How do you perceive yourself in this conversation? As a scandalous wit who is poking at the rubes with incisive social commentary, or is “dude who thinks some people deserve to die because fuck them” the vibe you’re explicitly going for?
Always a lot of qualifiers.
The folks who are fully informed and understand, but choose to stay to prove some point, or prove to themselves they can do it, while able to relocate, no sympathy.
But so many are not in the bounds of fully informed, understanding, and able to relocate.
Just because the information is widely available, and the person actually hears it, they may still not fully understand the power of the S storm that is about to envelope them. It is far outside the usual frame of reference. Storm surge height, wind speed, all relative to variable locations and times. Often people can’t make a good calculation. Personal circumstances can alter the personal calculation a lot, towards riding it out, or more often, it will miss me.
I can empathize with those folks. At the moment, I can go quite mobile for quite some time. But so many cannot do that without a great amount of worry in very short terms. Food, shelter, gas.
There are usually announced shelters in the areas. Hopefully a good option for those who need it. But some people may be worried about the shelter conditions and abandoning their home, possessions.
Overall. I sympathize and empathize with a lot who stay and suffer the consequences. Except the ones at the top of my reply.
Except that it seldom seems that’s what his aim is. It usually comes across as “just asking questions” period.
Dammit Kedikat, stop making me agree with you!!! 
Sorry. Can’t be wrong all the time. I have other stuff to screw up on besides Straight Dope Board.
That “community” would do society far more good if they would volunteer for charity, or help out their neighbors, or help out their local government, or do any of a myriad of things that would not unnecessarily put their lives at risk.
The only thing that this woman actually accomplished was feeding her ego by winning at Russian roulette multiple times–until the odds caught up with her, and she lost.
I do feel sympathy for her children. And I also hope that they grow up to be less stupid and more socially productive than their mother.
[quote=“Dinsdale, post:36, topic:972556”]Boo fucking hoo.
[/quote]
I can’t see into his mind, but from where I’m sitting: Trolling sociopath seems apt.
You must be great at parties.
I’ve watched a good amount of the Ian coverage, and, to be honest, I’ve seen plenty of able-bodied folks interviewed who made the choice to stay. One, in particular, called it the worst decision he’s ever made.
They all seem like nice, normal folks who made a choice that many came to regret.
Are they “stupid people”? That is an unkind assumption that you seem comfortable with.
mmm
Then again, he could just be a jerk.
And here is the tired-ass center of this mindset - if I have to know that someone lives or behaves in a way I don’t approve of, and I can’t stop them from doing it, and (most importantly) they don’t care what I think, then someone is “jamming their agenda down my throat.”
And here we see what’s really going in the OP. The superficial complaint is “why should I have to care”, and the answer is that you don’t have to care. The real complaint is “why should I have to hear about these people, why should they appear in my media, why shouldn’t they suffer in silence so that I don’t have to think about things I’d rather not?”
And the answer is that you hear about them because they exist, and they’re no less important than a cranky old white guy. That’s the idea that really gets your goat here. You don’t decide who’s important, not in charge of what the general public gets to talk about, and that makes you sad.
If you choose to spend your time on earth being sad that you’re not in charge of the Department of Important Topics, that’s a pretty pathetic way to exist.
Maybe he’s just an asshole who was jaded from the moment he walked in the door of that job, and delights in sitting in petty judgment of people in dire straits, nickel-and-diming them out of benefits they’re entitled to. Because his OP suggests he has neither the intelligence or motivation to make an authentic analysis as to whether someone actually needs help.
Yeah, I don’t grok it either, but since I don’t want other people telling me what to do with my life I’m going to let other people make their own decisions. I do think you should go about your business without endangering others (although sometimes, yeah, you can cause an avalanche - whether or not that’s reprehensible depends on the circumstances and whether or not it could be foreseen). Since her family is paying for corpse retrieval I’m not getting upset over it. Why do people care? I don’t know, why do people care about football? Or golf? Or running marathons? They do, that’s all. None of those things are my cup of tea but whatever.
