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The reality is different though. There is nothing in this world quite so soul crushingly painful as having your child die while doing something that the parent

The reality is different though. There is nothing in this world quite so soul crushingly painful as having your child die while doing something that the parent and perhaps people in general, consider to be 'safe.' For me, it took some time to fall madly and deeply in love with my spouse, and to my surprise I developed that attachment instantly to my children. That same sort of passion that you would do anything to keep them safe, to help them grow up to be the people you want them to be. When a child dies doing something that "should" have been ok, it creates a searing, wrenching, soul destroying since of loss and guilt and anger and pain. No waiver, no explanation of statistics, no explanation of preventative measures, nothing can salve that wound. And so parents, even ones of limited means, have been known to invest everything they have, time, money, energy, into making someone pay in the hopes it will make the grieving parent feel slightly less pain. It doesn't make for less pain of course, only time and distance can mute the pain, but that can't be explained either because the desire to do something is irrationally over powering.

redff0000 8y ago
Your child could have slipped when getting off a train and permanently injured themselves, or in any other number of ways. Low probability high severity events trigger a cognitive bias that makes people attempt to make things '100% safe'. There are two problems with that. 1: nothing can ever be made 100% safe so those low probability high impact events still happen from time to time. 2: making things safe hits a steep diminishing returns curve after some point, and the opportunity cost of creating said safety level starts to outweigh the benefits of not creating it.
- dragontamer 8y ago
  > Your child could have slipped when getting off a train and permanently injured themselves, or in any other number of ways. But thanks to our laws, we don't have to worry about playground sets. Low probability / high impact events are a fact of life and are a valid cause for regulations. Worker safety laws in the early 1900s were such that people more regularly lost fingers or even limbs in heavy machinery. It still happens today, but safety programs and safety regulations have made such events far less likely.
  - Joof 8y ago
    But it also means that we're neutering some really important mechanisms of human development. It seems very costly to squeeze out those teensy little bits of extra safety.
  - loup-vaillant 8y ago
    There's a difference between playgrounds and work environments: as far as I am aware, workers aren't any more miserable in safer work environment. Children in "safer" playgrounds, are. The value of life is not infinite. It is perfectly reasonable to sacrifice a few to improve the conditions of the many. Funnier, riskier playgrounds do exactly that. That said, the article stated the "safer" playground engendered more injuries, mostly because bored kids were taking inconsiderate risks. The more dangerous playgrounds actually looked more dangerous, and the kids in them ended up taking less serious risks. There's a good chance that more "dangerous" playgrounds are a one sided win. They could be better than the "safe" ones even if you disagree with my first two paragraphs.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      > The value of life is not infinite. The whole western civilization is standing on the assumption that it is.
      - maxerickson 8y ago
        This is observably not the case, in all sorts of situations. Violence, vehicles, medicine, pollution, etc, etc, etc. Of course we've gotten to a place where we spend lots of dollars preventing 1 statistical death, but not even tens of millions most of the time.
        TomMarius 8y ago
        I don't see how it's observably not the case when my mother is working in a hospital where people are kept alive for decades just for the slight chance that medicine might evolve enough to cure them or they just wake up one day; when they are spending extraordinary amounts of money and time of dozens of researchers and doctors on experimental treatments, etc. I don't understand how vehicles or pollution change anything. I never said there are no bad actors, there are in every civilization, and there are compromises you need to make but that doesn't mean you would not do anything to save someone. Awareness about pollution and its effects is just starting to exist. We didn't think it's bad a few decades ago.
- loup-vaillant 8y ago
  To put it bluntly, the increased happiness of millions of children is worth a couple children's health, or even lives. That's a tough sell, but that sounds reasonable (well, I can talk, I don't have children). This is basically the same reasoning Yudkowsky presented with his dust speck vs torture argument argument: a sufficiently widespread benefit, however small, will outweigh a sufficiently improbable horrible event.
  - souprock 8y ago
