I’m not sure this is true. If something has only a 5% chance of ending badly, my risk assessment may suggest that it’s worth doing (depending on just how bad that ending is), and the fact that the 5% chance comes to pass in my case doesn’t necessarily mean that I assessed the risk incorrectly or ignored anything.
I may be misunderstanding you.
Context is all.
If his reaction to his failure is a focus on other factors…perhaps * Those assholes across the street took all the good parking so my customers had to walk, and the Republicans are fucking up the economy so no one likes to eat out, and how was I going to know that my sous chef would quit when she got pregnant?* … then some measure of “You should have known better,” might be useful, because the context is the failed owner refusing to acknowledge the part his poor planning played.
If he is saying, “I should have known that Emma was a short-term solution and that if the parking meters didn’t get approved I’d have issues,” then I agree there’s no value in chiming in, “Yeah, you SHOULD have known better.”
Context is all.
Today Hurricane Matthew is going by my house as I type. A few days ago we had a 5% chance of a real direct hit. So we prepared accordingly: for a direct Cat 4 hit. As of now there are people playing in the surf at our beach; I’m watching them on the webvidcam.
What the OP said about “blame” for bad things happening is equally applicable to “credit” for good things happening.
Ref Tom Tildrum’s insightful post above. I prepared for the 5% worst and got the 95% best. Was that a blamable mistake? What if I’d planned for the 95% best and gotten the 5% worst? Would that have been a blamable mistake?
One or the other has to be a mistake. Which is it?
Late clarification. My final sorta-rhetorical question is aimed at the OP, not at Tom.
I think the old adage “Hope for the best but prepare for the worst” comes into play here, LSLGuy. I can’t see anyone thinking you did anything wrong, even if you do look over-prepared given 20/20 hindsight.
Do you have any proof that Kim Kardashian faked this robbery? If yes, please send it to the authorities in Paris, I’m sure they’ll be interested. Meanwhile, I’ll let the professionals do their jobs of investigating this.
Also, how does a person inflicting self-harm for attention compare to a person abused against their will? Two very different situations.
:rolleyes: I clearly said “I personally think…”. That is all, it’s my opinion. If the Paris police want it they are more than welcome to it. I’m also sure that they appreciate the fact that you have decided not to get involved. :rolleyes:
Your question, rephrased, is “How does a person inflicting self harm for attention compare with a person inflicting self harm for attention?”. If you can’t see how a unhealthy craving for attention could lead to both an officer shooting herself (which is as close to a proven fact as possible in this case) and a someone else faking a high profile robbery (not proven, but entirely possible given the facts so far), well, c’est la vie.
Here is some information on histrionic personality disorderwhich, especially when coupled with drama addiction, often leads to this type of behavior. I’m not diagnosing anyone, only showing that there are compelling underlying reasons fro people to act in this manner.
ETA - If the story is true, I feel as badly for Ms. Kardashian as anyone does. There are simply many questions that must be answered first.
The OP’s history of bizarre posts concerning women is also a factor in this interpretation.
My answer is basically the same across the board. Assuming there was stupidity involved (and that’s a big IF) I don’t believe the price for stupidity should be robbery, rape, physical assault, murder on the battlefield, or being eaten by alligators. I would respond to every one of these cases with as much empathy as I could muster. Judgment in the aftermath of victimization makes other people feel better about themselves but it’s usually at the cost of their humanity.
I’m more on the fence about the hypothetical medieval studies person, as she seems kind of insufferable. To an extent, unemployment may be seen as a more direct and natural consequence of the career field you choose. I am not unsympathetic to folks who have boxed themselves in this way, but her level of bitterness seems unwarranted. There’s a difference between making a decision you regret and learning absolutely nothing from decisions that turned out badly. In that vein, I sometimes have trouble mustering up sympathy for people who repeatedly make the same bad choices in relationships (especially when they use those experiences to justify terrible attitudes toward their preferred gender, rather than learning how to be in a healthy relationship.)
I just read this:
My $200,000 college debt is like a growing cancer.
I immediately thought of this thread.
I think most people over a certain age would judge this young woman as foolish–the one to be blamed for why she’s saddled with such debt, living in a house with no running water or working plumbing. Perhaps it is because I’m approaching this “certain age” that I can sympathize with the lack of sympathy. On its face, her story is one of compounding poor-decision making.