Why do people live in earthquake zones? Wildfire zones? Tornado alley? There are damn few places on the planet free of natural hazards. So that’s part of it. Not everyone has the means to relocate, sure, we’ve covered that. I’m not getting a sense that those who can’t move away are what’s got your goat. It’s the people who could but don’t, right?
So… why don’t people with the resources and means to evacuate ahead of a natural disaster choose not to do so?
Some of it is a lack of absorable information. If you haven’t experienced the effects of 100 mph or 150 mph winds it’s hard to get an emotional grip on that. As the Ron White clip said, it’s not the wind, it’s what is IN the wind. Wind borne debris can kill you. I’ve been in a building that had a tree come through the roof like god’s own spear. I haven’t been in a hurricane but I have been way too close to a tornado and yeah, you tell me about sustained winds climbing toward the triple digits I’m either going to hide under a rock or get out of Dodge but most people in the world haven’t had that experience. So that’s part of it.
Experience has a LOT to do with all this. “Oh, I’ve ridden out hurricanes in this house before” can lead to overconfidence about a stronger storm than you’ve experienced in the past. I think that caught some of the more inland people by surprise, who in the past had experienced hurricanes but had not had to contend with their homes filling up with water or having boats slammed into them. It’s one thing to be told about such risks, it’s another to have a visceral knowledge of them. I’ve also heard reports about people who did relocate to stronger buildings and set up to wait out the storm on the first floor suddenly having to retreat to higher floors - that’s a case where someone had taken what in the past were reasonable steps to be safe but the current circumstances were worse than in the past.
Finally, we get to the last category, where it’s not a lack of resources or experienced people faced with a greater threat than before or misjudging a threat, but the folks who are fully informed of the risks, who have resources, who nonetheless choose to remain. Why? Denial? Arrogance? A sense of adventure that is NOT coupled with risk management?
Yeah, I get pissed when I hear about someone able-bodied with plenty of money and a working vehicle who decided to stay in a one-story house on the beach in an area that was known to be at high risk days before the storm hit. I mean, WTF?
You know what also annoys me? When some of these folks who survived all this are whining that help isn’t arriving fast enough. I’m not talking about calling 911 - you do need to let the authorities know you need help even if they can’t come immediately - but being unable to take care of themselves in the immediate aftermath. I’m a person of limited means but I have a week’s worth of emergency water stored along with ready-to-eat and easy-to-prepare food. I have emergency lighting, back up power for my phone, and a small camp stove to heat food/boil water. Sure, in a storm like that you’ll have people fished out of flood waters who have truly lost everything, including emergency supplies, but I’m seeing TV interviews with people living on upper floors of buildings who still have shelter and most of their possessions. They did nothing to prepare?
I dunno - maybe they’re just so used to instant rescue it’s incomprehensible to them that maybe the rescuers can’t get to them immediately. Maybe they’re just pissed that during triaging the emergency they were put into the “can wait for help” category instead of getting instant attention. (Note - getting instant attention and treatment when you walk into an ER is NOT a good sign or good news. Having to wait, much as it might annoy you, is actually a good sign).
Then again, I have been told that my stocking of emergency supplies - a couple week’s worth, at most - is a sign of unhealthy obsession with doom. Except when something goes wrong I’m under a lot less stress and I don’t need immediate rescue.
Even so - other people making decisions I think are short-sighted or stupid don’t raise the ire in my that they do in the OP. As @HMS_Irruncible pointed out:
You really don’t have to care. You can choose what you do and don’t see/hear/read from the news.
I think that first part is well put. I was just wondering how many other folk don’t care as I don’t, about people experiencing the foreseeable results of their bad choices. It confuses me because so much of the media - and so many comments here - seem to work awfully hard to make excuses for people making really bad choices. Some folk seem to object to my use of the word “stupid,” well, offer up a better word for someone who ignores readily available information, makes an unwise choice, and then wishes sympathy or remuneration.
I guess where we differ is that I feel that someone who intentionally makes poor choices that result in them begging for assistance makes them “less important” that folk who act responsibly.
