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Our Newfound Fear of Risk

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Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#81

Post by anigbrowl »

VLM wrote: post #8
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…

"That bit of social engineering led to a huge force multiplier" Its possible to use this technique to predict the next set of attacks: 1) High levels of security theater mean long entrance lines in front of (perceived) high value targets. Therefore instead of attacking the high value target the security theater is protecting, the line of people waiting to enter gets attacked. I get nervous waiting in lines knowing an…

1) High levels of security theater mean long entrance lines in front of (perceived) high value targets. Therefore instead of attacking the high value target the security theater is protecting, the line of people waiting to enter gets attacked. I get nervous waiting in lines knowing any terrorist who isn't an idiot has their sights on me.

This isn't going to happen because a bunch of people in line at an airport isn't a high-value target. I mean it would suck, of course, but 'bunch of people get blown up at an airport' isn't nearly as worrying as 'large plane falls/is steered out of the sky and into downtown.' It doesn't have much value to terrorists because it's not as scary and it won't generate vast numbers of photographs.

Yeah, it seems obvious, but it's wrong. Because killing people is not the whole goal on terrorism. Making people panic is. We have lots of mass shooting incidents in the US, but there's relatively little political will to change the gun culture here because people are rarely (ie never) confronted with pictures of the aftermath. Similarly, if a line of people at an airport were killed, all the public would see would be ambulances and body bags. They would feel sorry for you but would not actually care that much on an emotional level. What made the 9-11 attack so clever, and devastating, was that the attacks were staggered in time so that you had people flying planes into some of the world's most famous buildings on live television. The last time anyone saw large amounts of stuff getting blown up for real on TV was during the first Gulf War.

Yeah yeah I know what I'm told, but under actual attack I would have no desire to die so rather than shelter in place I'd GTFO as soon as the cattle herders start yelling.

We have enough school shootings that we have some data on this. If you are running around trying to escape then a) you're an easily noticeable target and b) you're probably going to be in the way of law enforcement firing back at the shooter. I don't find your approach any more sensible than suggestions that everyone should be armed and that the possibility of a gun battle will be a sufficient deterrent. Given the number of people who engage in shootouts with the police, this is plainly not the case. Looking to sneak out makes sense, departing in a disordered GTFO fashion is just panic.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#82

Post by angersock »

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.

If you count fishing and crabbing, and possibly ferrying, I would be unsurprised in the slightest.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#83

Post by graeme »

mikeash wrote: post #79
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 don't understand your last sentence. For most of what you list, nobody is forcing American parents to do this, they just choose to. Nothing stops you from letting your own children do things on their own.

There are lots of social pressures to conform. It's also a lot harder to let your child spontaneously play with others if all the other parents require playdates before your kid can see their kids.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#84

Post by angersock »

anigbrowl wrote: post #81
VLM wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That bit of social engineering led to a huge force multiplier" Its possible to use this technique to predict the next set of attacks: 1) High levels of security theater mean long entrance lines in front of (perceived) high value targets. Therefore instead of attacking the high value target the security theater is protecting, the line of people waiting to enter gets attacked. I get nervous waiting in lines knowing an…

1) High levels of security theater mean long entrance lines in front of (perceived) high value targets. Therefore instead of attacking the high value target the security theater is protecting, the line of people waiting to enter gets attacked. I get nervous waiting in lines knowing any terrorist who isn't an idiot has their sights on me. This isn't going to happen because a bunch of people in line at an airport isn't…

At risk of never flying unmolested again--you do realize that you've identified the lacking qualities in the aforementioned attack plan, and that those can be readily addressed by such simple actions as hitting more places at once over a longer period of time?

The entire point of the article is that that sort of a analysis is ongoing, is that when you try to deal with an opponent you are dealing with something actively exploring a solution space.

That's what makes the security theater so annoying--it's clear that there are a dozen ways to stage a successful attack were one so inclined, none of which would be stopped or even slowed by our current (or any forseeable) measure.

I think people need to realize that the number of Bad People in the world is really small, and that they shouldn't give up freedoms in hopes of somehow decreasing their exposure. Large state and private groups are much more harmful, especially because they turn Not Bad People into Annoyingly Inconvenient And Impersonally Malicious People.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#85

Post by GrinningFool »

aasarava wrote: post #55
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 da…

That argument reads to me like this: "If my kid injured himself, I would be inconvenienced - so let's take extra steps to make sure I am not inconvenienced."

And to your point, there are cases where this is valid - when the inconvenience would extend beyond just "oh my afternoon is ruined" and into "everybody's afternoon would be ruined".

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#86

Post by smacktoward »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #72
zeteo wrote: post #49

It was a lot easier to tolerate risk when people had a common Big Picture. This could be provided by religion, ideology etc. Such attitudes still hold in some places, e.g. Amish communities seem more resilient after school shootings [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish_school_shooting#Amish_com...

And when the Big Picture is fractured, trust disappears. I see the anti-vax craze as primarily an issue of trust and control. "I don't trust Those People (the doctors)" or along the lines of "I need to control everything, including my vaccine schedule".

Or perhaps, "I can't control nearly anything anymore, so I'm going to get super focused on those few things I still can control, like my child's vaccine schedule."

People have spent decades now having their lives turned upside down by forces they're told they can't control: market movements, giant corporations, unresponsive political systems. Rather than pushing back and trying to assert some control over those things, which would require collective action, they focus inward instead on those things in their lives that they know they can control. It almost doesn't matter if their interventions there make things better or worse; it's more about giving the feeling of being In Charge.

It's like the CEO of the failing company who spends all his time micromanaging the colors on the company Web site home page. He can't give an order that will turn the business around, but he can give an order to change those colors. Which makes him feel like he still has some control over the future, even though he really doesn't.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#87

Post by mark-r »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #19
_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 also wonder if it's related to decreased birth rates in modern times - parents have fewer children than a century or two ago, so losing a single child to an accident of some sort is much more costly to the family, hence the increased risk aversion.

I doubt that losing a child has ever been less than awful no matter how many you have.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#88

Post by kyllo »

dalek_cannes wrote: post #21
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…

There's also the problem of fear of litigation. I'm from a part of the world that is not as lawsuit-happy as the U.S. Amongst other things, medical treatment is very cheap here and people laugh at labels like "warning: device heats up when in operation" (seen on an iron made in the USA).

I think the absurdity is not lost on some of the people writing the copy for these safety warnings. For example, after Liebeck v. McDonald's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaur...), companies started printing tautological statements like "WARNING: HOT COFFEE IS HOT" on the cups.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#89

Post by mpyne »

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.

I can confirm this was a big issue with our children. Our first we tended to treat like porcelain... eventually we've learned through experience that kids are more resilient than you may otherwise think.
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