5 ms·

I think this is a product of mass social media and mass media. Effectively, we amplify propaganda one way or another. It leads to false impressions and we are u

I think this is a product of mass social media and mass media. Effectively, we amplify propaganda one way or another. It leads to false impressions and we are unable to make decisions based off real information. This survey (which imo is not very robust) simply highlights the fact we are uninformed as a population. This is a failure primarily of our news media (the big 5) and education. Easy example, we believe mass shootings are far more common and dangerous than they actually are. A child is ~100x more likely to die from a drug overdose than a mass shooting, and ~10x from a car crash. Yet our perception is skewed because of what we see in the news / shared. Truly, most of our understanding is skewed in such a manner. That’s why ignoring anecdotal stories is so important for rational policy discussion. Unfortunately, mass media & social media (imo) is really making it impossible.

bruce511 4y ago
Our ability to understand risk is imperfect, and certaintainly divorced from actual risk numbers. While perceptions based on media are surely a factor, its also based on our control over the risk. Lots of people die in car accidents (presumably because they are bad drivers) but I am a good driver, therefore the risk for me is much lower or zero. I am in control therefore my perception of risk is reduced. What risk there is, I accept in return for the utility of a car. Same for drugs - my kids are well brought up, and I'm a good parent, so the risk of an overdose is low, and I feel in control of that. Clearly lots of people balance the risk of an overdose against the utility of taking the drugs (and clearly they get it wrong a lot.) School shootings have no (direct) utility. So I am both lacking in control, and there is no utility balance, I am concerned about this a lot more. I see the solution as fewer guns, but that crosses over with the utility perceived by a large segment of society. Since they are unwilling to give up that utility we reach an impass. School shootings are a side effect of gun ownership, which has a significant perceived utility to a large group of people. Those people implicitly accept that some people (including children) die in the service of that utility. To them taking away guns is as ridiculous as taking away cars (which also kill people.) taking away cars is absurd right? Of course perceived utility may not be real. Lots of people in the world live without guns. Lots live without cars. But these perceptions are hard, dare I say impossible, to change.
- int_19h 4y ago
  Note that the vast majority of child gun deaths are not from mass shootings. One third are intentional suicides. Most of the rest is kids accidentally shooting themselves or each other with guns that they gain access to. (While we're at it, and in the vein of the article, gun-owning parents tend to drastically overestimate how well-behaved their kids are around guns, and thus allow them more access than is safe.)
mb7733 4y ago
>A child is ~100x more likely to die from a drug overdose than a mass shooting, and ~10x from a car crash. Yet our perception is skewed because of what we see in the news / shared. Wait, I have the opposite reaction to the car crash comparison. Is that accurate? It blows my mind that the odds of a child in the US dying in a mass shooting is only a single order of magnitude less than the chance they die in a car crash...
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Both car safety and emergency medicine have got a lot better over time. In Czechia, the death toll from car crashes is one third of what it used to be at the end of the last century. And people definitely do not drive less.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    > Both car safety and emergency medicine have got a lot better over time. Don't let the walkable city and cycling activists hear you say that. From the way they tell it, modern cars have become rampaging murder machines.
    - elijaht 4y ago
      You are talking about safety inside of a car, the activists are talking about safety outside of a car
- jjcon 4y ago
  Couldn’t find good stats for shootings and children but it looks like 1000 kids die each year in the US from car accidents so all it would take is 10 kids dying a year in shootings which doesn’t seem like many at all (just consider kids in street gangs etc). ‘Mass shooting’ has different definitions depending on country/agency. In the US I think it just means a shooting (not necessarily a death) involving more than 2 people.
  - mb7733 4y ago
autoexec 4y ago
> This survey (which imo is not very robust) simply highlights the fact we are uninformed as a population. This is a failure primarily of our news media (the big 5) and education. Media gets the most blame here I think. Fear gets views/clicks so they exaggerate and promote a victim mentality to the point where people believe there's a "war on Christmas". They also twist the meaning of words. It's easy for people to misunderstand how Americans feel about "immigrants" when that word is often used to mean both legal and illegal immigrants. I'd expect that distinction matters a lot when it comes to how people feel. > we believe mass shootings are far more common and dangerous than they actually are. A child is ~100x more likely to die from a drug overdose than a mass shooting, and ~10x from a car crash. I don't think anyone seriously thinks that sending their kid to school is more dangerous than a drug overdose or that school shootings are more common than car crashes. I think there's a greater outrage over kids killed in school shootings than in car accidents because cars have always been dangerous (and understandably so) so we accept those risks but there is no accepting that one risk of sending our children into a school is the possibility that a dozen or more will come out in body bags. It's an outrage every time. Especially because children aren't supposed to have guns, and schools (who we have basically turned into full time babysitters for our nation's children) are supposed to protect them. It wouldn't matter if lightning strikes were a more common cause of death in children than school shootings, we'd still be more upset at the shootings since there's no expectation that thunderstorms producing lightning are safe, and very few of us feel that Zeus is supposed to be protecting their kids.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  Media plays a major role but they're not the root cause. Sure, the media exploit our fear for profit and likely make it worse in the process, but how could they do that if the fear didn't exist in us already? Kids in America have a 99% chance of making it to adulthood, but I think every good parent has a least some worry for their child despite that. This worry is probably part of the reason the odds are so good in the first place.
MichaelCollins 4y ago
> Easy example, we believe mass shootings are far more common and dangerous than they actually are. A child is ~100x more likely to die from a drug overdose than a mass shooting, and ~10x from a car crash. Yet our perception is skewed because of what we see in the news / shared. And all of those scenarios are less common than this one: The child doesn't die for any reason: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html I think we have a bias for focusing on rare tragedies than the common mundane outcomes.