I consistently have difficulty getting my head around people who believe and act upon irrational or clearly false things. The election was stolen. God. Maybe the weather forecasters are all wrong…
I have often wondered whether I was “on the spectrum”/experience social anxiety/am depressed. Or what percentage of seemingly average folk would be assigned some such pathology (especially if a care provider saw a series of paid sessions resulting from the diagnosis! ;)) I often feel that certain people are simply lazy, unmotivated whiners, and get criticized for my lack of empathy. But apparently folk are happy in their certainty that I am simply an asshole. Funny how that works!
I’ve known several (okay, two) mountaineers who lost their lives on mountains. One was a rather famous guy, Willie Unsoeld, who died while rescuing some people from an avalanche. Another was his daughter Nanda Devi, who died while climbing the mountain she was named for. Mountaineers die regularly while climbing. The risk is innate to the activity, and they would not have it any other way. That doesn’t mean they are mindless adrenalin junkies. In some way, I imagine, mountaineering is a condensed intense metaphor/version of life itself. Think about it.
Empathy is the capacity to understand and feel with others. A quality you are apparently in short supply of. Sympathy is probably what you are decrying, or trying to. That’s a different emotion.
Dunbar’s Number is problematic, don’t take it as gospel. (Also, as an aside - who has 150 close friends and family?)
And in any case, the leap from that to it being a limiter on empathy is unsupported. There’s nothing special about “close friends and family” that mean only they can support a reasonable mental model. A generic mental model of shared humanity is sufficient to engender empathy (“real empathy” being instantly dismissable as some No True Scotsman bullshit you should be ashamed of even advancing)
For instance, I don’t know @Dinsdale from a bar of soap IRL, but I have sufficient empathy to recognize an overwhelmingly needy cry for attention in their OP. That level of sheer desperation hits me right here in the feels, man. So sad.
Didn’t read the thread, so … apologies if this is repetitive:
It is nearly impossible to hate anyone whose story you know.
–Andrew Solomon
Agree.
I have more trouble extending empathy to certain people who make dangerous choices and put rescuers at risk. Case in point - these New Hampshire yahoos who got stuck on a mountain (from the Boston Globe):
“Two men in their 20s had set out on a hike in Franconia Notch State Park the afternoon of June 11 as if strolling through their neighborhood. They wore short-sleeved shirts and shorts and brought no extra layers. They carried no food, no water, no equipment.”
“They had nothing,” Kneeland said."
“Given the temperature was in the mid-70s that day, that might have been a relatively small risk. But after starting on the Greenleaf Trail, a meandering path up the rugged landscape of Mount Lafayette, they veered off course and began bushwhacking through woods, then tried climbing Hounds Hump, an alpine crag popular with rock climbers, without equipment or mountaineering skills.”
“It was a baffling miscalculation, rushing heedlessly into unforgiving terrain, that placed them in danger almost immediately. They became separated, and as one hiker managed to reach the top of the cliff face, the other became stuck on a ledge, terrified he would fall if he moved at all.”
“At 2:15 p.m., the man who was trapped called 911. He could not say where he was or how he had gotten there. He said he could see the highway and thought they were somewhere on the Hangman Trail on Alpine Mountain. Neither exists in New Hampshire.”
“It was just a horror show from start to finish,” said Colonel Kevin Jordan, the fish and game department’s chief of law enforcement."
The two (who reportedly had no explanation or apology when rescued; one immediately lawyered up) were charged with reckless conduct and pleaded guilty to lesser charges which involved $248 in fines.
N.H. is one of a few states that will charge for certain rescues and is apparently leading the way on criminal charges in some cases. The counter-argument is that people who get into precarious situations will be less likely to call for needed help if they know there’ll be repercussions. But that has to be balanced against the potential harm that limited rescue staff faces when getting reckless people out of trouble.
Risk is a continuum. If you work or recreate in the mountains or on the water, you are inherently accepting uncertainty. A friend of mine was involved in a avalanche burial last winter on a low-angle slope when the danger was rated by professionals as low. Another friend died when he hit a rock with his snowboard and snapped his neck after hitting a tree in the fall. Do we all just stay home and die of cardiac arrest?