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Comment by Murky3515 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand the psychology of it either. It's like they think that appearing overly concerned about something potentially dangerous is more embarrassing than being killed by something actually dangerous. That or they have lived such safe and sheltered lives that they cannot identify real danger. I don't have any other explanation.

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I would assume it's more due to them not realizing that this isn't just something that periodically happens at the park (like Old Faithful). It might seem unusual, but they don't know how unusual or dangerous it is. It might just be no more unusual than a low road near a body of water that gets a tiny bit flooded in one spot after a heavy rain -- the kind where locals who know about it just drive through because it's only an inch or two deep but visitors might be more hesitant about. In the case of this explosion, the aftermath video shows that it was indeed very unusual and dangerous.

Years ago there was a hurricane that made it up the New England coast. I remember a story of a father and daughter in Acadia National Park who had wandered out onto some exposed rocks (with about 40 other people) to watch these huge waves crash just below them. Eventually one wave was larger than the others and it knocked all 40 people onto their asses, while dragging the father and daughter (who were right on the edge) into the ocean. The father drowned.

All I could think was how colossally dumb you had to be to assume the waves just going to sit there crashing below you. It was clearly a huge storm surge. And then how horribly tragic and preventable the outcome was. Some people, man.

EDIT: Misremembered it. Three people were swept out, and it was the 7-year-old daughter who died. God damn, how awful.

https://www.bangordailynews.com/2009/08/23/news/three-swept-...

Here on the US West Coast so-called sneaker waves kill a handful of people every year, sometimes sweeping (and killing) entire families into the ocean who were strolling along a beach with unthreatening surf. I was oblivious to this until the 3rd or so incident that caught my attention, then on a hunch poked around with Google search enough to realize (after over 15 years living in the Bay Area) it's actually a regular occurrence. It happens on some stretches more than others, and its more likely in the winter, but it's not confined to "dangerous" beaches and can happen at any time. For some reason it hasn't captured the public's (or media's) attention to become a "thing"--a known hazard that people keep in mind. Every incident tends to be reported in isolation, notwithstanding any blurbs about recent incidents if they happened to occur close enough in time and locality.

It's natural to qualify and rate tragic events by degree of perceived "innocence". Families swept off quiet beaches to their doom without warning is about as innocently tragic as you can get. That said, some incidents are arguably less innocent then others, such as fishermen venturing onto narrower stretches of beach at low tide during winter, when Pacific surf is stronger and more varied. But even then usually it seems people aren't doing anything that onlookers would consider inviting tragedy, and quite often it happens on well trafficked beaches and during times of the year that people wouldn't consider risky.

Fortunately I grew up along the Gulf Coast so Pacific surf has always felt ominous to me. OTOH, I have a higher risk tolerance than many others, especially of younger generations, so maybe it's a wash for me.

I had one in Oregon with my then 8 or 9 year old step daughter. We were on rocks WELL above the wave line (like 6+ feet, dry rock leading the surf maybe 20 feet away). And (this is where I screwed up) we were about 50-100 yards out on this outcrop (so rapid scramble not possible).

Then, sneaker wave. I basically had her jump up "into my arms" so to speak, wrap arms around my neck, legs around my waist, while I situated myself as best I could, and grabbed onto rock with both hands. The water came up to my waist.

That was a genuinely terrifying experience.

It's not that. I was on a plane where a guy tried to break open the door to the outside mid flight and it takes a good 30-60 seconds for people to comprehend reality and make a decision. It's easy to judge from a screen but when an actual disaster hits, the brain does weird things

To be fair, you cannot really open a door of an airplane mid-flight (due to pressure difference), so passengers were in fact in much less danger than they perceived.

Yeah, the door opens in before it cams over to opening out (or can be thrown out onto the wing in some cases), so it’s being held in place by about 3000 kilos of force at typical cabin pressures. Good luck trying to pull it open.

Now, near the ground before the aircraft is pressurised, it could be dangerous mostly because it could pose a risk to the aircraft structure or systems if it tears off and impacts the aircraft in flight. Other than that, a jetliner can fly perfectly well with a door open at low altitude. (Not sure about special large cargo doors though)

This is true when the aircraft is at altitude, but there have been cases of passengers opening doors in flight at low altitude, where there is little or no pressure differential:

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/passenger-arrested-after-plan...

It typically takes much longer for people to process and make 'intelligent' decisions on novel information than we realize.

Again, typically the brain will skip these checks and go into fight or flight mode where you punch or run without knowing what you are doing. I'd like to think we break a lot of this response in the modern world by not being around a lot of spontaneous dangerous stuff, which leaves us gawking at times.

Having been there recently, it definitely would not have been immediately clear to me that there would be a problem. The boardwalk is next to the pools but clearly not in structural danger. The videos show the eruption being basically vertical, so if you aren't directly next to it, it isn't obvious that the ejecta will spread out a little, and that doesn't happen for a couple of seconds. So if you aren't right next to it, it initially doesn't seem unsafe.

