6 ms·

I'm sympathetic. But given the article is against "fact-free" parenting. I didn't find the data presented very compelling. Basically you'd need to know how com

by new299 9y ago

I'm sympathetic. But given the article is against "fact-free" parenting. I didn't find the data presented very compelling. Basically you'd need to know how common crime against children traveling unsupervised on buses in a similar scenario. The closest example presented is kids in New York riding the subway, so presenting stats on that would be useful. I'd also like more details on the Japanese example, it's honestly not uncommon to hear news reports of kids being abducted in Japan. I'd personally be interested in the stats, but as a comparison point it doesn't make sense unless you can normalize for the overall lower crime rate that Japan has. If anyone has good data against "Helicopter parenting", I'd be curious to see it.

dwaltrip 9y ago
From the post: > And the odds of your child being kidnapped by a stranger on the bus? Incredibly long. A 2003 study in Canada found just one case nationwide of a stranger abducting a child, in the entire two years prior. I personally found the article very compelling. This kind of mindless fear, in direct contradiction of clear evidence, makes my blood boil.
- oblio 9y ago
  Every "bet" consideration needs to include possible loss, not only the odds. Losing your child is for many people not that far off from losing their own life, so people tend to react in a very cautious way.
  - imcrs 9y ago
    Not when they decide to drive themselves and their kids on the freeway every workday.
    - oblio 9y ago
      The illusion of control is just as important :)
      - walterstucco 9y ago
        but much more dangerous
  - walterstucco 9y ago
    > Losing your child is for many people not that far off from losing their own life, Usually losing a kid is due untreatable diseases and bad parenting (like driving them to school without taking proper safety measures and suffer the consequences of an accident) There's no evidence that going to school alone is more dangerous than staying home with grandpa's guns
- new299 9y ago
  "A 2003 study in Canada found just one case nationwide of a stranger abducting a child, in the entire two years prior." Without knowing if, and how many children rode the bus alone, this information is not meaningful.
  - tempestn 9y ago
    Of course it is. One incident in two years, out of a population of tens of millions, is effectively zero. Regardless of how many kids ride the bus, if there were a significant number of predators out there waiting to abduct children, there are sufficient opportunities available that it would happen with some regularity. It's not for lack of unsupervised bus riders that it's such a rare occurrence.
    - Chris2048 9y ago
      The entire population of children do not all ride alone on a bus though. It's % of those who do that that are abducted is important.
      - AstralStorm 9y ago
        Typically not possible to estimate for either murders or abductions which ate already extremely rare nowadays in general. Are you suggesting chasing accuracy in a fraction of a fraction?
        Chris2048 9y ago
        The post I replied to said: > One incident in two years, out of a population of tens of millions I'm pointing out that overall population is not relevant. The "fraction of a fraction" is the ratio of children who ride the bus alone, and get abducted. It seems that is relevant information when trying to contextualize the danger in allowing a child to ride a bus alone.
    - new299 9y ago
      Isn't it possible that very few children ride the bus alone in Canada? Particularly given the fact that there seems to be governmental/social pressure against this? So the population of unsupervised children riding buses might be 10? or 100? or 1000000? we don't know. 1 in 10 would be high, though given the limited size of the dataset, possibly not very statistically relevant. It seems doubtful that this is a very useful dataset.
- colechristensen 9y ago
  It can be blamed fairly directly at the news selling your attention for advertisements. If they can frighten you they can get you to watch, and the attention of worrying parents has quite a bit of value. Capitalism doesn't work very well when combined with the task of serving the public with needed information.
- dagw 9y ago
  While I agree with the general assertion in the article, cherry picking statistics for just one, very rare, crime isn't compelling evidence. Why not present the stats for all relevant crimes?
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    So what kinds of crimes are you willing to look at? Murders and abductions are probably the worst and easiest to track. Robbery much harder and often unreported or reported as bullying.
