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by Scramblejams 3022 days ago
Not callous at all. We all have a limited amount of attention to pay to things, and as a society we have a limited amount of political and monetary capital to direct at problems. So we should focus on those problems that yield the biggest bang for the buck.

The media is frequently a bad actor in this. Since humans aren't generally good at assessing risk, value propositions like "How to keep your kid from being struck by lightning! Film at 11!" are actively counterproductive. I believe media has an ethical responsibility to allocate their resources and grab eyeballs in line with the magnitude and tractability of the problems they cover, but that's not what sells ad spots. :-(