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Comment by korethr | Hacker News Reader

> What I'm very curious about is what makes me perceive risk so much differently than these others. I'm wondering if it's conditioning (I spent a big chunk of my life building houses, and therefore climbing on extension ladders and walking on roof trusses was a daily ritual), childhood (I was in unstable environments a lot), or just brain wiring from birth.

I'm guessing conditioning is a big part of it.

I'd wager the majority or people with more hysterical reactions have lived fairly comfortable lives, without having to face much in the way of dangerous risks. And without that, they also fail to also learn that risks and dangers can be controlled and mitigated. Or that even mild preparedness can mean the difference between recoverable injury and death. So absent this personal experience of a counterpoint to the hysteria on the news, they're more likely to accept prognostications of certain horrible doom uncritically.

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Yea I think back to generations past, where you'd find yourself being sent to Normandy or something or stationed on a ship that just got hit by a torpedo. Chance of death - >>1%.

Now healthy people with a fraction of a percent risk of hospitalization, much less death, act like agoraphobes - apparently willing to do so indefinitely.

Far removed from the experience of the world as it is, dependent on the comfort of advanced human technology, people have become debilitated by the mere idea of the challenges that their ancestors overcame and readily coped with.

Courage is gone, and it's perhaps the most important virtue that allows one to get through life and face the insurmountable challenges that all of us will encounter.

What's really interesting is how many of my comments on this topic have been downvoted to oblivion with absolutely no responses from the people doing the downvoting.

I think a willingness to face temporary discomfort is something that seems to be in decline with specific members of the younger cohort of the millennial generation. This translates to journalism where you have a new generation of journalist who produces clickbait all day but never goes and interviews people in person and certainly doesn't do so over the phone. Think about how many people you know are unwilling to make phone calls and prefer text messages almost exclusively. That's not a huge deal but many of these same people are extremely uncomfortable interacting over a telephone with strangers. It's a really bad recipe for quality journalism.

Any attempt to have nuanced discussions on these topics immediately makes the sectarian politicos come out in droves and assume that you are a supporter of the previous president even if you aren't.

Trying to discuss the extremely plausible scenario of an accidental lab leak makes people assume you're a Trump supporter, for example. My opinion is that if he wasn't so ridiculously ignorant and unwilling to show vulnerability by engaging in topics he knows nothing about and attempting to learn, we would be in a much better place with this pandemic. Instead he didn't want to do that and simply offloaded all thinking to Fauci, but then simultaneously would attack him whenever he was speaking to certain groups.

Yea I largely agree with all the stuff you're saying. Regarding Trump though, I think he did do himself a massive disservice giving space to people like Fauci and Bolton. Although, with a generous interpretation, he certainly seems to be able to listen and platform people he diametrically opposes, which is something I don't know can be said about his opposition.

This has been bothering me for years, long before covid-19. Avoiding risk has become such a huge part of our culture that most of our standard salutations revolve around this: "stay safe", "have a safe trip", "drive safely", and so forth.

I'd much rather that people would wish me a fulfilling life in which I available myself of many rich experiences.

That brings to mind "safetyism" coined in the The Coddling of the American Mind.

Unsurprisingly safety is invoked in a variety of ways when certain people encounter ideas they don't like.

Doing so allows a person to completely sidestep the responsibility of mounting an argument.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coddling_of_the_American_M...

> Now healthy people with a fraction of a percent risk of hospitalization, much less death, act like agoraphobes - apparently willing to do so indefinitely.

If someone wants to be an agoraphobe, they can do so. But what bugs me is that these newly-minted agoraphobes seem to treat their agoraphobia with the same fervor and source of moral purity as a religion. To speak the heresy that one might have some control over what existential dangers await beyond one's front door is met with the same screeching panic that would follow suggesting all pre-pubescent children should be required to participate in satanic sex orgies. By refusing to be (as much as) a victim, you are an active threat to all that is good and true in the world.

I like to joke that I don't go outside because the day star is trying to kill me with radiation burns. And then I laugh at my silliness, put on sunscreen, and go outside anyway. But imagine being scolded by someone that, your not-easily-burning darker skin be damned, because you don't think you need sunscreen, you are the reason their dearest grandmother died of skin cancer. All the while recording you with their phone so the whole Internet will know that you, a science-denying anti-sunscreener, are also a killer-of-grandmas.

It's kinda like that.

> seem to treat their agoraphobia with the same fervor and source of moral purity as a religion

Oh yea, I'm gay and it clicked to me recently that the gay clubs I go to are basically just monasteries now. It used to be that gay people were known for unabashedly saying what couldn't be said (the profane) - it's now the complete opposite, gay people largely are enumerating an endless list of what's considered profane. Constant pearl-clutching, tip-toeing, hushed gossip, forced repentance and excommunication.

It's hard not to see the illiberal attitudes on the left (which at least in recent history were concentrated on the right, a consequence of their rigid sense of morality and tradition) as nothing more than rule-book fanatics evangelizing and prescribing a sacred morality.

John McWhorter calls these people The Elect, and I think correctly identified that this is fundamentally a religion. It spans all sorts of topics, but maintains the same character, for instance, in something like anti-racism:

https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/the-elect-neoracists-po...

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