5 ms·

This political correctness can have a serious backswing when people go to vote. As we have seen in US, and as we will see in Europe.

jl6 10y ago
I understand that one motivation behind not providing crime breakdowns by ethnicity is to avoid providing information that might be used without context to justify hate. But it is also a little racist to try to hide the problem, as if criminality is inherent to the ethnicity and cannot be solved, so may as well be ignored.
- qofcourse 10y ago
  Quite true - and the level of Orwellian thought-control that bureaucrats are engaging in, in order to hide facts because it might "justify hate" - is much more terrifying than the hate itself.
- pavlov 10y ago
  Collecting data about ethnicity is always problematic because the definitions are fundamentally fluid. Finnish people were considered Asian in some American states in the early 20th century. Should they be included in crime statistics with Chinese? Also, if police are required to collect this data, who else is? Should you be able to look up the registered ethnicity of a person similar to how anyone can look up tax returns in Sweden (and other Nordic countries)? If not, why not?
- DarkKomunalec 10y ago
  But pointing out the positive statistics of immigrants (e.g. https://hbr.org/2016/10/immigrants-play-a-disproportionate-role-in-american-entrepreneurship https://hbr.org/2016/10/immigrants-play-a-disproportionate-r... ) - is okay? Ignore the data supporting one side of the debate, and of course the other side will seem more convincing.
tomlock 10y ago
Not sure what stats back up this claim. I've heard people say this movement is anti-globalization, about the economy, anti-PC, anti-establishment - yadda yadda yadda. Everyone has a theory, and it seems like people just choose the one they like best. Trump at the moment has a very low approval rating - maybe not everyone got what they read into him?
- ra1n85 10y ago
  >Trump at the moment has a very low approval rating - maybe not everyone got what they read into him? Polls also predicted him to have less than a 10% chance of winning the election. Not all data is good data.
  - tomlock 10y ago
    Most analysis showed he had some chance of winning, and he won by a relatively low margin. If you rolled a ten sided dice once and it came up with a ten, would you feel repeated tests that showed there was a 10% chance of that outcome should be ignored in future?
  - pavlov 10y ago
    If the polls had said "0.1% chance", I would agree with you. But a 10% chance is actually quite high odds. Things much less likely than that happen to everyone, every day. The predictions were essentially right. Hillary Clinton had a better chance of winning the election, but Trump successfully rolled the dice with his 10% odds: he campaigned in some critical states that were expected to go blue and won them over by a narrow majority.
  - SolaceQuantum 10y ago
    So now I'm confused. Does a low approval rate matter, is it "bad data"? What defines "bad data"? Say the statistics running around this thread specifically about crime in countries, broken down by race and type or crime, or broken down further by region within counties too. How does one determine "good data" vs "bad data" here?
    - 10y ago
badsock 10y ago
Trump got less votes than Romney. Your backswing is just the same old bigots getting a momentary upper hand because of the way the chips happened to fall in the last election. Whether they can leverage that into more lasting power remains to be seen.

jl6 10y ago

I understand that one motivation behind not providing crime breakdowns by ethnicity is to avoid providing information that might be used without context to justify hate. But it is also a little racist to try to hide the problem, as if criminality is inherent to the ethnicity and cannot be solved, so may as well be ignored.

qofcourse 10y ago
Quite true - and the level of Orwellian thought-control that bureaucrats are engaging in, in order to hide facts because it might "justify hate" - is much more terrifying than the hate itself.
pavlov 10y ago
Collecting data about ethnicity is always problematic because the definitions are fundamentally fluid. Finnish people were considered Asian in some American states in the early 20th century. Should they be included in crime statistics with Chinese? Also, if police are required to collect this data, who else is? Should you be able to look up the registered ethnicity of a person similar to how anyone can look up tax returns in Sweden (and other Nordic countries)? If not, why not?
DarkKomunalec 10y ago
But pointing out the positive statistics of immigrants (e.g. https://hbr.org/2016/10/immigrants-play-a-disproportionate-role-in-american-entrepreneurship https://hbr.org/2016/10/immigrants-play-a-disproportionate-r... ) - is okay? Ignore the data supporting one side of the debate, and of course the other side will seem more convincing.

tomlock 10y ago

Not sure what stats back up this claim. I've heard people say this movement is anti-globalization, about the economy, anti-PC, anti-establishment - yadda yadda yadda. Everyone has a theory, and it seems like people just choose the one they like best. Trump at the moment has a very low approval rating - maybe not everyone got what they read into him?

ra1n85 10y ago
>Trump at the moment has a very low approval rating - maybe not everyone got what they read into him? Polls also predicted him to have less than a 10% chance of winning the election. Not all data is good data.
- tomlock 10y ago
  Most analysis showed he had some chance of winning, and he won by a relatively low margin. If you rolled a ten sided dice once and it came up with a ten, would you feel repeated tests that showed there was a 10% chance of that outcome should be ignored in future?
- pavlov 10y ago
  If the polls had said "0.1% chance", I would agree with you. But a 10% chance is actually quite high odds. Things much less likely than that happen to everyone, every day. The predictions were essentially right. Hillary Clinton had a better chance of winning the election, but Trump successfully rolled the dice with his 10% odds: he campaigned in some critical states that were expected to go blue and won them over by a narrow majority.
- SolaceQuantum 10y ago
  So now I'm confused. Does a low approval rate matter, is it "bad data"? What defines "bad data"? Say the statistics running around this thread specifically about crime in countries, broken down by race and type or crime, or broken down further by region within counties too. How does one determine "good data" vs "bad data" here?
  - 10y ago

badsock 10y ago

Trump got less votes than Romney. Your backswing is just the same old bigots getting a momentary upper hand because of the way the chips happened to fall in the last election. Whether they can leverage that into more lasting power remains to be seen.