23 ms·

Imprisoned for Your Safety

• tdfx 5y ago
  This is one aspect of American culture that absolutely mystifies me. The need to "idiotproof" every potential angle of harm in society leads to a predictable outcome: a bunch of idiots that have never learned anything the hard way. It creates a feedback loop that creates a need for more stringent nannying by the government until personal agency is completely eroded.
  • squarefoot 5y ago
    Please someone think of the lawyers!
  • charcircuit 5y ago
    >a bunch of idiots that have never learned anything the hard way Why do people need to learn the hard way? Now that we have YouTube there's less of a need for so many people to repeat the same thing to learn something as opposed to watching a video on it.
    • 988747 5y ago
      When you are watching a video everything seems easy. When you try to repeat what was shown in the video yourself everything becomes impossibly hard. The learning experience is really not comparable.
    • nemexis 5y ago
      > Now that we have YouTube there's less of a need for so many people to repeat the same thing to learn something maybe you can watch a video about: having a girlfriend/boyfriend, going to the beach and surfing, having friends and going on adventure trips with them... all these things were done before, so why do you need to do them when you can just check YT out...? I hope you sense the absurdity of what you're suggesting.
      • charcircuit 5y ago
        >so why do you need to do them when you can just check YT out...? That's kind of different as I'm talking about their not being much of a difference watching a chemical in a video and watching it in real life in terms of gaining knowledge. I don't see anything wrong with watching videos about people exploring or going to the beach. You might even have more fun than doing those things yourself and you don't even need to leave the comfort of your house.
  • ketzo 5y ago
    Yeah, all those kids that haven't poisoned themselves are a real drain on our society. I just don't buy that warning labels somehow create a dumber populace. Are we saying that self-electrocution is a required ingredient for critical thinking?
    • spaetzleesser 5y ago
      I think warning labels produce a number populace and produce nothing of value. And that's by design. If you put lengthy labels on everything the effect is the same as no labels at all. Nobody reads them and you just use the item as best as you can figure out. In CA they put cancer warning stickers on almost everything. Either you stop buying anything or you ignore them.
      • californical 5y ago
        I agree about the warning labels being too… eager… but I was shopping in the past and was about to buy a bottle of olive oil, except that there was a big cancer warning on the shelf for that specific bottle. So I bought a different bottle of olive oil that didn’t have the cancer warning. So in that case it was quite effective
    • ColFrancis 5y ago
      Warning labels, perhaps not. But in Australia I cannot run Cat6 for "safety". I might electrocute someone with the 12V and must get a licensed professional to do the work for me. A label warning that high voltage is inside is fine, a required label is quite ok, a fine because you didn't put the label on (even though it wasn't explicitly required) is a little bit of a stretch, banning modification is clearly an overreach (in my book). There is a line somewhere, and drawing it too close to either end is harmful. So now we're arguing degrees, and not absolutes.
      • bombcar 5y ago
        The way this usually works in the USA is a “homeowner’s exemption” - you can run cat6 in your house all you want but you can’t charge others to do it for them without certification/licensing. Which can lead to all sorts of fun homeowner specials when you buy an older property.
  • bricemo 5y ago
    My personal pet theory for this has always been that the United States was founded by lawyers. Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton were all attorneys. Of course this doesn’t speak to the rise of lawsuits as an industry in the 70’s and 80’s. I’m not sure of the reasons for that, but as the author notes it had a huge upswing at that time.
    • fragmede 5y ago
      The rise of lawsuits is because that's how the system "works". For better or worse. The US doesn't have the same sort of oversight watchdog groups with actual power like in the EU, so lawsuits with threat of monetary damages is how coffee is no longer flesh-burning scaldingly hot.
      • nate_meurer 5y ago
        No, the famous hot-coffee lawsuit did not result in lower service temperatures. Coffee is still widely served at the same flesh-burning scaldingly hot temperatures: > "Since Liebeck, McDonald's has not reduced the service temperature of its coffee. McDonald's current policy is to serve coffee at 176–194 °F (80–90 °C),[37] relying on more sternly worded warnings on cups made of rigid foam to avoid future liability, though it continues to face lawsuits over hot coffee.[37][38] The Specialty Coffee Association of America supports improved packaging methods rather than lowering the temperature at which coffee is served. The association has successfully aided the defense of subsequent coffee burn cases.[38] Similarly, as of 2004, Starbucks sells coffee at 175–185 °F (79–85 °C), and the executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America reported that the standard serving temperature is 160–185 °F (71–85 °C)." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Rest...
        • fragmede 5y ago
          That's a shame. And also on appeal, the judgement was tamped down. What is the system working here is that the woman got her medical bills paid for, and in a country where medical bankruptcy is a routine thing, that's really important.
  • sneak 5y ago
    I personally theorize that many of these considerations are practical, as education quality and quantity have both dropped considerably in the USA over the last generation or so, and precipitously so over two or three generations. The median person has a lot less knowledge, education, and experience today than in the past, and I hope and believe that the current circumstance is a general response to that as opposed to simply a legal system run amok with assignment of liability.
    • pixl97 5y ago
      Have you instead tried thinking that instead of people getting dumber that life is getting more complicated and that we have little tolerance for injury? Jump back 50 years and the number of people with crippling injuries really skyrockets. Many more people had missing fingers, legs, or arms back then.
    • pc86 5y ago
      I can't speak to the quality but quantity has definitively not dropped[0]. More people are more educated now than ever before, and that's only increasing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Educational_Attainment_in_the_United_States_2009.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...
      • sneak 5y ago
        I'm talking about the number of things learned, not the number of hours spent under the broad category heading of "education". Showing that more people graduate high school or university without compensating for the reduced level of education those milestones represent is a somewhat meaningless graph, which predictably goes up and to the right.
        • lern_too_spel 5y ago
          The Flynn Effect is about how general intelligence is generally trending upward. In the good old days, people were significantly dumber than they are now. This holds up in all quantiles. The smartest kids today are much smarter than the smartest kids a few decades ago, and this is apparent in the difficulty level of academic competitions.
  • flyinghamster 5y ago
    What's even worse is that any time you idiotproof something, better idiots form spontaneously.
    • more_corn 5y ago
      Good ol us of a. Continuously building a better idiot.
      • dang 5y ago
        Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
  • ameister14 5y ago
    So it's not really idiot-proofing, it stems from this: You have two innocent people. One harms the other, unintentionally. Who pays for the damage? ex. I throw a rock, it hits your windshield. Total accident. Should I pay? ex. I manufacture an atv - it's really fun to ride, but it tends to flip over, killing the rider. I obviously don't intend for this to happen, but it does, several times. Should I pay for this? Should the government regulate it?
• sumthinprofound 5y ago
  The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Chemistry Set: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-rise-and-fall-and-rise-of-the-chemistry-set-70359831/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-rise-and-f... >> The Federal Hazardous Substances Labeling Act of 1960 required labels for toxic and dangerous substances, and chemistry set makers removed the alcohol lamps and acids from their kits. The Toy Safety Act of 1969 removed lead paint from toys but also took its toll on the sets. The creation of the Consumer Product Safety Commission in 1972 and the passing of the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1976 resulted in further limits on the contents of the kits. << the tyranny. /s
  • roenxi 5y ago
    What word do you think is appropriate when someone prohibits people from doing what they want in a way that doesn't threaten (or even inconvenience) anyone else? Also, it seems like it might be a struggle to raise great chemists when access to chemicals becomes restricted for young people. Hopefully we've discovered all of chemistry and there is nothing important left to find in that field, otherwise this might be doing net harm to the next generation.
    • sumthinprofound 5y ago
      I don't have a generalized rebuttal however in this specific instance they were literally selling poison to children.
      • roenxi 5y ago
        I mean, yeah? There isn't any contention over the facts here. Interesting chemicals are not safe to ingest. What word do you think covers the action of swooping in and making other people's personal decisions for them, on the sole basis that you would make different decisions? I probably don't agree with your spending decisions. What do you want to call if I were empowered to make better ones on your behalf? Tyranny is a good word for it.
        • 5y ago
• skulk 5y ago
  > This is a world in which we have lost sight of the fact that constraining ourselves with ridiculous laws to protect us from anything that might conceivable harm us relegates us to the role of toddlers who don't know enough not to touch something hot. Is there any evidence for this? Sure, it feels good to say "oh, everyone these days has gone soft unlike me who is hard" but how does this actually play out? "don't know enough not to touch something hot" is hyperbole, but what's the concrete version of it? I'm struggling to think of anything.
  • djbebs 5y ago
    He gave several examples, why don't you think any of them apply?
    • skulk 5y ago
      None of the examples are particularly convincing. I'm not seeing any evidence of our eventual slip into toddlerdom. > This is a world that feels compelled to pass laws requiring the use of seat belts and motorcycle helmets in the hope of protecting people who are too stupid to wear them otherwise. Does anyone really have a problem with mandating basic safety? Can you say this is actually causing harm without extrapolating and theorizing? > If your car runs out of gasoline and you manage to walk to a gas station, you cannot buy gasoline in anything other than an government approved container. The fact that you are stranded makes no difference. This one's valid, but I also don't see the practical problem here. Gas stations can just stock jerry cans as needed, it's not that big of a deal. Maybe this one can be done away with. > If someone falls off a ladder while painting your house, they can sue you and take your house. This is a matter of liability, a concept I'm sure we all can say is something we should keep around to avoid acting like toddlers. There are situations where they deserve to be compensated for their injury, and there are situations where they don't, and most court systems will attempt to distinguish the two. Now, if your court system sucks, it may not make a great decision but that's neither here nor there. > This is a world that no longer allows you to purchase hydrogen peroxide above a certain concentration for fear you will use it to make a bomb. Unless I'm missing something, this is also false. You can buy 50% hydrogen peroxide here without a license https://www.fishersci.ca/shop/products/hydrogen-peroxide-50-stabilized-certified-fisher-chemical/h341500 https://www.fishersci.ca/shop/products/hydrogen-peroxide-50-.... Is that high enough?
• kragen 5y ago
  https://marshallbrain.com/manna4 https://marshallbrain.com/manna4 8< ------- Burt wanted to go outside and take a walk. Weather permitting, we tried to walk every evening. We left the cafeteria and departed through the main door along with a stream of other people. The building we exited was another one of the terrafoam projects. Terrafoam was a super-low-cost building material, and all of the welfare dorms were made out of it. They took a clay-like mud, aerated it into a thick foam, formed it into large panels and fired it like a brick with a mobile furnace. It was cheap and it allowed them to erect large buildings quickly. The robots had put up the building next to ours in a week. The government had finally figured out that giving choices to people on welfare was not such a great idea, and it was also expensive. Instead of giving people a welfare check, they started putting welfare recipients directly into government housing and serving them meals in a cafeteria. If the government could drive the cost of that housing and food down, it minimized the amount of money they had to spend per welfare recipient. 8< ------- Ultimately, you would expect that there would be riots across America. But the people could not riot. The terrorist scares at the beginning of the century had caused a number of important changes. Eventually, there were video security cameras and microphones covering and recording nearly every square inch of public space in America. There were taps on all phone conversations and Internet messages sniffing for terrorist clues. If anyone thought about starting a protest rally or a riot, or discussed any form of civil disobedience with anyone else, he was branded a terrorist and preemptively put in jail. Combine that with robotic security forces, and riots are impossible. The only solution for most people, as they became unemployed, was government handouts. Terrafoam housing was what the government handed out. 8< ------- Was it prison? Yes. But there were no walls. The food was good. The robots were as nice and respectful as they could be. You could walk outside wherever and whenever you wanted to. But there was an invisible edge. When you walked too far away from your building and approached that edge, two robots would approach you. I had tried it many times. “Time to turn around Jacob Lewis105. There is construction in the next zone and, for your safety, we cannot allow you to proceed.” There were a hundred reasons the robots gave for making you turn around. Construction, blasting, contamination, flash flooding, train derailments, possible thunder storms, animal migrations and so on. They could be quite creative in their reasons. It was all part of their politeness. If you turned around you were fine. If you made any move in any direction other than the one suggested, you were immediately injected and woke up back in your room. I had only tried it twice.
