It’s not true, unfortunately. There’s no substantive evidence that that’s true based on my research for the last 15 minutes after I was surprised by the same thing!
Emotionally charged event + availability heuristic really drives people to worry way too much about stuff like this. Terrorism/plane crashes cause similar disproportionate reactions.
I mean, by the same logic maybe we need Shooting Drills as part of the diverse and unpredictable experience that will produce greater good in the infinite afterlife?
He just has to contend with the fact that since God has placed us "in a bunch of different worlds over the course of infinitely long cosmic tenure", this one has to have Shooting Drills.
You have a problem with it? You take it up with God over the course of your infinitely long cosmic tenure. Or better yet, just wait till you die and get reincarnated to a world without shooting drills over the course of the infinitely long cosmic tenure.
So is that the sort of defense BB is making? (Not saying you hold this view.)
-There are many universes that God has created and populated with soul-bearing beings with different mix of good and evil.
-This one just seems to have whatever particular mix of evil and good we happen to have but there are better and worse universes.
It still doesn’t make much sense to me. For one, why would god need to create universes with evil in them?
Even if we accept for the sake of argument that some evil is necessary for “soul-building” or “free will” or whatever apology the theist gives, there are many sorts of evil or misfortune that seem to serve no purpose. Consider terminal diseases for babies for instance. Or the millions of animals that suffer in factory farms etc. It seems even if god created multiple universes, all of them ought to have been free of these. (Consider a world with just humans and plants or other non-sentient living beings.)
So I conclude that BB’s theism is a form of intellectual hipsterism:
I recall at the height of COVID hysteria (i live in Australia) these arguments were commonly deployed if you noted low risk of death or harm among certain cohorts.
“Easy for you to say if your kid isn’t the one in a million!”
Relatedly, the amount of times i heard things like “you can’t put a price on human life!”
You absolutely can and should bloody well try to! In a world of finite resources, it’s soft-headed (and i would say immoral) to do otherwise.
Yes. Also, I think your statistic is misleading because a lot of teens are killed in gang shootouts, for example, but that's rare for like 5-year-olds.
Also worth noting that children rarely die (in the developed world, anyway). Something could simultaneously be the leading cause of death in children (or some subgroup) and still not be a very big deal. The leading cause of death in children aged 5-10 in many parts of the world is cancer. But no one worries much about this, and rightly so.
I mean, I honestly do think that people should be more cautious in regards to eating to avoid choking. Choking to death is a terrible fate!
I'm not entirely sure that the argument that something affects few people is a reason to ignore it, though. Maybe it is for this case and for the cases that you mentioned, but what about, say, severely restricting the sex lives of a very small percentage of the total population? It won't affect very many people, but we would still say that this would be a huge injustice, no? Such as by banning child sex dolls/robots.
If you solved gun violence, that would solve school shootings, remove the need for drills, and have many other benefits. Consider looking at the bugger picture.
Hmm. We've got a little conflicting data here. Besides that bb's source ends in 2018. The world kept on. Did bb look for the data he liked and then write?
School shootings are often brought up when arguing for controls on firearms. Arguing for their insignificance is part of an argument outside this venue for there being no gun problem. Comparison to almost any other country would argue there is. Just compare homicide rates. I would argue that a bigger problem with school shooting drills is that they take our eyes off the ball. Looking like we're responding to the firearms disaster when we're not.
The other data that includes all shootings at schools. Shootings at schools are a problem and I'm betting that as much as drills may have downsides, millions of students are living in a firearms violence reality
You're probably right that the drills are counter-productive and unnecessary. Still, you perhaps go too far in saying that school shootings aren't "a very serious problem". The proponderous of mass killings of all types in the USA shows a tear in its social fabric. What does it say of a country that it continually produces mass killers (especially of children) where other similarly armed countries do not?
