> A ”best effort” summary of this article: if thousands of people die in once place, it’s one of the great tragedies in American history. However if thousands of people die in thousands different places, it is ignored and considered a fact of life.
But that makes sense statistically, because those are thousands of ostensibly independent events that don't necessarily have a single common cause, where the massacre of a thousand people in one place obviously has a single common cause. So of course the natural reaction is to shrug in the former case, because there's no obvious connection between them. Of course, if you can prove that those have a single common cause that can be tackled, then it makes sense to tie them all together.
But that makes sense statistically, because those are thousands of ostensibly independent events that don't necessarily have a single common cause, where the massacre of a thousand people in one place obviously has a single common cause. So of course the natural reaction is to shrug in the former case, because there's no obvious connection between them. Of course, if you can prove that those have a single common cause that can be tackled, then it makes sense to tie them all together.