a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  2483 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A man helped a lost toddler find her parents, police say. He was smeared online as a predator and fled town.

The stories from you and francopoli are absolutely, utterly fucked.

I don't even know what else to say. It's fucked. As a man aiming to be a teacher, I find the situation appalling and incredibly stupid.

This begs the question, though: why haven't we banned kitchen knives yet? They kill people, don't they? Sharp melee weapons at an arm's length in every house. So easy to just reach out and slash someone you don't like: your neighbour, their dog, their car... Why haven't we banned them? WHY?!

Because it's fucking stupid, that's why. The risks are abysmal compared to proper, appropriate use of sharp tools - or even compared to no use at all. I care about human life and safety as much as the next guy, but at some point, your cost-benefit analysis yields extremely poor results and you have to consider that maybe, the shit you're gonna do for safety's sake will drive people insane for that 0.32% increase that has no real effect on the situation but looks oh so comforting.





user-inactivated  ·  2483 days ago  ·  link  ·  

How do you fight an irrational fear? If you joke about rape or pedophiles you get shit on until you lose your career.

Not sure what the answer is, but I hope there is someone out there smarter than I who cam come up with something.

user-inactivated  ·  2483 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I don't claim to be smarter, but from what I gather, the best policy against irrational fear is education. Superstitions hold nothing over you if you know they're just a product of fiction.

But we're dealing with real people here, not fairy tales. Except... that's what that is: a nightmarish tale spun by people yearning for attention and views for no fucking reason whatsoever. What could a possible benefit be from scaring half a country into a lonely corner?

So what do we do? I don't know. I wish I would, but I don't, so I eagerly await the smarter person along your side. In the meantime, this kind of reasoning is what we could use (watch for a full minute).