Quote:
Originally Posted by Resolute 14
Granted. Spectacular examples make for spectacular results.
But accumulation of incidents over time spurs change as well. A basic example of that is when cities fix up road intersections that are known for being dangerous. The back access into Chestermere from Highway 1 being a local example - every time there is an incident there, the calls to fix it grow. As that support grows, the pressure to do something grows. Inevitably, it will be fixed. It is sad that more people will die before it happens, but each new tragedy brings new calls and new pressure to finally make change.
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My point is that in my view, at this stage in our development as a species this tendency to react spectacularly to what you describe as "spectacular examples" (I totally disagree with that description) is probably, overall, a bad thing. In other words, our negative reactions to events that are statistically unimportant relative to larger trends produces wrong behavior less often than helpful behavior.
So on the whole I wish we'd stop doing this. However, if we are going to behave in this manner and have these sorts of reactions simply because of the way we're wired in an evolutionary sense, this is an opportunity to take the good with the bad. So I'm a bit conflicted here about whether this should be the sort of thing we should be jumping on to prompt change.