    Well, I have a dozen kids, and I agree. Of course, part of the reason for so many kids is to minimize the percentage of my family that would be lost if one did die. My wife's uncle had the postcard family, one boy and one girl in a cute little city house with a picket fence. The daughter died, and the father completely fell apart. He lost 100% of his daughters. It is too late for him to create a replacement. Most families today are tiny. I think this has affected our perception of loss. The risk of 100% loss has become so great that people can't allow the risk of traditional play.
    - justinator 8y ago
      Of course, part of the reason for so many kids is to minimize the percentage of my family that would be lost if one did die. I think I just read the most insane sentence I'll read all year.
      - bad_good_guy 8y ago
        How is it insane when this is the historic reason behind large families?
        justinator 8y ago
        I'm not touching, "but it's historical!", because that's a problematic idea in of itself. Lots of things are, "historical", but don't make sense in the modern world. Say you had two kids, and you lost both. One way to think of it is your lost all the children you ever had. Fine. Say you had a DOZEN kids, and you lost six of them. Same thinking as above, you've lost half the children you ever had. Ok, but you still lost six kids!. Six kids have to go through life knowing they have lost six siblings. Having that somehow be better is pure insanity. Or at the very least the utmost self-centered thing I've ever heard of - you're hoping that the loss off 6 out of 12 kids is somewhat less of an impact on yourself when compared to losing two kids? These are human beings, not cupcakes you're bringing to a picnic. If you brought two cupcakes, and hoping to have one yourself, but both were eaten before you could have your own cupcake, that stinks - but you're just out of a cupcake. Then yeah: bring a dozen cupcakes to share, and have yourself your own cupcake.
- craftinator 8y ago
  Another thought that adds to this viewpoint: slightly more dangerous playgrounds teach kids how to play more safely, and they grow into adults who also know how to play responsibly. Kids who never get a chance to develop good balance (with the immediate feedback of bruises and scrapes) will not be as good at avoiding falls and other physical dangers as those who have good balance. They also won't know their own physical limits, and won't know which activities are too dangerous.
  - lutorm 8y ago
    That's exactly the point. It's not that playgrounds should be more dangerous for the heck of it, or just because kids think it's more fun that way. It's because learning to deal with danger is an essential life skill and we are now depriving our kids of it.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    The discussion is about quadriplegia, not scrapes and bruises.
    - craftinator 8y ago
      The discussion began on the topic of playgrounds and safety. All people have the risk of injury and death at all times. Some types of injury are not severe and have few lasting consequences, others are of the converse type. Paralysis is incredibly uncommon when compared to scrapes and bruises, which is why I brought up that subtopic.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
wizardforhire 8y ago
“The reality is different though. There is nothing in this world quite so soul crushingly painful as having your child die while doing something that the parent and perhaps people in general, consider to be 'safe.'” Actually there is and by several orders of magnitude more painful, and it is this: Watching these same parents scream safety, proclaiming the presciouness of their children while simultaneously condemning entire populations to death by their implicit support of wars, racism, and the governments responsible. Granted it may not be as immediately appearant of a reaction than say watching your child suffer, but while experiencing the death or suffering of a child may heal with time, the systemic effects of these masses of “concerned parents” lingers on with us forever.
- nemo1618 8y ago
  Ridiculous. The two are not even remotely comparable.
  - wizardforhire 8y ago
    It’s not ridiculous and I don’t want to get into a flame war over this, because clearly my statement is contentious! Rather I’d like to have the discussion and I feel this is a relevant/appropriate albeit esoteric forum. Yet I stand by my statement. To elaborate: yes the suffering by a parent when witness to the suffering or death of their child is painful beyond words. With few if any experiences comparable. However, the combined suffering of literally millions upon millions of people subjugated to the atrocities of war made possible by the implicit support and consent by literally the same set of said parents is beyond the ability to fully comprehend or experience as an individual. However despite our inadequacies as individuals at being able to emote in the face of such atrocities does nothing to diminish the pain felt by the victims whose combined suffering is orders of magnitude greater than that of an individual parent. Just because we lack the ability to comprend the suffering on such a scale does nothing to alleviate it. If anything it only exacerbates and obfuscates the phenomenon. I believe a term for it is The Tragedy of the Commons.
    - nemo1618 8y ago