But the thing that makes me feel some compassion for her is that I doubt she was making all these “bad decisions” in a vacuum. Sure, $100,000 in student loans is a eyebrow-raising sum to people who know the value of a dollar and understand compounding interest. But the average 18-year-old doesn’t know what this kind of debt really means. It’s a pure abstraction to them. So before calling her a fool, I’d need to know how her parents were advising her. Did they encourage her to transfer to a cheap public school once she lost her scholarship? Or did they encourage her to “follow her dreams” wherever they took her, regardless of cost? Because if it’s the latter, then she’s not really a fool. She was following foolish advice.
The decision to buy such a horrible house given her dire economic straits initially strikes me as the stupidest decision of all time. But again, I have to remind myself that people never make stupid decisions KNOWING they are stupid. I’m guessing she and her partner knew the house was a fix-er-up, which perhaps in their young adult minds meant only having to do cosmetic stuff. Perhaps they grew up in the city/suburbs and didn’t know that not every house is hooked up to municipal water. Perhaps their parents didn’t know this either, so couldn’t even advise them properly even if they had wanted to. I mean, yeah, we can tell ourselves that anyone who buys a house should know what to look out for. But socially, we also push out this message that everyone should own their own home and if they don’t, they’re some kind of childish loser. When you apply this kind of pressure on people, of course there will be those who rush in too quickly and make rash decisions. Are these people fools? Or are they just responding to foolish pressure?
As far as what the “blame game” accomplishes, I don’t think it does anything to fix a current situation. But I do think it can help to prevent future problems. I don’t think it would be a bad thing for the aforementioned woman to question the source of her information. Is she following the advice of her parents? Were they the ones telling her to take on all that debt and to buy such a crappy house? If the answer is “yes” to these questions, then perhaps this young woman needs to stop listening to her parents and be more independent-minded. If she’s not being pressured by her parents or anyone else, then she perhaps she needs to be more critical of her own decision-making process and seek advice from others.
An interesting point. The social “credit” aspect for favorable outcomes on a high risk venture is a element I had not fully considered in the risk/reward balance.
Say the jewelry lover is not attacked and gets a huge social media following because of her posts which she can monetize.
Say the Marine escapes the conflict unscathed and gets a commendation for heroism and quickly moves up the military ladder.
Say the medieval studies student meets a nice tech gazillionaire who was an SCA fiend in his youth. He is taken with her intellect and area of study and marries her. She now has the resources to do and live as she wishes.
Say the middle aged restaurateur is smart enough to make it work and successfully franchises his concept.
They all “win”. Do you modify your congratulations because what they did on the front end of their undertakings was high risk and objectively foolhardy?
The answer, frankly, comes back to what **monstro **almost said above.
For most people in society their thinking goes like this: If you win it was a smart move. If you don’t it was bloody stupid. Regardless of the actual *a priori *odds or the quality of the thinking leading to the decision.
And that’s a bloody stupid way to teach people to think about risk, reward, and decision making in the face of uncertainty.
If I knew someone who played $50 worth of lottery tickets every week and they eventually hit the jackpot, I would tell them congratulations and wish them well.
But I wouldn’t be proud of them, and I certainly wouldn’t hold them up as a role model. And if someone asked me why, I’d say, “Because they were lucky, plain and simple. It could have easily gone the other way. And for all I know, it may still go the other way.”
Personally, I don’t think the outcome is what makes a decision foolish. Drag racing on a busy interstate highway is stupid even if no one crashes and dies. It’s foolish even if the prize for the winner is a million dollars.
Great analysis as per usual.
It actually makes me question the wisdom of even allowing someone that young to take out such an extreme amount of debt. Yeah, 18 is legally an adult, but most people will tell you they did some dumbshit things at that age. When we look at a young professional with heaping amounts of student debt, we tend to judge her based on her current age, not the age she was when she made those choices, or what her life circumstances were, or how she was (or was not) guided.
As for me, growing up it was repeatedly drummed into my head that student loan debt is always good debt. Don’t sweat it, you can always pay it back after you earn your degree. It’s NBD. Parents, teachers, older people of all sorts would outright dismiss any concerns I had about taking student loans. You’re bright, you’ll get a good job, you’ll never regret it, etc.
That’s because their advice made sense back when education had a reasonable cost. My Mom was proud that she paid her student loans off in 10 years and insisted that I could too. My Mom and these other adults influencing my choices had no concept of how much education costs these days.
