From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Aug 10 2003 - 15:55:29 MDT
At the annual SIGGRAPH conference, there used to be a
large, robust SIG KIDS section, featuring actual live
kids who had done something interesting in digital
media. As press, I spent some time interviewing these
kids and writing about what they had created.
Then, one year the SIG KIDS area, which had been open,
like all the rest of SIGGRAPH, to the general
attendees, suddenly had a literal fence around it,
with guards. When I asked how I could enter the area
to collect material for my article, I was told simply,
"you can't. Under no circumstances will you or anyone
else be allowed to enter the area or speak with any of
the kids."
It turned out, on examination, that the decision to
seal off the SIG KIDS are had been made because of
concerns that some child molestor might take advantage
of the situation - this being shortly after that
little girl was molested and killed in the bathroom in
Las Vegas. I asked if there had been any incidents to
date at SIGGRAPH that would suggest reason for
concern, and was told, no.
SIGGRAPH is a professional conference that attracts
tens of thousands of attendees from all over the
globe. You don't get into the conference unless you
are a professional with ID, and, unless you are press
or a lecturer, etc., you pay substantial bucks as
well.
Not to say that some child molestor might not be
tempted, but there are much softer targets, I'm
certain, than SIGGRAPH, where there was constant close
adult supervision well before the fence was erected.
The kids participating did not generally come from
some cloistered high-security paradise, either. Prior
to and after SIGGRAPH, I'm sure that they walked
unsupervised around their neighborhoods and the local
malls, etc., where there would be long periods of time
when NO adult who knew them would be around.
These were not generally stupid kids, either, so there
was less vulnerability in that respect, and, in fact,
we know that most molestation happens at home and by
parents, relatives or people known and trusted by the
parents. The Las Vegas incident was the bolt of
lightning out of a clear blue sky, a very rare
occurence.
When I presented this to an otherwise sane friend of
mine, however, who was somewhat involved with SIGGRAPH
decision making, her response was to immediately
question my motives. Even though she knew that I had
had years of experience working with kids in schools
and home schooling settings, and that the focus of
many of my articles was on the integration of
computers with education, the fact that I would
question these security arrangements convinced her
that I must be secretly planning some dastardly deed.
I asked her how she could possibly justify the
security arrangements, in terms of cost/benefit. Her
response was to fly into a rage, ~"I'm not going to
watch MY GRAND DAUGHTER raped and murdered in some
bathroom. The security at SIGGRAPH even now is
minimal at best and should be increased! EVERY person
who has anything at all to do with any child anywhere
should have a complete background check first. (And
if you disagree, then you must be a secret molestor.)"
I wondered if the clerk at the local 7/11 who saw kids
on a daily basis buying snacks after school had a
complete background check first, or the paper delivery
man, or the gardener. Maybe we should all be locked
up, given that meeting children at the library, the
mall, the theater, etc., is inevitable, until every
adult has had a thorough background check. Or, as in
the SIGGRAPH model, maybe we should just lock up all
the kids...
I tried to point out that perfect safety would
literally be infinitely expensive, and putting every
cent into that kind of security would mean nothing for
medicine, medical research, safer cars. I.e., the
cost of such draconian policies in practice would be
MORE deaths of children - a LOT more, but any question
of balance was again invariably met with a question of
motive.
On a related note, a huge number of day care centers
reportedly went out of business as a consequence of
drastic increased in insurance rates after the
McMartin Preschool incident, and most people today
believe that the McMartin's were convicted. In fact,
they were all acquited, and the ultimate resolution of
the case pointed unequivocably to the planting of
suggestions and false memories by the state
psychologist. None of the underground tunnels in
which Satanic rituals had allegedly been conducted
were ever discovered, even though the school grounds
were thoroughly excavated, etc. Nonetheless, the
general perception and the hysteria that followed
resulted in huge insurance hikes and also the
prosecutions of dozens of innocent people in similar
cases all over the U.S.
The next year that SIGGRAPH was in L.A., there was no
SIG KIDS section. And no raped, murdered children
there either, to be fair. How many of the kids who
might have been there and missed out on the experience
and the development of useful life skills that kept
them alive later on in life has not been evaluated, of
course.
From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Fri Aug 08 2003
.... Something
is sacred when it is absolute and involable, and the
mere thought of
trading it off for some secular value is abhorrent.
Different
societies have different sacredness, but all societies
have it. In
practice we always have to do trade-offs between
values. As an
example, how much do we want to pay for road safety?
If human lives
were infinitely valuable to us, we would gladly pay
all money we
could for safer roads. But we actually chose (or have
someone chose
for us) a finite amount. But actually being tempted or
forced to
make these compromises makes us uncomfortable, and
various escape
and coping mechanisms (such as 'moral cleansing' where
people do
something they consider moral to balance the trade -
we feel
contaminated by trading in the sacred). These taboo
tradeoffs cause
strong moral outrage, especially among observers. It
is seen as
unacceptable to trade something sacred for secular, or
even to
consider it.
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