5 ms·

It's an interesting read, though to be fair a lot of what popular culture and fiction says about any romanticised group is not true/heavily exaggerated. Most of

by CM30 10y ago

It's an interesting read, though to be fair a lot of what popular culture and fiction says about any romanticised group is not true/heavily exaggerated. Most of what people think they know about ninjas isn't true. Most of what people think about the wild west isn't true. Same with everything from medieval times to Roman soldiers to ancient egypt. And also like mentioned in the article, much of what we think about when we hear those words/terms is based on a subset of these groups/populations as well.

Turing_Machine 10y ago
Heck, most of what people know about any other group (romanticized or not) isn't true. For instance, visitors to the United States often worry that they're going to see running gun battles on the street on a daily basis.
- Swizec 10y ago
  I mean, within a month of my moving to San Francisco somebody got shot and killed on my street corner. And within the first two months I saw police barricade an intersection walking around with shotguns and automatic rifles due to a bank robbery of some sort. We were told to just walk around and in general nobody seemed to find this event to be anything special. I've since stopped paying attention to these things. Better that way. Feels more peaceful. Then again, just last week a guy got shot by police in broad daylight 3 blocks from me because he was actively in the process of stabbing someone. No running gun battles yet that I know of. It's been 2 years or so.
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    Here is the thing: your neighborhood is only a very, very, very small portion of the United States. in 2014, 2% of the counties in the United States accounted for about 51% of the murders, and 54% of the counties had zero murders.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > in 2014, 2% of the counties in the United States accounted for about 51% of the murders, But what percent of the population did those counties represent? "Counties" are fairly arbitrary divisions, after all. New York County, NY (better known as the burrough of Manhattan) has a population of around 1.6 million. Kalawao County, HI has a population of 89. It doesn't really make sense to compare homicide counts by county.
      - Turing_Machine 10y ago
        "It doesn't really make sense to compare homicide counts by county." It does if you're a tourist needlessly worrying about getting gunned down while you're visiting the Grand Canyon, or a student needlessly worried that you're going to encounter open gang warfare in a small midwestern college town. As it happens, the worst 1% of counties have about 19% of the population but about 37% of the murders, so it's not just that these counties are more heavily populated. They really are more dangerous. Even within those counties, murders are heavily concentrated by neighborhood. Edit: here's a map that lets you zoom down to the individual census block level, and which shows the rate (thus controlling for population). Note how much of the country is in the 0-50 category. http://nation.maps.arcgis.com/apps/OnePane/splash/index.html?appid=8125e8f4244a47d986f4cd840824eef3 http://nation.maps.arcgis.com/apps/OnePane/splash/index.html...
        whiddershins 10y ago
        wait is that map weighted per capita?
        ghaff 10y ago
        It appears not. Nor does it account for the severity of the crime among the included indexes. ADDED: I misread. Does seem to be a rate. Not totally clear to me how per capita adds. On the one hand it captures the family member or neighbor known person assault. On the other hand, it's not terribly comforting to know that there are lots of murders somewhere but there are lots of people so you'll probably be OK.
  - wtvanhest 10y ago
    You likely live in the Mission, one of the worst neighborhoods for gun violence in the United States.
- beaconstudios 10y ago
  when we visited DC from the UK, we heard gunshots at night a couple of times. When we visited Florida, when we got to the Hard Rock Casino an area was cordoned off because someone had hijacked a golf cart and driven around and had a gun battle with the police. I hear Florida is a special case though.
  - anentropic 10y ago
    > someone had hijacked a golf cart and driven around and had a gun battle with the police OMG everything I imagined is true!
    - logfromblammo 10y ago
      Anywhere: someone steals a vehicle. America: the thief leads a chase and conducts a gun battle with police. Florida: the vehicle is a golf cart. I occasionally read the news and catch up on the exploits of legendary anti-hero Florida Man, and somewhat more rarely his intermittent girlfriend and permanent babymama, Florida Woman. Their stories can often be ended by the punchline, "The Aristocrats!" So yes, Florida does appear to be a special case, but the state does make a special policing effort to keep Florida Man away from the tourists. So as long as you stick to the mainstream areas, you are unlikely to encounter him during your trip. But stray too far from the beaches, parks, and tourist traps, and you might just catch a glimpse of him or his exploits. And sometimes, you can still see him whitelining past your rental car on a motorcycle at 90 mi/hour (145 km/hour) in a 50 mi/hour (80 km/hour) zone. And if you ever see a naked man throw a Burmese python at a police car, that's definitely him.
  - ensignavenger 10y ago
    Being from the UK, do you really have confidence that you can tell the difference between a gun and a backfiring engine? I own and target shoot guns, and I still would not be 100% confident that I could tell the difference if I heard a loud bang. Might be true for DC- probably as much or more a special case than Florida, though :)
    - 10y ago
fiatjaf 10y ago
I thought I knew nothing about ninjas, since I had never actually studied ninjas, only got information from movies and manga, then I heard a historian supposedly specialized in ninjas give a talk titled "Everything you know about ninjas is wrong" or somewhat like that. 90% of what he has said met what I already knew and believed (even though I wasn't very sure of what I knew).
lucideer 10y ago
This is technically true, but given the particular topic, it's unreasonably dismissive. As Turing_Machine points out this can also be true of modern cultures. Unremarkably. As fiatjaf points out, this can (sometimes) be untrue of ninjas. The interesting distinction here is the almost self-fictionalisation of pirates. Many pirates would go from port to port spreading rumours and horror-stories about themselves simply to make raiding an easier (and less violent) process; fearful captains being all the more compliant.
LaMarseillaise 10y ago
> Roman soldiers to ancient egypt Do you have some examples for these two, or maybe a link? I am interested in these subjects in particular.
- nickik 10y ago
  For roman soilders there is the main problem that the Roman empire existed for so long that almost nothing is true for all of them. The uniforms they are always wearing in movies are probebly only really standardised like that for a small part of the empire, and even the not completly. "The Complete Roman Army" is the best book on the subject.

by CM30 10y ago

Turing_Machine 10y ago

Heck, most of what people know about any other group (romanticized or not) isn't true. For instance, visitors to the United States often worry that they're going to see running gun battles on the street on a daily basis.