Yes, the overreaction is real, and we should never ignore the actual stats for a measured response. Numbers going down is a good piece of data that ought to be reported. However, I do think that some of the comparisons in the article aren’t pertinent because there’s an element of psychological horror with deliberate targeting of children. People have internalized that we can’t do anything about choking hazards (ban eating? Lol) or lightning. Rock climbing and skydiving are personal choices by adults.
People have not and will not accept that we can’t do anything about people going crazy and attacking schools as a yearly occurrence in the US when other countries have 0 per decade, even if the probability of YOUR kid actually getting hurt is low.
You're right that no other country is in the same league for civilian guns per capita (and looking it up now, it's a bigger gap than I thought)— but I had in mind other wealthy countries, like Canada, Switzerland, or Iceland, where it's not difficult to get hold of a gun but they don't have the same problems.
On which statistic are you comparing America to Canada, Switzerland, Iceland etc.? For overall murder rate it's an apples to oranges comparison since America has so many more blacks than those countries.
The higher number of blacks affects the mass shooting rate as well, since a mass shooting is defined as any incident in which 4 or more people are shot, and that includes a lot of gang shootings.
However if you're looking specifically at random acts of mass slaughter like Columbine, I believe you're correct that America has more of those events than other countries. That's probably because America has a bigger population and also because guns are more available in America than in Canada.
Just taking non-gang related spree killing, it is much more common the USA than anywhere else, at a rate beyond its larger population or ease of access to guns. National service means it's easy to get ahold of a gun in Switzerland, but Americans have killed more people in mass killings this year than in the last 100 years in Switzerland. The race of US spree killers are also proportionate to the racial makeup of the country. And to take school shootings specifically, it's essentially a uniquely American phenomenom: there are more school shootings each year in the US than any other country has had in its entire history.
All of this combines to being a cultural pattern independent of the country size. Obviously access to guns is a factor, but it's provably not the only factor.
(Also, not to let your bizarre race angle stand unchallenged— merely having black skin doesn't make someone generally more homicidal. To take one clear example: the moderately wealthy and stable country Kenya has a lower homicide rate than the USA, with a population of Europeans and Asians at about 0.3% of the population.)
>Americans have killed more people in mass killings this year than in the last 100 years in Switzerland.
Switzerland's population is 2.6% the size of America's population.
It's certainly possible that there's something about American culture that promotes school shootings, but that's not clearly the case based on the data. It may just be population size and access to guns. If there are cultural factors, I suspect it's more about being an atomized, developed country than something specific to America.
> merely having black skin doesn't make...
It's not about skin color, it's about race. Of course there are cohesive traditional cultures like Kenya which greatly decrease the murder rate, but when blacks and whites are raised in the same culture, blacks commit homicide at a higher rate. That's the case in every single country where there are large enough populations of different races to collect reliable statistics. Blacks always have a higher murder rate than whites in the same country, whites almost always have a higher murder rate than asians in the same country.
This was one of my main talking points back in high school! People often mistake scope sensitivity for a lack of empathy.
Schools are creating anxiety and division. Why?
Because they believe they are in danger when they are not. Same as everyone.
My God, I had no idea how deadly corks are! I will sign your petition to ban assault corks.
It’s not true, unfortunately. There’s no substantive evidence that that’s true based on my research for the last 15 minutes after I was surprised by the same thing!
Emotionally charged event + availability heuristic really drives people to worry way too much about stuff like this. Terrorism/plane crashes cause similar disproportionate reactions.
I've always thought they were silly. Like TSA at airports, metal detectors at public buildings, etc.
> Why those who support school shooting drills should support mandatory listening to the Blocked and Reported podcast
I *was* anti school shooting drills, but this is extremely convincing…
Bentham's BD, why don't you ask your god to end all the school shootings?
https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-most-plausible-explanation-of
I mean, by the same logic maybe we need Shooting Drills as part of the diverse and unpredictable experience that will produce greater good in the infinite afterlife?
That is true.
He just has to contend with the fact that since God has placed us "in a bunch of different worlds over the course of infinitely long cosmic tenure", this one has to have Shooting Drills.
