I don't wish anyone bad, but if one day your family too will be bomb by foreign troops and you will wake up in a hospital and see your daughter without arms and legs, you too will understand that.
No. I don't trust Facebook, but then again, I haven't trusted Facebook in a long time (which is why I deleted my account).
Except that my account isn't deleted even when Facebook said they would after 14 days. That's just one example.
But the reason why the very liberty of citizens of the United States is under threat is because people aren't willing to stand up to what is right if it's inconvenient for them. They will instead rationalize and look for more proof and stick their heads in the sand.
Why doesn't Google stick a random missing child photo next to their logo on every page view? Surely it would be seen by millions in a matter of an hour. Why doesn't Windows display a little message in the corner of every desktop, linking to an important charitable cause? Why don't you place a bunch of 5x5 signs of missing kids in your lawn? You value the appearance of your lawn more than the possibility of saving a life? Why do you watch TV when kids are dying? You could be working, and saving money to send them food. You could have saved hundreds of lives if you didn't watch that last season of Breaking Bad.
Want more initiative? Hey, let's stick missing kid stickers on the rear window of cars. Or what if every Friday, instead of going out for lunch, everyone in the country donates 5 or 10 dollars to save starving kids. Or what if grocery stores had a basket next to each checkout, and you buy extra food while shopping, then place it in there to be donated? These ideas are a dime a dozen, and this 404 concept is one of the worst I've seen.
In short, everyone needs to draw the line somewhere. If someone isn't interested in changing their 404 pages, don't send the guilt trip party, because there are a million ways you could be doing more in your life. Everyone chooses to help to a different degree.
No, I don't. This kind of argument is commonly advanced, but it neglects the opportunity cost of over-saturation causing people not to pay attention or care. This is the lesson of the fable about the boy who cried wolf. Noise ends up swamping the signal.
When I notice the 'missing kids' thing on the weekly coupons that show up in my mailbox, as often as not it's some kid that disappeared 10, 15, 25 years ago. That's sad, of course, but as a practical matter it's making things worse.
Are you claiming that over saturation is worse than zero saturation?
To be honest, I can't remember the last "missing child" face I saw. If I visited Reddit today and saw a face of a kid in my state that was missing, I'd be more likely to pick them out. This program isn't getting forced by anyone but claiming it would do worse than "no good" is ignorant.
That would depend entirely on the cost of the initiative and what other things, including potentially more effective ways of rescuing kidnapped children, could be done instead.
That would depend entirely on the cost of the initiative and what other things,
Um, obviously. The point is that the cost is just about nothing, especially if your current 404 is an apache default or a joke page. Nobody is suggesting some type of moral obligation, but if a repurposed 404 does bring a missing child home, the cost was clearly worth it.
including potentially more effective ways of rescuing kidnapped children, could be done instead.
It's a goddamn 404 page; it's use does not preclude any other methods of recovering kidnap victims.
You're thinking of time and money costs; those are just a small part. What about the costs of being reminded of such a terrible thing every time you hit a 404? And what about those costs for people who lost their child five or ten years ago, and for whom those are just terrible memories, with no hope left?
All great points. I'm reminded of that whenever I see one of those "cleft palate" pictures. It's a terrible thing of course, but it's not exactly something that lifts your spirits and should not be forced upon people.
You make an interesting point. I could see how these 404s could be in poor taste depending on the tone of the site, but I'm not really moved by the "someone might feel bad about something they saw on the internet" argument.
Opportunity costs always exist and should never be discounted. Yes, the opportunity cost for each instance is low, but it's also being spent by a whole lot of people.
That would depend entirely on the cost of the initiative and what other things, including potentially more effective ways of rescuing kidnapped children, could be done instead.
No, that is incorrect.
The program would be regarded as successful if it rescued one child at any cost.
It is possible that there are more effective ways, but the existence of those possibilities does not preclude a less effective way of being successful.
Additionally, it seems unlikely that any other "more effective" way would be precluded by this method so it is inaccurate to measure the effectiveness of this method vs other methods ("could be done instead") - it would almost certainly be done in addition to other things.
Finally, on a personal note I believe attempting to argue that returning a kidnapped child to their parents may NOT be regarded as a success because of the "cost of the initiative" is morally indefensible.
Finally, on a personal note I believe attempting to argue that returning a kidnapped child to their parents may NOT be regarded as a success because of the "cost of the initiative" is morally indefensible.
But surely this isn't the case or each of us would personally have to dedicate all of our own time and money to finding every missing child, correct? Why aren't you using your salary to run ads on Facebook with the faces of missing children? It might work...
