Comment by gideonfell on When None Dare Urge Restraint · 2007-12-09T16:47:02.000Z · LW · GW

This is one of the truer things I have read since 9/11; I know that because it perfectly matches my own opinions. :) I also had more or less the same three thoughts in rapid succession in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the towers. A previous commentator, 'david', was skeptical about that kind of claim, i.e. that the mental event would have gone down precisely in that fashion. To david, I would concede that certainly in accounts such as this we omit some stray thoughts, such as: "Where's the remote control?" or "I bet nobody's going to get any work done today." But I think it is fair game to discount such unmemorable or tangential thoughts, just as I hope it is understood by all that our mental experience does not actually consist of crisp series of sentences in italics.

Quibbles about hyperbole aside, the more important question is how we bring about an America where citizens each have at least a p=.02 chance of having these level-headed thoughts when something like this happens again?