2 ms·

At least when I last visited Yellowstone, the place was full of signs and stories about how people have died (and IIRC, their bodies were never recovered) from

At least when I last visited Yellowstone, the place was full of signs and stories about how people have died (and IIRC, their bodies were never recovered) from trying to swim in the colorful fun-looking pools of water, or from kids and pets wandering off. I don't know what else they could do to add more "danger and awe" apart from planning on having some sacrificial tourists every day. People are just generally bad at perceiving or respecting abstract danger.

datavirtue 2y ago
Never walk alone.
- mindslight 2y ago
  I'm not sure if you're commenting on Yellowstone specifically, national parks and wild areas in general, or simply the everpresent risk from our heads being ~6ft above the ground and kept aloft by one hell of an inverted pendulum problem.
krisoft 2y ago
But that also adds to the same effect! Their moral is to stay on the boardwalk and don’t stray off from it. Their morale is to look out for your kids and pets that they do the same. Which equates boardwalks with safety. Which, as an approximation is kinda true. But then something like this happens which undermines the assumptions under that approximation and if you are still using it as a heuristics you can be in trouble. > People are just generally bad at perceiving or respecting abstract danger. Maybe? But also, all the yellowstones hydrothermal features look like the gods have cursed the land. If you were just galavanting through the forest and you come up seeing that without any prior knowledge or park rangers to assure you you would say “oh, hell no” and you would turn around. The park cultivates a sense of safety otherwise it wouldn’t be a park.
- mindslight 2y ago
  > If you were just galavanting through the forest and you come up seeing that without any prior knowledge or park rangers to assure you you would say “oh, hell no” and you would turn around I think you're assuming much more individualism in the primitive dynamic than actually existed. As I said, individual humans are terrible at judging danger. There was an article posted a few days back about collapses while trenching for construction, and the difficulties of getting people to take that risk seriously until it actually happens. So at the state you're envisioning, I'd say it's more like others in your tribe telling you to stay away from those weird holes in the ground, because some tribe members had already been killed by them. And the contemporary dynamic is more like an extreme scaling up of that, with a much more nuanced understanding of the dangerous mechanisms.

datavirtue 2y ago

Never walk alone.

mindslight 2y ago
I'm not sure if you're commenting on Yellowstone specifically, national parks and wild areas in general, or simply the everpresent risk from our heads being ~6ft above the ground and kept aloft by one hell of an inverted pendulum problem.

krisoft 2y ago

But that also adds to the same effect! Their moral is to stay on the boardwalk and don’t stray off from it. Their morale is to look out for your kids and pets that they do the same. Which equates boardwalks with safety. Which, as an approximation is kinda true. But then something like this happens which undermines the assumptions under that approximation and if you are still using it as a heuristics you can be in trouble. > People are just generally bad at perceiving or respecting abstract danger. Maybe? But also, all the yellowstones hydrothermal features look like the gods have cursed the land. If you were just galavanting through the forest and you come up seeing that without any prior knowledge or park rangers to assure you you would say “oh, hell no” and you would turn around. The park cultivates a sense of safety otherwise it wouldn’t be a park.

mindslight 2y ago
> If you were just galavanting through the forest and you come up seeing that without any prior knowledge or park rangers to assure you you would say “oh, hell no” and you would turn around I think you're assuming much more individualism in the primitive dynamic than actually existed. As I said, individual humans are terrible at judging danger. There was an article posted a few days back about collapses while trenching for construction, and the difficulties of getting people to take that risk seriously until it actually happens. So at the state you're envisioning, I'd say it's more like others in your tribe telling you to stay away from those weird holes in the ground, because some tribe members had already been killed by them. And the contemporary dynamic is more like an extreme scaling up of that, with a much more nuanced understanding of the dangerous mechanisms.