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If I say, 'this action is reminiscent of a ruthlessly capitalistic ethos, trying to make a profit wherever one is to be made' that doesn't mean you're endorsing

If I say, 'this action is reminiscent of a ruthlessly capitalistic ethos, trying to make a profit wherever one is to be made' that doesn't mean you're endorsing for instance the holocaust even though seizing the possessions of the victims there probably showed a net profit. There's a reasonable argument to be made for restricting the nations to some minimum population. The typical figure is 250k-300k which is also likely conservatively high. The reason your article wants to restrict the data to populations of 10 million is precisely to cherry pick. For instance this [1] is the murder rate for Jamaica, a country of some 2.8 million, over the past 5 years. The numbers themselves have some variance, but the rate's magnitude is relatively unchanged because of how high that scale is. It ranges from something like 600% to 900% higher than the US over those numbers. It's the same thing domestically within the US. Places like Detroit have obscenely high and consistent murder rates. The population? 672k. Guess we can just discount it as variance? You can find the sort of same head-in-the-sand attitude when discussing matters with people on the opposite end of the spectrum. For instance, Scandinavia has done some great things. But wait... What about the population? Sweden? 9.9 million. Denmark? 5.7 million. Norway? 5.2 million. Finland? 5.5 million. Iceland? 0.3 million. Well I guess we can completely discount Scandinavia for any and all statistics. Since none of the nations reach that magic 10 million mark, they must be completely irrelevant. Right? [1] - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C2_nhWaXUAgKKfq.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C2_nhWaXUAgKKfq.jpg

jakelazaroff 8y ago
> If I say, 'this action is reminiscent of a ruthlessly capitalistic ethos, trying to make a profit wherever one is to be made' that doesn't mean you're endorsing for instance the holocaust even though seizing the possessions of the victims there probably showed a net profit. Right, except my reaction is to the literal description of the attitude in question, not something that happens to incorporate it. The statement was "I admire X, which is a component of Y", and I'm saying "I find X, specifically, objectionable". No one is claiming 10 million is some magic statistical number for sample sizes; that is a straw man.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  Ahh. I would rarely consider, let alone object, to things outside of context. X of course means very different things given varying Ys. The reason I am talking about 10 million is because it's the magical number that the study the NYTimes chose to run an article on, decided to pick. It has nothing to do with reducing variance, though of course that's used as the justification. In reality even in populations of tens of thousands there is surprisingly low variance in homicide rates. I mean if you look at what they're doing it's really scummy. They're juking their numbers to try to create a correlation when one does not exist. That's already really bad. But then they take it a step further by just jumping to correlation = causation. Try to imagine that this was a topic that did not confirm your biases. I think you'd be out of your mind with how really trashy this whole article is. It's like they took a list of things you should not do when reporting on statistics, and decided to do them all.

jakelazaroff 8y ago

> If I say, 'this action is reminiscent of a ruthlessly capitalistic ethos, trying to make a profit wherever one is to be made' that doesn't mean you're endorsing for instance the holocaust even though seizing the possessions of the victims there probably showed a net profit. Right, except my reaction is to the literal description of the attitude in question, not something that happens to incorporate it. The statement was "I admire X, which is a component of Y", and I'm saying "I find X, specifically, objectionable". No one is claiming 10 million is some magic statistical number for sample sizes; that is a straw man.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
Ahh. I would rarely consider, let alone object, to things outside of context. X of course means very different things given varying Ys. The reason I am talking about 10 million is because it's the magical number that the study the NYTimes chose to run an article on, decided to pick. It has nothing to do with reducing variance, though of course that's used as the justification. In reality even in populations of tens of thousands there is surprisingly low variance in homicide rates. I mean if you look at what they're doing it's really scummy. They're juking their numbers to try to create a correlation when one does not exist. That's already really bad. But then they take it a step further by just jumping to correlation = causation. Try to imagine that this was a topic that did not confirm your biases. I think you'd be out of your mind with how really trashy this whole article is. It's like they took a list of things you should not do when reporting on statistics, and decided to do them all.