You have a problem with it? You take it up with God over the course of your infinitely long cosmic tenure. Or better yet, just wait till you die and get reincarnated to a world without shooting drills over the course of the infinitely long cosmic tenure.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9kcTNWopvXFncXgPy/intellectual-hipsters-and-meta-contrarianism
Clearly, BB believes that school shootings are not only good, but a necessary component of the maximal possible good!
There is a universe where God prevents all school shootings. It's just not this universe.
So is that the sort of defense BB is making? (Not saying you hold this view.)
-There are many universes that God has created and populated with soul-bearing beings with different mix of good and evil.
-This one just seems to have whatever particular mix of evil and good we happen to have but there are better and worse universes.
It still doesn’t make much sense to me. For one, why would god need to create universes with evil in them?
Even if we accept for the sake of argument that some evil is necessary for “soul-building” or “free will” or whatever apology the theist gives, there are many sorts of evil or misfortune that seem to serve no purpose. Consider terminal diseases for babies for instance. Or the millions of animals that suffer in factory farms etc. It seems even if god created multiple universes, all of them ought to have been free of these. (Consider a world with just humans and plants or other non-sentient living beings.)
So I conclude that BB’s theism is a form of intellectual hipsterism:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9kcTNWopvXFncXgPy/intellectual-hipsters-and-meta-contrarianism
I recall at the height of COVID hysteria (i live in Australia) these arguments were commonly deployed if you noted low risk of death or harm among certain cohorts.
“Easy for you to say if your kid isn’t the one in a million!”
Relatedly, the amount of times i heard things like “you can’t put a price on human life!”
You absolutely can and should bloody well try to! In a world of finite resources, it’s soft-headed (and i would say immoral) to do otherwise.
I’m curious how your numbers and arguments square with the fact that firearms related murder became the number one cause for children and teens recently: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/guns-remain-leading-cause-of-death-for-children-and-teens. Is the discrepancy because most such shootings happen outside of school?
Yes. Also, I think your statistic is misleading because a lot of teens are killed in gang shootouts, for example, but that's rare for like 5-year-olds.
Also worth noting that children rarely die (in the developed world, anyway). Something could simultaneously be the leading cause of death in children (or some subgroup) and still not be a very big deal. The leading cause of death in children aged 5-10 in many parts of the world is cancer. But no one worries much about this, and rightly so.
During the Cold War, schools had "Duck and Cover" drills to prepare for a nuclear strike.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_and_cover
The champagne cork fatality rate is very unlikely as far as I can tell: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/41385/do-more-people-die-from-flying-champagne-corks-and-golf-balls-than-are-attacked
I mean, I honestly do think that people should be more cautious in regards to eating to avoid choking. Choking to death is a terrible fate!
I'm not entirely sure that the argument that something affects few people is a reason to ignore it, though. Maybe it is for this case and for the cases that you mentioned, but what about, say, severely restricting the sex lives of a very small percentage of the total population? It won't affect very many people, but we would still say that this would be a huge injustice, no? Such as by banning child sex dolls/robots.
More than ten. More than alligators. More than vehicle deaths.
2021, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the CDC
But the article isn't about gun violence writ large, it's about school shootings.
If you solved gun violence, that would solve school shootings, remove the need for drills, and have many other benefits. Consider looking at the bugger picture.
Bigger picture lol. Bugger picture would probably mean looking at gay porn lol.
Hmm. We've got a little conflicting data here. Besides that bb's source ends in 2018. The world kept on. Did bb look for the data he liked and then write?
School shootings are often brought up when arguing for controls on firearms. Arguing for their insignificance is part of an argument outside this venue for there being no gun problem. Comparison to almost any other country would argue there is. Just compare homicide rates. I would argue that a bigger problem with school shooting drills is that they take our eyes off the ball. Looking like we're responding to the firearms disaster when we're not.
