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But let’s not actually fix that or anything, when we can have more fun building flashy gadgets!
So you want to ‘fix’ human nature do you? Do go on.
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People really don’t understand what it’s like in New York. When I moved to Long Island, I didn’t expect that most everyone I met would have a personal story about 9/11. My best friend started his day slipping into his flip flops at his college just down the street from the Twin Towers, then running from the debris as the building came down, then walking an entire marathon distance in his flip flops to finally land in safety at his roommate’s house. A former co-worker volunteers for a fire department; her supervisor was the one who coordinated the aborted helicopter rescue attempt. Everyone here has a friend who died, was nearby when the attack happened, had a child in their classroom who had a relative who died.
Yeah, people are jumpy.
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Trillions of dollars are spent upon optimising people’s physical health, and hardly anyone complains that those practices are “unnatural”. Yet since behavioral models are normative rather than optimal, most everyone feels an incentive to deeply identify with their maladaptive behaviors. Repairing congenital cognitive dysfunctions is not very different - although arguably the risks of not doing so are greater, since one’s distortions in perception and decision-making adversely affect many more people.
The same people who complain that it would be against some immutable “human nature” to customize their brain often are those who would jump at a development that would allow them to overeat, smoke, or fuck without consequences. It’s as much hypocritical as it is a demonstration of the very problem!
Low flying aircraft, unannounced in NYC? I’d think that it’d be obvious why this caused panic…
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New York residents responding in panic to slow and low flying airliners being followed by jets 8 years after 2 of them caused the greatest disaster in the history of NYC can hardly be described as dysfunctional or maladaptive behaviour. Given the information the bystanders had at the time, their reaction was normal and correct. I’m at a loss to understand your point here other than to display your superiority over the people in the video due to your assumption of how you would have behaved in the same situation.
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Okay, so why should the whole city panic if one has no evidence that they are being targeted? How do I know if it’s ME or the building I am in? Even if you knew for a fact that a building in NYC would be destroyed, why assume that it must be the one where you are? People often engage in some truly bizarre examples of risk analysis - not because I say that they are, but because they continue to live in stress and fear while doing things that increase rather than decrease the risks they claim to be concerned about. For example, stampedes, airline security theatre, and voting for Trump.
When people feel attached to a certain outcome beyond all sense and reason, they compromise their situational awareness and ability to adapt. That seems easy enough to demonstrate, that I am not clear what you are saying it has to do with me, personally. Whatever you think of me has no bearing on whether or not that is true. In fact, assuming that my self somehow matters more or less than anybody else’s self is precisely the kind of unexamined wishful thinking I am trying to point out.
(countdown to somebody complaining that discussing whether or not people should panic when seeing this plane is somehow “missing the point” and going OT when that’s what most of the blog entry talks about…)
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Considering they had previously been a target and had been warned that they still are, the no evidence angle falls flat.
Because it was low and very close. The damage from the first attack extended far beyond the towers so assuming they needed to get far away is reasonable response
Because you are the one saying these people reacted irrationally and “beyond all sense and reason” we can only assume this is a scale of rational which you yourself have created which assumes you would react differently based on your labeling these people as you have done.
edit to add: Somehow, I suspect had it been a real attack and there was a video of people calmly standing there watching the plane crash into a building above their heads you would be telling us how irrational their behaviour was.
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Well I just hope you’re there in an emergency to tell me what the correct course of action is
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^^^^^ This.^^^^^
Everyone in the NY Metro area knew someone who died either directly or second hand. For me it was 4 people in my town (90+ minutes commuting distance from NYC), two people I graduated HS with, one person I graduated college with, the husband of someone I went to college with, and a student’s brother. That’s just deaths - forget about people who got out on time. I saw the towers fall from 18 miles away (it was that clear out) from our office window in NJ. I can’t imagine what it was like that day up close. And Jersey City is right there – so many/most of those people had personal stories of their own that day. For this Air Force One thing … I don’t think this was an overreaction at all. I think it was a reaction.
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Try shooting some fireworks off outside the bedroom window of someone who has combat-related PTSD. Then tell them that they’re engaging in a truly bizarre example of risk analysis when they have a panic attack and roll out of bed to duck for cover.
Actually, don’t. Because that would be a total dick move. Just take my word for it: bad idea.
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So that’s a healthy response which should simply be accepted because people have a name for it? Is it more compassionate to be content with ineffectual sympathy and wring our hands in group commiseration, or to concentrate on efforts to actually fix what all concerned seem to accept is otherwise a problem?
What I am being told sounds as if preferring to optimise the person and their responses lacks empathy. Isn’t that like how Christian Science frames treatment of physiological problems? Trying to do anything pragmatic only proves that you don’t understand and don’t care about the real nature of the problem…
Robert Ornstein in his book Evolution of Consciousness: The Origins of the Way We Think delves in to this very topic. He proposes a thought experiment that goes something like this; Imagine early man in the wild. He see what looks like tiger eyes in the bushes. Naturally, he runs away. Now a rational thinking reaction would be to evaluate the situation to determine if they are really tiger eyes at which point he would be promptly eaten.
We are not and have never been rational beings but rather adaptive creatures formed not by self analysis but by evolution where survival trumps correct analysis. Sure, we like to pretend it is otherwise but that’s simply self delusion and calling out people for not sharing your delusion is beyond all sense and reason. We may believe that rational analysis of a situation is paramount in decision making, but once we attempt to apply it to survival we loose. Evolution has provided us with millions of years of empirical evidence to suggest that the assumptive reaction proves to be the most effective strategy.
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It’s a normal response which any person with an ounce of empathy should be able to understand and accept.
If you truly can’t understand why someone who witnessed thousands of their fellow New Yorkers slaughtered by a jetliner attack might be put on edge by the sight of a low-flying jetliner headed toward midtown then I’d say your response lacks empathy almost by definition.
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This is an odd hill to choose to die on. I’ll leave it at that.
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People are still jumpy around here. I got to say when I hear a whole shitload of sirens I turn on the news.
My kayak launch is right under the left wing tip!
But it simply being a norm does not in any way mean that it is healthy. Insisting that I somehow don’t understand that it is normal seems disingenuous. It sidesteps the double-standard I was pointing out between physiological health having an optimal model, and mental/behavioral/emotional health being seen only with a normative model.
If you were being admitted to a hospital for diabetes or heart disease - would you say that they would be more sympathetic, have more empathy to simply understand and accept your condition as a normal physiological response to trauma? It would be completely scandalous, be all over the media, and damage the reputation of the hospital and staff involved.
But I never said that I don’t understand it. Quite the contrary, I said that I do understand it. Empathy is only the barest beginning to problem-solving. And I would argue that using sentimentality to deliberately preclude trying to solve social problems becomes less compassionate. That would be taking an easy out and perpetuating misery.
No, it needs some explanation. Whether or not it is healthy is precisely the point, that is what matters, people’s well-being. Once again, for the infinitieth time, people prefer to make the discussion personal instead of topical.
Since I still get nervous when I hear a number of sirens in town, clear blue September skies make me anxious, and I still hate going downtown, you can sure as shit believe I’m going to freak out when fighters trail after a low flying 747.
And if that makes me some kind of unhealthy weirdo, well that’s actually the least of my issues, isn’t it.
Look, I’m sure your television made it look like eight million people weren’t viscerally affected, especially since we all went home that day and stayed in for two weeks, but if you didn’t watch it from the streets or have any empathy for those that did, please shut your cakehole.
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I disagree. And I think you’re just arguing for the sake of arguing. I’m out.
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