    - dagw 9y ago
      Robbery much harder and often unreported or reported as bullying. Robbery/theft/assault etc. seems like the ones you'd actually care about. Murders and kidnappings of children by strangers are so rare that any data about them is essentially meaningless.
    - pamqzl 9y ago
      Honestly I'd be far more worried about my kid being hit by a car than being a victim of any crime. Or maybe they try something stupid (we all did stupid things as kids and I don't expect my kids to be smarter than I was) and wind up drowning in the river or falling off something.
      - dagw 9y ago
        Oh absolutely. but if we're talking about crimes, it's much more likely that my kid would get robbed on her way to school rather than kidnapped.
      - walterstucco 9y ago
        > Honestly I'd be far more worried about my kid being hit by a car But why? Is it common for them to be hit by cars? Is it safer for them to go to school with parents? And if someone hits you while you are trying to protect your kid, is it less traumatic? And if while you take them to school you hit someone else's kid, is it less traumatic? Is it common for kids to drown or fall and die while parents are not there? From what I see it is common for adults to drown while they're trying to save someone else (usually not kids, but other adults) If you start thinking about everything that _could_ happen, you wouldn't let your kids go out Kids spend a lot of time alone and still they manage to survive Why going to school should be any different?
bisRepetita 9y ago
I have no idea how anyone could abduct 5 kids at once in a public place. Those little monsters scream loud and run fast.
- kazagistar 9y ago
  They do that with their parents too.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  I would try a net.
  - bisRepetita 9y ago
    I bet 10 to 1 you end up in the net.
pmiller2 9y ago
Hearing reports of a thing on the news is actually a signal that such things are not common. That's why you don't see every little (or even big) traffic accident on the news. It's not special. It happens every day.
- CalRobert 9y ago
  Incidentally, the regularity of pedestrians being killed by drivers - to the extent that many folks (sorry, anecdata) blame the pedestrian more than the driver because walking is seen as the aberration, is my biggest fear about letting a kid run about. Funny enough people move their families to the suburbs for "safety', thereby increasing their miles driven and increasing the kid's risk of getting killed by a car.
- new299 9y ago
  There are so many potential biases involved, that I'm not sure I would use "hearing it on the news" as a statistical metic to drive my personal evaluation. Obviously, if you're using it to set policy, some kind of study would be valuable.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tomohawk 9y ago
The point is, this guy shouldn't have to prove that it is safe. Rather, the state should have to prove that he did something wrong, as defined by a law. If the state thinks that this is wrong, the state should provide evidence that it is wrong and get a law passed. The state in this case is acting like a terrorist organization. It has no law on its side, and is at least implicitly threatening to take away the kids.
- new299 9y ago
  This seems tangential to what I was trying to (perhaps unclearly) express. I personally would agree with author of the post. However, the author is saying "it's not dangerous to do this", as opposed to "it is a basic human right to do this". He is also asserting that the opposing view is not supported by the facts (it's "fact free"). That's all fine. But then the author presents statistics he's gathered, none of which really strongly support his case. And in fact, I would not be surprised if you could cherry pick statistics to support either case. It would be better to either: 1. Find better statistics. 2. Not present poor statistics, and then say "look here this supports my argument", when it doesn't. Or at least, apply caveats to the data...
  - tarboreus 9y ago
    Again, the burden of proof is (or should be) on the state here. And there are no stats showing that this is dangerous, because it isn't.
    - new299 9y ago
      You seem to be arguing with a point I'm not trying to make. But if you are suggesting that the decision should be fact based and present an argument with supporting statistics. Then those statistics should be relevant to your argument. The statistics presented in the article were not relevant. If it is not dangerous, it should be possible to show this with data... the data presented in the article is poor and doesn't support his case well.

