weltschmerz
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Post by weltschmerz on Jan 6, 2015 19:34:28 GMT -5
That's a really strange caveat, not to mention completely meaningless. If someone shoots another someone and one has an old record for possession of a joint and the other has an record for distubing the peace, are they any less dead?
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weltschmerz
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Post by weltschmerz on Jan 6, 2015 19:52:25 GMT -5
Might as well just count red-headed, left-handed people who were born during a leap year, and call it a day.
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EVT1
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Post by EVT1 on Jan 6, 2015 22:14:06 GMT -5
Does he bother adjusting that statistic for the other countries?
Let's see how Colombia moves on the chart once we eliminate criminals killing criminals
It's a lame ass attempt to explain away statistics one does not like.
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weltschmerz
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Post by weltschmerz on Jan 6, 2015 22:17:50 GMT -5
Does he bother adjusting that statistic for the other countries?
Let's see how Colombia moves on the chart once we eliminate criminals killing criminals
It's a lame ass attempt to explain away statistics one does not like. Of course not.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Jan 7, 2015 0:02:53 GMT -5
That's a really strange caveat, not to mention completely meaningless. If someone shoots another someone and one has an old record for possession of a joint and the other has an record for distubing the peace, are they any less dead? I'll let Paul defend Mr. Molyneux's thesis, since I'm not really sure where his data is coming from either. Molyneux claims in the first five minutes of the video that 80% of all violent crime in the US is gang-related. No source cited. In any case, his thesis is that violent crime is exceptionally concentrated in the US. Let's take his observation to the logical extreme. Suppose the US homicide rate is what it is now, but 100% of all homicides in the US occur in Florida (for EVT ). Hopefully when looking at that situation your reaction would be "what on Earth is wrong with Florida" rather than "what on Earth is wrong with America". That is, you'd hopefully acknowledge the specificity of the problem's locale while trying to deduce why it was occurring. It doesn't make sense to look at factors uniformly present throughout the US when the problem is painfully unique to Florida. To an extent, the same logic applies to violence concentrated by group (in this case, gang bangers) rather than by locale, and to violence that isn't 100% concentrated but concentrated enough that if you cut out that group, the remaining citizens look like peace-loving hippies by comparison. In a nutshell, that's the argument Mr. Molyneux is making. He's saying that if you cut out the banger-on-banger homicides, the US is, relatively speaking, a relatively homicide-free country when compared to other countries with their banger-on-banger homicides cut out. Your grievance about criminal-record-on-criminal-record crime being a "strange caveat" is valid. There's also validity to the objection that if one selectively "cuts out" one group or another and compares the results, those results are inextricably linked to the choice of cut. Having said this, if Molyneux' claim of 80% gang-banging homicide is accurate, it seems to me that when it comes to guns, the question "what on Earth is wrong with America's gangs" is indeed more pertinent than the question "what on Earth is wrong with America", unless one believes that America's obsession with guns is the reason it has so many gangs, which is a whole different ball of wax. When looking at the root causes of violence, I agree with Molyneux to the extent that we can't simply say "the US has a high homicide rate; the US likes guns; ergo guns cause homicide" if 100% of the homicides are in Florida but 100% of the US loves guns. The raw data don't always give the complete picture, especially for nations as large and diverse as the US. Sometimes you have to acknowledge the strange caveats.
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EVT1
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Post by EVT1 on Jan 7, 2015 1:07:52 GMT -5
We do wonder what the fuck is wrong with Florida- see Reddit.
And it is no clue what is going on- sure nice rural areas have low gun crime, just as they have low amounts of shits they contribute to the sewer system.
And not the point anyway- it is a statistic so high no amount of bullshit is going to overcome it. Why bother anyway- the gun lobby won- they won years ago, and add that with a black president and gun sales reach a peak.
**** Interesting note- the 10% of alcoholics are responsible for 90% of the alcohol sales in a given year. The 10% of paranoid nutballs are responsible for 90% of the gun sales in the last decade. FACT!
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weltschmerz
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Post by weltschmerz on Jan 7, 2015 2:17:22 GMT -5
Again, it's like saying the US is the slimmest, fittest nation on earth, if you cut out the obese people. What's the point?
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Jan 7, 2015 7:49:36 GMT -5
Again, it's like saying the US is the slimmest, fittest nation on earth, if you cut out the obese people. What's the point?
The point is to acknowledge the specificity of the problem. Suppose Canada was the heart-healthiest nation on Earth barring poutine-related heart attacks. With poutine-related attacks included, we rank 153rd. If Paul was arguing that our 153rd place status was proof our healthcare system didn't work, wouldn't you at least attempt to reason with him that Canada's problem isn't our healthcare system but instead our mad obsession with poutine? Regarding your "slimmest, fittest nation on earth" example: suppose we cut the top 10% most obese people out of every nation and compared the resulting statistics. Suppose that the US did indeed rank as the slimmest, fittest nation on earth barring the top 10%. True, it doesn't make the US any less unhealthy overall, but it should at the very least impress upon us how concentrated the obesity problem is to a relatively small group of people. It behooves us to look at the factors affecting the hyperobese 10% rather than the factors affecting everyone in America.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Jan 7, 2015 7:51:30 GMT -5
We do wonder what the fuck is wrong with Florida- see Reddit.
And it is no clue what is going on- sure nice rural areas have low gun crime, just as they have low amounts of shits they contribute to the sewer system.
