6 ms·

I'm not really blaming you here, this attidue is very normal these days, but a mere 25 years ago, most people had no cell phone, no mobile phone, and never, eve

by b112 5y ago

I'm not really blaming you here, this attidue is very normal these days, but a mere 25 years ago, most people had no cell phone, no mobile phone, and never, ever suffered mishap as a result. (Inconvenience is not what I call a mishap) I grew up in the country, and a few times had to walk 20 miles home, due to a dead car. Being a rural area, after 10pm, I might see 1 or 2 cars the entire walk home (4 hours and a bit). During the day, there were times my car broke down, or I ran out of gas, so knocking on doors (a mile or so usually awake) was a better choice. Often, a kind person would have some gas. Compare this to ... the city. If you can yell loudly, literally thousands of people can hear you.

fao_ 5y ago
> most people had no cell phone, no mobile phone, and never, ever suffered mishap as a result. never??? How do you possibly have enough information to know that?!
- b112 5y ago
  Because I said "most people" not "all people".
cnelsenmilt 5y ago
25 years ago there was a pay phone in every gas station, and in denser areas in every corner market, bus terminal, grocery store, hotel, ..., not mentioning those installed directly along the street.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  People also didn’t live under the expectation of being reachable 24/7. Similarly, people used paper maps while driving which were cumbersome, but didn’t live under the expectation or the opportunity of traveling to new locations regularly.
  - alar44 5y ago
    Stop. Projecting. I don't know anyone who expects me to be available 24/7. Most people I know text don't text back immediately either. It's a you problem, not a societal one. Set some fucking boundaries and start acting like an adult.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      You are the one projecting here. I don’t feel like I’m personally under those expectations, but I definitely see that in other people’s lives. Try to use less inflammatory language on this forum.
    - status200 5y ago
      Dude, go touch grass. Being a jerk on YC does not make you look cool, smart, or savvy.
  - b112 5y ago
    I find it nicer to look at a huge map, when visiting a city. Maybe a 100" TV would be about the same. But sadly, it is harder to get paper maps now, for obvious reasons.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      By traveling to new places, I even just mean that Yelp and Google, coupled with GPS navigation, allow people to more regularly patronize new businesses in the localities they reside in. So it’s much more frequent to be driving to somewhere unfamiliar.
- robonerd 5y ago
  Now instead of pay phones in gas stations, if you have an emergency virtually every other person you might meet can call 911 for you on the spot, without having to run off to find a pay phone.
- b112 5y ago
  In the city, yes. But my point was, there are other people around. Yell, bang on a house's door, go into the gas station, etc etc.
SnowHill9902 5y ago
Nobody is unhappy for not having what he doesn’t know that he can have.
- b112 5y ago
  Yes I don't not disagree also, not with this.
  - SnowHill9902 5y ago
    Try to reformulate the phrase avoiding negatives. It doesn’t mean the same.
    - b112 5y ago
      I was poking at the comment I replied to.
- dylan604 5y ago
  No no, life is much better with FOMO. Keeping up with the Jones used to be a local thing. Now its global, and that's so much better. /s
com2kid 5y ago
Survivorship bias, it is totally a thing! There are mountain tops that have cell service now days (great line of sight!). People get lost in the woods pretty often. Heck just having a compass + map that works offline can get people unstuck. How many lost person stories used to end with "and he died just a few miles from the nearest town"? Of course that sentence is now relegated to history because because almost everyone has a GPS in their pocket!
- eternityforest 5y ago
  I think the government should really make a big deal out of satellite messengers being cheap and available for all hikers. What if they subsidized them so that you could make emergency calls with no monthly fee? I wonder how many lives they would save if it was so readily available people didn't think of leaving cell range without one?
Sebb767 5y ago
25 years ago, the cars also didn't have much crash safety compared to today and they did survive without seatbelts and airbags in metal cages without crumple zones, too!* Hell, 80 years ago planes took off without any electronics and with high explosives on board, were shot at and even returned!* * except for those who did not Sure, most people didn't die because of lacking safety nets. But some did and I don't think "it worked for most without" is a sufficient argument to ditch them.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dylan604 5y ago
> the city. If you can yell loudly, literally thousands of people can hear you. and roughly 1/3 of them will yell at you to shut up, half of the remaining will just silently wish it, with the remaining not noticing
xoa 5y ago
>but a mere 25 years ago, most people had no cell phone, no mobile phone, and never, ever suffered mishap as a result. But that just isn't true. Being able to use a mobile radio to summon emergency services earlier has statistically significant association with improved outcomes [0]. It isn't just about what happens to you, it's about what you can do for others you come across in emergencies. 25 years ago, I'd need to drive a minimum of 15-30 minutes to the nearest house and hope I was able to use their landline (or break in I guess?), or maybe there would be an open service station within that distance (often not). People died (still do) or suffer serious injury getting lost in the woods very close to home. I nearly did once in the 90s, cross country skiing and being foolish. I went out in the afternoon on a gray, gray overcast day, zero shadows, fresh snow, and as a skier since a child I felt overly confident and didn't take a normal fanny pack even with light (back then of course lamps were a lot crappier pre-LED), water or whatever. It got dark fast, by this point about 15°F, and I got completely, utterly confused. I knew I should be close and indeed reconstructing afterwards (finding my own tracks later in the week) I was within 1/2 mile or so. But it was a half mile through old forest without that clear trails. Fortunately I had had some outdoor training and recognized this was genuine trouble, I didn't try to go back in the woods but crossed a frozen swamp and broke for a farm field, and then from there to an actual house whose light I could see and use as a guide about a mile and a half away. Even if no one was home there'd at least be a road I could follow, fortunately there was someone and I could beg to use their landline and call a friend. But there were directions of travel I could have gone there with no one, and no road, for 6+ miles of mountainy forest. And if one succumbs to panic, it's easy to end up spending hours going in circles, or even without because sense of direction is hard with zero markers, no stars or the like. Or are fine, but fall and break a leg or something. This happens. People die. I and friends worked as First Responders and later mountain rescue volunteers of various levels. It's all well and good to say "well you should never do that" but humans are imperfect, even experienced ones. Having access to quite accurate near term weather forecasts alone is just massive, a boon a lot of us don't stop to appreciate. Obviously, as tools cell phones have other risks. It's possible to get overconfident with them and take risks that negate the benefits. People have died due to silly things like literally stepping backwards over a cliff trying to get the perfect selfie. And there are other negative effects as this article talks about. Nevertheless, it's wrong to claim everything was fine back in "the good old days" when life expectancy was significantly lower [1]. You don't have to have a fancy smart phone to have a basic comms, GPS and map, but that doesn't negate how valuable those can be. ---- 0: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22142669/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22142669/ 1: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life-expectancy https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life...

