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One of the problem that the OP blog points out is that mainstream news dish out bad news that encourage an exaggerated and wraped fearful worldview. For example

by kiba 14y ago

One of the problem that the OP blog points out is that mainstream news dish out bad news that encourage an exaggerated and wraped fearful worldview. For example, when a mass murder incident happens, people talk a lot about gun violence and how it's gripping the country and we should do something about it. Of course, they forgot that 40K people die in car accidents, 600K more die of heart disease and about 500K more die of cancer each year. A mass murderer is essentially an amateur when they are compared to inanimate or impersonal killers like cells going out of control or high blood pressure. People aren't going to stop talking about these incidents and they aren't going to stop being terribly uninformed with just this blog post. What they need is some sort of media campaign to inform them of the real risk of dying and what they really need to fear. This is what I called "fear inoculation", a term I coined at http://kibabase.com/articles/notes-and-thoughts#fear-inoculation http://kibabase.com/articles/notes-and-thoughts#fear-inocula... In essence, fear inoculation is basically protection against memes that promote irrational fear of certain things like terrorist incidents and airplane crash.

jberryman 14y ago
You are aware that gun deaths are on course to exceed auto deaths this year? While the gov. has spent billions over decades to prevent auto deaths, cancer deaths, etc., effectively $0 have been spent to study and prevent gun deaths; how is it irrational to be concerned about that?
- kvnn 14y ago
  This is actually very surprising to me. Thanks for the info.
- kiba 14y ago
  Gun death looks like a proximate cause. Guns are tools for suicide, or for killing people who you don't like. If you want to reduce gun related death, you should look into suicide research and criminology/sociology research. You could ban guns, but it's likely that people will kill each other with something else. There's no shortage of methods on way to kill somebody. Anyway, do you have a citation? I have mine, which is http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

by kiba 14y ago

jberryman 14y ago

You are aware that gun deaths are on course to exceed auto deaths this year? While the gov. has spent billions over decades to prevent auto deaths, cancer deaths, etc., effectively $0 have been spent to study and prevent gun deaths; how is it irrational to be concerned about that?

kvnn 14y ago
This is actually very surprising to me. Thanks for the info.
kiba 14y ago
Gun death looks like a proximate cause. Guns are tools for suicide, or for killing people who you don't like. If you want to reduce gun related death, you should look into suicide research and criminology/sociology research. You could ban guns, but it's likely that people will kill each other with something else. There's no shortage of methods on way to kill somebody. Anyway, do you have a citation? I have mine, which is http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm