5 ms·

The article implied greater incidence of violent crimes as well These included minor offenses such as trespassing and copyright violations, but also serious cr

by adrusi 10y ago

The article implied greater incidence of violent crimes as well These included minor offenses such as trespassing and copyright violations, but also serious crimes such as arson, fraud, and kidnapping. Only one crime mentioned qualifies as "white collar".

pc86 10y ago
Isn't one of the major reasons to commit arson insurance fraud? I'm not saying arson is a white collar crime just that if you're desperate for money for whatever reason, and you're generally pretty smart, you may be inclined to try to get away with something like that. The same with kidnapping, although that seems much more violent and likely to end badly for everyone involved than arson.
omouse 10y ago
Copyright violations? Hahahaahahaha. Copyright itself is the offense. Ridiculous.
- sqeaky 10y ago
  I feel that if stated differently there is real potential for an argument here. Starting with an example of why copyright is bad, such as the preposterous 100+ year time for works to enter the public domain or that it was originally as a tool of censorship by European royalty would both be reasonable starting points. The way you put ityou are likely to get even anti-IP people, like myself, on the other side because we don't want to be associated with you.
  - Mathnerd314 10y ago
    The easy version is to just say "copyright monopoly"; everyone knows a monopoly is bad, and by mentioning it you automatically create an association. The fact that such an association doesn't necessarily exist (http://www.copyhype.com/2013/01/three-reasons-copyright-is-not-a-monopoly/ http://www.copyhype.com/2013/01/three-reasons-copyright-is-n...) is irrelevant, since most people don't reason logically anyway, and of course there are arguments for why there is in fact a monopoly (http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2014/08/08/copyright-monopoly-nothing-artists/ http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2014/08/08/copyright-monopol..., e.g. lack of advertising access).
    - sqeaky 10y ago
      Sound bites can be powerful when convincing people. I will use this in the future, at least to get a real conversation started. Without the backing of real conversation sound bites can be used to dismiss meaningful arguments. In turn this leads to them being dismissed. Switching back to copyright, I think that saying "copyright is not a monopoly" it is not as cut and dry as the linked site would indicate. I think one's ability to hire lawyers matters here. Consider Disney, they will have a much easier time defending themselves, where a smaller author might not be able too. Disney will also have a much easier defeating a legitimate defense of another real author than a lone author might be able to. It is not hard to imagine a hypothetical Disney of yesteryear suing people to keep other space operas down with their Star Wars IP. It is harder to imagine a small defendant succeeding in that defense even if it is legitimate. I think this is largely a non-issue, because Disney of today is less of jerk. Of all the kinds of Intellectual Property I think Copyright is most fair, the kind of legal abuse I described is much more common with Trademarks and Patents. I think the recent "flow" trademark issue or anything King software (the candy crush guys) does with game names so how asymmetric IP laws can be in general.
    - danbruc 10y ago
      [...] everyone knows a monopoly is bad [...] I don't think that is true. Neither does everybody know that a monopoly is bad, nor, and more importantly, is a monopoly inherently bad. Take for example the monopoly on violence. And even if you want to restrict the meaning to monopolies in the economic sense, even then is a monopoly not inherently bad. It only becomes so if its powers are abused. Sometimes having competition will increase the total costs, think for example of having five competing power distribution networks. In such cases it may be a better choice to have a monopoly and regulated it to prevent its abuse instead of having competition.
      - Mathnerd314 10y ago
        Right, your average American don't "know" a monopoly is bad. In general they won't "know" anything about the subject. But, from their grade school American history class, they probably have some vague recollection of the anti-trust laws passed in the early 1900's to break up the "Robber Barons" or "Titans of Industry", and the corresponding "even rich people aren't above the law" sentiment. So if you say "copyright monopoly" they won't dismiss the need for legislative reform out of hand. Whereas if you use terminology like "legalize piracy" they probably will. A natural monopoly would be associated with a public utility; probably the various libraries. An electronic library might become a public utility, but so far Spotify, Netflix, etc. have had incomplete catalogs and there's not much support for the compulsory licensing scheme they'd need to make it work (which would be its own public service...)
kps 10y ago
> minor offenses such as trespassing and copyright violations Not a terrible comparison, there. Trespassing is the use of someone else's property without permission, in a way that doesn't deprive them of it, typically isn't even noticed unless someone is watching out for it, and becomes frequent only where the approved route is disproportionately difficult.
- thatcat 10y ago
  Not a great one either. Trespassing has the additional aspect of physical space invasion that infringes on privacy and causes liability in a way that copyright can not. Digital copyright infringement is sharing data without a license which hasn't conclusively been shown to have a negative financial outcome for the holder of the copyright.
  - wahern 10y ago
    Turning into someone's driveway to make a U-turn on a narrow residential neighborhood is trespassing. Without knowing more the best we could say is that high-IQ people are more aware of their crimes or maybe more willing to admit to them. For example, a property lawyer might be more likely to admit to trespassing than the average person just because he's more aware of how often he commits it. At the same time, his awareness of and persistence in such unlawful behavior doesn't mean he's flouting the law more than anyone else except in the most pedantic, literal sense. The whole study sounds dubious. Relying on self-reporting is excused as necessary. That there are no practical alternatives doesn't make the method magically sound or even remotely accurate. That in the aggregate self-reporting roughly corresponds with crime statistics says absolutely nothing about the accuracy of self-reporting for niche subgroups. It's this kind of pseudo-science that gives science in any field a bad name. I can appreciate that it might be especially difficult to find funding for a study that, first, establishes a strong correlation between self-reporting and IQ. But until there's significant push back from the community for studies premised on barely-tenable assumptions that funding will never be forthcoming.

