Things My Grandfather Saw

[peterbirks]

Well, bugger me, I've chopped it off AGAIN with SportingBet. If this carries on I'll have to quit the forex field and start punting equities. It's rare that you get one case of "market gets jitters, marks down share price too much, which promptly recovers half the loss", but to get the same thing happening to the same stock within a couple of months is, well, Paradise.

£300 last time, £360 this (in at 153p on Monday, out at 189p just over an hour ago). Hardly earth-shattering, but it's nice to build up a few quid in the Barclays account.

+++++++++

Did anyone see the news item this morning about the Old Age Pensioner stuck in a manhole for half an hour, and on-one would help him. Eventually, he said, he managed to manoeuvre himself, despite a gash that would need 47 stitches and two broken ribs, so that he could get hold of his mobile (pensioners with mobile phones! whatever next!) and telephone the police.

Needless to say, the media talked about "heartless Britain" without looking into deeper causes. Because, you know whose fault it is that this poor guy was ignored? I'll tell you. Jeremy fucking Beadle and Ashton tosspot Kutcher. That's who. And, add on as additional persons who should take the blame, every personal liability ambulance-chasing lawyer inthe world, and anyone who has watched Punk'd (or Beadle's About) and chuckled.

Let's face it, each and ebery one of the poor bastards who walked by this old guy probably said to themselves, "Gee, I'd like to help him, but there's probably a hidden camera somewhere, and I'll be made fun of. And, if there isn't a hidden camera, what would happen if he died, or got hurt? I'd probably get sued, or arrested, or something. No, safer for me to just walk on by. But, hell, I'd really have liked to have helped him."

So, all you watchers of Punk'd who chuckled away (I can't believe that any readers of this Blog would have seen any of the Beadle shows, let alone laughed at them), the fact that this poor guy spent half an hour in a manhole, with two broken ribs and a gash that needed 47 stitches, is all your fault.

I hope that you feel suitably contrite.

Comments

[jellymillion.livejournal.com]

I hope that you feel suitably contrite.

This is a wind-up, right? You really had me going for a minute there.

This is the Wind-Up

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

That would have been a good song title, wouldn't it?

Well, it was kind of a wind-up, Mike. But it was, elliptically, trying to make a serious point.

We all know about the law of unintended consequences where event A unexpectedly results in event B. We also all know about how taking an action can have an unexpected consequence if it is assumed that all else remains constant. Since most actions affect other people, it's obviously wrong to assume that they will not react. Therefore any strategy that relies on other participants continuing to act the same is, by definition, a flawed strategy (I leave it to your idle amusements to see how many of these flawed strategies you can spot in a single week in the poker and financial worlds.)

However, not enough is written about the situation where consequence B (say, everybody walking past an old guy in a manhole who is obviously in distress) is the result of not single event A, but a number of events, which we can call A(1), A(2), A(3) etc.

Because each of these events A(1) and so on cannot be shown to have direct causation. Indeed, because there are varying levels of causation amongst our (A1) to A(n), it's easy for people to just say "dear me, look at the state of society today", without actually asking themselves what various factors caused such an event to come about.

In other words, people can cope with direct causation, but complex causation creates problems in their brains.

So, no, it isn't a direct result of Jeremy Beadle being on TV that 30 people walked past an old guy in a manhole. Perhaps 50 years ago 28 people would have walked past and two people would have stopped to help (so, point one, not much has changed, just a little bit has changed).

A combination of factors might have caused that change (if there has been a change).

1) There's a concept that if something is "not my problem" then it coulkd, nay should, be ignored. Part of this can be ascribed to the more delineated nature of our culture. Society isn't a matter of everyone mucking in. Adam Smith has a lot to answer for. Rescuing old guys from manholes is the job of the fire brigade, or the police, not for me.

2) There's a nascent fear that the guy in the manhole might be a set-up. Now, come on, how often have you wondered whethere something strange you have seen is a set-up for the cameras? In other words, it's a minor factor, but it's a factor. So, the "fear of making a fool of myself" point is at work

3) There is, quite literally, a fear of being sued. Let's call this the litigation gone mad culture. Once again, it might not be conscious, but the concept of being the Good Samaritan being a riskless process has been thrown out of the window.

I daresay there are other factors that I hadn't thought of, and this is a particular instance. My point was really meant to be a more general one. But if you make general points, people don't read. Or they do read, and they nod their heads, saying "very sensible", and don't reply.

But if I phrase it like I did the above, people read it, and write a reply.

Clever, huh?

PJ

Re: This is the Wind-Up

[(Anonymous)]

Harrington here.

Egads, man, I have been inspired by your rant to intervene more in times of crisis and need. Let's start by examining this sentence and offering some critical advice:

"Eventually, he said, he managed to manoeuvre himself, despite a gash that would need 47 stitches and two broken ribs."

What sort of society are we living in where a gash needs two broken ribs (presumably to repair it?).

OK, cheap shot, but it made me laugh.

I wonder if the person down the manhole cover (man down the personhole cover?) would have been left there for so long had they not been old? Let's face it, whilst not all old people are weirdos or a bloody nuisance, a sufficiently large minority of them are troublesome enough to be deemed worth avoiding as a matter of course by most (younger) people.


John H.

Re: This is the Wind-Up

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Obviously the ribs needed to be broken to get the bloke out of the hole, not to mend the gash.

Or, as they say in the US. Whoopsy, my bad.

PJ

[the-maenad.livejournal.com]

I used to have to watch Beadle -- my mother thought he was the funniest man on TV when I was likkle.