• userbinator 5y ago
  This attitude has unfortunately also spread into the computing industry, and although some may attribute that to chasing profits, even a lot of FOSS has started to adopt the "you are too stupid to make your own decisions" position.
  • josephcsible 5y ago
    > even a lot of FOSS has started to adopt the "you are too stupid to make your own decisions" position. I know GNOME and systemd are guilty of this. Are there any others you know of?
• thr0wawayf00 5y ago
  > This is a world that has nearly ended the manufacture of private aircraft that any individual with a private pilot's license and enough money can purchase. Did this happen due to legislation or market forces? I honestly don't know, but that sounds like it could be that the author got priced out of the market. Where's the legislative or legal connection here? > This is a world that feels compelled to pass laws requiring the use of seat belts and motorcycle helmets in the hope of protecting people who are too stupid to wear them otherwise. People dying in auto accidents costs the government money in lost economic activity as well as things like medical care. I have a really hard time seeing how a helmet law, which if violated would result in what, a citation?, can be construed as overwhelmingly oppressive. This is pretty weak. > You are too stupid to speak in public or post on the Internet on any topic you judge to be important. We will tell you what you can and what you cannot say. Care to provide specific examples of what you have tried and been unable to say because the government explicitly tells you not to? A lot of that has to do with the commercial mechanisms that keep the internet free for users too, it's not like banning all regulation around the internet would magically make it a better place. I still think American ISPs are doing a lot more to stifle innovation than legislation that keeps certain chemicals out of kids chemistry sets.
  • WalterBright 5y ago
    > People dying in auto accidents costs the government money in lost economic activity as well as things like medical care. I'm astounded to read this. Do you believe we are the property of the government? That we live for the benefit of the government? That we are kept alive to serve the government? > I have a really hard time seeing how a helmet law, which if violated would result in what, a citation?, can be construed as overwhelmingly oppressive. This is pretty weak. Washington State just repealed the bicycle helmet law, on the grounds that it was racist.
    • pixl97 5y ago
      In this sense we are the government. The people that are getting hurt in auto accidents are us, and in a large number of cases not just the person behind the wheel of bad driving. If you crash into someone and you die but they dont, they are still left as a burden on society to take care of.
• WalterBright 5y ago
  It's also been extended to the notion that if one fails, it is always someone else's fault. A current example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30395256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30395256
  • collegeburner 5y ago
    I'm disappointed that this comment is being downvoted silently. You're correct, it's the same basic mindset. If nothing else, consider the "Pascal's Wager" of poverty: somebody who is poor should assume he can, by his sole effort, "pull himself up by his bootstraps" to a better life. This will help him get the best chance at doing so. If not, it doesn't matter anyway. So yes, we should "push" a positive mindset on those in poverty. And anecdotally, it worked for me and a lot of other people I know, and I think most of the people who claim otherwise do so to justify their political goal of an enlarged socdem welfare state that provides "benefits" to everybody instead of just "the needy".
    • WalterBright 5y ago
      > I'm disappointed that this comment is being downvoted silently. I expected it. I have plenty of experience on HN with my opinion that people have agency in their lives.
      • awb 5y ago
        That’s a simplistic view that lacks nuance. There are many scenarios where you don’t have agency. At some point during the day you will inevitably trust someone else to prepare food for you, give you advice, collect information, enforce rules, etc. As important as it is to acknowledge your own agency (you’re 100% right about that), you’d be remiss to ignore all the instances where you don’t.
        • WalterBright 5y ago
          The ones I give my opinion on agency on are ones where people do have agency. > At some point during the day you will inevitably trust someone else to prepare food for you, give you advice, collect information, enforce rules, etc. Trusting someone is something entirely different from having agency.
• lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  I fully approve of the underlying idea that education is a good and valuable thing and that encouraging people / children to seek knowledge themselves is the only sensible way. But come on. We do not run chemistry undergraduate courses by letting the students in the building and just leaving them there. A chemistry set is not enough. Teachers, mentors, peers and all the rest are part of both shaping and accelerating learning. A child given chemicals who then "stupidly" poisons themselves is not solely to blame. They are expected to be supervised. If we as a society cannot afford enough teachers we should not say "let's hand out chemistry sets - we will get a few industrial chemists at the cost of a few poisonings". That is not trade off to be discussed - we should talk about why is chemistry not taught better at every primary and secondary school?
  • Hizonner 5y ago
    One of the things a person ought to learn is how to learn outside of an institutional setting. Completely alone if need be. That includes risk assessment, by the way. This does not mean that kids' chemistry sets should include low-dose deadly poisons, but teachers are not a substitute for being able to learn things on your own. A person who can only function in a social setting is just as incomplete as a person who cannot function in a social setting. Maybe more so.