Swizec 10y ago
I mean, within a month of my moving to San Francisco somebody got shot and killed on my street corner. And within the first two months I saw police barricade an intersection walking around with shotguns and automatic rifles due to a bank robbery of some sort. We were told to just walk around and in general nobody seemed to find this event to be anything special. I've since stopped paying attention to these things. Better that way. Feels more peaceful. Then again, just last week a guy got shot by police in broad daylight 3 blocks from me because he was actively in the process of stabbing someone. No running gun battles yet that I know of. It's been 2 years or so.
- Turing_Machine 10y ago
  Here is the thing: your neighborhood is only a very, very, very small portion of the United States. in 2014, 2% of the counties in the United States accounted for about 51% of the murders, and 54% of the counties had zero murders.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > in 2014, 2% of the counties in the United States accounted for about 51% of the murders, But what percent of the population did those counties represent? "Counties" are fairly arbitrary divisions, after all. New York County, NY (better known as the burrough of Manhattan) has a population of around 1.6 million. Kalawao County, HI has a population of 89. It doesn't really make sense to compare homicide counts by county.
    - Turing_Machine 10y ago
      "It doesn't really make sense to compare homicide counts by county." It does if you're a tourist needlessly worrying about getting gunned down while you're visiting the Grand Canyon, or a student needlessly worried that you're going to encounter open gang warfare in a small midwestern college town. As it happens, the worst 1% of counties have about 19% of the population but about 37% of the murders, so it's not just that these counties are more heavily populated. They really are more dangerous. Even within those counties, murders are heavily concentrated by neighborhood. Edit: here's a map that lets you zoom down to the individual census block level, and which shows the rate (thus controlling for population). Note how much of the country is in the 0-50 category. http://nation.maps.arcgis.com/apps/OnePane/splash/index.html?appid=8125e8f4244a47d986f4cd840824eef3 http://nation.maps.arcgis.com/apps/OnePane/splash/index.html...
      - whiddershins 10y ago
        wait is that map weighted per capita?
        ghaff 10y ago
        It appears not. Nor does it account for the severity of the crime among the included indexes. ADDED: I misread. Does seem to be a rate. Not totally clear to me how per capita adds. On the one hand it captures the family member or neighbor known person assault. On the other hand, it's not terribly comforting to know that there are lots of murders somewhere but there are lots of people so you'll probably be OK.
- wtvanhest 10y ago
  You likely live in the Mission, one of the worst neighborhoods for gun violence in the United States.
beaconstudios 10y ago
when we visited DC from the UK, we heard gunshots at night a couple of times. When we visited Florida, when we got to the Hard Rock Casino an area was cordoned off because someone had hijacked a golf cart and driven around and had a gun battle with the police. I hear Florida is a special case though.
- anentropic 10y ago
  > someone had hijacked a golf cart and driven around and had a gun battle with the police OMG everything I imagined is true!
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    Anywhere: someone steals a vehicle. America: the thief leads a chase and conducts a gun battle with police. Florida: the vehicle is a golf cart. I occasionally read the news and catch up on the exploits of legendary anti-hero Florida Man, and somewhat more rarely his intermittent girlfriend and permanent babymama, Florida Woman. Their stories can often be ended by the punchline, "The Aristocrats!" So yes, Florida does appear to be a special case, but the state does make a special policing effort to keep Florida Man away from the tourists. So as long as you stick to the mainstream areas, you are unlikely to encounter him during your trip. But stray too far from the beaches, parks, and tourist traps, and you might just catch a glimpse of him or his exploits. And sometimes, you can still see him whitelining past your rental car on a motorcycle at 90 mi/hour (145 km/hour) in a 50 mi/hour (80 km/hour) zone. And if you ever see a naked man throw a Burmese python at a police car, that's definitely him.
- ensignavenger 10y ago
  Being from the UK, do you really have confidence that you can tell the difference between a gun and a backfiring engine? I own and target shoot guns, and I still would not be 100% confident that I could tell the difference if I heard a loud bang. Might be true for DC- probably as much or more a special case than Florida, though :)
  - 10y ago

fiatjaf 10y ago

I thought I knew nothing about ninjas, since I had never actually studied ninjas, only got information from movies and manga, then I heard a historian supposedly specialized in ninjas give a talk titled "Everything you know about ninjas is wrong" or somewhat like that. 90% of what he has said met what I already knew and believed (even though I wasn't very sure of what I knew).

lucideer 10y ago

This is technically true, but given the particular topic, it's unreasonably dismissive. As Turing_Machine points out this can also be true of modern cultures. Unremarkably. As fiatjaf points out, this can (sometimes) be untrue of ninjas. The interesting distinction here is the almost self-fictionalisation of pirates. Many pirates would go from port to port spreading rumours and horror-stories about themselves simply to make raiding an easier (and less violent) process; fearful captains being all the more compliant.

LaMarseillaise 10y ago

> Roman soldiers to ancient egypt Do you have some examples for these two, or maybe a link? I am interested in these subjects in particular.

nickik 10y ago
For roman soilders there is the main problem that the Roman empire existed for so long that almost nothing is true for all of them. The uniforms they are always wearing in movies are probebly only really standardised like that for a small part of the empire, and even the not completly. "The Complete Roman Army" is the best book on the subject.