5 ms·

Perception: there's a 75% chance my kid will be kidnapped by a pedophile. Reality: there's a 0.01% chance of the pedophile kidnap, but a 75% chance of drowning

by drauh 10y ago

Perception: there's a 75% chance my kid will be kidnapped by a pedophile. Reality: there's a 0.01% chance of the pedophile kidnap, but a 75% chance of drowning in the bathtub. Numbers are made up. Perception is not reality. Another example: Trayvon Martin was a dark-skinned young male wearing a hoodie. Perception: he is a criminal casing the houses in order to commit a future crime. Reality: he was a kid walking home to his house. Other examples: * Perception of the likelihood of terrorist attack, vs likelihood of dying in a fatal traffic crash. * Perception that vaccinations cause autism, vs reality that vaccinations prevent fatal disease.

sssilver 10y ago
The question is, would the factual probability go up if the perceived probability goes down? ;)
- drauh 10y ago
  Like all questions, the answer is "depends". :) E.g. number of kids falling and breaking their arm will be larger, but the population is larger and medical care is better, now. So, overall, I think the risks are actually lower than when I was a kid running around unsupervised. I don't know about the number of pedophile predators per capita, but I imagine that may be a roughly fixed proportion of the population. Kids now also have cellphones, so that's a lifeline kids never had in the past. So, I'd imagine that percentage would not really rise, either.
- milesvp 10y ago
  I would argue it'd be negligible. We live in a world fueled by fear, primarily because it's now so easy to hear about the edge cases. I used to blame newspapers for this, but it's gotten so much worse with social media. Now even the most obscure topic that would have not warranted the cost of ink is being broadcast to people, made all the more persuasive because of the anecdotal nature of the medium.
- yaur 10y ago
  what makes you think they would go up? I was a latch-key kid growing up and by the time real risks of adolescence like sex, drugs, and driving came up I already had years of experience managing risk. OTOH, when I look at how my ex has raised our kids I'm terrified that when they become independent they are going to get themselves into trouble and not have the experience to stay calm and get themselves out of it.
mrxd 10y ago
OK, but what if a parent believes that there's a 75% chance of kidnapping (reality: 0.01%), but they leave their child unattended? Arguably they haven't done anything wrong because their child was not exposed to any risk in reality. To put it differently, what if I point an unloaded gun at someone an pull the trigger? No harm is done, but if I believed the gun was loaded, the moral calculus would change. The reality that no one was harmed or even in danger is not necessarily decisive. What I believe to be true at that moment is the difference between a prank and attempted murder.
- hga 10y ago
  The first two rules of gun safety is that there is no such thing as an unloaded gun (a rule of attitude, admittedly), and that you never let the muzzle of a gun cover something you're not willing to destroy. Rule 3 is to not to put your finger on the trigger until you're on the target, which is not violated here, 4 is to be sure of your target and what's behind it, you might not be doing the latter since you're so sure it's unloaded. From the viewpoint of US law, you have almost certainly committed a serious crime, unless the other party is playing along, and also believes the gun is unloaded (and there has been at least one recent tragic training fatality where the gun indeed turned out to be loaded).
SilasX 10y ago
I'm sorry, but I think this is making the same errors in the opposite direction. 1) Yes, child abduction/predation is unlikely ... because we've adopted a huge number of countermeasures that close of this vector. That doesn't (by itself) mean you can just stop doing those measures and act like the risk is still low. 2) The risk of death by bathtub is not 75%. 3) Terrorists ramp up efforts against any vector they've found to be weak. While they currently account for a very small percentage of deaths, that doesn't mean we should have just shrugged our shoulders and done nothing, even basic measures like locked cockpit doors and ending the recommendation of passenger compliance. 4) Trayvon Martin was acting suspiciously and similarly to burglars -- peering into houses around the time there had been other burglaries and reports of similar behavior [1]. OBVIOUSLY he didn't deserve what happened (let's count how many people miss this clause!), but we don't know, as you're implying, that Martin was somehow merely walking home and not casing houses during a spate of robberies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin#Background_of_the_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin#Bac...
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Yes, child abduction/predation is unlikely ... because we've adopted a huge number of countermeasures that close of this vector. Actually, most of the social "countermeasures" were adopted after high-profile single incidents in the 1990s (perhaps largely because the larger 1960s-1980s crime wave that had been the pretext for expanding government powers in the law enforcement arena previously was ending, and a new pretext was needed) and later, when the overall rate of incidents had been dropping for decades (since, IIRC, the 1950s or 1960s), but media attention to them -- and hence public perception of the prevalence of incidents -- had, at the same time, been increasing. AFAIK, there is little-to-no evidence that any of the "countermeasures" have had any significant effect on the prevalence of child abduction/predation.
  - SilasX 10y ago
    The problem in claiming "the evidence says..." in cases like this is that the body of potential perpetrators is intelligent and adaptive. Say someone cracks a major bank account by guessing "password" as the password. The bank changes the password. I claim that the weak password was a security risk, and changing it was the right response. Someone comes a long and gives me a data-intense lecture about "well, electronic bank theft was already declining, and it accounts for only a tiny fraction of financial losses, so changing the password was a waste of time, and was in the context of the IT department using a bunch of pretexts to order people around". How would you refute that, given all the evidence on their side?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