  • WalterBright 5y ago
    Oh phooey. I got a chemistry set at age 10 complete with bunsen burners and acids. Had a great time with it. The notion of sticking any of it in my mouth never occurred to me. The quantities of the chemicals weren't much, so there wasn't a whole lot of damage to be done with it. A bunsen burner is much less dangerous than a candle. I didn't learn a whole lot about chemistry with it, but later when I took chemistry classes I had some experience to flesh out the abstract instruction. BTW, at Caltech, I noticed that quite a high percentage of students had played around with things that explode while kids. One told me his explosive hydrogen balloon had burned a 3' diameter hole in his home's roof. I asked him how he hid that from his parents. He said he patched it with a tarp, and when his parents weren't home he repaired it. They never found out, and he learned to be much more careful. Also, the reason Caltech's JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) exists is because some rocket experimenters on campus had had some terrific explosions. The residential neighborhood got nervous about that and forced them outside the (then) city limits. It was called the Jet lab instead of the Rocket lab to allay the locals' fears about it. You might also enjoy Homer Hickham's biography "October Sky" about how playing with rockets as a kid led directly to his career at NASA.
• amluto 5y ago
  > If your car runs out of gasoline and you manage to walk to a gas station, you cannot buy gasoline in anything other than an government approved container. Approved gas cans are easy to come by and not particularly expensive. And keep in mind that gasoline is very flammable, turns into a moderately nasty pollutant when evaporated, is a moderately nasty pollutant when spilled, and can dissolve an inappropriate container. Additionally, the government has a very compelling interest in keeping roads open, and preventing transportation related fires seems entirely sensible. No one has stopped you from buying gasoline, and, sadly, no one stops you from burning it in highly polluting devices in populated areas.
  • WalterBright 5y ago
    I bought one of those government approved containers. It's impossible to fill it without spilling gas, and I absolutely hate spilling gas. (The nozzle is spring loaded, such that it takes a fair amount of force to open it. Then, when the container is full, it squirts out the top faster than I can react.)
    • beerandt 5y ago
      Those are actually the easy ones to "fix". Either disassemble and pull the spring out, or if it's the push then twist version, just force/ twist the spout past the plastic nub that's supposed to limit how far it twists. Either will allow you to hold the valve open without force. Of course a properly sized/ shaped funnel without any spout at all is even easier. Which is basically how the metal safety cans work. Also helps to drill a vent hole on the handle, and use a sheet metal screw as a plug.
      • WalterBright 5y ago
        Eh, I didn't think of using a screw as a plug. Brilliant!
        • beerandt 5y ago
          There are also pvc caps made that fit perfectly on most spouts and work much better for spout caps, but iirc they aren't standard sch40. It was surprising to me that such crappy quality manufacturing manages to have such a standard cap dimension.
• Zak 5y ago
  It seems to me there has been a significant shift to thinking about problems sociologically rather than individually - perhaps combined with only doing the easy half of the sociology. Individually, it's pretty reasonable to include something like "The chemistry set is recommended for ages 12 and over; chemicals A, B, and C are poisonous if ingested; chemicals D and E are flammable" with the chemistry set. Some of the warnings should probably go on the outer packaging so parents can make informed decisions about buying it. In general, 12 "is old enough to know better" when it comes to tasting the poison and playing with fire. Sociologically, we know that some 12 year olds will taste the poison and set their houses on fire. It's usually not hard to count roughly how many. We have decided the question is something like "how many kids should we let die so that the rest can play with chemistry sets?" and concluded the answer is few to none. Of course, as the article alludes to, there's a lot more benefit to experimenting with a chemistry set than mere entertainment. It's hard to measure though, and saying that there's an acceptable number of poisoned kids is not a winning move for politicians.
  • amelius 5y ago
    > We have decided the question is something like "how many kids should we let die so that the rest can play with chemistry sets?" and concluded the answer is few to none. Yet, new versions of Tesla Autopilot hit the road every week, and the public is used as beta-testers.
    • TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      The issue is not always children or safety. When an elderly customer of McDonald’s sues — and wins damages — for being burned by coffee that is too hot, what do you think will happen to prevent it in the future? (Besides cooler coffee) hint: special warnings on the cup, redesigned cups, and the basic infantilization of adults.
      • SkittyDog 5y ago
        You have been and taken in by propaganda. Please take the time to read the wikipedia article that the other commenter linked, and learn the truth about this incident. You deserve better than to continue having the wool pulled over your eyes.
• wallacoloo 5y ago
  this is describing a tendency to shift the burden of trust from those immediately connected to you (e.g. your parents) to those more distanced from you (govt authorities). there’s economic efficiency arguments for this sort of thing: parents can’t keep up with state-of-the-art knowledge in every field, whereas specialization can allow for a system that does. but it creates more fragility (individual mistakes have widespread costs: see prescription opioids leading to mass addiction) and ossification (long after illicit/underground culture has learned something valuable it’s hard to take that mainstream: see the impact of psychedelics on PTSD or depression. or for a case to show that we haven’t reached complete ossification but just slower dissemination, ketamine for depression (which has achieved recent approvals after significant efforts)).
  • awb 5y ago
    > this is describing a tendency to shift the burden of trust from those immediately connected to you (e.g. your parents) to those more distanced from you (govt authorities) We still have both. Now we have a government saying your kid’s chemistry kit won’t include lethal substances. And you (or your parents) can buy a chemistry book and do whatever experiments you feel are safe. We now have two layers of trust instead of one and you can choose which layer works best for you.
• ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  I grew up in Africa. We had snakes going through our yard, every day, that would make you brownulate your jodhpurs. We had bugs that, when they bit you, hurt for a month. My favorite toys were these painted sheet-metal cars and spaceships, with flints and sanding wheels. They would spit out showers of sparks. I survived. But ask any parent that has lost a child. It's absolutely devastating. I know a number of them. I never, ever want to tell them that their child's life is worth less than my freedom from inconvenience. It's really not a black/white issue, and I have no answers.
  • donw 5y ago
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • monitron 5y ago
      • malwarebytess 5y ago
        > having a capacity to move one to either compassionate or contemptuous pity > marked by sorrow or melancholy > pitifully inferior or inadequate > absurd, laughable seems accurate enough a word to describe the emotional argument.
