5 ms·

> 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 ha

by 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?
  - roenxi 5y ago
    > Does anyone really have a problem with mandating basic safety? Yes. That is why he included the example. It is totally ridiculous that if I do something that puts myself at a minor risk then I get funnelled into a system where the options are compliance or imprisonment. The situation is complicated somewhat by the fact that as far as we call tell a rational person should agree with what the system is demanding, and it isn't important enough to fight about. But nevertheless, imprisonment should not be a theoretical outcome for someone wilfully choosing not to wear a seatbelt. I don't know, I'm not a domain expert. Maybe they don't imprison people for that and just bankrupt them. Still wildly disproportionate and an idiotic formal response to a minor bad decision.
    - pc86 5y ago
      A former coworker of mine always refused to wear a seatbelt, and to my knowledge still does. He was in a car accident and had major damage to his legs, hips, and back. Traction, several surgeries, you get the idea. Because he's too stupid to wear a seatbelt he incurred a lot of costs, both financial and psychological, for a lot of people. > Still wildly disproportionate and an idiotic formal response to a minor bad decision. Any interaction with the justice system has to have imprisonment at the end of the line. Not because that's the right way to do it, but because it just doesn't work otherwise. Let's imagine a scenario where a law is passed saying you cannot be imprisoned for a speeding ticket under any circumstances. As long as you don't get in an accident, you can go 150mph down the highway and you won't go to jail. Okay so you get a ticket for an obscene amount of money. But you can't pay it, or you just don't. Do we just throw our hands up and say "shucks, you got us on that one?" Even if you have wages to garnish or property to forfeit, you'd have to take those costs into account and now for a $500 ticket you're having your car repo'd or your wages garnished by 10% for months. It doesn't seem like an oppressive socialist hellscape to me to just say "you know what, you either pay your ticket or you go to jail, and if you're going fast enough, just go straight to jail."
      - roenxi 5y ago
        I'm not certain that a 3rd party would read that as something I agree with, so I'll just note: 1st paragraph - that looks like someone bearing the costs for their bad decision personally to me. Which is why they should be the one making the decision. 2nd & 3rd - yep. That comes close to the extended argument for why it is stupid to legally mandate wearing seatbelts. The level of threat required to enforce a minor requirement is absurd. People shouldn't be subjected to that sort of legal hazard without a high bar of justification.
mhb 5y ago
Not being clever enough to wear an N95 mask if you're concerned about aerosols and instead believing that any random piece of cloth will protect you?
ColFrancis 5y ago
I've noticed a lot of turns at traffic lights are getting explicit red arrows. A solid green light without an arrow means that you need to give way to pedestrians and other vehicles if turning. It feels to me no one is looking any more, they just think green means go. I think it's because we've trained them out of thinking with too many constraints.
- flyinghamster 5y ago
  I see them in my area, too, but only at intersections with any or all of extremely heavy traffic, poor sightlines, or multiple left turn lanes, that would make a left turn on plain green dicey at best. Sometimes there will be red, yellow, flashing yellow, and green arrows, with flashing yellow being the yield option, used at times of day when it's appropriate.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  My guess is that it's more a matter of cost. With LEDs, it's cheap to have a red arrow and a red circle. With incandescent lights, you cannot just illuminate part of the red bulb to get an arrow.
  - californical 5y ago
    Except that none of the traffic lights that I’ve seen have ever used the same light for an arrow and circle — even with LEDs, it’s always two separate lights
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      Really? That seems costly for no reason. I thought when I've seen it it's been the same light.

by skulk 5y ago

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?
- roenxi 5y ago
  > Does anyone really have a problem with mandating basic safety? Yes. That is why he included the example. It is totally ridiculous that if I do something that puts myself at a minor risk then I get funnelled into a system where the options are compliance or imprisonment. The situation is complicated somewhat by the fact that as far as we call tell a rational person should agree with what the system is demanding, and it isn't important enough to fight about. But nevertheless, imprisonment should not be a theoretical outcome for someone wilfully choosing not to wear a seatbelt. I don't know, I'm not a domain expert. Maybe they don't imprison people for that and just bankrupt them. Still wildly disproportionate and an idiotic formal response to a minor bad decision.
  - pc86 5y ago
    A former coworker of mine always refused to wear a seatbelt, and to my knowledge still does. He was in a car accident and had major damage to his legs, hips, and back. Traction, several surgeries, you get the idea. Because he's too stupid to wear a seatbelt he incurred a lot of costs, both financial and psychological, for a lot of people. > Still wildly disproportionate and an idiotic formal response to a minor bad decision. Any interaction with the justice system has to have imprisonment at the end of the line. Not because that's the right way to do it, but because it just doesn't work otherwise. Let's imagine a scenario where a law is passed saying you cannot be imprisoned for a speeding ticket under any circumstances. As long as you don't get in an accident, you can go 150mph down the highway and you won't go to jail. Okay so you get a ticket for an obscene amount of money. But you can't pay it, or you just don't. Do we just throw our hands up and say "shucks, you got us on that one?" Even if you have wages to garnish or property to forfeit, you'd have to take those costs into account and now for a $500 ticket you're having your car repo'd or your wages garnished by 10% for months. It doesn't seem like an oppressive socialist hellscape to me to just say "you know what, you either pay your ticket or you go to jail, and if you're going fast enough, just go straight to jail."
    - roenxi 5y ago
      I'm not certain that a 3rd party would read that as something I agree with, so I'll just note: 1st paragraph - that looks like someone bearing the costs for their bad decision personally to me. Which is why they should be the one making the decision. 2nd & 3rd - yep. That comes close to the extended argument for why it is stupid to legally mandate wearing seatbelts. The level of threat required to enforce a minor requirement is absurd. People shouldn't be subjected to that sort of legal hazard without a high bar of justification.

mhb 5y ago

Not being clever enough to wear an N95 mask if you're concerned about aerosols and instead believing that any random piece of cloth will protect you?

ColFrancis 5y ago

I've noticed a lot of turns at traffic lights are getting explicit red arrows. A solid green light without an arrow means that you need to give way to pedestrians and other vehicles if turning. It feels to me no one is looking any more, they just think green means go. I think it's because we've trained them out of thinking with too many constraints.

flyinghamster 5y ago
I see them in my area, too, but only at intersections with any or all of extremely heavy traffic, poor sightlines, or multiple left turn lanes, that would make a left turn on plain green dicey at best. Sometimes there will be red, yellow, flashing yellow, and green arrows, with flashing yellow being the yield option, used at times of day when it's appropriate.
HWR_14 5y ago
My guess is that it's more a matter of cost. With LEDs, it's cheap to have a red arrow and a red circle. With incandescent lights, you cannot just illuminate part of the red bulb to get an arrow.
- californical 5y ago
  Except that none of the traffic lights that I’ve seen have ever used the same light for an arrow and circle — even with LEDs, it’s always two separate lights
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    Really? That seems costly for no reason. I thought when I've seen it it's been the same light.