, at least in the U.S., hijackers typically "simply" wanted money or to be flown elsewhere. As long as those demands were met, there were no casualties. So it wasn't that it was "too risky" to fight back - it was that hijacking was generally not considered life-threatening. The original reactions on 9/11 were not due solely to "social engineering", but to prior experience.

That high-pitched noise you heard was the point, zinging swiftly over your head. All the pre-9/11 "experts" who told us to bend over and let the goat enthusiasts have their wicked way with us, didn't do so in a nuanced, situationally-aware fashion. They said, "always cooperate with hijackers." The fact that organizations existed the purposes of which were to kill Americans and destroy American resources, was blithely ignored by the "experts". Only through long conditioning did they cow the general public enough that four or five dudes with really short knives could hijack a plane. While the last plane was still in the air, the general public realized what bullshit that had been.

When "experts" talk about "risk", it's never "things are pretty good and getting better". (I.e., it's never the truth.) They always want us to fear more, and as a result pay more. It's not different now.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#59

Post by deerpig »

alayne wrote: post #44
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…

Are you saying there weren't overprotective parents before? This thread is full of a lot of confirmation bias / society is going to hell in a hand basket type of discussion. Boy, kids these days, right? I'd like to see some facts because I don't find it very credible.

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 with guns in their schools. They have no freedom to play, think or do much of anything which isn't scheduled. The whole concept of a "play date" is so twisted and sick as to be beyond comprehension. And all of this is because of some weird belief that children are in more danger today than any time in history. It's not true, the rates of child abuse, kidnapping, and everything else that parents are scared of haven't changed much from when I was a kid.

I would never ever raise a child in the States....

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#60

Post by cyanoacry »

I recently started a job in the aerospace industry, and it's still taking me a little bit of time to get used to the concept of risk, simply because it:

  1) is rarely addressed in education (nowhere in sciences nor humanitites)
  2) is an extremely "scary" word
  3) is difficult to visualize.
The combination of all three of these factors means that people don't realize that risk is an everyday thing: there are probabilities and outcomes that you need to weigh in order to make the decisions properly. Risk management is big if you're managing multi-million dollar contracts or huge rockets, but it seems to never filter down into the common psyche, which is disturbing. Humans have successfully managed risk to fly planes and go into space, so we have the models to make these decisions, yet we don't seem to be able to properly apply it on the ground.

Is the solution more education? I think so, but in a different light: people need to accept that bad things happen, and that you can model the probabilities and work out for yourself what tradeoffs you're making. Rarely is it all good and bad, and by estimating the expected value, you get the opportunity to say "no, this costs too much" in response to all-out "safety" measures.

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