      • kingcharles 5y ago
        > I think that if your manner of speech makes you sound like a B-movie villain I imagined the poster above you having his five-year-old child come home from school with a fresh painting of Mommy and Daddy and the poster snatching it out of their hands, "PATHETIC!" rips up painting
        • donw 5y ago
          No, you save that for the essays they write throughout high school. Joking aside, children are not tiny adults, and how you deal with them changes over time. A five-year-old gets rewarded for just doing work, because that's the baseline. A fifteen-year-old must demonstrate some degree of competence. They are not developmentally identical. A grown adult obsessed with safety over all other concerns is childish, pathetic, and ironically, dangerous as all hell to others. Those that prioritize safety above other concerns are the first to use violence against any and all perceived threats to that "safety".
• smoyer 5y ago
  I was lucky enough to have a friend with that Gilbert chemistry set ... Unfortunately it didn't help my chemistry education very much but I can see how it would have for someone that took it far more seriously (we mostly learned what color flames we could expect from burning chemicals.)
• dymk 5y ago
  Bet this author wouldn’t have written this article if he’d ever taken a lawn dart through his thigh.
• justbored123 5y ago
• moffkalast 5y ago
  > This is a world Ah yes, the world of USA. I know it's a hard concept for Americans to understand, but there do exist countries on this planet where litigation culture hasn't degenerated to the point of complete utter madness. Perhaps for once it would be a good idea to take notes instead of forcing idiotic ideas onto the rest of the civilized world.
  • kragen 5y ago
    Do kids there have good chemistry sets?
  • sneak 5y ago
    One of the most important things I keep in mind is that Americans account for fewer than 1/20th of human beings. Whatever attributes, good or bad, ascribed to the people in that place at that time, if they are somehow unique, are not generally applicable to human beings or human nature or those traits would not likely be unique to 3.x% of people. As the US is comprised of hundreds of millions of people, it is likely whatever special unique circumstances have arisen there are circumstantial; that is, nurture and not nature. It's probably the result of some (written or unwritten) policy or tradition that is, by definition, local or temporary.
  • scaramanga 5y ago
    Not only that, one could easily argue that it hasn't even happened in the USA :) Although a massive PR campaign has been waged to suit the legislative agenda of tort reform, because in order do massively limit the liability of huge corporations to effective legal redress for their victims, there has to be a public perception of a masses of frivolous law suits.
• awb 5y ago
  > The courts had decided that if a twelve-year-old wondered what cobalt chloride tasted like, was stupid enough to find out, and poison himself in the process, the manufacturer of the Chemistry set was at fault. There are ways to ingest something without being “stupid”, like a spill accidentally contaminating a food surface like a kitchen table or counter. Also, how many kids jokingly made their siblings eat sand or some other thing they weren’t supposed to eat? As a parent, I appreciate things being marketed to kids to be as non-lethal as possible. This is a classic fallacy: “nothing bad happened to me, so if someone else gets hurt they must be stupid”. This reminds me of memes decrying modern safety rules showing kids in the 50s riding in the front seats of cars without seatbelts. It’s not always about the chances of an accident happening, it’s about the minor chance of an accident causing catastrophic results.
  • Sebguer 5y ago
    The author later on in the essay actually explicitly calls out seatbelt and helmet laws as similarly spurious.
    • crooked-v 5y ago
      It's obviously a nonsense argument the moment you consider that not all car accidents are avoidable.
  • sT370ma2 5y ago
    So you are saying that because one kid in a million wins a Darwin award using a chemistry set, the other 999,999 can't have one?
    • awb 5y ago
      No.. Re-read the part about accidents. Accidents aren’t Darwin awards. Accidents happen in Level 4 Bio facilities by some of the most highly trained individuals in the world. I’m guessing the accident rate for kids would be much higher than 1 in a million. And you can still buy an adult chemistry set for your kid and supervise them to the extent you feel is appropriate. Maybe you personally have never had an accident but to err is human and kid’s products do need to be designed for the masses and accounting for the fact that their bodies, moral compass and decision making is still in flux.
• slg 5y ago
  This article reminds me of a documentary that came out a couple years back on HBO Max called Class Action Park. It was about a notoriously dangerous water park in New Jersey in which several kids died or were maimed. Most of the documentary was toned with nostalgia. They interviewed many former employees and people who went there as kids. Many of the interviewees were comedians that told funny stories about the antics that went on there. Most of them viewed the experience through rose-colored glasses. This was a place were a kid could be a kid in an era when parents still allowed that to happen. Then there would be an interview with a mom whose child died in the park describing how she was so grief-stricken that she walked into traffic trying to kill herself and was pulled back at the last second by her husband. You hear one story like that from a parent who lost a kid and suddenly dangerous waterslides and chemistry kits don't seem that important to a good childhood.
  • e40 5y ago
    To me there's a big difference between a water park slide and a chemistry set. The water park is a business that is providing you an experience on their property. In this case, isn't there the assumption that they hired good engineers to build the slide, so they could make money off me and I won't die using their slide? In the case of the chemistry set, I'm buying something I know can hurt me if I use it wrong. It has warnings all over it. Actually, I had a chemistry set when I was young, but really don't remember anything about it, unfortunately.
    • slg 5y ago
      The reputation of the park being dangerous wasn't retroactive. According to Wikipedia, at least 6 people died in the park. That "assumption" that the park was safe should have been gone after the 1st death and was certainly gone after the 5th. People knew that it was dangerous at the time and that was part of the fun. Does that mean the 6th person to die is solely responsible for their own death? To paraphrase you "they were doing something they knew could hurt them". Does that excuse the park's horrendous safety record? Should the park be allowed to operate if customers knew death was a very real possibility?
• EdwardDiego 5y ago
  I wonder if the author sees the contradiction between this and an earlier post about doctors not caring if they kill you - wherein the author was appalled, while seeking vaccination against Covid, that no-one was wearing masks properly in a densely packed waiting room. Because Government mandating that masks be worn, and that businesses have a right to refuse you entry if you don't comply, and likewise mandating social distancing for restaurants/waiting rooms/buses, achieves what the author wants.
