Quote from: StormBringer;241763True enough, but I am sure you can understand the desire to keep the truth from simply being what is shouted loudest.

I get it.  The world is full of lying sacks of shit like CavScout, and when left unchecked, you get Bush in office.

Quote from: StormBringer;241763True enough, but I am sure you can understand the desire to keep the truth from simply being what is shouted loudest.

It's not a verbal conversation, it's a written one. When speaking, people tend to remember the last word; in text, people tend to read the first words and only scan over the rest, especially in forums. So you get your point across in your first post about that point, or you don't, and that's that.

If you finely hone your words and give them a keen edge, then repetition will dull them, and the perception of what is the truth will be based not on the words themselves, but people's likes and dislikes of the various people as individuals.

Plus when you say the same thing 100 times people stop reading you generally, not just that particular thread. They scan down a big thread... "oh... that guy. Yeah, I'll scan to the next post..."

Nothing is quite as cute as two libs getting together and discussing how to ignore someone they couldn’t shout down.

Get a room already.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;241774Plus when you say the same thing 100 times people stop reading you generally, not just that particular thread. They scan down a big thread... "oh... that guy. Yeah, I'll scan to the next post..."

Alright, you made your point.

Good. Now I have a new point: you should start an online rpg. This will make us all happy that we have a game to play or at least hear about, and let you use your powers for good.

Quote from: StormBringer;241738CavScout opened this can of worms by using the survey statistics, and then did everything possible to keep the focus on those, because they contradict a clearly agreed on concept.  The correlation between poverty and crime.

If there's a contradiction between a clearly agreed-upon concept which is contradicted by the evidence, then both the evidence and the concept should be revisited. We've taken a look at the evidence, and I think everyone's clear what the flaws and strengths of the various bits of data are. What's less clearly-understood is why, if the income gap has widened in the past 8 years, and crime is linked to the income gap, the rate of crime has decreased in the last 8 years, if indeed that's what's happened. But the only way to figure out what's going on is to look at each step of the argument and figure out where it leads; sometimes, it leads to unexpected places, and sometimes those places contain truth. It's usually worth the trip.

Personally, I think the lack of direct causation has a lot to do with external factors. While economics are a predictor of crime, so are literally thousands of other things. I think those "other things" have a strong role to play in the interplay between the alleged income gap widening and the alleged drop in crime rate.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;241780Good. Now I have a new point: you should start an online rpg. This will make us all happy that we have a game to play or at least hear about, and let you use your powers for good.

Welll...  There is that Dynamo Joe/Traveller hybrid I was thinking of.  And the Olde School I need to promote...

Thanks for the smash and grab back to reality.

Quote from: Engine;241784Personally, I think the lack of direct causation has a lot to do with external factors. While economics are a predictor of crime, so are literally thousands of other things. I think those "other things" have a strong role to play in the interplay between the alleged income gap widening and the alleged drop in crime rate.

This is very true.  America has many tools in it's toolbox designed just for preventing crime, which is why I've mostly stayed out of this conversation (that and I think CavScout's whole argument is disingenuous crap).  All those tools are going to have an effect, but it's almost impossible to sort out which tools have which effect and how things are working.

Maybe the crime rate isn't soaring due to the increase of poverty because legalized abortion is having a curbing effect.  Not saying it's the case, but it's a possibility.

It's a fact that in really broad terms the more disparity and poverty you have, the more crime you have.  Compared the US and Brazil, or Canada and Russia, or any Western democracy and any third world nation.  But the same broad effect might not show up in a short time span in a well-developed country that has a multitude of crime prevention programs in place.

Quote from: Engine;241784What's less clearly-understood is why, if the income gap has widened in the past 8 years, and crime is linked to the income gap, the rate of crime has decreased in the last 8 years, if indeed that's what's happened. But the only way to figure out what's going on is to look at each step of the argument and figure out where it leads; sometimes, it leads to unexpected places, and sometimes those places contain truth. It's usually worth the trip.

This is also true, but I don't think anyone was saying that a 1% change in the gap will lead to instant anarchy.  The change in crime will lag a bit, and as Jackalope mentioned above, there may be other mechanisms in place to mitigate small-ish changes.

QuotePersonally, I think the lack of direct causation has a lot to do with external factors. While economics are a predictor of crime, so are literally thousands of other things. I think those "other things" have a strong role to play in the interplay between the alleged income gap widening and the alleged drop in crime rate.

But how many of those are also correlated with poverty?  Or, as mentioned before, the perception of poverty?  I have said before that actual poverty and perceived poverty are likely nearly equal as factors, and there is a certain percent of the income gap that is perception.

Quote from: StormBringer;241788This is also true, but I don't think anyone was saying that a 1% change in the gap will lead to instant anarchy.  The change in crime will lag a bit...

And this is, I suspect, one of the arguments I'd make, if the data sort out as I suspect they do: not only do you have the swamping effect of other things happening in this civilization - shit, the crime rate's been going down for a while now, anyway; shouldn't we be looking at the difference in the rate of decrease? - but there's also the fact that change takes time.

Quote from: Engine;241797And this is, I suspect, one of the arguments I'd make, if the data sort out as I suspect they do: not only do you have the swamping effect of other things happening in this civilization - shit, the crime rate's been going down for a while now, anyway; shouldn't we be looking at the difference in the rate of decrease? - but there's also the fact that change takes time.

Which corresponds to, at least, the perceived boost to the economy.  As I mentioned above, if you do a rough eyeball of the statistics, it looks like they correspond fairly well to the recessions and such of the past 20 something years.

I would certainly need to see supporting data for any conclusions drawn from such a perceived correspondence.

Quote from: Engine;241803I would certainly need to see supporting data for any conclusions drawn from such a perceived correspondence.

Certainly, I would as well.  As I said, a rough correspondence appears to exist there, but getting the numbers to run is probably going to take a bit more than a couple of bored folks and Google.  

Quote from: Jackalope;241772I get it.  The world is full of lying sacks of shit like CavScout, and when left unchecked, you get Bush in office.

I think you're on to something there. :hmm: