One thought on why so much attention to mass shooters

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Caught a link to an essay from a Harvard psychology professor:


The TL;DR gist is that in the absence of significant threats, the brain widens the classification to include what are, in reality, lesser threats.

You can probably think of many similar situations in which problems never seem to go away, because people keep changing how they define them. This is sometimes called “concept creep,” or “moving the goalposts,” and it can be a frustrating experience. How can you know if you’re making progress solving a problem, when you keep redefining what it means to solve it? My colleagues and I wanted to understand when this kind of behavior happens, why, and if it can be prevented.

To bring this back to my thread title: because the country is so safe overall, mass shootings garner a level of attention they wouldn't otherwise, because they are, really, "lighting strikes." They happen, but they don't happen often and are very unlikely to happen to YOU.

(It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway(!): Nothing above should suggest that we not try to STOP mass shootings by identifying troubled people and getting them help, etc.)

R
 
Yeah, Americans seem to spend an enormous amount of their resources worrying about absolutely the wrong things. How else can you explain Kardashians?
 
To very loosely quote Jack Reacher..
"The soccer mom is more worried about some guy with a gun a hundred miles away than the pool in her backyard or the chemicals under her sink..."

The epic battle with my wife! I leave my pocket knife on the table its a dangerous weapon BUT the 10" butcher Knife on the counter is fine. Don't even get me started on the chems!
 
The epic battle with my wife! I leave my pocket knife on the table its a dangerous weapon BUT the 10" butcher Knife on the counter is fine. Don't even get me started on the chems!

Your wife would not feel safe at our house.
 
it all goes back k to Maslow's Hierarchy of needs....of course there should be a sixth tier.....liberal freaking stupidity and whining. if these people had to actually spend any time at all providing for themselves we would have much less of this self entitlement liberal BS.



"Needs lower down in the hierarchy must be satisfied before individuals can attend to needs higher up. From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards, the needs are: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem and self-actualization."

maslow-5.jpg
 
The epic battle with my wife! I leave my pocket knife on the table its a dangerous weapon BUT the 10" butcher Knife on the counter is fine. Don't even get me started on the chems!
All my chems are in a high cabinet.
What's funny is that my kitchen knife drawer is well within reach, kids won't touch them. Any kind of "cool" jacknife, like the little one on my keychain they want to take and play with.
Running with pencils and scissors is of more concern to me than a boogey man the media creates.
 
All my chems are in a high cabinet.
What's funny is that my kitchen knife drawer is well within reach, kids won't touch them. Any kind of "cool" jacknife, like the little one on my keychain they want to take and play with.
Running with pencils and scissors is of more concern to me than a boogey man the media creates.

My kids have no interest in chemicals or knives, but they always want to run in parking lots, that’s what worries me.
 
I also apply that logic to all the SJW's and Liberals out protesting everything. If they had any real problems or legitimate danger in their lives they would never uncurl from a fetal position.

For half of them its a job (astroturfing) or something to do because they sure as hell ain't working.
 
Agree with the theory but I think mass shootings are simply heavily covered by the media. If they covered every horrible car accident in the country we’d be worried about car accidents.

^This. It's all about sensationalism. One mass shooting takes precedence over ~16,000 gun homicide deaths/yr, ~42,000 opioid deaths/yr, ~37,000 by car accident deaths/yr (about 1/3 by drunk drivers), etc.
 
Main stream media LOVES mass shootings, can't get enough of them and the more deaths the better.... it's an instant "Sweeps Week" ratings boost for them! The Libtards are the only ones that love it more so they can push their warped agendas....
 
Agree with the theory but I think mass shootings are simply heavily covered by the media. If they covered every horrible car accident in the country we’d be worried about car accidents.
Remember that period of a few weeks when it seemed they covered every elderly person car accident and everyone was all like "WTF...we need to do something about this" ... then the news stopped and moved on to something new.

It is the same.
 
The perception is that driving is safer than flying, which is definitely not true. We perceive the danger that's available to us in our minds. Since the media floods our minds with all the crazy mass murders out there, we worry about that more. It isn't realistic at all, but when was the last time the media cared about that? Here's the psychology on that: Fear and the Availability Heuristic - Schneier on Security
 
100% of the reason the media covers mass shootings at all is. . . . ratings. Period. If they can tell the Keebler Elves and Edsel Ford that X# of people watch from 6:22 to 7:05pm every night, they can get more $ for a commercial during that time.

It's simple economics.

As far as Trump - this is truly fascinating. . . . the yapping heads at the majors may actually HATE Trump. The big-wigs - LOVE HIM! Because he's the biggest media bonanza in the last millennium or seven. To my chagrin, people have NOT wearied of the back-and-forth yet. When they do, the axes will fall HARD on the cable news morons.
 
Agree with the theory but I think mass shootings are simply heavily covered by the media. If they covered every horrible car accident in the country we’d be worried about car accidents.

Not quite.... humans are shitty assessors of risk, and since most people drive, they're desensitized to it, unless they've been in a huge accident or suffered from one, etc.

I don't necessarily think that most people are worried about mass shootings, either. I just think that violent crime and shit like that "sells" in the ratings in the media, because people are a bunch of sick f***s, more or less. It also doesn't help that most so called "news" content is boring, its basically the same shit over and over again, when a volcano melts houses or someone kills 60 people everyones like "ZOMG can you see this shit!!?!?!" etc. It's like the rubbernecker effect.

-Mike
 
Remember that period of a few weeks when it seemed they covered every elderly person car accident and everyone was all like "WTF...we need to do something about this" ... then the news stopped and moved on to something new.

It is the same.

That only happened because that pedal stomper in Santa Monica mowed down like 11 people in that farmers market. Then a couple weeks later everyone outside of that
realm pretty much forgot about it, and meme wise even though geritol pedal stomping is a frequent thing, people figured out that most of the time it doesn't result in deaths or
serious injuries. Although it is pretty funny now if you go in front of a store and you see bollards, realize that most of it isn't because of theft protection anymore. One of my customers has a liquor store on the north shore and since I started doing work for him several years ago he's had at least THREE pedal stomper incidents, and there was a 4th one that was a near smash- Some old bag actually drove her car sideways on the sidewalk near the building but didn't quite reach his storefront.

-Mike
 
Remember that period of a few weeks when it seemed they covered every elderly person car accident and everyone was all like "WTF...we need to do something about this" ... then the news stopped and moved on to something new.

It is the same.
This. 2 weeks of pitbull attacks and then nothing. A week of junkies leaving babies in cars and.then nothing.
 
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