But surely this isn't the case or each of us would personally have to dedicate all of our own time and money to finding every missing child, correct?
No.
"Success" in this case is defined by reuniting a parent with a child. Using monetary conditions to weigh that is immoral IMHO.
However, there is no implication that anyone should spend their money in this (or any other) way. Indeed, I don't believe that there is any moral imperative to implement this on their website. That is a personal decision and is best left to the person making it.
attempting to argue that returning a kidnapped child to their parents may NOT be regarded as a success because of the "cost of the initiative" is morally indefensible.
You're saying that any and all possible attempts at finding / returning a child would have zero costs associated, or that whatever the negative cost is irrelevant and should be disregarded. Imagine the government shifts a massive amount of spending towards finding missing children, and suspends the 4th amendment, hires a massive army of investigators and searches door to door to find missing children. Of course this is an exaggerated scenario but it's at least arguable that the negative costs associated with this plan could outweigh the benefits, and that this would be morally undesirable. I don't think there is ever a scenario where costs can be completely ignored / discounted to obtain any amount of beneficial outcome. If you agree with my point in the extreme case, but not in the original scenario, then the disagreement is one of degree not principle. i.e. "well it depends on the costs.." Exactly.
I'm saying that if your "exaggerated scenario" reunited a child with their parents it would be a success. I'm not arguing that something like that should be done, nor am I arguing that cost effectiveness cannot be considered.
I am saying that given that the prior condition of successfully reuniting a child with their parent then saying it was not successful because it cost too much is putting a price on the child's life. That is morally repugnant in this circumstance.
We're just dealing with two different definitions of success here aren't we?
Success Definition One: Success occurs when the child is returned. This is a binary outcome and you're right to say that if the child is returned then it simply is a success under this definition and nothing can change that.
Success Definition Two: The scheme works and is practical. This is a qualitative outcome which does require comparing apples to oranges (or as you emotively put it; "putting a price on a child's life"). If Bill Gates offered 12 billion dollars for the return of a child, no questions asked, no law enforcement involved, it might work very well indeed, but cannot be called a success under this definition.
With regard to the 'prior condition', I would still argue that if the scenario under Two above occurred, and worked, I would still call it a failure under definition two and a success under definition one.
And honestly, definition two is the more interesting one to try to produce a solution for.
"potentially more effective ways of rescuing kidnapped children"
Agree.
Better than nothing? Ok, yes. Better than a company giving people an opportunity to monetize their 404 traffic (people do this obviously) and then taking those earnings (even if nominal) and putting it toward a cause to help children (or anything "worthy") even better.
How many false alarms would it take to distract the department from finding a lost child?
Let me put it this way: Let's say it take 500 hours to find a child without someone calling in and 5 hours to investigate a claim.
If the website method has a success rate of 1% or less the time needed to investigate the claims outweighs the time it would take to find the child without the 404 pages at all.
I don't have any numbers for this but surely that is one scenario where this could cause more harm than good.
Depends. It might convince the public that the biggest threat to children is from strangers. A lot of children would be harmed by their close relatives and the general public might think there's nothing wrong.
Only in places like Hacker News is there a consensus opinion that Facebook is "a new addictive and time wasting form of entertainment who's contribution society is null or negative"
You either know that statement is untrue but lie anyway, or you haven't been outside and seen a tree in real life for over a year. Many people of all walks of life think Facebook is an "addictive and time wasting form of entertainment who's contribution society is negative."
If you honestly believe otherwise, you need to push away from the computer desk and interact with normal human beings in the flesh STAT.
Writing style is important when trying to persuade. But for the discerning reader looking for facts, content is what counts.
The top post shifts the focus from a blogger's (Greenspan's) account of his dealings with Mark Zuckerberg to "founders guilt".
And this comment is now addressed to the relative merits of Facebook.
The discussion moved from discussing Greenspan's account to discussing founder's guilt and the merits of social networking. How does this happen?
Those topics are not the point of Greenspan's post.
It's a simple tale of how one founder treated someone else, from whom he took advice and ideas.
It's a tale that's familiar (perhaps painfully familiar to some), because we've heard others tell it before as it also happened to them.
Keep changing the subject. Or trying to justify how Zuckerberg treated people by looking at the end result (which no one denies was due in part to great luck).
By all means do what Zuckerberg did and build something big. But don't screw other people over the way he did, call users "dumb fucks" and disregard their privacy as a trivial matter because you think that's a prerequisite to success. It isn't.
I think what he's saying is if you go outside and look at a tree, then the truth will be revealed to you. No need to do this if you've seen a tree in the last year though. But perhaps I read his comment wrong.