Lucky for me I had very little debt from undergrad, but grad school was a calculated risk. It’s always a calculated risk. And there are so many unforeseens – about half of my husband’s debt was simply unforeseeable going into his Ph.D. program, because we had no way of knowing he would fail to match two years in a row for internship. My Mom’s student loan payments were a fraction of her income. My husband’s and mine, combined, started out at $1600/month. That is the reality facing young professionals these days, that generations before us cannot comprehend.
Was it stupid for us to take out those loans? I don’t think so. It’s certainly not as much reward as it used to be, but we both got very employable degrees and are able to live well below our means even with those payments. It’s certainly a burden, but we’re piecing together a strategy to take care of them over the long-term. In retrospect, I would have looked harder at making my education cheaper, but who can say what opportunities I would have missed out on, not attending the school with the better reputation?
Hindsight’s 20/20, always. But supposing we made a huge mistake, there’s nothing for it but to move on making wiser decisions moving forward. It’s utterly pointless to castigate people who know they made poor choices and are doing their best to get back on the right track. The part where I lose sympathy is when people slide into total victim mode and refuse to do anything to address their situation, or even to acknowledge the role they played in it.
It’s foolish, in my opinion, to respond to foolish pressure, so I reject the distinction you offer here.
You’re willing to demand that these people be treated as adults: you’d be suitably outraged on their behalf if the government tried to control their sexual choices, their votes, their decision to study art history instead of systems engineering, or their choice of where to live.
But when the exercise of their right to make these decisions turns out poorly, you are far too willing to consider their “young adult minds,” as pliable and unaccountable.
I recognize that you make room for the possibility that her decision-making process is flawed, but I think you’re too generous in absolving her of responsibility if she listened to bad advice. She cannot simultaneously ask to be treated as an adult in society but then claim she was led astray by poor companions; being adult should mean being responsible for and accountable for the decisions you make.
Would you expect the person born and raised by fools to be any less foolish?
If a society has foolish mores and values, wouldn’t you expect its members to have foolish mores and values? Or would you expect all individuals to have the same ability to see beyond society’s inculcation and to discern the objective reality they don’t even know exists?
Seems to me in the past you have argued that we should not judge historical figures by present-day standards. Can you explain to me why it is prudent to judge a contemporary who may not have been raised with *your * standards? Is it unreasonable for me to withhold (some) judgment of someone without knowing just how they were educated and advised?
Um…I’m scanning my post, trying to find where I “demand” anything, let alone this. Can’t find any hint of what the hell you’re talking about.
It would be nice if you asked me for my opinion before telling me what I’d be outraged about.
FYI, I don’t think it is the government’s place to control anyone’s sexual choices, provided they are consensual. Reproductive choices, yes, under very limited circumstances. But sex and reproduction aren’t the same thing.
FYI, I have no problem with the government barring someone from voting under very limited circumstances.
FYI, I have no problem with the government influencing a student’s area of study if that student is funding their education via government assistance. It is not in the public’s interest to churn out nothing but underwater basketweavers, and I personally don’t esteem education for the sake of education for any and everything. So I’m perfectly fine with the government providing more financial assistance to some majors and denying it for others. But beyond that, no.
Daffaq? “Pliable and unaccountable?” You inferred this from what I posted?
Bolding mine. In case it’s not clear, I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for this chick. Just a little sympathy. I certainly don’t think she’s “unaccountable”.
I didn’t absolve her of all responsibility, just some of it. Actually, I posted the same article in another forum and ripped the poor girl to shreds. What insanity convinced her that cashing out her retirement savings to buy a decrepit house with no running water was a fiscally responsible decision? Why didn’t she live at home right after graduation so she could save some money and not accrue credit card debt? What the fuck did she study that would justify $100K in student loans? I am well aware that she made some irresponsible decisions, Bricker. But I am intelligent and compassionate enough to understand she wasn’t the only one making those decisions. When a person takes the kind of risks this young woman did, they are almost always responding to pressures exerted by the people they trust and care about. These folks assure them that their choices are okay, go ahead, it’s what you’re supposed to do, we’ll be there if you fail, everyone does it, etc. And it doesn’t just stop when you’re 18. The foolish advice to “do what everyone else does” keeps going and going until–hopefully–you become mature enough to ignore it.
Perhaps you are one of the few people in the universe who is immune to that kind of pressure. But I’m pretty sure you’ve given your own children advice and expected them to follow it.
Let’s hope you are a more reasonable person with them than you are to me.