bruce511 4y ago

Our ability to understand risk is imperfect, and certaintainly divorced from actual risk numbers. While perceptions based on media are surely a factor, its also based on our control over the risk. Lots of people die in car accidents (presumably because they are bad drivers) but I am a good driver, therefore the risk for me is much lower or zero. I am in control therefore my perception of risk is reduced. What risk there is, I accept in return for the utility of a car. Same for drugs - my kids are well brought up, and I'm a good parent, so the risk of an overdose is low, and I feel in control of that. Clearly lots of people balance the risk of an overdose against the utility of taking the drugs (and clearly they get it wrong a lot.) School shootings have no (direct) utility. So I am both lacking in control, and there is no utility balance, I am concerned about this a lot more. I see the solution as fewer guns, but that crosses over with the utility perceived by a large segment of society. Since they are unwilling to give up that utility we reach an impass. School shootings are a side effect of gun ownership, which has a significant perceived utility to a large group of people. Those people implicitly accept that some people (including children) die in the service of that utility. To them taking away guns is as ridiculous as taking away cars (which also kill people.) taking away cars is absurd right? Of course perceived utility may not be real. Lots of people in the world live without guns. Lots live without cars. But these perceptions are hard, dare I say impossible, to change.

int_19h 4y ago
Note that the vast majority of child gun deaths are not from mass shootings. One third are intentional suicides. Most of the rest is kids accidentally shooting themselves or each other with guns that they gain access to. (While we're at it, and in the vein of the article, gun-owning parents tend to drastically overestimate how well-behaved their kids are around guns, and thus allow them more access than is safe.)

mb7733 4y ago

>A child is ~100x more likely to die from a drug overdose than a mass shooting, and ~10x from a car crash. Yet our perception is skewed because of what we see in the news / shared. Wait, I have the opposite reaction to the car crash comparison. Is that accurate? It blows my mind that the odds of a child in the US dying in a mass shooting is only a single order of magnitude less than the chance they die in a car crash...

inglor_cz 4y ago
Both car safety and emergency medicine have got a lot better over time. In Czechia, the death toll from car crashes is one third of what it used to be at the end of the last century. And people definitely do not drive less.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  > Both car safety and emergency medicine have got a lot better over time. Don't let the walkable city and cycling activists hear you say that. From the way they tell it, modern cars have become rampaging murder machines.
  - elijaht 4y ago
    You are talking about safety inside of a car, the activists are talking about safety outside of a car
jjcon 4y ago
Couldn’t find good stats for shootings and children but it looks like 1000 kids die each year in the US from car accidents so all it would take is 10 kids dying a year in shootings which doesn’t seem like many at all (just consider kids in street gangs etc). ‘Mass shooting’ has different definitions depending on country/agency. In the US I think it just means a shooting (not necessarily a death) involving more than 2 people.
- mb7733 4y ago

autoexec 4y ago

> This survey (which imo is not very robust) simply highlights the fact we are uninformed as a population. This is a failure primarily of our news media (the big 5) and education. Media gets the most blame here I think. Fear gets views/clicks so they exaggerate and promote a victim mentality to the point where people believe there's a "war on Christmas". They also twist the meaning of words. It's easy for people to misunderstand how Americans feel about "immigrants" when that word is often used to mean both legal and illegal immigrants. I'd expect that distinction matters a lot when it comes to how people feel. > we believe mass shootings are far more common and dangerous than they actually are. A child is ~100x more likely to die from a drug overdose than a mass shooting, and ~10x from a car crash. I don't think anyone seriously thinks that sending their kid to school is more dangerous than a drug overdose or that school shootings are more common than car crashes. I think there's a greater outrage over kids killed in school shootings than in car accidents because cars have always been dangerous (and understandably so) so we accept those risks but there is no accepting that one risk of sending our children into a school is the possibility that a dozen or more will come out in body bags. It's an outrage every time. Especially because children aren't supposed to have guns, and schools (who we have basically turned into full time babysitters for our nation's children) are supposed to protect them. It wouldn't matter if lightning strikes were a more common cause of death in children than school shootings, we'd still be more upset at the shootings since there's no expectation that thunderstorms producing lightning are safe, and very few of us feel that Zeus is supposed to be protecting their kids.

MichaelCollins 4y ago
Media plays a major role but they're not the root cause. Sure, the media exploit our fear for profit and likely make it worse in the process, but how could they do that if the fear didn't exist in us already? Kids in America have a 99% chance of making it to adulthood, but I think every good parent has a least some worry for their child despite that. This worry is probably part of the reason the odds are so good in the first place.

MichaelCollins 4y ago

> Easy example, we believe mass shootings are far more common and dangerous than they actually are. A child is ~100x more likely to die from a drug overdose than a mass shooting, and ~10x from a car crash. Yet our perception is skewed because of what we see in the news / shared. And all of those scenarios are less common than this one: The child doesn't die for any reason: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html I think we have a bias for focusing on rare tragedies than the common mundane outcomes.