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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 o

by 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?

by tdfx 5y ago

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?