And not the point anyway- it is a statistic so high no amount of bullshit is going to overcome it. Why bother anyway- the gun lobby won- they won years ago, and add that with a black president and gun sales reach a peak.
**** Interesting note- the 10% of alcoholics are responsible for 90% of the alcohol sales in a given year. The 10% of paranoid nutballs are responsible for 90% of the gun sales in the last decade. FACT!
I wasn't aware they were able statistically quantify paranoid nutballs.
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AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP
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Post by AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP on Jan 7, 2015 10:10:43 GMT -5
Again, it's like saying the US is the slimmest, fittest nation on earth, if you cut out the obese people. What's the point?
The point is to acknowledge the specificity of the problem. Suppose Canada was the heart-healthiest nation on Earth barring poutine-related heart attacks. With poutine-related attacks included, we rank 153rd. If Paul was arguing that our 153rd place status was proof our healthcare system didn't work, wouldn't you at least attempt to reason with him that Canada's problem isn't our healthcare system but instead our mad obsession with poutine? Regarding your "slimmest, fittest nation on earth" example: suppose we cut the top 10% most obese people out of every nation and compared the resulting statistics. Suppose that the US did indeed rank as the slimmest, fittest nation on earth barring the top 10%. True, it doesn't make the US any less unhealthy overall, but it should at the very least impress upon us how concentrated the obesity problem is to a relatively small group of people. It behooves us to look at the factors affecting the hyperobese 10% rather than the factors affecting everyone in America. Actually, I would argue that America could, in your scenario, indeed be the healthiest nation- even the healthiest overall - in spite of a small subset of the population that is unhealthy. I didn't post the video with the expectation that people would watch it, btw-- I was asked to cite the source, and anyone that cares to see the data can watch it. I bring that up again to bring this up-- overall homicide rate is extremely low. Consider this: The overall crime rate in America are similar to comparable nations. Assault- 2.2% of Americans are victimized each year compared to 2.3% of Canadians (probably excludes hockey), 2.8% of Aussies. For car theft it's 2.3% are victimized in the US, 2.7% of Aussies, and 2.8% in England. 88% of offenses in America are non-violent- just 3% of all crime in the US results in an injury. Homicide accounts for just 0.2% of all crime in America. Violent crime doesn't drive the US criminal justice system- primarily, the war on drugs does-- and of course the deadly combination of the welfare state and the war on drugs drives much of the violence that actually does occur.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2015 15:57:13 GMT -5
The point is to acknowledge the specificity of the problem. Suppose Canada was the heart-healthiest nation on Earth barring poutine-related heart attacks. With poutine-related attacks included, we rank 153rd. If Paul was arguing that our 153rd place status was proof our healthcare system didn't work, wouldn't you at least attempt to reason with him that Canada's problem isn't our healthcare system but instead our mad obsession with poutine? Regarding your "slimmest, fittest nation on earth" example: suppose we cut the top 10% most obese people out of every nation and compared the resulting statistics. Suppose that the US did indeed rank as the slimmest, fittest nation on earth barring the top 10%. True, it doesn't make the US any less unhealthy overall, but it should at the very least impress upon us how concentrated the obesity problem is to a relatively small group of people. It behooves us to look at the factors affecting the hyperobese 10% rather than the factors affecting everyone in America. Actually, I would argue that America could, in your scenario, indeed be the healthiest nation- even the healthiest overall - in spite of a small subset of the population that is unhealthy. I didn't post the video with the expectation that people would watch it, btw-- I was asked to cite the source, and anyone that cares to see the data can watch it. I bring that up again to bring this up-- overall homicide rate is extremely low. Consider this: The overall crime rate in America are similar to comparable nations. Assault- 2.2% of Americans are victimized each year compared to 2.3% of Canadians (probably excludes hockey), 2.8% of Aussies. For car theft it's 2.3% are victimized in the US, 2.7% of Aussies, and 2.8% in England. 88% of offenses in America are non-violent- just 3% of all crime in the US results in an injury. Homicide accounts for just 0.2% of all crime in America. Violent crime doesn't drive the US criminal justice system- primarily, the war on drugs does-- and of course the deadly combination of the welfare state and the war on drugs drives much of the violence that actually does occur. The 0.2% homicide rate of all crime in America. Is that the firearm related homicides, or all homicides?
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AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP
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Post by AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP on Jan 9, 2015 18:38:10 GMT -5
Actually, I would argue that America could, in your scenario, indeed be the healthiest nation- even the healthiest overall - in spite of a small subset of the population that is unhealthy. I didn't post the video with the expectation that people would watch it, btw-- I was asked to cite the source, and anyone that cares to see the data can watch it. I bring that up again to bring this up-- overall homicide rate is extremely low. Consider this: The overall crime rate in America are similar to comparable nations. Assault- 2.2% of Americans are victimized each year compared to 2.3% of Canadians (probably excludes hockey), 2.8% of Aussies. For car theft it's 2.3% are victimized in the US, 2.7% of Aussies, and 2.8% in England. 88% of offenses in America are non-violent- just 3% of all crime in the US results in an injury. Homicide accounts for just 0.2% of all crime in America. Violent crime doesn't drive the US criminal justice system- primarily, the war on drugs does-- and of course the deadly combination of the welfare state and the war on drugs drives much of the violence that actually does occur. The 0.2% homicide rate of all crime in America. Is that the firearm related homicides, or all homicides? That's all arrests.
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weltschmerz
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Post by weltschmerz on Jan 9, 2015 19:15:00 GMT -5
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