The other data that includes all shootings at schools. Shootings at schools are a problem and I'm betting that as much as drills may have downsides, millions of students are living in a firearms violence reality
https://k12ssdb.org/all-shootings
But I wasn't saying anything about gun control!
But you should have been.
You're probably right that the drills are counter-productive and unnecessary. Still, you perhaps go too far in saying that school shootings aren't "a very serious problem". The proponderous of mass killings of all types in the USA shows a tear in its social fabric. What does it say of a country that it continually produces mass killers (especially of children) where other similarly armed countries do not?
Yes, the overreaction is real, and we should never ignore the actual stats for a measured response. Numbers going down is a good piece of data that ought to be reported. However, I do think that some of the comparisons in the article aren’t pertinent because there’s an element of psychological horror with deliberate targeting of children. People have internalized that we can’t do anything about choking hazards (ban eating? Lol) or lightning. Rock climbing and skydiving are personal choices by adults.
People have not and will not accept that we can’t do anything about people going crazy and attacking schools as a yearly occurrence in the US when other countries have 0 per decade, even if the probability of YOUR kid actually getting hurt is low.
With choking, people should be encouraged to take smaller bites so that even if they do choke, they won't be choking to death.
It could say that we signal boost school shooters so it’s a viable path to notoriety for young psychopaths.
No countries are similarly well-armed to the US. Which countries did you have in mind?
You're right that no other country is in the same league for civilian guns per capita (and looking it up now, it's a bigger gap than I thought)— but I had in mind other wealthy countries, like Canada, Switzerland, or Iceland, where it's not difficult to get hold of a gun but they don't have the same problems.
On which statistic are you comparing America to Canada, Switzerland, Iceland etc.? For overall murder rate it's an apples to oranges comparison since America has so many more blacks than those countries.
https://www.stevesailer.net/p/2023-homicide-victimization-rates
The higher number of blacks affects the mass shooting rate as well, since a mass shooting is defined as any incident in which 4 or more people are shot, and that includes a lot of gang shootings.
However if you're looking specifically at random acts of mass slaughter like Columbine, I believe you're correct that America has more of those events than other countries. That's probably because America has a bigger population and also because guns are more available in America than in Canada.
Just taking non-gang related spree killing, it is much more common the USA than anywhere else, at a rate beyond its larger population or ease of access to guns. National service means it's easy to get ahold of a gun in Switzerland, but Americans have killed more people in mass killings this year than in the last 100 years in Switzerland. The race of US spree killers are also proportionate to the racial makeup of the country. And to take school shootings specifically, it's essentially a uniquely American phenomenom: there are more school shootings each year in the US than any other country has had in its entire history.
All of this combines to being a cultural pattern independent of the country size. Obviously access to guns is a factor, but it's provably not the only factor.
(Also, not to let your bizarre race angle stand unchallenged— merely having black skin doesn't make someone generally more homicidal. To take one clear example: the moderately wealthy and stable country Kenya has a lower homicide rate than the USA, with a population of Europeans and Asians at about 0.3% of the population.)
> There are more school shootings each year in the US than any other country has had in its entire history
That's not true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:School_shootings_in_Canada
>Americans have killed more people in mass killings this year than in the last 100 years in Switzerland.
Switzerland's population is 2.6% the size of America's population.
It's certainly possible that there's something about American culture that promotes school shootings, but that's not clearly the case based on the data. It may just be population size and access to guns. If there are cultural factors, I suspect it's more about being an atomized, developed country than something specific to America.
> merely having black skin doesn't make...
It's not about skin color, it's about race. Of course there are cohesive traditional cultures like Kenya which greatly decrease the murder rate, but when blacks and whites are raised in the same culture, blacks commit homicide at a higher rate. That's the case in every single country where there are large enough populations of different races to collect reliable statistics. Blacks always have a higher murder rate than whites in the same country, whites almost always have a higher murder rate than asians in the same country.
Denying this is like denying the round Earth.
Your link neatly proves my point. There are 8 school shootings in Canada listed. There have been 30 school shootings this year alone in the US.