by drauh 10y ago

sssilver 10y ago

The question is, would the factual probability go up if the perceived probability goes down? ;)

drauh 10y ago
Like all questions, the answer is "depends". :) E.g. number of kids falling and breaking their arm will be larger, but the population is larger and medical care is better, now. So, overall, I think the risks are actually lower than when I was a kid running around unsupervised. I don't know about the number of pedophile predators per capita, but I imagine that may be a roughly fixed proportion of the population. Kids now also have cellphones, so that's a lifeline kids never had in the past. So, I'd imagine that percentage would not really rise, either.
milesvp 10y ago
I would argue it'd be negligible. We live in a world fueled by fear, primarily because it's now so easy to hear about the edge cases. I used to blame newspapers for this, but it's gotten so much worse with social media. Now even the most obscure topic that would have not warranted the cost of ink is being broadcast to people, made all the more persuasive because of the anecdotal nature of the medium.
yaur 10y ago
what makes you think they would go up? I was a latch-key kid growing up and by the time real risks of adolescence like sex, drugs, and driving came up I already had years of experience managing risk. OTOH, when I look at how my ex has raised our kids I'm terrified that when they become independent they are going to get themselves into trouble and not have the experience to stay calm and get themselves out of it.

mrxd 10y ago

OK, but what if a parent believes that there's a 75% chance of kidnapping (reality: 0.01%), but they leave their child unattended? Arguably they haven't done anything wrong because their child was not exposed to any risk in reality. To put it differently, what if I point an unloaded gun at someone an pull the trigger? No harm is done, but if I believed the gun was loaded, the moral calculus would change. The reality that no one was harmed or even in danger is not necessarily decisive. What I believe to be true at that moment is the difference between a prank and attempted murder.

hga 10y ago
The first two rules of gun safety is that there is no such thing as an unloaded gun (a rule of attitude, admittedly), and that you never let the muzzle of a gun cover something you're not willing to destroy. Rule 3 is to not to put your finger on the trigger until you're on the target, which is not violated here, 4 is to be sure of your target and what's behind it, you might not be doing the latter since you're so sure it's unloaded. From the viewpoint of US law, you have almost certainly committed a serious crime, unless the other party is playing along, and also believes the gun is unloaded (and there has been at least one recent tragic training fatality where the gun indeed turned out to be loaded).

SilasX 10y ago

I'm sorry, but I think this is making the same errors in the opposite direction. 1) Yes, child abduction/predation is unlikely ... because we've adopted a huge number of countermeasures that close of this vector. That doesn't (by itself) mean you can just stop doing those measures and act like the risk is still low. 2) The risk of death by bathtub is not 75%. 3) Terrorists ramp up efforts against any vector they've found to be weak. While they currently account for a very small percentage of deaths, that doesn't mean we should have just shrugged our shoulders and done nothing, even basic measures like locked cockpit doors and ending the recommendation of passenger compliance. 4) Trayvon Martin was acting suspiciously and similarly to burglars -- peering into houses around the time there had been other burglaries and reports of similar behavior [1]. OBVIOUSLY he didn't deserve what happened (let's count how many people miss this clause!), but we don't know, as you're implying, that Martin was somehow merely walking home and not casing houses during a spate of robberies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin#Background_of_the_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin#Bac...

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Yes, child abduction/predation is unlikely ... because we've adopted a huge number of countermeasures that close of this vector. Actually, most of the social "countermeasures" were adopted after high-profile single incidents in the 1990s (perhaps largely because the larger 1960s-1980s crime wave that had been the pretext for expanding government powers in the law enforcement arena previously was ending, and a new pretext was needed) and later, when the overall rate of incidents had been dropping for decades (since, IIRC, the 1950s or 1960s), but media attention to them -- and hence public perception of the prevalence of incidents -- had, at the same time, been increasing. AFAIK, there is little-to-no evidence that any of the "countermeasures" have had any significant effect on the prevalence of child abduction/predation.
- SilasX 10y ago
  The problem in claiming "the evidence says..." in cases like this is that the body of potential perpetrators is intelligent and adaptive. Say someone cracks a major bank account by guessing "password" as the password. The bank changes the password. I claim that the weak password was a security risk, and changing it was the right response. Someone comes a long and gives me a data-intense lecture about "well, electronic bank theft was already declining, and it accounts for only a tiny fraction of financial losses, so changing the password was a waste of time, and was in the context of the IT department using a bunch of pretexts to order people around". How would you refute that, given all the evidence on their side?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]