Comment by Dove | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Dove | Hacker News Reader

It is difficult, especially for politicians, to talk about injustice, accidents, the death of children and innocents, in terms of acceptable loss. It sounds callous. One wants to do better. But if we are to live in a society with basic freedoms, it is exactly what is needed.

Intuitively we know this. Setting speed limits to a universal 5 MPH and rigidly enforcing the rule is close to what would be needed to reduce traffic fatalities to zero. But most people love their freedom and mobility. They look at the risk of a fatal accident with the rules as they are and say it's acceptable. And when someone beats the odds and has one, we don't generally blame the laws. We say it's a tragic accident, which is a way of saying an acceptable risk has been realized for someone.

We should think the same way about a great many things. Things like aircraft bombing or child abduction are horrific, but low risk. The horror makes us incorrectly disregard the fact that the risk is low--possibly low enough, even, to be acceptable.

The problem is compounded by the political and human need to do something. Even if the risk is acceptably low and cannot be meaningfully reduced without draconian measures, people feel the need to bring it down by one means or another. So they do things that don't help. For show. For comfort. Out of confusion.

A bit of mathematical clarity and a willingness to label things mere accidents would be helpful. Considering the many men willing to give their lives in wars throughout history to secure better lives for their descendants, it would be a shame if we threw it all away for fear of a few accidental deaths per year. Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, the difficult thing about preserving freedom is that one must be willing to accept some low level of evil without doing anything legal to stop it.

The problem is, people seem to genuinely like living in fear. Maybe it gives them something to talk about, maybe it's like being on a roller-coaster, but the media wouldn't blow things out of all proportion unless there was a market for it. Politicians wouldn't make some of these crazy laws if the public didn't demand it.

People buy newspapers less to hear about the real news but to be worried/scared/concerned about stupid stuff they shouldn't care about.

I think it's societies fascination with that sort of thing that needs fixing.

The vast majority of us will live largely uneventful lives and will die of old age/cancer/heart attack/etc. We're not going to have our kids abducted, be the victim of terrorism, die from swine flu etc.

Maybe it's that "You're going to lead an uneventful life" bit that people just can't bear to face.

The worst one recently is pedophilia. I went to my sons play at school a while back, and we were told we must not video the play, and at the end we were told we could take pictures, but only of our own children, not of other peoples children, and not of groups of children together!

Of course everyone ignored the headteacher and instead used common sense - taking group photos etc, but it's incredibly disturbing to see such ridiculous policies come into place. What sort of message are we sending our kids?

(If you haven't seen the Brasseye pedophilia special you should definitely watch it. Classic).

Our need for fear is probably very deeply rooted in the primal desire for survival.

Fear drives almost everything we do, really. Fear of starvation due to random events out of our control leads to the invention of farming. Fear of being homeless leads to a work ethic. Fear of being alone leads us to form bonds with others. Fear is probably the only universal motivator.

"The problem is, people seem to genuinely like living in fear."

I don't know; I suspect people react very easily to "leadership" hints and cues about danger, and it's thus useful for politicians (of any stripe) to encourage fear.

http://sivers.org/drama

J.G. Ballard makes the same point, in the opposite direction: if we can't have both modern comforts and our hearts' desires, we may eventually give up on what we have in favor of what we want -- and may even be right to do so.

There will always be some who do. G.K. Chesterton spoke of the "rational and deliberate preference which will always to the end trouble the peace of the world, the rational and deliberate preference for a short life and a merry one." (_Napoleon of Notting Hill_, chapter 8.)

Theodore Dalrymple found that preference in many of the English homeless; he was surprised to find that homeless wandering "is not without its compensations," and sounds like he was half-convinced to turn vagrant himself -- but read the article, http://www.city-journal.org/html/6_4_oh_to_be.html. Dalrymple also detects this preference for adventure over security in some of the English underclass... and, more worrisomely, Chesterton -- who knew of what he spoke -- detected it in the Nazis.

In other words: if we value our prosperity and idleness -- or even if we value simpler, more obvious ideals like "not torturing" and "not trying to exterminate the Jews" -- we should probably do something to make life a little less dull for those who prefer something else over dullness.

I don't support Ballard's methods, to say the least (read a book or two of his and you'll see why not); but perhaps permitting Americans to fight as mercenaries abroad, and relaxing our self-defense laws at home, might be a good first step? Or making the military a better-paying and less bureaucratic place?

Maybe it's that "You're going to lead an uneventful life" bit that people just can't bear to face.

I agree, its why Huxley had the idea of V.P.S Treatment in Brave New World.

http://www.huxley.net/bnw/seventeen.html

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.

That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

--Herman Goering, Nuremberg Diary, April 18, 1946

My personal belief is we fixate on things like plane bombings and child abductions because we are out of touch with the world in the given respect.

We understand there is a risk to driving a car, and accept it. To some extent we are deadened to it, forget about it (which is why I occasionally force myself to remember the risks) but we also intuitively understand the risk is low. You don't see an accident but every 6 months or a year, and most people are involved in them far less, yet we drive nearly every day.

Planes and abductions are different. We don't fly every day; we don't have an understanding of just how many flights happen, so we don't realize how low the odds actually are- we fixate on the downed plane, and in our minds we see 1 out of 1- 100% failure. Now, there are some exceptions like 9/11, where the risk is low but the cost is massive, possibly offsetting the low risk. That, on the bright side, can be approached differently (perhaps give the pilots weaponized doorways, or completely seal the door during flight. Institute a policy of 'go ahead and kill your hostage, we aren't going to crash this plane into the Empire State' [it is crucial to make the hostage NOT the pilot]. It's cruel, but if you crash the plane everyone and more are dead anyway, and without trained guards on-board there's not even a ghost of a chance you can fight the hostage free.)

Abductions are the same way; we are not aware how many children travel around on a daily basis and as such do not realize the relative size of the odds. This one also has an extra spice mixed in though- we are worried about somebody else, and we are not there. I find, at least for me, it's much easier to accept risk for myself esp. when I am involved in the situation, than it is to accept risk to someone else, ESP. when I am not involved in the situation.

That and while a large number of us drive, very few of us fly the plane - we have to entrust that duty to another person. That person may be very well trained, but is normally not someone you know.

Flying is also fairly unnatural for humans - it's at its heart rather dangerous, and it's thanks to the skill and training of the individuals involved that make it a safe way to travel.

Conversely, while we do get a fair amount of training to drive a vehicle, it's nowhere near the amount of checking and cross-checking that a pilot goes for. The nearest I do is "mirror-indicator-headcheck" when crossing lanes, and "if I have to think about whether it's dark enough to turn on my headlights, it's time to turn them on".

While the actual risk involved with flying may be low, that's because it's been reduced in practice a heck of a lot, but that's often not visible to the public.

That seems like it might point the way to a solution. Lets make it obvious. I'm not sure how, but lets show how much training pilots get, how much rigor goes into making an airplane, how many checks an balances go into it, how many people are involved, the number of man hours, the number of tests, etc...

Of course, this doesn't apply to the kidnapping situation... but maybe some kind of information campaign can do the trick there to.

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