• phkahler 5y ago
  >> This is a world that has nearly ended the manufacture of private aircraft that any individual with a private pilot's license and enough money can purchase. Fortunately home building aircraft is alive and well. Check out your local EAA for more info. On the other hand, Burt Rutan quit selling plans for planes after someone did utterly stupid things and the family tried to sue him. Many home builders are reluctant to sell a plane they built for similar reasons.
• Terry_Roll 5y ago
  The irony is, the lawyers dont even give everyone a TLDR of law at school or periodic updates when new legislation comes into force, so are they really protecting us or is this a stealth take over or dominance over society and the individual, some sort of revenue generating exercise or a bit of everything? So I learned a few years ago, when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the UK, at the time one of the philosophy's of law in which to back up the legal system was the existence of the concept of society, another was law follows the elected leader of society which would have been Margaret Thatcher, so when she declared there is no such thing as society, she basically gave every prisoner in the UK a free exit from prison but to my knowledge no prisoner ever took this up or tried!
• elil17 5y ago
  The rate of child deaths due to unintentional injury has fallen by over half from 1970 to 2007 for children 1-14.[1] With the current population of US children, this means about 100-200 fewer child deaths per year. Consumer protection lawsuits have done a lot to keep people safe. That said, there needs to be balance. Keeping kids indoors for fear of kidnapping is ridiculous. Keeping kids away from real science is also probably a bad idea. But modern playground equipment safety regulations, as an example, are really good, even if they do mean no more spiny things. [1]: https://www.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/healthitBACKUPJan6-17/HealthITArchive/images/mchb_child_mortality_pub.pdf https://www.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/healthitBACKUPJan6-... (My stated conclusion is not directly said in the fact sheet - compare the pie charts and reference the line chart to verify.)
  • agotterer 5y ago
    Playgrounds are also supposed to be a place where kids learn to take risks and find their boundaries. Many of todays playgrounds are so safe that kids aren’t learning to take risks. There’s a great book called The Coddling of the American Mind. It talks about play grounds safety, cancel culture, and many of the topics covered in this thread. I recommend it for everyone, but especially parents.
    • watwut 5y ago
      I mean, historically they were not build for risk taking. That was not motivation behind playgrounds at all. I agree that American culture is often overly on the safe side. But that does not make the above argument true. Plus, what would actually helped would be to stop framing non risky activities as risk taking.
    • elil17 5y ago
      Is that what playgrounds are for? I thought they were a place for kids to have fun, make friends, and get exercise?
    • ip26 5y ago
      As adults we might overestimate what it takes for a kid to feel like they are taking a risk. My preschooler was quaking with fear & on the verge of tears (but determined) the first, second, and third time he climbed 6ft up a funky metal trellis. Then it was just as terrifying when he climbed a rope ladder.
• DoreenMichele 5y ago
  I think there's a difference between civilized and domesticated. Civilized is writing laws that protect other people from your assholery. Domesticated is writing laws that protect you from own assholery at the expense of basic freedoms. I don't think domesticated is a good state for humans. I think it evolutionarily leads to people becoming Eloi -- aka sheeple.
• rl3 5y ago
  Did Iriwn Mainway write this? Consumer Reporter: So, you don’t feel that this product is dangerous? Irwin Mainway: No! Look, we put a label on every bag that says, “Kid! Be careful – broken glass!” I mean, we sell a lot of products in the “Bag O'” line.. like Bag O’ Glass, Bag O’ Nails, Bag O’ Bugs, Bag O’ Vipers, Bag O’ Sulfuric Acid. They’re decent toys, you know what I mean? [0][1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veMiNQifZcM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veMiNQifZcM [1] https://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76jconsumerprobe.phtml https://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76jconsumerprobe.phtml
• georgeecollins 5y ago
  >> If someone falls off a ladder while painting your house, they can sue you and take your house. This rings true to me. Where I live, on one side of the street half the houses have been taken over by house painters who sued the former owners. The other half of the street the houses go unpainted because people fear the laborers will take advantage of them. I wish we could go back to a world where property owners had power and political influence.
  • josephcsible 5y ago
    Har har. It's not common, sure, but it does really happen, and it's devastating and life-destroying to the owners and their entire families when it does.
    • georgeecollins 5y ago
      The same can be said for being struck by lightning. Yet people don’t say the problem of the world is that you can be struck lightning. It’s obvious propaganda.
      • josephcsible 5y ago
        But we do have safety measures against being struck by lightning (e.g., bringing people indoors during storms).
        • georgeecollins 5y ago
          I don't think there are many protections in either case. I don't know what your experience is, but when people show up to work on my house they don't seem to do so without a lot of protections or regulations and I don't feel very worried about it. If your experience is different, please elaborate. Larger point: The original post is by an old guy talking about how great things were in the old days. Even Adam Smith made fun of how it is human nature for people to think things are going to hell. Economists do think over-regulation is a problem. But what they think is a problem is regulation that protect incumbents large and small (farm subsidies, accreditation). Getting sued by your house painter is silly.
• ng12 5y ago
  I was thinking about this today when I was interrupted mid-conversation by an emergency weather alert on my phone. The cause? A snow flurry that was expected to last about an hour. It ended up lasting for about half that. Now, it's New England. These kind of things happen and I am prepared for them by virtue of living here. When I resumed my conversation the topic turned to why they felt the need to send out an emergency alert for something so mundane. The only reason we could come up with was that if they didn't and someone got in an accident they could probably sue. Reading this article really makes me feel like that's the case.