by new299 9y ago

dwaltrip 9y ago

From the post: > And the odds of your child being kidnapped by a stranger on the bus? Incredibly long. A 2003 study in Canada found just one case nationwide of a stranger abducting a child, in the entire two years prior. I personally found the article very compelling. This kind of mindless fear, in direct contradiction of clear evidence, makes my blood boil.

oblio 9y ago
Every "bet" consideration needs to include possible loss, not only the odds. Losing your child is for many people not that far off from losing their own life, so people tend to react in a very cautious way.
- imcrs 9y ago
  Not when they decide to drive themselves and their kids on the freeway every workday.
  - oblio 9y ago
    The illusion of control is just as important :)
    - walterstucco 9y ago
      but much more dangerous
- walterstucco 9y ago
  > Losing your child is for many people not that far off from losing their own life, Usually losing a kid is due untreatable diseases and bad parenting (like driving them to school without taking proper safety measures and suffer the consequences of an accident) There's no evidence that going to school alone is more dangerous than staying home with grandpa's guns
new299 9y ago
"A 2003 study in Canada found just one case nationwide of a stranger abducting a child, in the entire two years prior." Without knowing if, and how many children rode the bus alone, this information is not meaningful.
- tempestn 9y ago
  Of course it is. One incident in two years, out of a population of tens of millions, is effectively zero. Regardless of how many kids ride the bus, if there were a significant number of predators out there waiting to abduct children, there are sufficient opportunities available that it would happen with some regularity. It's not for lack of unsupervised bus riders that it's such a rare occurrence.
  - Chris2048 9y ago
    The entire population of children do not all ride alone on a bus though. It's % of those who do that that are abducted is important.
    - AstralStorm 9y ago
      Typically not possible to estimate for either murders or abductions which ate already extremely rare nowadays in general. Are you suggesting chasing accuracy in a fraction of a fraction?
      - Chris2048 9y ago
        The post I replied to said: > One incident in two years, out of a population of tens of millions I'm pointing out that overall population is not relevant. The "fraction of a fraction" is the ratio of children who ride the bus alone, and get abducted. It seems that is relevant information when trying to contextualize the danger in allowing a child to ride a bus alone.
  - new299 9y ago
    Isn't it possible that very few children ride the bus alone in Canada? Particularly given the fact that there seems to be governmental/social pressure against this? So the population of unsupervised children riding buses might be 10? or 100? or 1000000? we don't know. 1 in 10 would be high, though given the limited size of the dataset, possibly not very statistically relevant. It seems doubtful that this is a very useful dataset.
colechristensen 9y ago
It can be blamed fairly directly at the news selling your attention for advertisements. If they can frighten you they can get you to watch, and the attention of worrying parents has quite a bit of value. Capitalism doesn't work very well when combined with the task of serving the public with needed information.
dagw 9y ago
While I agree with the general assertion in the article, cherry picking statistics for just one, very rare, crime isn't compelling evidence. Why not present the stats for all relevant crimes?
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  So what kinds of crimes are you willing to look at? Murders and abductions are probably the worst and easiest to track. Robbery much harder and often unreported or reported as bullying.
  - dagw 9y ago
    Robbery much harder and often unreported or reported as bullying. Robbery/theft/assault etc. seems like the ones you'd actually care about. Murders and kidnappings of children by strangers are so rare that any data about them is essentially meaningless.
  - pamqzl 9y ago
    Honestly I'd be far more worried about my kid being hit by a car than being a victim of any crime. Or maybe they try something stupid (we all did stupid things as kids and I don't expect my kids to be smarter than I was) and wind up drowning in the river or falling off something.
    - dagw 9y ago
      Oh absolutely. but if we're talking about crimes, it's much more likely that my kid would get robbed on her way to school rather than kidnapped.
    - walterstucco 9y ago
      > Honestly I'd be far more worried about my kid being hit by a car But why? Is it common for them to be hit by cars? Is it safer for them to go to school with parents? And if someone hits you while you are trying to protect your kid, is it less traumatic? And if while you take them to school you hit someone else's kid, is it less traumatic? Is it common for kids to drown or fall and die while parents are not there? From what I see it is common for adults to drown while they're trying to save someone else (usually not kids, but other adults) If you start thinking about everything that _could_ happen, you wouldn't let your kids go out Kids spend a lot of time alone and still they manage to survive Why going to school should be any different?

bisRepetita 9y ago

I have no idea how anyone could abduct 5 kids at once in a public place. Those little monsters scream loud and run fast.

kazagistar 9y ago
They do that with their parents too.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
I would try a net.
- bisRepetita 9y ago
  I bet 10 to 1 you end up in the net.

pmiller2 9y ago

Hearing reports of a thing on the news is actually a signal that such things are not common. That's why you don't see every little (or even big) traffic accident on the news. It's not special. It happens every day.

CalRobert 9y ago
Incidentally, the regularity of pedestrians being killed by drivers - to the extent that many folks (sorry, anecdata) blame the pedestrian more than the driver because walking is seen as the aberration, is my biggest fear about letting a kid run about. Funny enough people move their families to the suburbs for "safety', thereby increasing their miles driven and increasing the kid's risk of getting killed by a car.
new299 9y ago
There are so many potential biases involved, that I'm not sure I would use "hearing it on the news" as a statistical metic to drive my personal evaluation. Obviously, if you're using it to set policy, some kind of study would be valuable.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tomohawk 9y ago

The point is, this guy shouldn't have to prove that it is safe. Rather, the state should have to prove that he did something wrong, as defined by a law. If the state thinks that this is wrong, the state should provide evidence that it is wrong and get a law passed. The state in this case is acting like a terrorist organization. It has no law on its side, and is at least implicitly threatening to take away the kids.

new299 9y ago
This seems tangential to what I was trying to (perhaps unclearly) express. I personally would agree with author of the post. However, the author is saying "it's not dangerous to do this", as opposed to "it is a basic human right to do this". He is also asserting that the opposing view is not supported by the facts (it's "fact free"). That's all fine. But then the author presents statistics he's gathered, none of which really strongly support his case. And in fact, I would not be surprised if you could cherry pick statistics to support either case. It would be better to either: 1. Find better statistics. 2. Not present poor statistics, and then say "look here this supports my argument", when it doesn't. Or at least, apply caveats to the data...
- tarboreus 9y ago
  Again, the burden of proof is (or should be) on the state here. And there are no stats showing that this is dangerous, because it isn't.
  - new299 9y ago
    You seem to be arguing with a point I'm not trying to make. But if you are suggesting that the decision should be fact based and present an argument with supporting statistics. Then those statistics should be relevant to your argument. The statistics presented in the article were not relevant. If it is not dangerous, it should be possible to show this with data... the data presented in the article is poor and doesn't support his case well.