[HN Gopher] Science of Crowd Control [video]
___________________________________________________________________
Science of Crowd Control [video]
Author : marban
Score : 67 points
Date : 2023-08-24 01:47 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| paint wrote:
| If I want to watch a Wendover Productions video, I might as well
| read the wikipedia article myself and have a few tabs of stock
| videos open in the background.
| [deleted]
| Tokkemon wrote:
| oof
| supernova87a wrote:
| I have a side question. Is there just an entire industry of
| anonymous low cost labor countries that YouTubers outsource their
| video compilation to, where the service is to gather 300 random
| clips that vaguely relate to the text being spoken, but are not
| the person's own work or research?
|
| Without even realizing it for a while, I started to mistake a
| video that basically stated someone's collected
| assertions/opinions/variously supported research with pseudo
| documentary journalism because of the huge number of video clips
| being played as the person spoke.
|
| Or these amount of clips are just needed to hold someone's
| attention if the person making the video is only doing a
| voiceover? I guess otherwise, nothing distinguishes the video
| from a podcast.
| input_sh wrote:
| No, they pay for a stock footage service and find something
| vaguely resembling whatever they're talking about to insert
| into the video.
| blamazon wrote:
| > vaguely resembling whatever they're talking about
|
| The sibling channel to Wendover, (which is produced by the
| same team) 'Half As Interesting' [1] uses this to comedic
| effect - they will often show what is clearly the wackiest or
| strangest clip that came up when searching on these clip
| sites the phrase that the narrator is saying.
|
| [1]: https://youtube.com/@halfasinteresting
| dadoomer wrote:
| Yes, this is (I assume) easy enough that it must be cheaper
| than outsourcing.
| lozenge wrote:
| I think Wendover is a team of like 6-12 people? I just paged
| through the video and there's a lot of world map stuff (time
| consuming), Google Earth stuff (fairly quick) and crowd-
| specific CGI (super time consuming). Then they still need to
| fill the rest of the time, so yeah, stock footage will have to
| do.
| d0mine wrote:
| It seems like a job for AI (as it is today).
| [deleted]
| fouc wrote:
| For the first example in this video, I immediately thought that
| the staff should create tickets that guarantee purchase of the
| item, and then walk down the line and hand out tickets in order.
| Once all 500 tickets are handed out, the rest of the crowd has no
| choice but disperse.
|
| The rest of the video is fascinating, such as how crowd crushes
| happen
| arccy wrote:
| now your staff are mobbed and robbed
| makeitdouble wrote:
| At that point your store will get robbed as well.
|
| On a more serious note, that process can be done online, in
| particular as a lottery. The main issue would be that some
| stores actually want the crowd lining up to get news coverage
| of the event. Covering the event in a more dire light (from
| the angle of the store being too dumb with their operation ?)
| could help for those.
| mjb wrote:
| "Among the Thugs" by Bill Buford, which looks at football
| violence and crowd deaths in the 1990s is a great read if you're
| interested in crowds (and even if you're not interested in
| soccer/football at all). It's real gonzo stuff, embedded into the
| fan groups, going to the games, and even getting beaten by
| police.
| pmarreck wrote:
| That top comment >..<
|
| > The key to good crowd control is partying with a strong tank
| that knows when to taunt or use his other abilities while as a
| dps you're focusing your fire correctly.
| [deleted]
| levzettelin wrote:
| Contains some interesting observations. And sure, it makes sense
| to think about the design of such events. But to claim that
| "hooliganism", "youth culture", and "religious fanaticism" have
| nothing to do with crowd crushes seems absurd, and makes it feel
| like the author has an agenda. The way it's narrated reinforces
| this feeling.
|
| Why do people find it so hard to grasp that there are multiple
| factors to such complex events?
| adwn wrote:
| > _But to claim that "hooliganism", "youth culture", and
| "religious fanaticism" have nothing to do with crowd crushes
| seems absurd [...]_
|
| Whenever you believe to have identified the root causes for an
| event, and they're as diverse and disjunct as _hooliganism_ ,
| _youth culture_ , and _religious fanaticism_ , then that's a
| strong indicator that those factors aren't actually causally
| related to the event. Blaming crowd crushes on "youth culture"
| is reminiscent of blaming school shootings on video games.
| levzettelin wrote:
| The common denominator amongst these causes would seem to be
| that people turn off their critical thinking abilities and
| value a commitment to some ideology more than being smart
| about things. I thought that was obvious, so I used the
| phrase from the video "hooliganism, youth culture, and
| religious fanaticism" as a synonym for this.
| adwn wrote:
| > _[...] that people turn off their critical thinking
| abilities and value a commitment to some ideology more than
| being smart about things._
|
| That's not at all what is happening in a crowd crush
| situation. As explained in the video, above a certain crowd
| density, people _physically_ lose the ability to control
| their movement in the mass of bodies and involuntarily
| behave more like molecules in a fluid and less like
| individual actors. The people in the back of the crowd, who
| still have agency in their movement, _don 't know_ that
| they're indirectly causing the death of others, they're not
| homicidal maniacs (for the most part).
