There’s a science question here, and there’s an engineering question here. They are two different questions.
Science asks, what are the numbers, what are the likelihoods? And there is always going to be more study needed. Consider that people are still arguing over evolution, there may never be numbers so compelling that they convince everyone.
The engineering question asks what we could do to change things. Engineers don’t get to wait for better numbers, they have to do the best they can with what they’ve got. We don’t really know why the violent crime rate has been going down for the last three decades, when everyone expected the rate to rise. Was it declining lead levels? Legalized abortion? How much consensus would we need to do more of it?
Mass shootings are not the only symptom that we are doing it wrong. I doubt that it’s even the worst symptom of us doing it wrong. They’re just a symptom that few would disagree about that something needs changing.
There’s a science question here, and there’s an engineering question here. They are two different questions.
Science asks, what are the numbers, what are the likelihoods? And there is always going to be more study needed. Consider that people are still arguing over evolution, there may never be numbers so compelling that they convince everyone.
The engineering question asks what we could do to change things. Engineers don’t get to wait for better numbers, they have to do the best they can with what they’ve got. We don’t really know why the violent crime rate has been going down for the last three decades, when everyone expected the rate to rise. Was it declining lead levels? Legalized abortion? How much consensus would we need to do more of it?
Lots of focus on fiction media- the videogames and movies that are supposed to be shaping young people’s thoughts. I don’t see news people asking questions on what effects their own reporting has had on the problem. Roger Eber thttp://boingboing.net/2012/12/15/roger-ebert-on-how-the-press-r.html and Charlie Brooker http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PezlFNTGWv4 both make a compelling case that it’s the way these events are reported that makes their recurrence inevitable.
Ultimimately, i think you have to decide how deeply you want to question these things. James Howard Kunstler http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ZeXnmDZMQ&feature=youtu.be#t=14m29s points to the architecture we live in as a primary source of dispair. I think he’s got a point too.
Mass shootings are not the only symptom that we are doing it wrong. I doubt that it’s even the worst symptom of us doing it wrong. They’re just a symptom that few would disagree about that something needs changing.