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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33394 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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I wonder what percentage of people answer the door at night with a gun?

I certainly would, and everyone I know would at least think it reasonable even if they personally don't plan on doing so.

Do people just have that good discipline that they don't get spooked and shoot?

Because if you're a sensible person responding to an unexpected caller at a strange hour you likely have the gun holstered or held, pointing downward, finger off the trigger, just so it is on hand since you won't have time to retrieve it if the encounter goes south.

And then as you gather more information about the situation, if you notice more cause for alarm/red flag you might start thinking about pointing and shooting. By the time you've made the decision to do that, usually there's been an actual threat presented, and thus it's go time.

Even though there's not much physical effort involved going from "Hmm, wonder who's at the door" to "Fuckfuckfuckfuck time to shoot" there are at least a couple psychological checkpoints most people have to pass before they're even pointing a gun in someone else's direction.

I would expect you to shoot someone by accident, perhaps 1 in 100 times

Good on trying to state an order of magnitude estimate, but this one is massively off.

Doesn't have to involve pointing the gun. Just...having it behind the door.

You don't aim at someone if you aren't ready to kill them. You don't put your finger on the trigger if you aren't ready to punch a hole in something, even if it's the floorboard. Those two rules cover the vast majority of incidents which would otherwise occur from shaky hands or sweaty palms.

I was referring to unexpected door ringing at night, which is a whole different kettle of fish than daytime doorbell ringing or a pizza delivery or something like that.

As for why people don't get shot more often, it's just trigger discipline.

I have the same confusion about why depressed people don't swerve into traffic more.

Yet somehow. Humans manage to consistently not jump of cliffs. Blows my mind.

Humans manage to consistently not jump of cliffs.

Until they see the first one jump.

I have the same confusion about why depressed people don't swerve into traffic more.

I thought the [admittedly unfalsifiable, even though this rarely kills people in modern cars] explanation for that, and (albeit unintentionally) avoiding the contagion effect, was "fell asleep at the wheel".

Same effect probably applies to SIDS, come to think of it; creating a cultural assumption that these cases are acts of God probably keeps the natal murder rate down even though it leads to otherwise wasteful behaviors to try and avoid it.

I took a baby care class a few years ago. They plainly stated that most SIDS is people accidentally smothering their babies. Like falling asleep holding the baby and then turning a bit so the baby's face is pressed against something. They presented this as advice to not fall asleep holding your baby.

So acknowledging that it is sort of the parent's fault, but avoiding making it sound intentional. Which maybe helps avoid some social contagion.

About 50% of people sometimes have the urge to jump when on a cliff edge. I agree that you would expect more people to actually jump.

Many people are familiar with the experience of a sudden urge to jump when in a high place, that is, when standing on a bridge or a viewing platform. On the Internet this experience is described and discussed under the term call of the void, while Hames and colleagues [1] have coined the term high place phenomenon. Although it is an experience known to many people, the phenomenon has rarely been studied.

In the only study published on the phenomenon by now, Hames et al. [1] investigated a sample of 432 undergraduate college students. They could show that over 50% of participants who have never suffered from suicide ideation in their lifetime, reported to have experienced the phenomenon at least once in their lives.

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