November 5, 2024

5 thoughts on “Bring Down the Fence

  1. “This has been the argument from ‘anti-fencers’ from the very beginning: that people will find a way to end their lives if they really want to.”

    Sure, but this still doesn’t prove that the fences have not prevented impulsive suicides. And I don’t think even the administration was ever arguing that the fences would stop someone determined to jump. In some sense this incident is meaningless in terms of providing evidentiary support for/against the fences; we all knew someone could climb over them if he/she wanted to.

  2. Dennis is right. There’s no proper counterfactual. You can say “there would have been more suicides had the fences not been put up” or you can say “there would have been fewer suicides had the fences not been put up,” and no one can contradict you because we can never observe the world in the case “where the fences had not been put up.” Probably the best you can do is assume things would have continued as they had been before. But (i) “how things were” is not necessarily obvious because it’s hard to tell what’s an anomaly and what is a genuine trend, and (ii) there is no compelling reason we ought to actually believe that the suicide rate is constant other than that it’s convenient to do so.

    So really any “suicide policy” the administration enacts is immune from criticism. How reassuring! Although I’ll say I also wish they’d be taken down.

  3. Yes, you’re both right, obviously this incident does not provide any indication of how many suicides may have been prevented by the fences (one could possibly even make the case that Monday’s event was successfully preventative, and use it to lobby for the fences).

    As far as the statement that ‘we all knew someone could climb over if they wanted to,’ I’m not sure that is entirely true. Not in the sense that most people entertained the idea, but that it was merely a possible situation that was put forward as a hypothetical argument. My point is that this is now a reality and something that needs to be weighed heavily in the fence debate.

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