by b112 5y ago

fao_ 5y ago

> most people had no cell phone, no mobile phone, and never, ever suffered mishap as a result. never??? How do you possibly have enough information to know that?!

b112 5y ago
Because I said "most people" not "all people".

cnelsenmilt 5y ago

25 years ago there was a pay phone in every gas station, and in denser areas in every corner market, bus terminal, grocery store, hotel, ..., not mentioning those installed directly along the street.

Apocryphon 5y ago
People also didn’t live under the expectation of being reachable 24/7. Similarly, people used paper maps while driving which were cumbersome, but didn’t live under the expectation or the opportunity of traveling to new locations regularly.
- alar44 5y ago
  Stop. Projecting. I don't know anyone who expects me to be available 24/7. Most people I know text don't text back immediately either. It's a you problem, not a societal one. Set some fucking boundaries and start acting like an adult.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    You are the one projecting here. I don’t feel like I’m personally under those expectations, but I definitely see that in other people’s lives. Try to use less inflammatory language on this forum.
  - status200 5y ago
    Dude, go touch grass. Being a jerk on YC does not make you look cool, smart, or savvy.
- b112 5y ago
  I find it nicer to look at a huge map, when visiting a city. Maybe a 100" TV would be about the same. But sadly, it is harder to get paper maps now, for obvious reasons.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    By traveling to new places, I even just mean that Yelp and Google, coupled with GPS navigation, allow people to more regularly patronize new businesses in the localities they reside in. So it’s much more frequent to be driving to somewhere unfamiliar.
robonerd 5y ago
Now instead of pay phones in gas stations, if you have an emergency virtually every other person you might meet can call 911 for you on the spot, without having to run off to find a pay phone.
b112 5y ago
In the city, yes. But my point was, there are other people around. Yell, bang on a house's door, go into the gas station, etc etc.