by adrusi 10y ago

pc86 10y ago

Isn't one of the major reasons to commit arson insurance fraud? I'm not saying arson is a white collar crime just that if you're desperate for money for whatever reason, and you're generally pretty smart, you may be inclined to try to get away with something like that. The same with kidnapping, although that seems much more violent and likely to end badly for everyone involved than arson.

omouse 10y ago

sqeaky 10y ago
I feel that if stated differently there is real potential for an argument here. Starting with an example of why copyright is bad, such as the preposterous 100+ year time for works to enter the public domain or that it was originally as a tool of censorship by European royalty would both be reasonable starting points. The way you put ityou are likely to get even anti-IP people, like myself, on the other side because we don't want to be associated with you.
- Mathnerd314 10y ago
  The easy version is to just say "copyright monopoly"; everyone knows a monopoly is bad, and by mentioning it you automatically create an association. The fact that such an association doesn't necessarily exist (http://www.copyhype.com/2013/01/three-reasons-copyright-is-not-a-monopoly/ http://www.copyhype.com/2013/01/three-reasons-copyright-is-n...) is irrelevant, since most people don't reason logically anyway, and of course there are arguments for why there is in fact a monopoly (http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2014/08/08/copyright-monopoly-nothing-artists/ http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2014/08/08/copyright-monopol..., e.g. lack of advertising access).
  - sqeaky 10y ago
    Sound bites can be powerful when convincing people. I will use this in the future, at least to get a real conversation started. Without the backing of real conversation sound bites can be used to dismiss meaningful arguments. In turn this leads to them being dismissed. Switching back to copyright, I think that saying "copyright is not a monopoly" it is not as cut and dry as the linked site would indicate. I think one's ability to hire lawyers matters here. Consider Disney, they will have a much easier time defending themselves, where a smaller author might not be able too. Disney will also have a much easier defeating a legitimate defense of another real author than a lone author might be able to. It is not hard to imagine a hypothetical Disney of yesteryear suing people to keep other space operas down with their Star Wars IP. It is harder to imagine a small defendant succeeding in that defense even if it is legitimate. I think this is largely a non-issue, because Disney of today is less of jerk. Of all the kinds of Intellectual Property I think Copyright is most fair, the kind of legal abuse I described is much more common with Trademarks and Patents. I think the recent "flow" trademark issue or anything King software (the candy crush guys) does with game names so how asymmetric IP laws can be in general.
  - danbruc 10y ago
    [...] everyone knows a monopoly is bad [...] I don't think that is true. Neither does everybody know that a monopoly is bad, nor, and more importantly, is a monopoly inherently bad. Take for example the monopoly on violence. And even if you want to restrict the meaning to monopolies in the economic sense, even then is a monopoly not inherently bad. It only becomes so if its powers are abused. Sometimes having competition will increase the total costs, think for example of having five competing power distribution networks. In such cases it may be a better choice to have a monopoly and regulated it to prevent its abuse instead of having competition.
    - Mathnerd314 10y ago
      Right, your average American don't "know" a monopoly is bad. In general they won't "know" anything about the subject. But, from their grade school American history class, they probably have some vague recollection of the anti-trust laws passed in the early 1900's to break up the "Robber Barons" or "Titans of Industry", and the corresponding "even rich people aren't above the law" sentiment. So if you say "copyright monopoly" they won't dismiss the need for legislative reform out of hand. Whereas if you use terminology like "legalize piracy" they probably will. A natural monopoly would be associated with a public utility; probably the various libraries. An electronic library might become a public utility, but so far Spotify, Netflix, etc. have had incomplete catalogs and there's not much support for the compulsory licensing scheme they'd need to make it work (which would be its own public service...)

kps 10y ago

> minor offenses such as trespassing and copyright violations Not a terrible comparison, there. Trespassing is the use of someone else's property without permission, in a way that doesn't deprive them of it, typically isn't even noticed unless someone is watching out for it, and becomes frequent only where the approved route is disproportionately difficult.

thatcat 10y ago
Not a great one either. Trespassing has the additional aspect of physical space invasion that infringes on privacy and causes liability in a way that copyright can not. Digital copyright infringement is sharing data without a license which hasn't conclusively been shown to have a negative financial outcome for the holder of the copyright.
- wahern 10y ago
  Turning into someone's driveway to make a U-turn on a narrow residential neighborhood is trespassing. Without knowing more the best we could say is that high-IQ people are more aware of their crimes or maybe more willing to admit to them. For example, a property lawyer might be more likely to admit to trespassing than the average person just because he's more aware of how often he commits it. At the same time, his awareness of and persistence in such unlawful behavior doesn't mean he's flouting the law more than anyone else except in the most pedantic, literal sense. The whole study sounds dubious. Relying on self-reporting is excused as necessary. That there are no practical alternatives doesn't make the method magically sound or even remotely accurate. That in the aggregate self-reporting roughly corresponds with crime statistics says absolutely nothing about the accuracy of self-reporting for niche subgroups. It's this kind of pseudo-science that gives science in any field a bad name. I can appreciate that it might be especially difficult to find funding for a study that, first, establishes a strong correlation between self-reporting and IQ. But until there's significant push back from the community for studies premised on barely-tenable assumptions that funding will never be forthcoming.