>I think there is a real issue on what people perceive as society's role and what parent's role is.
Not only that, but you a society has become obsessed with risk mitigation over the last several decades. The problem is that people are poorly equipped to estimate risk with very low occurrences against low or unclear cost. You see it in all facets of society with a platitude of better safe than sorry.
It shows up in increased medical licensing to reduce error, which means less accessible and more expensive care. It shows up in new parents who don't introduce their children to family for risk of covid. It shows up San Francisco city policy to reduce traffic death to zero even if it means reducing traffic to a standstill.
At the end of the day, a life with zero risk is not a life worth living but people are scared into the safest option.
It gets better.... they do the drill but then don't even practice the most important and highest priority of the 3 option which is to RUN.
It turns out, running is too inconvenient for the teachers to deal with, because it's a lot of work to round up kids that have run away (and probably not the safest thing to begin with anyway for just a drill). So instead they drill for them to hide, which should be done only if you can't run away. The thing is, watching both the Uvalde and Christchurch massacre videos, it will become crystal clear to you that hiding is the literal worst of the three options as you become a sitting duck.
So they have the drill, then drill into the kids to be sitting ducks because it is more convenient for the administrator than dealing with kids that are running. The advice I have for my kid is to not give a damn what the teacher says, to grab the nearest long durable object and smash out the windows and run away.
> The advice I have for my kid is to not give a damn what the teacher says, to grab the nearest long durable object and smash out the windows and run away.
Meanwhile, here in the UK, the advice I gave my son was to look both ways when crossing the road, not to mess around with plug sockets, and not to run when carrying a pair of scissors.
I honestly don't know how the US has got itself into such a messed up state that such drills are considered necessary and routine, or how it is that the people are ok with this. I'm guessing it's a boiling a frog type scenario as it doesn't make sense otherwise.
I think you've missed the point there, which is that something has become necessary to prepare for the horrifying reality of mass shootings.
Unfortunately, due to the political situation in the country, it's currently impossible to do the one thing that we know might actually stop those shootings (make it harder or impossible for people, especially children, to get their hands on heavy weaponry). So by the "logic" of "we must do something" "this is something" "then we must do this", we have active shooter drills instead.
Assuming the drills are necessary currently, doing "the one thing" isn't going to end them for at least decades. It's not going to be an either or situation.
The best solution I see is worldwide disarmament in some manner that still allows equalization of women, elderly, etc in physical force. That's a pretty tall order honestly not sure that happens anytime in my lifetime. It also has a sort of 'prisoner dilemma' element where the individual would be insane to give up their arms while the criminal still has theirs.
> It also has a sort of 'prisoner dilemma' element where the individual would be insane to give up their arms while the criminal still has theirs.
Advocates of "gun control" in the US don't realize this part, they seem to assume by making guns less available the criminals won't be able to find them.
I'd be wary of putting all of these examples into the same box, though.
If kids can't play outside anymore because of overprotective parents or an overprotective society, that feels to me like a net negative. If newspapers are afraid to publish because they are fearful of libel suits, then we might miss fact-checked stories that are in the public interest, and it's not clear that that's a good trade-off.
On the other hand, zero traffic death policies usually result in fairly cheap and only mildly inconvenient interventions (if inconvenient at all) to improve the legibility of key intersections and dangerous roads. Drives to reduce medical error usually rely on increased training or the introduction of fixed procedures or checklists, quick wins. Safety regulations in construction require proper dust extraction and safety at heights, and really the cost in better ladders, scaffolding, safety harnesses, vacuums and so on is completely negligible compared against the occupational hazards and chronic illnesses often suffered by older construction workers.
(And sometimes it's debatable. I feel like NASA could take a bigger risk on some manned missions if the astronauts agree, but on the other hand there's so much money and effort involved in these missions that it's not so strange that they want to get everything right, and that feels like the right culture and attitude. I feel like you should probably be allowed to swim anywhere you want even in still water or when there's algae, at your own peril, but really it's not that much of an inconvenience to go to a safer spot with a lifeguard.)
My impression is that what really ails Western societies is not necessarily risk averseness but rather gridlock, where a small amount of people can block a lot of progress for the rest of us. Gridlock has made governments averse to big infrastructure projects (e.g. high speed trains) and big changes in regulations that could move the needle (e.g. land value taxation) but they're not really averse to the risk, they're averse to getting swamped by interest groups and influential people with a vested interest in the status quo.