  • Sebguer 5y ago
    That hypothesis makes no sense. Who would they sue? FYI, you can opt out of these alerts: https://weather.com/news/news/2021-03-25-how-to-get-wireless-emergency-alerts-cell-phone-severe-weather https://weather.com/news/news/2021-03-25-how-to-get-wireless... Realistically the reason for "excessive" alerts is probably just scope creep. The system almost definitely began as a mechanism to send alerts for really serious weather, but over time that definition's shifted, or they decided that sending more alerts was a good way to justify a bigger budget, or something similar.
    • ng12 5y ago
      There's been a number of lawsuits stemming around the Amber Alert system [1][2][3]. It's very plausible that they could find someone to sue for failing to issue an emergency alert. Not sure if they would win but it could encourage the NWS and local agencies to err on the side of caution. 1. https://mynorthwest.com/6711/lawsuit-cop-falls-asleep-delaying-amber-alert/ https://mynorthwest.com/6711/lawsuit-cop-falls-asleep-delayi... 2. https://www.amberadvocate.org/amber-feature/ashlynnes-law/ https://www.amberadvocate.org/amber-feature/ashlynnes-law/ 3. https://www.wandtv.com/news/amber-alert-lawsuit-moves-to-federal-court/article_6c2dbf68-d71c-5a36-8e91-2c8e618cdbef.html https://www.wandtv.com/news/amber-alert-lawsuit-moves-to-fed...
  • rcurry 5y ago
    This reminds me of the first year I lived in New Mexico, I had moved there from Wisconsin and one night the TV warns us of an “Emergency Weather Alert”, so I look to my wife and, fearing the worst, I say “maybe we should go stock up on some groceries.” A few minutes later we learn that they are expecting up to an inch of snowfall in the next five hours. We almost died laughing about it.
• jlkuester7 5y ago
  I believe this is partially a result of a societal shift away from personal responsibility for individuals towards "social" responsibility of the collective. This shift has its benefits (I, for one, am glad that it is "hard" to unintentionally starve to death in the developed world, regardless of how poorly you planned for winter). But I do think it is important to remember that this does not mean the trend is universally beneficial. IMHO it is better for individual responsibility to be the default and for society to take responsibility only for specific, carefully defined, aspects of life. Seat belt laws are a good example. Perhaps regulations involving children and vulnerable adults makes sense, but I am a long way from being convinced that our society is improved by forcing all adults to wear seat belts. (Even though I think it is pretty foolish to ever drive without wearing one...)
  • jlkuester7 5y ago
    puts on tin-foil hat I always like to "follow the money" and the cynic in me wonders how much influence the health care lobby has on seat belt legislation. I don't have any stats on this, but seems like there is a lot more to bill for when car accident victims are not declared dead at the scene...
    • owisd 5y ago
      Countries with socialised healthcare all have seatbelt laws.
  • liara_k 5y ago
    Certainly, there's a libertarian argument made against requiring seat belt use, including mathematical economics models that can prove it... provided a few unstated assumptions are met--like rational agents, complete information, perfect competition, etc... Of course, the problem is that those assumptions aren't met. If someone is more seriously injured in a car crash because they weren't wearing a seat belt, the cost of that is going to be borne by society at large in a variety of ways. A more serious accident is going to consume more Police and EMS resources. The increased hospital and resulting medical costs will be shared by millions of people through (even private) insurance companies. If the person dies, the investment the public made in the person's education is lost, etc... The response to these points from libertarians is typically to propose a system where someone can chose not to be bound by this rule, and pay the price in increased health care/disability premiums or something. But these systems ignore significant information and transaction cost problems. The person makes a statement about whether or not they want to be bound by a seat belt rule, but how is that information verified? (People lie...) If it's just a contract term, not a law, if someone is pulled over for speeding and wasn't wearing a seat belt, do the police ticket the driver for violating the contract? If someone who says they want to follow the seat belt rule is unlucky enough to just forget it the day they got into an accident, do we just let them die? If a crash victim comes into the hospital unconscious, do they verify seat belt contract compliance with the insurance company before spending money on life-saving treatment? Or do they treat the person only if they'll be able to pay out of pocket? The whole system is full of costs, complexities, and moral hazard--it's a mess. It's SO much simpler and less costly just to have a seat belt law that applies to everyone. Sure, a few people will find it a little paternalistic and annoying, but the other way is a lot worse. We might be willing to deal with a more complex and expensive system if the rule is very intrusive or highly restrictive of personal liberty. Being able to drive without seat belts isn't worth it.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• swayvil 5y ago
  I can legally do pretty much anything if I can prove that it's "for safety". That's handy.
• ILMostro7 5y ago
  Every idea or principle is seen through the lens of current events. There is no nuance or context applied. Everything is seen as either "don't tread on me" type of thinking or "please think of the children!". Maybe it's because the loudest voices or those riding a wave of sensationalism simply drown out everything in the wake. Personal freedoms should absolutely take a back-seat to general welfare and safety of society, within limits and depending on the nature of potential dangers. An airborne virus, for example, necessitates curtailing personal freedoms for the greater good. Generally, however, once you switch from common sense to thinking in terms of law culturally, it's a slow path toward a police state. I realize that's a loaded phrase; so, maybe read this with a grain of salt, rather than immediately attributing some ulterior motive or agenda. Once common sense gets twisted for political gain, generally a quicker progression toward anarchy or police state. This is a society espousing individual freedom, yet hysterical over crime. Punishing a child's actions the same as an adult's shows the micromanaging of those freedoms; especially when police are called to schools for fights or even "misdemeanor" acts. Jails are used to house and treat more people with mental health issues than hospitals. As we're conditioned to give up our free will and even certain personal freedoms over time and daily (i.e. more personal debt, more things to own, more time spent working, more money spent on things/services to alleviate the stress... cycle), we usually end up either overreacting to "hot-button issues" or lash out at things that have no direct impact on our daily life and on the welfare and prosperity of our families or communities (e.g. abortion, gay marriage). That's not to say that those are not important issues. But they should not take precedence over the level of crime in your neighborhood; your paycheck; your healthcare; education, among other things. It seems that, especially more recently, no one can/will think for themselves. Even as they proclaim to be "anti-establishment" or some other buzzword, it just becomes more clear there's no original thought in sight. Everyone wants to offer their commentary, yet it usually ends up being nothing but talking points and buzzwords; a self-inflating pedestal of hollow ideas and shallow principles.
