Weighty Ghost

I'm often seeing memes on Facebook reminising sarcastically about the past, saying something like, "When I was a kid, I rode a bike without a helmet and somehow I survived."

Well of course you did. If you didn't survive, you wouldn't be on Facebook to talk about it, now would you? I'd like to believe that somewhere out there is a Ghostbook, where dead people network, and they have their own memes. "When I was a kid, I rode a bike without a helmet, and I suffered a fatal brain injury."

I've since discovered that this is called Survivorship Bias. And ironically I learned that from a Facebook meme.

Any sort of protecting-our-kids-too-much issue is really frustrating. I mean even more than your average Facebook-based politico-philosophocal discussion. It's bad enough when you have an issue that has an intellectually-justified side and an emotionally-justified side and they just argue past each other. But in this case, both sides have a big emotional component. I didn't need a helmet, so today's kids shouldn't wear them, statistics be damned. My kid was in an accident, so all kids should wear a helmet, balancing of public safety and individual freedom be damned.

So whenever I see someone simplistically make one of these arguments, I wish I could steer them towards one of the people making simplistic arguments the other way. You guys just yell slogans and throw memes at each other.  We'll be over here talking it over like adults.