To be clear, my central point is that people cannot differentiate between the exceedingly low risks with cost and real risks that should be addressed.
I'll speak to your points on the medical area because it's the area that I'm most passionate about and think I'm the most informed. I'm not talking about medical checklist s. I'm talking about increased licensure. An example would be pushes to increase the academic training of nurses. Nurses with four-year degrees marginally better outcomes than nurses with two-year degrees. At face value that sounds like people will get better care. What's not discussed is that this means nurses are more expensive so hospitals have less nurses. Another example is mini drugs that are over-the-counter in most countries require a prescription in the US. At face value this sounds safer as it allegedly reduces misuse. However, it adds hundreds of dollars in cost for a doctor's visit to get a $5 pill, and means many people that need it won't get it.
I certainly agree that governmental gridlock and dysfunction exist. However, that alone doesn't explain why large infrastructure projects like rail cost $5 to 10x more in the US when they do make it through the process. Infrastructure projects have vastly higher headcount then even in the EU. You have paid professionals whose job it is to make sure that Builders don't step on endangered animals. This obsession with preventing the risk ignores the fact that it would be both cheaper and better for the animals assume some will die and spend part of the money you would be paying to prevent that on actually helping them.
> If newspapers are afraid to publish because they are fearful of libel suits, then we might miss fact-checked stories that are in the public interest, and it's not clear that that's a good trade-off.
I'd argue the opposite. If they're afraid of libel, they're probably engaging in it and should stop.
If they're sure of what they're saying and have proof of due diligence, they shouldn't be afraid. If they're not sure, they might still want to publish the information but be clear and explicit that they have no proof and state how they got hold of the information.
Saying "I heard but haven't been able to verify that Person X did Thing Y" is very different from saying "Person X did Thing Y". The latter should absolutely be liable to a suit if they don't have proof or very strong evidence that it actually happened. The former shouldn't as much.
Disclaimer, IANAL so I can't tell if libel laws in different countries work that way but I would expect them to do so at least in broad terms.
> If they're afraid of libel, they're probably engaging in it and should stop.
That may depend on the jurisdiction.
My understanding is that libel laws in the UK, for instance, are horribly broad, and, importantly, don't actually take the truth into account. (From what I've read, I would say it would be more apt to call them "defamation laws", but no one put me in charge.)
So if it were as simple as "just don't print verifiable lies", then I'd tend to agree with you, but given that there are places where you can print verifiable truth and still get slapped with a successful libel suit for it...
Even if you think you'll win a case, there's still the distraction and economic cost of being dragged into a lawsuit. Fear of libel suits probably does make the gutter press slightly less trashy, but it also has a chilling effect on dependable sources, and they are regularly employed by malicious actors for precisely that reason. But anyway, if you don't like that particular example, make up another where you feel society is currently too risk averse.
I think this is too broad a subject. Different societies have different risk profiles.
In the US, the OP is probably enough example. If you can't let your kids play outside or walk the streets for fear of being accused of child abuse, endangerment or whatever charges might be made against you, that's the symptom of worrying societal illness.
I grew up in America - in the southern part of the continent though, not in the USA. I now live Europe. Kids roam and play outside and that's a normal thing.
Kids need to be allowed to be kids, otherwise they will grow up to be very limited adults with odd world views. Perhaps everything else stems from this, at least partially? Kids who grow up overprotected might feel they need to overly protect everyone as an adult, and these adults will be the ones behind laws and regulations.
My point was not to debate the seriousness of covid but talk about relative risk. If you think covid is very serious and it's perfectly logical to take some precautions with your child.
To my point, there is a huge difference between taking your child to a sports game and introducing it to one or two people over the course of a year. If you magically knew there is a 1 in 10 chance your child would die, of course don't do it. The question is when would you start to do it. One in a million chance, one in a billion? At some point the logic of better safe than sorry works against you.
Not only that, but you a society has become obsessed with risk mitigation over the last several decades. The problem is that people are poorly equipped to estimate risk with very low occurrences against low or unclear cost. You see it in all facets of society with a platitude of better safe than sorry.
It shows up in increased medical licensing to reduce error, which means less accessible and more expensive care. It shows up in new parents who don't introduce their children to family for risk of covid. It shows up San Francisco city policy to reduce traffic death to zero even if it means reducing traffic to a standstill.
At the end of the day, a life with zero risk is not a life worth living but people are scared into the safest option.