  • gverrilla 5y ago
    Give it time. The world is changing very fast, and a lot of people get confused and lost when everything changes - particularly this fast. Globalization, internet, and increasing complexity.
• mateo1 5y ago
  Thinking your child is too smart to ingest toxic materials or start a fire is naive. Of all the weird things liberals believe, being against safety regulations for consumer products never ceases to amaze me.
• epgui 5y ago
  > Your (sic) are too stupid to make your own decisions The author gives a lot of examples where this is a bit ridiculous... But I do think sometimes it is true that people are just too dumb to make their own informed decisions: - consumption of tobacco products (people just need a tax nudge) - consumption of junk food (people just need a tax nudge) - seatbelt laws (I disagree with the author here) - vaccination (I know I won't be making any friends here, but empirically, layfolks just don't have the capacity to make an informed decision)
  • oliv__ 5y ago
    Saying that someone is "too dumb to make their own informed decisions" sounds to me like saying "you are too dumb to live your own life", which I find repugnant.
    • epgui 5y ago
      Perhaps it's a distasteful thing to say, but humans (all of us, myself included) are not particularly good at certain types of decisions, for at least a few reasons: 1) we suck at making decisions when the optimal decision requires delaying gratification. 2) some decisions are just so terribly complex (eg.: the pros and cons of vaccinations) that if you don't follow expert advice and try and build up your understanding from scratch, you're extremely unlikely to arrive at a sensible conclusion.
      • oliv__ 5y ago
• codeisawesome 5y ago
  > If someone falls off a ladder while painting your house, they can sue you and take your house. I just checked some online references and this is well within the realm of possibility. New thing learned today: contractor insurance certificates must be inspected thoroughly.
  • awb 5y ago
    Do share
    • codeisawesome 5y ago
      First hit on search - https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/personal-injury/ladder-injury-lawsuit/ https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/personal-injury/ladder-injury-l... Apparently it is under “premises liability” and I don’t know how the so-called “warn the contractor” system gets to be anything beyond but he said she said in a real hearing…
      • awb 5y ago
        > If someone falls off a ladder while painting your house, they can sue you and take your house. This doesn’t address the claim that people are losing their houses due to painters falling off of ladders. There is a very low bar in the US for filing a lawsuit and it’s unsurprising to find a lawyer’s website encouraging you to do so as they typically still get paid even if you lose, or they hope to scare someone into a settlement because they’d never win at trial. Winning a case like this in front of a jury, and for the value of the house (and collecting it) as OP mentioned sounds unrealistic to me, but happy to see links to any stories where this actually happened in case I’m wrong. Plus, some states have rules about not forcing people to sell their primary residence to pay a debt: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_exemption https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_exemption I just can’t imagine a jury awarding such high damages unless there was obvious negligence on the homeowner’s part. I have trouble believing that an accident alone (through no fault of the homeowner) could cost you your home.
        • 5y ago
• analog31 5y ago
  Maybe the makers of chemistry sets are following consumer demand. The only backlash I've heard about modern chemistry sets are from those who are reminiscing about their childhood, or using it as an allegory about a perceived social crisis. But maybe the people who actually buy chemistry sets want them to be more benign. Can we hear from some parents who understand the chemistry involved and what their own preferences are?
• aliswe 5y ago
  I think that Hacker News is filled by the likes of this article. someone who had a profound experience and now wants to give the advice that this experience gave him insight of exaggerated importance and as such writes an article overstating the experience and some more or less arbitrary wisdoms extracted from it.
• scaramanga 5y ago
  ITT: "Political correctness gone mad." Proposed title: "Hobbyist chemist awakens the force of reaction" In my day... society didn't change for the better. But even if it did, which it didn't, every unique snowflake became a highly offended victim of the change and complained loudly about it as if to signal their virtues. Even if that change was mostly imagined and you had to come up with highly contrived and distorted examples to convince people that the thing you were massively offended about actually exists and is a problem, it would pose no threat to the prelapsarian and rosy hued fantasy of the past that you had donned your suite of armour to defend.
• pyuser583 5y ago
  The only thing I remember about college chemistry was the safety training for working in a lab. It’s not for kids.
• pmarreck 5y ago
  This person's conclusion does not follow from his or her premise
• glandium 5y ago
  Fun fact: there was an insect collection set sold in Japan for kids, in the 70s/80s. It contained two bottles: one containing an insecticide, and another containing a preservative, and both accompanied with a warning not to drink them. It turns out both bottles contained plain water with a colorant.
• jonsen 5y ago
  Just a thought, maybe this is a general phenomenon: "I knew myself well enough to realize that working in industry as a ______ would have brought only endless frustration and ultimately kill my love for a subject that I could not bear to devalue in that way."
• fennecfoxy 5y ago
  Disagree. This is a terrible worldview to take: he's just smarmy because he's familiar with the Chemistry topic, but would he still be alive today if not for the many electrical standards and regulations that meant he can charge his iPhone without electrocuting himself? All sorts of technology is at the forefronts of our worlds and this can only be done _because_ people don't have to be an expert in every subject to interact with these things safely. Ex ABS brakes mean I don't need to have racecar driver skills. And at the end of the day there's nothing stopping modern parents from being responsible parents and buying their kids a proper adult chemistry set and supervising the use of it, teaching the child to respect it in the same way that my Father taught me to respect mains electricity when mucking about with electronics stuff (by hooking me up to a line tester and giving me a shock "it will be 1000x worse than this) and that lesson sticks with me to this day, mains is scary.