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I was wondering how one could be so bad at estimating weight. But yes, it’s a lot.
by dirtnugget 6y ago
I was wondering how one could be so bad at estimating weight.
But yes, it’s a lot.
- chrisseaton 6y agoHow do you estimate the weight of a person? I know how much I weigh, but I don't know how much anyone else weighs. I guess some other people don't even weigh themselves so don't even know how much they weigh. How do you estimate it?
- hutzlibu 6y agoHeight + bellysize + muscle size?
- chrisseaton 6y agoRight... how do I get a number from looking at those?
- rdmirza 6y agoCompare those values to your own weight, and pay attention when you hear someone’s weight to see if it matches your heuristic.
- chrisseaton 6y ago> pay attention when you hear someone’s weight to see if it matches your heuristic I don't think I've ever heard an adult male ever mention their own weight in public. You can see why it'd be hard to estimate when you don't have any data.
- quickthrowman 6y agoYou’ll have to get a job at a county fair running the weight guessing attraction to get enough data. There’s no other way to do it, it’s how we all figured out how to estimate the weight of a human. I’ll call my friend Chucky, he’ll get you a gig in a traveling carnival for the summer.
- fuzxi 6y agoOr simply any job that requires checking IDs. Bouncer, bartender, cashier in a store that sells alcohol/cigarettes, etc.
- garaetjjte 6y agoHuh, I have never seen weight specified on any ID.
- fuzxi 6y agoEvery US ID and driver's license I've ever seen (and I've seen many) list height and weight.
- tyingq 6y agoWatch a fair amount of boxing and practice that way.
- JshWright 6y ago> How do you estimate the weight of a person? Practice. In theory if you're doing this a lot, you should be able do a decent job of estimating +/- 10%, which is more than accurate enough. There are certainly other complications (some medications are dosed on "ideal body weight" (ignoring subcutaneous fat), etc...)
- mauvehaus 6y agoI'll second this. Climbers tend to get at least half-way decent estimating the weight of other climbers because it's pretty relevant if you're lead belaying somebody. In fairness, we're usually estimating the weight of people of fairly fit builds, but with some practice estimating people of other builds, I agree that you'd get within 10%.
- dirtnugget 6y agoOne more reason to leave drugs to qualified personell.
- wonderwonder 6y agoA very large part of police work is providing and reacting to descriptions of suspects. If there is no training on this provided then this seems to be a very large oversight. Based on the fact that police constantly arrest and harrass people who 'matched the description' perhaps there is no training, or perhaps the officers simply don't care and are just looking for a person that fits their bias.
- wonderwonder 6y agoI would be really surprised if they estimated this poorly and would guess they were just irritated by him and decided to up the dose as punishment. If I am wrong then they receive zero training when estimating weight and multiple officers are terrible at it. To mistakenly confuse a 140lb for 220lb is poor judgement to the point that it strains credulity.
- skinkestek 6y agoFWIW: My wife work in health care and just a couple of months or so told me how difficult it can be to estimate the weight of a person. She had recently seen some pictures with examples of persons and their actual weights and it had surprised even her.
- pessimizer 6y agoIt doesn't strain credulity for me. Most descriptions of the black victims of police brutality by law enforcement inflate them to a monstrous size, and use animal metaphors to describe their terrifying faces. Never underestimate the degree to which racism is driven by actual, irrational terror.
- ashtonkem 6y agoThere are actually documented cases of police officers in the early 20th century requesting heavier calibers and hotter loads from gun manufacturers because they believed their firearms were incapable of stopping an enraged <slur deleted>. Biologically, this is utter nonsense. But the belief that black people are tougher, stronger, and more capable of withstanding pain and drugs is a surprisingly common belief. Doctors are notorious for downgrading black pain in clinical situations as compared to white patients, and administer less pain killers.
- bsanr2 6y agoThe uncomfortable truth is that authorities regularly misidentify black men as being bigger/taller/older/darker than they actually are. Whether that's an issue specific to police indoctrination or to American culture in general, it's clearly part of what happened here. Apologies to the HN users who will be incensed at the notion of race playing a role in this situation.
- jhardy54 6y ago> Apologies to the HN users who will be incensed at the notion of race playing a role in this situation. No apologies necessary, receiving a dose of reality is good for them.
- dirtnugget 6y agoSo true.
- dirtnugget 6y agoEven today a common misconception among white doctors is that black people have thicker skin than white people or even that their nerv endings are less sensitive. https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/how-we-fail-black-patients-pain https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/how-we-fail-black-patient...
- ashtonkem 6y agoAs I’ve mentioned elsewhere, cops in the early 20th century requested larger calibers and hotter loads from gun manufacturers because they believed black people survived gun shots better than white people.
- fortran77 6y agoPolice in the U.S. are usually extremely overweight. They might not know that a healthy 5'10 adult should weigh 150 pounds.
- dirtnugget 6y agoThat seems like an overly generalised thing to say.
- fortran77 6y agoThere are FBI reports that say the same thing, referenced here: https://inpublicsafety.com/2015/01/tackling-the-obesity-epidemic-in-law-enforcement/ https://inpublicsafety.com/2015/01/tackling-the-obesity-epid... and here: "FBI: 80 Percent Of Police Officers Are Overweight" https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2014/08/14/fbi-80-percent-of-police-officers-are-overweight/ https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2014/08/14/fbi-80-percent-of-police... Why on earth would you come to challenge something without first checking if its true?