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Right now everyone in Hong Kong are talking about the 8 HK tourists killed in Manila. Facebook pages are made, mourning locations are set up, news are all about it, government lower the flags for 3 days, Filipino maids are being fired (oh yea, who tell you people are rational?)...
Well... Its understandable, with the event happening right at dinner time and everyone watching TV. The performance of manila police are so bad that it attract more audience than those retarded TV drama.
However, at least 100 times more people died or lost their homes/ families in the floods in China last month. Now... no one remember them already. I am willing to bet a mothership that the donations for the floods will go down dramatically next week.
I guess human are always so illogical, and focus on what they see on TV  similar things happens after 911 in USA.
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On August 25 2010 16:08 DarkwindHK wrote:Right now everyone in Hong Kong are talking about the 8 HK tourists killed in Manila. Facebook pages are made, mourning locations are set up, news are all about it, government lower the flags for 3 days, Filipino maids are being fired (oh yea, who tell you people are rational?)... Well... Its understandable, with the event happening right at dinner time and everyone watching TV. The performance of manila police are so bad that it attract more audience than those retarded TV drama. However, at least 100 times more people died or lost their homes/ families in the floods in China last month. Now... no one remember them already. I am willing to bet a mothership that the donations for the floods will go down dramatically next week. I guess human are always so illogical, and focus on what they see on TV similar things happens after 911 in USA.
Yes, I completely agree that the general public is only concerned about what the media wants them to be concerned about. However, in this situation, you are comparing a man-made incident (the Manila hostage taking) with natural disasters (China/Pakistan floods). While we should do our part in helping the victims of the natural disasters, these are unavoidable. Whereas, the Manila hostage situation was only so terrible because of the incompetent Filipino police force, which could have been avoided.
You can think of it as one being a blame game, while for the natural disasters you can't blame anyone. Naturally, the media will focus on what can be discussed.
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l10f
United States3241 Posts
Reminds me when that korean kid killed a bunch of kids at a university a long time ago. Every Korean probably got weird looks or been asked if they were Korean after that one.
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It's like "Hey look middle class [or above] people died, everyone give them care and donate to families" then even when 100x people in 3rd world countries die to wars/natural disasters the media doesn't give it nearly as much attention (unless the death toll is absurdly large).
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Tourists being killed is a bigger deal than locals being killed. Do you see why?
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On August 25 2010 16:20 BlackJack wrote:
Tourists being killed is a bigger deal than locals being killed. Do you see why?
No, I don't. In fact, I see no difference at all.
Kein Auslander, und doch ein Fremder.
"The dirty secret of this day and age is that political gain and media ratings all too often bloom on fresh graves. I remember a better day when no one dared politicize or profiteer on drama.
Simply being silent is so often the right thing to do. But today carnage comes with a catchy title, splashy graphics, regular promos, and a reactionary passage of legislation. Reporters perch like vultures on the balconies of hotels for a hundred miles around. Cameras jockey for shocking angles, as news anchors race to drench their microphones with the tears of victims. Injury, shock, grief and despair shouldn't be brought to you by sponsors.
That's pornography. It trivializes the tragedy it abuses. It abuses vulnerable people, and maybe worst of all, it makes the unspeakable seem commonplace"
-Charlton Heston in Denver, after the Columbine massacre
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There was a famous quote by someone a long time ago. A pretty nasty guy.
"When one person dies, it's a tragedy. When millions of people die, it's a statistic."
Or something along those lines.
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On August 25 2010 17:18 neobowman wrote:
There was a famous quote by someone a long time ago. A pretty nasty guy.
"When one person dies, it's a tragedy. When millions of people die, it's a statistic."
Or something along those lines.
It's attributed to Stalin, but actually came out of Voroshilov
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On August 25 2010 17:18 neobowman wrote:
There was a famous quote by someone a long time ago. A pretty nasty guy.
"When one person dies, it's a tragedy. When millions of people die, it's a statistic."
Or something along those lines.
Stalin
Uh... this is exactly why I don´t follow news anymore, they are seldom I need to or want to know but more of this ...I dunno...porn of somekind.
The Haunted made a song out of it + Show Spoiler +
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On August 25 2010 17:07 Galois wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2010 16:20 BlackJack wrote:
Tourists being killed is a bigger deal than locals being killed. Do you see why? No, I don't. In fact, I see no difference at all.
That's because I misread OP
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I don't intend to belittle the tragedies at all in the following statements.
I would argue that it isn't illogical. People get a hit of dopamine when they help somebody out or perform some other altruistic function. These both are just "fixes."
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On August 25 2010 16:20 BlackJack wrote:
Tourists being killed is a bigger deal than locals being killed. Do you see why?
Cause tourists bring money.
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It's these kind of things that just always remind me, that in the end, there is no good or bad, no right nor wrong. Shit just happens.
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On August 25 2010 17:51 Samurai- wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2010 16:20 BlackJack wrote:
Tourists being killed is a bigger deal than locals being killed. Do you see why? Cause tourists bring money.
Yeah I thought foreign tourists were killed in HK instead of HK tourists being killed in Manilla so that point doesn't really apply.