SnowHill9902 5y ago

Nobody is unhappy for not having what he doesn’t know that he can have.

b112 5y ago
Yes I don't not disagree also, not with this.
- SnowHill9902 5y ago
  Try to reformulate the phrase avoiding negatives. It doesn’t mean the same.
  - b112 5y ago
    I was poking at the comment I replied to.
dylan604 5y ago
No no, life is much better with FOMO. Keeping up with the Jones used to be a local thing. Now its global, and that's so much better. /s

com2kid 5y ago

Survivorship bias, it is totally a thing! There are mountain tops that have cell service now days (great line of sight!). People get lost in the woods pretty often. Heck just having a compass + map that works offline can get people unstuck. How many lost person stories used to end with "and he died just a few miles from the nearest town"? Of course that sentence is now relegated to history because because almost everyone has a GPS in their pocket!

eternityforest 5y ago
I think the government should really make a big deal out of satellite messengers being cheap and available for all hikers. What if they subsidized them so that you could make emergency calls with no monthly fee? I wonder how many lives they would save if it was so readily available people didn't think of leaving cell range without one?

Sebb767 5y ago

25 years ago, the cars also didn't have much crash safety compared to today and they did survive without seatbelts and airbags in metal cages without crumple zones, too!* Hell, 80 years ago planes took off without any electronics and with high explosives on board, were shot at and even returned!* * except for those who did not Sure, most people didn't die because of lacking safety nets. But some did and I don't think "it worked for most without" is a sufficient argument to ditch them.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dylan604 5y ago

> the city. If you can yell loudly, literally thousands of people can hear you. and roughly 1/3 of them will yell at you to shut up, half of the remaining will just silently wish it, with the remaining not noticing

xoa 5y ago

>but a mere 25 years ago, most people had no cell phone, no mobile phone, and never, ever suffered mishap as a result. But that just isn't true. Being able to use a mobile radio to summon emergency services earlier has statistically significant association with improved outcomes [0]. It isn't just about what happens to you, it's about what you can do for others you come across in emergencies. 25 years ago, I'd need to drive a minimum of 15-30 minutes to the nearest house and hope I was able to use their landline (or break in I guess?), or maybe there would be an open service station within that distance (often not). People died (still do) or suffer serious injury getting lost in the woods very close to home. I nearly did once in the 90s, cross country skiing and being foolish. I went out in the afternoon on a gray, gray overcast day, zero shadows, fresh snow, and as a skier since a child I felt overly confident and didn't take a normal fanny pack even with light (back then of course lamps were a lot crappier pre-LED), water or whatever. It got dark fast, by this point about 15°F, and I got completely, utterly confused. I knew I should be close and indeed reconstructing afterwards (finding my own tracks later in the week) I was within 1/2 mile or so. But it was a half mile through old forest without that clear trails. Fortunately I had had some outdoor training and recognized this was genuine trouble, I didn't try to go back in the woods but crossed a frozen swamp and broke for a farm field, and then from there to an actual house whose light I could see and use as a guide about a mile and a half away. Even if no one was home there'd at least be a road I could follow, fortunately there was someone and I could beg to use their landline and call a friend. But there were directions of travel I could have gone there with no one, and no road, for 6+ miles of mountainy forest. And if one succumbs to panic, it's easy to end up spending hours going in circles, or even without because sense of direction is hard with zero markers, no stars or the like. Or are fine, but fall and break a leg or something. This happens. People die. I and friends worked as First Responders and later mountain rescue volunteers of various levels. It's all well and good to say "well you should never do that" but humans are imperfect, even experienced ones. Having access to quite accurate near term weather forecasts alone is just massive, a boon a lot of us don't stop to appreciate. Obviously, as tools cell phones have other risks. It's possible to get overconfident with them and take risks that negate the benefits. People have died due to silly things like literally stepping backwards over a cliff trying to get the perfect selfie. And there are other negative effects as this article talks about. Nevertheless, it's wrong to claim everything was fine back in "the good old days" when life expectancy was significantly lower [1]. You don't have to have a fancy smart phone to have a basic comms, GPS and map, but that doesn't negate how valuable those can be. ---- 0: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22142669/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22142669/ 1: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life-expectancy https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life...