This is Dangerous vs. I Don't Know

On swapping uncertainty for a perception of certain danger

Author

Ray Doraisamy
March 27, 2026

At age 10, I thought I was an enterprising man. I bought and sold Pokémon cards...until my mother found them.

After screaming at me for some time, she shed some tears. Anger I could take, but my mother's sadnesses and disappointments were not something I could defy.

I threw my Pokémon cards away.

By 1862, the railroad had conquered much of the American West, though the transcontinental railroad had yet to be built.

Lancet, the physician's journal still held in high prestige today, published The influence of railway travelling on public health.

In it, the foremost physicians of the time warned against the rapid concussions caused by railway travel that would be peculiarly hurtful to the nervous centers, and ultimately end in paralysis.

They also reported that rail would age you rapidly.

I have had a large experience in the changes which the ordinary course of time makes on men busy in the world, and I know well how to allow for their gradual deterioration by age and care; but I have never seen any set of men so rapidly aged as these seem to me to have been in the course of those few years.

When bicycles came along, British medical journals would diagnose "bicycle face", a dangerous condition developed by riding bicycles.

As a young comics reader, I was dimly aware of the Seduction of the Innocent.

The writer, a psychiatrist named Fredric Wertham, claimed comics were the cause of most ills. A psychologist told Wertham of one his patients, a 13 year old girl. "Marked sexual preoccupation hampers her objectivity." Wertham wrote, "It makes no mention of comic books—but it seems to me that they [comics] hampered her objectivity most."

The most subtle and pervading effect of comics on children can be summarized in a single phrase: moral disarmament. I have studied this in children who do not commit overt acts of delinquency, who do not show any of the more conspicuous symptoms of emotional disorder, and who may not have difficulty in school. The more subtle this influence is, the more detrimental it may be.

Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent

Larger claims would be made (and bought) when role-playing games came along.

Remember the “Freeway Killer” Vernon Butts, who committed suicide in his jail cell in 1981 while being held as a suspect in a string of murders? Butts was an avid D&D player who often communicated with visitors using a code developed as a part of his D&D involvement. Another isolated incident? Not hardly. Police reports around the country have connected FRP [fantasy role-playing] activity to more than a hundred suicide and murder cases.

A Christian Response to Dungeons and Dragons is the most entertaining source, here. I encourage you to read it, if you're looking for amusement. Though as funny as it is today, we might recall how much power it had.

You can see how this kind of fear spreads. It doesn't take long for a Senator to take it up.

The entire culture then changes, in response..

“I’d like to ban all the violent video games,” [Senator] Lieberman said. “It’s hard to control every measure of this, especially in a society that values free speech and First Amendment rights.”

In 1993, just ten years after the United States Surgeon General Koop asserted that video games were an addiction that caused domestic violence, there were United State Senate hearings on video games causing violence.

Two years ago, I met a woman, a worshipper of Odin. She was upset at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and blamed video-games for the war. Consider a few names of Odin:

  • Atriðr: Attacker

  • Bǫðgæðir: Battle promoter

  • Geirlǫðnir: The one who invites to the spear-battle

  • Hjaldrgoð: God of battle

  • Sigfǫðr: Father of victory, war-father

I laugh, but all these examples are understandable reactions to uncertainty.

If I don't know what the effects of something are, it's much easier for me to assume the worst.

There's a corner of the land we live on that has some bushes. I'm more wary there, as I suspect rattlesnakes are there. I don't know what the probability is. It's harder to deal with the uncertainty. So I assume there's a significant chance the toddlers will get bit there.

The same goes for the likes of Ms. Rachel and Cocomelon. I believe the effects are unwanted, a filing off of a child's ability to discern and make decisions. I don't really know yet, do I?

Trying to bootstrap a business has similar pitfalls. I don't think I've experienced anything more uncertain.

It is very, very easy to assume the worst, to assume bad odds, instead of accepting uncertainty.

You might distantly recall a similar pattern in asking a girl out.

Another enters in considering what is possible and impossible.

It is often easier to call something impossible, than to explore the unknown.