redff0000 8y ago

Your child could have slipped when getting off a train and permanently injured themselves, or in any other number of ways. Low probability high severity events trigger a cognitive bias that makes people attempt to make things '100% safe'. There are two problems with that. 1: nothing can ever be made 100% safe so those low probability high impact events still happen from time to time. 2: making things safe hits a steep diminishing returns curve after some point, and the opportunity cost of creating said safety level starts to outweigh the benefits of not creating it.

dragontamer 8y ago
> Your child could have slipped when getting off a train and permanently injured themselves, or in any other number of ways. But thanks to our laws, we don't have to worry about playground sets. Low probability / high impact events are a fact of life and are a valid cause for regulations. Worker safety laws in the early 1900s were such that people more regularly lost fingers or even limbs in heavy machinery. It still happens today, but safety programs and safety regulations have made such events far less likely.
- Joof 8y ago
  But it also means that we're neutering some really important mechanisms of human development. It seems very costly to squeeze out those teensy little bits of extra safety.
- loup-vaillant 8y ago
  There's a difference between playgrounds and work environments: as far as I am aware, workers aren't any more miserable in safer work environment. Children in "safer" playgrounds, are. The value of life is not infinite. It is perfectly reasonable to sacrifice a few to improve the conditions of the many. Funnier, riskier playgrounds do exactly that. That said, the article stated the "safer" playground engendered more injuries, mostly because bored kids were taking inconsiderate risks. The more dangerous playgrounds actually looked more dangerous, and the kids in them ended up taking less serious risks. There's a good chance that more "dangerous" playgrounds are a one sided win. They could be better than the "safe" ones even if you disagree with my first two paragraphs.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    > The value of life is not infinite. The whole western civilization is standing on the assumption that it is.
    - maxerickson 8y ago
      This is observably not the case, in all sorts of situations. Violence, vehicles, medicine, pollution, etc, etc, etc. Of course we've gotten to a place where we spend lots of dollars preventing 1 statistical death, but not even tens of millions most of the time.
      - TomMarius 8y ago
        I don't see how it's observably not the case when my mother is working in a hospital where people are kept alive for decades just for the slight chance that medicine might evolve enough to cure them or they just wake up one day; when they are spending extraordinary amounts of money and time of dozens of researchers and doctors on experimental treatments, etc. I don't understand how vehicles or pollution change anything. I never said there are no bad actors, there are in every civilization, and there are compromises you need to make but that doesn't mean you would not do anything to save someone. Awareness about pollution and its effects is just starting to exist. We didn't think it's bad a few decades ago.
loup-vaillant 8y ago
To put it bluntly, the increased happiness of millions of children is worth a couple children's health, or even lives. That's a tough sell, but that sounds reasonable (well, I can talk, I don't have children). This is basically the same reasoning Yudkowsky presented with his dust speck vs torture argument argument: a sufficiently widespread benefit, however small, will outweigh a sufficiently improbable horrible event.
- souprock 8y ago
  Well, I have a dozen kids, and I agree. Of course, part of the reason for so many kids is to minimize the percentage of my family that would be lost if one did die. My wife's uncle had the postcard family, one boy and one girl in a cute little city house with a picket fence. The daughter died, and the father completely fell apart. He lost 100% of his daughters. It is too late for him to create a replacement. Most families today are tiny. I think this has affected our perception of loss. The risk of 100% loss has become so great that people can't allow the risk of traditional play.
  - justinator 8y ago
    Of course, part of the reason for so many kids is to minimize the percentage of my family that would be lost if one did die. I think I just read the most insane sentence I'll read all year.
    - bad_good_guy 8y ago
      How is it insane when this is the historic reason behind large families?
      - justinator 8y ago
        I'm not touching, "but it's historical!", because that's a problematic idea in of itself. Lots of things are, "historical", but don't make sense in the modern world. Say you had two kids, and you lost both. One way to think of it is your lost all the children you ever had. Fine. Say you had a DOZEN kids, and you lost six of them. Same thinking as above, you've lost half the children you ever had. Ok, but you still lost six kids!. Six kids have to go through life knowing they have lost six siblings. Having that somehow be better is pure insanity. Or at the very least the utmost self-centered thing I've ever heard of - you're hoping that the loss off 6 out of 12 kids is somewhat less of an impact on yourself when compared to losing two kids? These are human beings, not cupcakes you're bringing to a picnic. If you brought two cupcakes, and hoping to have one yourself, but both were eaten before you could have your own cupcake, that stinks - but you're just out of a cupcake. Then yeah: bring a dozen cupcakes to share, and have yourself your own cupcake.
craftinator 8y ago
Another thought that adds to this viewpoint: slightly more dangerous playgrounds teach kids how to play more safely, and they grow into adults who also know how to play responsibly. Kids who never get a chance to develop good balance (with the immediate feedback of bruises and scrapes) will not be as good at avoiding falls and other physical dangers as those who have good balance. They also won't know their own physical limits, and won't know which activities are too dangerous.
- lutorm 8y ago
  That's exactly the point. It's not that playgrounds should be more dangerous for the heck of it, or just because kids think it's more fun that way. It's because learning to deal with danger is an essential life skill and we are now depriving our kids of it.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  The discussion is about quadriplegia, not scrapes and bruises.
  - craftinator 8y ago
    The discussion began on the topic of playgrounds and safety. All people have the risk of injury and death at all times. Some types of injury are not severe and have few lasting consequences, others are of the converse type. Paralysis is incredibly uncommon when compared to scrapes and bruises, which is why I brought up that subtopic.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

wizardforhire 8y ago

“The reality is different though. There is nothing in this world quite so soul crushingly painful as having your child die while doing something that the parent and perhaps people in general, consider to be 'safe.'” Actually there is and by several orders of magnitude more painful, and it is this: Watching these same parents scream safety, proclaiming the presciouness of their children while simultaneously condemning entire populations to death by their implicit support of wars, racism, and the governments responsible. Granted it may not be as immediately appearant of a reaction than say watching your child suffer, but while experiencing the death or suffering of a child may heal with time, the systemic effects of these masses of “concerned parents” lingers on with us forever.

nemo1618 8y ago
Ridiculous. The two are not even remotely comparable.
- wizardforhire 8y ago
  It’s not ridiculous and I don’t want to get into a flame war over this, because clearly my statement is contentious! Rather I’d like to have the discussion and I feel this is a relevant/appropriate albeit esoteric forum. Yet I stand by my statement. To elaborate: yes the suffering by a parent when witness to the suffering or death of their child is painful beyond words. With few if any experiences comparable. However, the combined suffering of literally millions upon millions of people subjugated to the atrocities of war made possible by the implicit support and consent by literally the same set of said parents is beyond the ability to fully comprehend or experience as an individual. However despite our inadequacies as individuals at being able to emote in the face of such atrocities does nothing to diminish the pain felt by the victims whose combined suffering is orders of magnitude greater than that of an individual parent. Just because we lack the ability to comprend the suffering on such a scale does nothing to alleviate it. If anything it only exacerbates and obfuscates the phenomenon. I believe a term for it is The Tragedy of the Commons.
  - nemo1618 8y ago