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For the purpose of being fully informed, and because you might forgot you have seen this photo, this is what happened when the police arrived: https://twitter.c
by NhanH 11y ago
For the purpose of being fully informed, and because you might forgot you have seen this photo, this is what happened when the police arrived: https://twitter.com/OfficalPrajwol/status/644011809351962625/photo/1 https://twitter.com/OfficalPrajwol/status/644011809351962625...
Regardless of what someone looks like or what their name is, if they did not do anything wrong and is 14 years old, I think it's reasonable to expect them not being handcuffed and parade out of school in front of their peers. It's hard to take in good faith that the police have done their job well - with diligence, compassion, professionalism, and without animosity or bias.
Police were called, kid were arrested, detained massively erroneously, interrogated without the present of an attorney [0], and potentially having his life turned upside down, or side way (for better or worse). It's a tragedy that we see people without understanding of Bayesian statistics (or frequentist, for that matter) - but we do see them, and far too often. These are the times we live in. So how should this have been handled?
Hopefully some will learn that reasonable and probable cause needs to have some basis in certain priori, and that opportunity cost and the boy who cries wolf are really and very harmful issue. I think if people handle the situation with rational thought rather than instigation, and understand that P(massacre | kids = 14 years old in the US) is some number that probably is smaller than IEEE floating point error, then everyone will be better off for that.
[0]: http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/us/texas-student-ahmed-muslim-clock-bomb/ http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/us/texas-student-ahmed-muslim-...
- beauSD 11y agoThe police detained him until they could investigate the device and question him about his intentions, then released him. Sounds like a rough afternoon, but hardly a ruined life. He's been released and he's exonerated. > Hopefully some will learn that reasonable and probable cause needs to have some basis in certain priori, and that opportunity cost and the boy who cries wolf are really and very harmful issue. I put the security of a school full of other kids above the 'opportunity cost' of being questioned by police. I'm guessing many other people would as well - especially the parents of the other kids at the school. > understand that P(massacre | kids = 14 years old in the US) is some number that probably is smaller than IEEE floating point error, then everyone will be better off for that. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Just because it doesn't happen in the US often, doesn't mean it won't. 14 years old are involved in violence all over the world, especially in bombing incidents.
- NhanH 11y agoIf you truly assume that the world is a dangerous place that we really need to be that careful, then it's the opportunity cost of the police force of NOT preventing the actual problems (there has to be some bad things being done/ will be done that is not prevented, right? That's the basis of your argument). And if they truly believed it was a dangerous bomb, was the school evacuated? > Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Just because it doesn't happen in the US often, doesn't mean it won't. 14 years old are involved in violence all over the world, especially in bombing incidents. This is not even wrong, and it's terrifying if politicians would be thinking the same way as you does here. There is no guarantee EVER that anything will, or will not happen. But due to the limited resources and capability that we human have, we have to act and behave rationally based on the probability that something will happen. A scenario that comes from an unfounded basis and human imagination can not be treated with the same weight as a scenario that has some more reasonable chance to happen (based on past performance or what not). And note that P(something) indicate the probability that something can happen (or your belief of something to happen, in Bayesian interpretation), it has nothing to do with past performance/ events. The past changes your belief of P, but probability is predicting the future. People in certain area of the world are involved in violence all year round, having bombed dropped on their roof, their hometown decimated. Are you preparing for that scenario to happen to you in the US in the present? Why or why not?