But my other point was that the simple fact that it happened to tourists makes it international news because tourists could be from any country. The reason it is international news is because people like to know about potential dangers to their lives so that they can avoid them, even though the threats are microscopically small. It's along the same lines of plane crashes, terrorist attacks, and shark attacks. You have a better chance of hitting the lottery but if I hear about a shark attack near me I'm not getting in the water.
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Some stroke patients that have had the connection between their visual center for faces and their emotional center severed will look at their mother, admit that the person they are looking at looks exactly like their mother, but because they have no emotional reaction, their brain interprets their mother as being an impostor, a fake. They will say things like: she looks exactly like my mother, but she's not, it's someone pretending.
On the other hand, because the connection between the auditory centers and the emotional ones are still intact, they will instantly recognize their mother's voice on the phone and be ecstatic to finally talk to her.
Brain scans have shown that the same area lights up in the brain when contemplating a false statement as when feeling disgust.
Another interesting case is patients that are blind but still have firings in the part of their brain that normally only fires after being stimulated by lower visual centers. The effect is that the patient is convinced he can see, although he is totally blind. These patients will bump into walls and trip over stuff and yet still be convinced they can see.
We are dependant on our anatomical, neurological structure. Some limitations are here to stay and there is not much we can do about it except always look for ways to keep our beliefs in check, always verify if we are straying from reality, because it is very easy to do so. A perfectly rational human would arguably not be human anymore, so be careful what you wish for.
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Umm the reason why everyone is so pissed off is because this whole tragedy could have been completely prevented if the Filipino government was in any way competent.
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On August 25 2010 18:39 writer22816 wrote:
Umm the reason why everyone is so pissed off is because this whole tragedy could have been completely prevented if the Filipino government was in any way competent.
Of course, that is not even disputable, their police simply sxxks....
However, I think if you die, you die, doesn't matter it is caused by another person or mother nature. If I have to say, I think dying under a pile of mud waiting for rescue is way more agonizing than killed by gun shot.
Of course, non of that matters, since there is no good way to judge the value of life. My point is, if we focus on what is logically more important (rebuild the city, improve sewage system in the flood areas), that will be better for our future. However, people are too focus on the Manila incident, gov release travel warnings, visiting the survivors, writing stupid things online (we should stop buying Filipinos exports! but what do they export anyways? mangos?).
Anyways, I guess Philippines will have a bigger reason to treat this incident seriously, The thousand years wisdom: you do not want to piss off China if you are a small East Asian country.
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That is the reason why I just stoped caring. I'm just human and realy all I can care about is what happens in my life. So many people die every day from hunger but nobody realy cares because it "just happens" but when a few people die in front of peoples nose it's suddenly a huge tragedy and everyone cares.
September 11th (as an example, same goes for anyone of those "Big Tragedys") was a tragedy but so many other people died that day but no one cares about them so why should I care about September 11th victims.
Please don't get me wrong....
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On August 25 2010 18:23 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2010 17:51 Samurai- wrote:On August 25 2010 16:20 BlackJack wrote:
Tourists being killed is a bigger deal than locals being killed. Do you see why? Cause tourists bring money. But my other point was that the simple fact that it happened to tourists makes it international news because tourists could be from any country.
In fact, the 3 Canadians that were killed on board were my high school classmate and her family. So subjectively/irrationally, this incident is more important than others.
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Humans are the worst thing on on the planet :/
And sorry to hear that Chromyne
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those people killed were harmless tourists that visit a country to play.
people dying in your country is one thing, representatives of your country killing innocent people from other countries can give your country trouble with the others
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It's probably just how the brain works. If you spent every second stressing on every tragedy you would be perpetually in despair. Tend to just prioritize the recent, 'relevant'(to them) or sensational ones. I think i read a theory that it is because we evolved to live in a much smaller size community ("middle world"), that when technology made it possible to link millions, the brain isnt use to operate on that scale. Not saying it's good or we can't improve, but I wouldnt start losing faith in humanity over it.
That said, by no means am I saying everything is OK, or noone has done anything wrong. Some people make a living capitalizing tragedies, or using it to push an agenda, it's sick.
Also, I'm really sorry to hear that Chromyne
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Oh hey Haiti! How's it going!
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yea dude. ofc people are stupid as shit. otherwise they wouldn't be ruled by sensational advertising fronts (also known as mainstream media)
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what is so illogical about more interest being shown towards the more recent tragedy?
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This isn't irrational at all. One tragedy does not make another tragedy lesser.
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no way! Middle class hk will never fire their maids! how would they live and who would look after them !
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On August 25 2010 16:14 Najda wrote:
It's like "Hey look middle class [or above] people died, everyone give them care and donate to families" then even when 100x people in 3rd world countries die to wars/natural disasters the media doesn't give it nearly as much attention (unless the death toll is absurdly large).
It's not about the class, it's about sensationalism. No one cares if those people were "above middle class", the story is huge for an entirely different reason.
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who ever thought people were "always" rational human beings?
the world couldn't care less for the poor its sad but its how the world is run..
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EPT
