Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[LuckyR]

Danger is the risk of harm, whereas deadly is risk of death. Something can be dangerous without being deadly; for example, touching a hot stove for 5 seconds. The likelihood of dying from this is very unlikely, but you are going to be left with burns. Therefore, danger is a more apt description than deadly. Not to mention the significantly better medical practices that make things that were once deadly less so. This doesn't mean things are less dangerous, as an accidental wound is still a wound. It's still harmful to your body. In application to the modern day, the world is not less dangerous, only less deadly. There are significantly more opportunities for danger in our everyday lives than there used to be; those dangers are just easier to recover from.

I am not certain your description of danger and thus dangerousness is universally accepted. Not that it is a bad definition, just one that many will differ from in their understanding.

As far as your conclusion of the opportunities for danger in the moden era, I totally disagree with you. What is your realistic risk to eating food tomorrow? Getting a paper cut opening a bag of chips? How about food contamination in the 1800s? Cholera from the well in the square in London. Or hunting and gathering on the plains in the Stone Age? No, it is silly to suppose that the trend in the risk dying is opposite to the risk of harm over long periods of time.

Can you please elaborate your opinion. Did you mean something like risk of getting dislipidaemia due to long term unhealthy food habits? Or is it the reduction of risks to the human life due to the improvement of living conditions through hundreds of years with the societal evolution of the humans, from hunting dats to the technological era?

My opinion is that Cocaine-+-Blood's idea that the trend in human life over time is towards less deadly events yet more dangerous events is ridiculous on it's face and that there is no separation between the two. In fact deadly events are just the accumulation of dangerous events in most cases.

[Sushan]

Danger is the risk of harm, whereas deadly is risk of death. Something can be dangerous without being deadly; for example, touching a hot stove for 5 seconds. The likelihood of dying from this is very unlikely, but you are going to be left with burns. Therefore, danger is a more apt description than deadly. Not to mention the significantly better medical practices that make things that were once deadly less so. This doesn't mean things are less dangerous, as an accidental wound is still a wound. It's still harmful to your body. In application to the modern day, the world is not less dangerous, only less deadly. There are significantly more opportunities for danger in our everyday lives than there used to be; those dangers are just easier to recover from.

I am not certain your description of danger and thus dangerousness is universally accepted. Not that it is a bad definition, just one that many will differ from in their understanding.

As far as your conclusion of the opportunities for danger in the moden era, I totally disagree with you. What is your realistic risk to eating food tomorrow? Getting a paper cut opening a bag of chips? How about food contamination in the 1800s? Cholera from the well in the square in London. Or hunting and gathering on the plains in the Stone Age? No, it is silly to suppose that the trend in the risk dying is opposite to the risk of harm over long periods of time.

Can you please elaborate your opinion. Did you mean something like risk of getting dislipidaemia due to long term unhealthy food habits? Or is it the reduction of risks to the human life due to the improvement of living conditions through hundreds of years with the societal evolution of the humans, from hunting dats to the technological era?

My opinion is that Cocaine-+-Blood's idea that the trend in human life over time is towards less deadly events yet more dangerous events is ridiculous on it's face and that there is no separation between the two. In fact deadly events are just the accumulation of dangerous events in most cases.

I see. It is just a word of games. But at the end we are at the point at which we started. If the world is a less dangerous place, it should be less deadly as well, and vice versa. Accumulation of dangers will make it deadly one day. So the two should go in same directions rather than going in opposite directions.

[Bob001]

Every living thing is innately afraid, but only to a certain degree. Human beings experience terror when certain situations occur. However, misplaced fear affect a lot of people especially when one dreadful thing has happened, one will see or think of hundreds more. Experiencing fear when there is none can also happen to many. An example can be where one might be scheduled to attend a job interview but all of a sudden feels as though he doesn't know about the job anymore and timid to attend the interview. While fear can be real, there is also False fear which is both illusionary and extremely heightened in severity.

[Sushan]

Every living thing is innately afraid, but only to a certain degree. Human beings experience terror when certain situations occur. However, misplaced fear affect a lot of people especially when one dreadful thing has happened, one will see or think of hundreds more. Experiencing fear when there is none can also happen to many. An example can be where one might be scheduled to attend a job interview but all of a sudden feels as though he doesn't know about the job anymore and timid to attend the interview. While fear can be real, there is also False fear which is both illusionary and extremely heightened in severity.

Fear is a protective factor. If we possess no fear, then we are extremely prone to severe injuries and even death. We avoid doing certain things because we are afraid of being harmed, and that is actually good. But the morbid form of anything is bad, and that is common for fear as well. If we are unnecessarily afraid of things we may loose many opportunities. So the balance between the extremities is extremely important. With experience we tend to change our perspectives on fear. And this includes our view on the world as well.