Appropriate Responses
Mar. 3rd, 2012 01:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ashnistrikeI love my wife.
I got home today and saw a copy of The Watchtower on the coffee table.
Me: Oh, did we get Jehovah's Witnesses today?
S: Yes, apparently some live nearby.
Me: So, what happened?
S: They asked whether I'd noticed all the bad things happening in the world, and whether I agreed that things seemed to be getting worse all the time, and didn't I think that was a sign of the coming apocalypse? I explained to them about the availability heuristic* and about how rates of violence are actually getting lower.
Me: I love you--what did they say?
S: That it made sense. And they stayed and rested a while before they went back out in the rain.
And now I feel like I ought to put these things together in a convenient pamphlet for the benefit of people not married to psychologists.
*I can't find a good link for this aspect of the heuristic, but in general it's easier to think of bad things that happened recently, because it's generally easier to think of things that happened recently. And it's definitely easier to think of bad things that have happened during your lifetime. This leads to every generation imagining a recently lost golden age when this stuff was unheard of.
I got home today and saw a copy of The Watchtower on the coffee table.
Me: Oh, did we get Jehovah's Witnesses today?
S: Yes, apparently some live nearby.
Me: So, what happened?
S: They asked whether I'd noticed all the bad things happening in the world, and whether I agreed that things seemed to be getting worse all the time, and didn't I think that was a sign of the coming apocalypse? I explained to them about the availability heuristic* and about how rates of violence are actually getting lower.
Me: I love you--what did they say?
S: That it made sense. And they stayed and rested a while before they went back out in the rain.
And now I feel like I ought to put these things together in a convenient pamphlet for the benefit of people not married to psychologists.
*I can't find a good link for this aspect of the heuristic, but in general it's easier to think of bad things that happened recently, because it's generally easier to think of things that happened recently. And it's definitely easier to think of bad things that have happened during your lifetime. This leads to every generation imagining a recently lost golden age when this stuff was unheard of.
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no subject
Date: 2012-03-07 03:52 am (UTC)