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Comment by hnlmorg | Hacker News Reader

> An aside, but it's always interesting to me that people are specifically interested in instances where a lot of people die together. I mean, who cares?

The friends and families of those victims probably care.

I can’t say I’d be too happy if my daughter died at school from a completely preventable school shooting.

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...right, my point is it's confusing that people seem to care more when a bunch of people are killed all at once. Is 30 people killed all together somehow more than 30x as tragic as 30 independent one-offs spaced throughout a year?

I suppose it highlights how one person in a bad mood can kill 30 innocent people, instead of needing e.g. 15-30 homicidal maniacs to do the same thing. It's not that confusing when you think about it.

I'm not sure about exact ratios, but in general society appears to agree that collective harm is worse. For example, the UK had 'Pals battalions' in WW1, and stopped when they realised that you could end up with whole villages losing all their young men in a single day. The damage to society from this tactic was too high, even if the camaraderie was short term better and the recruitment statistics were aided. If you wanted to learn more about why society cares more about collective death, I'd advise you start by researching topics like Pals battalions, on which plenty of research has no doubt been done.

Oh cmon that’s just human nature. We care a lot more about one of events like natural disasters than say automotive deaths - this isn’t a special insight. Also, the victims of mass shootings (children at schools, attendees at festivals, etc) are the definition of innocent. That’s part of the reason.

>We care a lot more about one of events like natural disasters than say automotive deaths - this isn’t a special insight.

Yeah we agree about that, the interesting question is why?

>the victims of mass shootings (children at schools, attendees at festivals, etc) are the definition of innocent. That’s part of the reason.

This is an explanation in the specific case of shootings

Look I’m no social psychologist but I don’t think this is unstudied or surprising stuff? It’s generally known that humans are incredibly good at getting used to bad things that happen in a regular/routine/predictable manner. Eg deaths from cancer/cars/smoking/domestic violence/Covid/etc don’t make the news, despite happening in large numbers. It’s unpredictable suffering that jolts us - volcanoes, air crashes, shootings. It’s just the way we are. If I had to guess(but what do I know) it’s part evolutionary - predictable risk can be managed, avoided, plannned for, controlled. Unpredictable is new and thus much more threatening.

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