|
| Blaming crowd crushes on the lack of "critical thinking
| abilities" and "commitment to some ideology" is intuitive,
| easy, and _wrong_. A wrong model for a problem will prevent
| you from finding an effective solution - as seductive as
| that model may be.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| > _As explained in the video, above a certain crowd
| density, people physically lose the ability to control
| their movement in the mass of bodies and involuntarily
| behave more like molecules in a fluid and less like
| individual actors._
|
| The people at the interface of that phase change have the
| choice to move backwards, but still press forwards even
| though it puts them into physical contact with other
| people. They can be partially excused for not knowing of
| the situation ahead of them, but they're still (usually,
| except in cases of fire/etc) making a free choice to
| physically touch and press themselves into and against
| other people. I am talking about people at the interface,
| not in the middle of it.
|
| If everybody in the crowd refused to voluntarily press
| somebody else, then no forces would be transmitted
| through the crowd. But pressing other people,
| particularly to jostle your way past them, is the nature
| of crowd psychology. For this reason people should avoid
| crowds entirely. Being in such a high density crowd is
| _usually_ a choice.
| levzettelin wrote:
| I understand the argument. The problem with this is just
| that it requires people who sacrifice their critical
| thinking abilities to an ideology in order to end up with
| a mass of people who stand so close to each other that
| they are best described by the equations of fluid
| dynamics.
|
| The people in the center of the crowd who die had plenty
| of opportunities to get out, but they didn't; they
| committed to their respective ideology.
|
| Sure, if you find yourself in a mass of people that is so
| dense that you loose any sense of agency, it might help
| to remember that you're just a molecule in the mass and
| go with the flow. But if you find yourself in such a
| situation, it's usually a clear sign that you haven't
| always been reasonable on the way there.
| yetanother-1 wrote:
| Wendover production is a good quality channel that I always
| recommend. That being said, their explinations of the problems
| at hand are always too simplified and limited. Yes the topic is
| much more complex, but by the end of the video you will end up
| with some idea about the topic. It is a way to fill some
| curiosity and satisfy clicks. It can not be taken as any source
| of knowledge or 101 introduction into topics.
| ochoseis wrote:
| Wendover does make entertaining videos, but lately he's
| gotten a little full of himself and occasionally includes
| annoying political commentary.
| dkarl wrote:
| I agree that it's annoying not to spell things out literally,
| but what I hear is that if we talk about those aspects then
| people get in a moral huff and refuse to do anything to solve
| the problem, and innocent people who aren't hooligans,
| dumbasses, or fanatics die along with the hooligans, dumbasses,
| and fanatics.
|
| If you say it's "not really about" those things, then you
| bypass people's knee-jerk moralism and make it possible to
| actually work on the problem and prevent people from dying,
| which is important because many sane and reasonable people have
| no choice but to mix in with the dumbasses if they want to
| participate in these activities.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| It's because ultimately it doesn't matter.
|
| There could be any cause for the crowd to form in the first
| place, that crowd dynamic would be similar whatever the
| motivation of the crowd is. For instance if you're in the core
| zone that would get crushed if/when the crowd's movement was
| stopped, blaming avid capitalism doesn't help you in any way,
| you would have been safe if under the same incentives the
| organisators of the event had proper crowd management in first
| place.
|
| Fatalities at the Hajj weren't reduced by making people less
| religious, they improved their logistics instead [edited]
| mcpackieh wrote:
| One you're already in the crush zone nothing is going to help
| you, not even blaming the event organizers for lacking proper
| crowd management in the first place. Once you're in that
| situation, your life remains imperiled no matter who or what
| you point your finger at. The solution is to avoid getting
| into that situation in the first place, and until public
| places are fixed that means not being where a crowd is. Not
| going to the event in the first place is the best solution,
| but you can also leave early (my preference) or leave late,
| or leave through a lesser known exit.
|
| Counting on organizers to fix it with policy is a bad idea,
| the physical structure of public places needs to be changed
| to prevent it. Policy-based solutions are great as one layer
| of defense, but if that's your only defense in a structure
| that is otherwise prone to crowd crush, you're better of not
| being there in the first place.
| levzettelin wrote:
| I find it easy enough to imagine a type of people that would
| not engage in such barbaric actions under any circumstances.
| Say a group of 10000 physicist assembling to discuss quantum
| physics. But, sure, if you can't change the type of people
| assembling, improving logistics is your only option.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| The same would happen if they were all tightly packed in a
| small venue, and at the end of the conference there was
| only one exit down a narrow path.
|
| For the record, a similar issue happened in Korea not so
| long ago at a Halloween festival where people weren't even
| motivated to go a specific way, it was just too
| overcrowded:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-63443044
| levzettelin wrote:
| Doesn't really shout "scientists", this article LOL.
| brazzy wrote:
| > type of people that would not engage in such barbaric
| actions
|
| Please, please inform yourself.
|
| You are holding some vile misconceptions.
| adwn wrote:
| > _I find it easy enough to imagine a type of people that
| would not engage in such barbaric actions under any
| circumstances._
|
| None of the people in the back intend to cause injuries to
| the people in the front of the crowd, nor do they even know
| what's happening. The cause of crowd crushes is not the
| "type of people assembling", as evidenced by the wide
| variety of crowds that experienced crushes.
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-08-26 23:01 UTC)