Recent Crime

Recently, multiple students at my school were assaulted, not far from the school itself, and one of them was sent to the hospital. Our instinct in this situation is to be afraid for others and ourselves and react by playing it safe, but we can do better than instinct here. For example: should we have been playing it safe in the first place? Should we look to statistics for crime in a greater area, ideally the entire area that we traverse daily, to make our decisions, rather than scary anecdotes? These are good questions to ask in order to reach an optimal outcome.

A good place to start would be to ask, Does this tell me anything that I didn’t know before? Is there anything new about this? Often, we react to intimidating news like this as if everything about it tells us something new, but that might not actually be the case. In my case, my parents and I knew that this area wasn’t completely safe, and a student has been assaulted near the area in the past. However, this was a group of many students, which tells us that numbers may not give you an advantage.

Now, we can ask: can this data really be extrapolated for the sake of a greater decision? For now, we don’t know because the school and NYPD do not know everything about the perpetrators or the motive for the assault. Again, if I play the situation too reactively and just stop staying out late and come home immediately until it's been a while since a crime has been reported in this very specific area, there’s a good chance that I could be the next one to get hit. That is always a possibility, but you have to pull on a decent sample size to really evaluate the risk, rather than reacting to the most emotional anecdotes. This kind of analytical approach is a good way to take control of the situation. We can try to learn from emotional anecdotes, but we shouldn’t be reliant on them as rare reminders of more common events that could be absent when we need them most; thinking that way, you are not really in control of the situation.

Of course, it’s difficult to think this way because there are so many decisions we make in a single day without even thinking twice that have large implications. So, we have to have priorities: where should I invest the most time into thinking about an optimal outcome? Because I can’t necessarily repeat this process for every decision. Obvious first answers include risk of major physical accidents, like where and when to cross the street or stay outside longer than we need to for school. There are also major life decisions like choosing a school, a college or a job where we have to think about the implications that each choice might have. For example, if I choose the highest-paying job where I am accepted and start working there, am I willing to sacrifice major extra time for that money, and am I willing to accept the responsibilities that may come along with that role for potential years of my life?

There is some value to going with the flow. You might be tempted to ask how I could say that without contradicting what I’ve said before. But I don’t think going with the flow means being completely reactive and instinctive in all circumstances; I think the most important, most Stoic aspect of going with the flow is to accept any and all outcomes that are out of your control (at the most fundamental level, you don’t have to be completely happy with every outcome) and focus on what you can control. If you’ve ever watched the movie Forrest Gump, that is the main takeaway I got from that movie. Because of the unfortunate circumstances of the real world, any of us who live in even a mildly dangerous area could get attacked one day. We don’t necessarily get to decide when and where that could happen. But we do get to decide where we can be attacked each day. I’m not saying that it is right to always take the most cautious approach with always staying inside, as there are problems with that as well, such as missing out on opportunities to form bonds with other people or understand the environment that you will have to occupy some of the time. Then of course, there are ways to do those things without going outside, and those have their own complexities, etc. You get the point. In my opinion, it’s up to each of us to decide how careful we want to be, because we all own our lives. This kind of logical framework will help you to make the choice that has the highest probability of success. If it doesn’t work out, then either you didn’t understand the world correctly, which you should try to correct if possible, or you should rest easy knowing that you did the best you could. The world and the probabilities may betray you, but the framework will not.