I feel like the argumentation here is kinda misleading.
Here’s a pattern that doesn’t work very well: a tragedy catches our attention, we point to statistics to show it’s an example of a distressingly common problem, and we propose laws to address the issue.
The post promises to discuss a pattern. It’s obviously a culture-war-relevant pattern, and I can see a pretty good case for it being one where all the examples are going to be at least culture-war-adjacent. It’s an important pattern, if true, so far that seems justified and worth worrying about how to improve on.
But then the post provides one example. Is it a pattern? If so, what are the other cases, and why doesn’t the post concern itself with them? If the post is about the pattern of mistakes and how to address them, and why this is a thing to worry about in general, shouldn’t there be more like 3+ examples?
The case made that gun violence is not being addressed well, and is conflating at least two different but related problems, seems quite strong. It’s a good read, and the statistics presented make a strong case that we’re not addressing it well. I liked the argument presented, and felt better informed for having read the post (note to self: I should probably dig a bit deeper on the statistics, since the conclusion is one I’m pretty sympathetic to). But if that’s the argument the post is going to make, why isn’t the title / intro paragraph something more like “we’re not addressing the main causes of gun violence” or “mass shootings that make headlines aren’t central examples of the problem” or something like that?
I assume that the gun violence example is one case of many, and that there are both general and specific lessons to be learned. I assume it would be possible to over-generalize from one example, so looking for common features and common failures would be instructive.
Overall, it felt like the post made several good points, but that the structure was a bit of a bait and switch.
Fair! I was thinking of it as three instances, where we have three different statistics being used to support policy changes that don’t fit their underlying causes, but you’re right that they’re all on gun policy.
Thinking a bit, here are two other cases where you see similar things:
Transportation, with people using “road deaths” to push for making buses safer after high-fatality crashes, even when buses are already far safer than cars and it’s cars that are the reason for high road deaths (even adjusting for mode share)
Domestic hunger, where the examples people give are people starving, but the statistics are for food insecurity which is defined very broadly. I think it’s likely that this is pushing us towards the wrong policies here but would need to look into this more.
Another example: using statistics about the frequency of abductions to argue that children should need to be pretty old before being on their own outside the house. Except a huge fraction of kidnapping is parental custody disputes, and if you’re a parent making this decision you know whether that’s a relevant concern.
A serving London police officer used his badge and handcuffs to detain a young woman (Sarah Everard), he then raped her, murdered her and set fire to her body.
Since this absolutely awful case caught headlines various changes have been made to police policy. Several hundred officers are being investigated for crimes that (for some reason) were not previously investigated [1]. And the government brought in new laws against street harassment [2]. I support the changes (as far as I understand them) and I really don’t understand why the police were not already investigating officers accused of serious sex crimes. But, it is still clear that the case of Sarah Everard is not a typical example of “street harassment” (its not an example at all), so mentioning her case in that discussion feels vaguely dishonest.
I feel like the argumentation here is kinda misleading.
The post promises to discuss a pattern. It’s obviously a culture-war-relevant pattern, and I can see a pretty good case for it being one where all the examples are going to be at least culture-war-adjacent. It’s an important pattern, if true, so far that seems justified and worth worrying about how to improve on.
But then the post provides one example. Is it a pattern? If so, what are the other cases, and why doesn’t the post concern itself with them? If the post is about the pattern of mistakes and how to address them, and why this is a thing to worry about in general, shouldn’t there be more like 3+ examples?
The case made that gun violence is not being addressed well, and is conflating at least two different but related problems, seems quite strong. It’s a good read, and the statistics presented make a strong case that we’re not addressing it well. I liked the argument presented, and felt better informed for having read the post (note to self: I should probably dig a bit deeper on the statistics, since the conclusion is one I’m pretty sympathetic to). But if that’s the argument the post is going to make, why isn’t the title / intro paragraph something more like “we’re not addressing the main causes of gun violence” or “mass shootings that make headlines aren’t central examples of the problem” or something like that?
I assume that the gun violence example is one case of many, and that there are both general and specific lessons to be learned. I assume it would be possible to over-generalize from one example, so looking for common features and common failures would be instructive.
Overall, it felt like the post made several good points, but that the structure was a bit of a bait and switch.
Fair! I was thinking of it as three instances, where we have three different statistics being used to support policy changes that don’t fit their underlying causes, but you’re right that they’re all on gun policy.
Thinking a bit, here are two other cases where you see similar things:
Transportation, with people using “road deaths” to push for making buses safer after high-fatality crashes, even when buses are already far safer than cars and it’s cars that are the reason for high road deaths (even adjusting for mode share)
Domestic hunger, where the examples people give are people starving, but the statistics are for food insecurity which is defined very broadly. I think it’s likely that this is pushing us towards the wrong policies here but would need to look into this more.
Another example: using statistics about the frequency of abductions to argue that children should need to be pretty old before being on their own outside the house. Except a huge fraction of kidnapping is parental custody disputes, and if you’re a parent making this decision you know whether that’s a relevant concern.
An example I think fits the pattern:
A serving London police officer used his badge and handcuffs to detain a young woman (Sarah Everard), he then raped her, murdered her and set fire to her body.
Since this absolutely awful case caught headlines various changes have been made to police policy. Several hundred officers are being investigated for crimes that (for some reason) were not previously investigated [1]. And the government brought in new laws against street harassment [2]. I support the changes (as far as I understand them) and I really don’t understand why the police were not already investigating officers accused of serious sex crimes. But, it is still clear that the case of Sarah Everard is not a typical example of “street harassment” (its not an example at all), so mentioning her case in that discussion feels vaguely dishonest.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63162881 [Police investigations]
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65065154 [Street harassment bill linked to the murder]
[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/c8657zxk82wt?page=2 [A list of everything the BBC think links to the murder]