I sure do miss Michael Crichton. We lost him too soon. I was touching a little on this with my coworkers, at how so much of the heavy-handed COVID response has a lot to do with our current society’s refusal to accept any risk.
Michael Crichton: Environmentalism is a religion
http://principia-scientific.org/crichton-environmentalism-religion/
I feel bad for kids. I had an enormous amount of personal freedom as a kid, and I was free to do things that might be bad or hurt me.
Monkey bars. Those see-saw things that could cut off your fingers. Walking long distances from home and being exposed to attack by unsavory people. Playing tackle football with no protection. Those kinds of things.
I was free to make mistakes and I made plenty of them. Some things could have killed me and I would have never learned from them, but...they didn’t.