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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   37989 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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The bridge near me used to be suicide capital of Toronto. In North America it was second only to the Golden Gate Bridge as a venue for people to end their lives. So in 2006, the suicide nets went up, and there's only been one death since. I wonder whether if that solution was proposed today if we'd get the same kind of inane pushback: no, first we have to tackle the opioids, or too much screen time, or cyber-bullying, or whatever the root cause of the problem was. The nets are ugly: not only as a reflection of our society's problems, they also get in the way of a good view. But it would've been cowardly inaction to insist the root cause of the problem had to be solved first.

Did this have any actual impact on the total suicide numbers or did some people just get a less scenic last few moments? This is why root cause analysis is important, because you very much may have just ended with uglier bridges and uglier suicides for all your effort and expenditures.

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