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"Grown-ups have taken all the fun out of being a kid just to save a few thousand lives." https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2017/04/06/george-carlin-you-are-all-dis

"Grown-ups have taken all the fun out of being a kid just to save a few thousand lives." https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2017/04/06/george-carlin-you-are-all-diseased-transcript/ https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2017/04/06/george-carlin-you-a...

sp332 7y ago
This feels like a really unconvincing argument. A few thousand is a lot of lives. A few lives would feel like a few too many.
- stickfigure 7y ago
  A few thousand per month would be a problem, sure. But how about a few thousand per decade? There are four million babies born in the US every year (130 million worldwide).
- tomatotomato37 7y ago
  This may sound callous, but in a US population of 300 million, a few thousand of any lives is on the order of 0.001%. One of the realities of living in a world of billions of people is that risks of incredibly low precentage still end up happening due to just the sheer magnitude of people To put it another way, lightning strikes are one of the rarest forms of death in the country, and yet still kill more people in the US than the size of my family's big holiday dinner
- base698 7y ago
  What's the risk threshold you'd be comfortable with? 1 in a 1,000? 6 in 10,000? 13 in 10,000? 1 in 100,000?
lb1lf 7y ago
There is more than a grain of truth to this; a couple of years ago it's was brought to my attention that since the 1950s, children being killed in traffic in Norway was down by a couple of orders of magnitude, even though traffic had increased by a couple of orders of magnitude in the same time. Drowning? Also down by a similar ratio. Generic accidents? Same, same. Sure, there has never been as safe a time to be a kid as today. Big question is, does being wrapped in cotton throughout your formative years make for a safer life as an adult, or did you miss some lessons in risk assessment which makes you more prone to getting it good and hard later in life?
- jimmaswell 7y ago
  To answer the last question, unless rates of adults dying by car accidents/drowning/etc went up the same amount it went down for kids, no. And it's still better to not die as a kid anyway.
eridius 7y ago
Tell that to the kids who died playing in unsafe conditions. One can certainly argue that we've gone too far in the direction of removing all risk of injury. But saving lives? Absolutely the right thing to do! One preventable death is one death too many. The goal here should be "controlled risk". Not no risk at all, but controlled risk in well-understood conditions to ensure that kids can still experiment and have fun without risking death or permanent injury. This article mentions kids having access to hammers and nails and planks to build stuff. That's controlled risk; they could hurt themselves, but they're not going to kill themselves (at least, not by accident). But you wouldn't give them a nail gun.
- castlecrasher2 7y ago
  >But saving lives? Absolutely the right thing to do! I'm suddenly reminded of the game SOMA and every other "the ends justify the means" AI story where unspeakable horrors come from mottos like "save all lives at all costs."
- tomatotomato37 7y ago
  >One preventable death is one too many The problem is right here, what is the society acceptable definition of preventable? Keeping all children in hermetic bubbles would prevent all child deaths due to disease, but weaken their immune system so much that the minute they come out they would get sick and die as an adult. In effect all these safety efforts are creating mental hermetic bubbles that fucks their future mental state when they finally achieve independence.
  - ausbah 7y ago
    >Keeping all children in hermetic bubbles To me that's kind of a facious slippery slope argument. Of course it isn't worth it to completely lock down a person's life in the name "safety" or "their own good", but when you can take measures that guarantee a greater degree of safety with only a thin, marginal reduction in freedom, "living", or whatever you wish to call it (if any reducation at all) - of course it is worth it. To me this would be something like restricting people's right to drive on public roads when we have a fully autonomious network of vehicles (however long that will take). Sure people are a bit more restricted in their freedom to man a vehicle, but on the other hand you could (and this is what I am wagering) completely eliminate the ~95% of vehicle accidents and deaths caused by humans.
anbop 7y ago
Tell that to those few thousand parents.

sp332 7y ago

This feels like a really unconvincing argument. A few thousand is a lot of lives. A few lives would feel like a few too many.

stickfigure 7y ago
A few thousand per month would be a problem, sure. But how about a few thousand per decade? There are four million babies born in the US every year (130 million worldwide).
tomatotomato37 7y ago
This may sound callous, but in a US population of 300 million, a few thousand of any lives is on the order of 0.001%. One of the realities of living in a world of billions of people is that risks of incredibly low precentage still end up happening due to just the sheer magnitude of people To put it another way, lightning strikes are one of the rarest forms of death in the country, and yet still kill more people in the US than the size of my family's big holiday dinner
base698 7y ago
What's the risk threshold you'd be comfortable with? 1 in a 1,000? 6 in 10,000? 13 in 10,000? 1 in 100,000?

lb1lf 7y ago

There is more than a grain of truth to this; a couple of years ago it's was brought to my attention that since the 1950s, children being killed in traffic in Norway was down by a couple of orders of magnitude, even though traffic had increased by a couple of orders of magnitude in the same time. Drowning? Also down by a similar ratio. Generic accidents? Same, same. Sure, there has never been as safe a time to be a kid as today. Big question is, does being wrapped in cotton throughout your formative years make for a safer life as an adult, or did you miss some lessons in risk assessment which makes you more prone to getting it good and hard later in life?

jimmaswell 7y ago
To answer the last question, unless rates of adults dying by car accidents/drowning/etc went up the same amount it went down for kids, no. And it's still better to not die as a kid anyway.

eridius 7y ago

Tell that to the kids who died playing in unsafe conditions. One can certainly argue that we've gone too far in the direction of removing all risk of injury. But saving lives? Absolutely the right thing to do! One preventable death is one death too many. The goal here should be "controlled risk". Not no risk at all, but controlled risk in well-understood conditions to ensure that kids can still experiment and have fun without risking death or permanent injury. This article mentions kids having access to hammers and nails and planks to build stuff. That's controlled risk; they could hurt themselves, but they're not going to kill themselves (at least, not by accident). But you wouldn't give them a nail gun.

castlecrasher2 7y ago
>But saving lives? Absolutely the right thing to do! I'm suddenly reminded of the game SOMA and every other "the ends justify the means" AI story where unspeakable horrors come from mottos like "save all lives at all costs."
tomatotomato37 7y ago
>One preventable death is one too many The problem is right here, what is the society acceptable definition of preventable? Keeping all children in hermetic bubbles would prevent all child deaths due to disease, but weaken their immune system so much that the minute they come out they would get sick and die as an adult. In effect all these safety efforts are creating mental hermetic bubbles that fucks their future mental state when they finally achieve independence.
- ausbah 7y ago
  >Keeping all children in hermetic bubbles To me that's kind of a facious slippery slope argument. Of course it isn't worth it to completely lock down a person's life in the name "safety" or "their own good", but when you can take measures that guarantee a greater degree of safety with only a thin, marginal reduction in freedom, "living", or whatever you wish to call it (if any reducation at all) - of course it is worth it. To me this would be something like restricting people's right to drive on public roads when we have a fully autonomious network of vehicles (however long that will take). Sure people are a bit more restricted in their freedom to man a vehicle, but on the other hand you could (and this is what I am wagering) completely eliminate the ~95% of vehicle accidents and deaths caused by humans.

anbop 7y ago

Tell that to those few thousand parents.