Also, you are likely to visit this area before Old Faithful, so the most you will have seen is some steam going up. My visit was the first time I'd ever seen a geyser, so I would have had no idea what to expect, and presumably the boardwalk is in a safe location. If it were unsafe, they wouldn't have built the boardwalk there, right? (And it doesn't seem like anyone was injured, so...)

If you run in a panic when normal geyser erupts, it would be embarrassing, right? Now, what is a normal geyser eruption and what is not normal? If you never tried to research this, you do not know.

So we come to an uncertainty. This seems pretty big, and probably is not normal, isn't it? Or it is? So you are not sure, should you shake off social norms of behavior (being calm, not shouting, acting like a grown adult) and to switch to a survival behavior (running away, shouting commands "run" to others, dragging people with you by their limbs, or doing whatever you think is the adequate behavior for such a situation).

Looking at the video carefully, people in a few seconds come to a conclusion that this is dangerous and start moving away, but they didn't get away from norms of everyday behavior. These two different priorities (to act normal or go to the survival mode) are still there, and they are still fighting in minds of people for a dominance.

Their response was "gently jog while constantly checking over your shoulder", because they decided it is dangerous and you need at least jog away, but they are feel that they may be underestimating (or overestimating) the danger, and they keep themself aware of the events to be able to change their behavior accordingly to them.

The very situation prompts for rapid change from a normal mode of existence to a survival mode, and there is no clear unambiguous signal that it is the case. The geyser erupts? Didn't we come here to watch geysers? Wouldn't it be embarrassing to run from the geyser? There are a lot of questions, and System 2 is a slow one. People are educated to keep System 1 in a check and to think things through. They are educated to know some dangerous situations and they can react to them immediately, but this is something unusual, they are not trained for it, and their minds become overwhelmed by a massive visual stimulus and by all the thoughts and ideas that may be relevant, but only System 2 could decide and to prioritize them properly.

When I was watching the video I instantly saw that it is dangerous, but I was prompted about it by the article, so I was ready to see something impressive AND dangerous. Therefore I'm not sure would I be better in that situation if I was watching it in real life without any prompting.

> they have lived such safe and sheltered lives that they cannot identify real danger.

I wrote about it above, but I want to stress it out:

1. we are conditioned to think before acting,

2. most of us have no experience with geysers and we cannot access the hazard level of a geyser at the first glance, and we know that we can't, so... goto 1.

There is also the imperative to get the video. Which for once was well done.

It's not necessarily psychology, it could be an involuntary stress response called freezing behaviour. It's where you stop, become hyper alert and observant of your surroundings to make a conscious decision about how to act. It's basically the conscious alternative to fight or flight.

I'm talking about the people in the video who saw what happened, then very casually and slowly turned and strolled away.

Who? Everyone in the video is running by 6 seconds in, and it reasonably takes 2-3 seconds to be clear that this isn't just a normal geyser eruption.

Some of the runners are shambling or in a very light jog, but that looks like it's down to form or fitness rather than being blasé. I don't see anyone "strolling".

The woman in the white shirt, tan shorts only started running because the people behind her started running. She was strolling away from the explosion. Same with green shorts in the foreground. We don't actually see him run, just walking away.

These people have no sense of urgency around danger, or they cannot recognize danger.

> It's like they think that appearing overly concerned about something potentially dangerous is more embarrassing than being killed by something actually dangerous.

This is a real psychological phenomenon. Most people don't want to be the first person to yell "fire!", or to appear to take a situation more seriously than it warrants, because they might be wrong and they'd stand out as being wrong and feel embarrassed. That feeling can "stick" shockingly long after you'd think the situation was obvious.

We have not socially normalized and trained the concept that it's better for people to occasionally be understandably wrong than to delay reacting to problems. The right reaction to quick reactions that turn out to be incorrect should be "Thanks for calling attention to what might have been a problem!", not an array of signals that all convey "what a weirdo".

It is a combination of those factors along with what I call TV-Brain, a subconscious assumption that it’s not real, it’s just like when I see it in the rectangle.

Remember, most people in the western and especially American world, simply do not experience real world risks and dangers, everything is so sanitized and cleaned and protected and safe, that they simply do not connect reality with their own demise or even a risk to it. On a related note, it is alway why I believe there are so many and increasing numbers of injurious contacts with bisons, moose, elk, bears, etc in Yellowstone, because they think they’re cuddly animals that they saw in wildlife documentaries and know from cartoons and tv stories of the child that is friends with the talking bear, etc. most people are simply so detached from reality that they simply have no reference for what they are doing that is extremely dangerous to their continued state of being alive.

The first time I visited the Everglades there was a family that had been at Disney for some time and the kids would not believe the many enourmous alligators laying around were real.

On the other hand, my two year old (who had been hitting kids in preschool and getting a lot of "don't hit" messaging, turned and queried, of an alligator on the boardwalk about ten or twenty feet in front of us "No hit the Alligator?"

While my heart and heart rate spiked, I swiftly grabbed him up and agreed, "yes, no hit the alligator!"

The other side of that is "everything is very survivable on TV". Like you see constant explosions and people just getting knocked over, dusting themselves off, and keep going.

Real life, a lot less so.

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