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We're approaching a strange post-empirical world where the right chart or graph can be used to justify any public policy, and often changing how the data for th

We're approaching a strange post-empirical world where the right chart or graph can be used to justify any public policy, and often changing how the data for the chart is collected, analyzed and presented is easier than solving the issue. The collective anecdotes of thousands/millions of people can be dismissed because the chart says otherwise. Disagree that crime in your neighborhood has dropped? Just because your car has been broken into and your neighbor got robbed doesnt mean there's a trend. Anecdotes arent data. Do you have a source for that?

seph-reed 5y ago
This is a toughy. People who don't believe in covid vaccines -- for instance -- are living in a world of anecdotes, untrusting of easily manipulable data. But it's where we're at. In a world where you can't trust the data and your friends are addicted to consuming propaganda, what the fuck is truth?
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
In your opinion, did the multi-decade drop in American crime, regularly discussed by academics who have some tentative theories to explain it, happen or was it all faked? https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/americas-faulty-perception-crime-rates https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/amer...
- j_walter 5y ago
  That was real and everyone can agree on that based on what they see as well as the data. However you can't go to a single SF neighborhood and find people that think crime has dropped recently. There are boatloads of articles about people having their cars broken into so often they leave them unlocked because replacing windows was so expensive. Videos of people shoplifting while security stands by and does nothing because of the laws. Articles about criminals that kill someone but had been in and out of the system for years with fairly severe crimes but always let off by a rouge DA or out on bail (or without bail because bail is racist). https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/sf-da-announces-homicide-charges-against-parolee-in-fatal-nye-hit-and-run/2436773/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/sf-da-announces-homici...
  - CardenB 5y ago
    ??? A couple of months ago I literally saw a man get tackled for stealing ties from a high end store in SF nearby union square.
    - fnord77 5y ago
      every time I go to target in the metreon, I see someone shoplifting a substantial amount of merch. every. single. time. usually what I see is someone with a roller luggage fill it up and then calmly walk out the door
  - bsanr2 5y ago
    No one considers that perhaps ever-increasing inequality in the Bay Area has also increased both the incentive to commit crime and the disincentive to prosecute it. It would stand to reason that the people who are desperate would be more desperate than ever, while the people who are well-off would be more able to eat the costs than ever. No one is happy but the dynamic is grotesquely sustainable.
    - Lucasoato 5y ago
      Why unvoting? Of course it would be too easy for themselves justifying their actions blaming inequality, but if in some place life isn't sustainable for others but the super-rich... That's of course going to push people to commit more crimes.
    - FDSGSG 5y ago
      > the people who are desperate would be more desperate than ever This does not follow from increasing inequality. The poor do not get poorer, rich just get richer (faster).
      - alsetmusic 5y ago
        > This does not follow from increasing inequality. The poor do not get poorer, rich just get richer (faster). The poor stay poor. The lower-middle class becomes poor.
- sabarn01 5y ago
  murders are hard to fake. The rest of crime data is more subjective than people realize. I was robbed at gunpoint for 1$. I did not report the crime.
  - sizzle 5y ago
    That’s really scary, over a damn dollar?!? What was the context here if you don’t mind sharing, why one dollar and not your whole wallet? Why pull a gun?? Isn’t that a felony? Won’t police respond immediately to the report of someone threatening your life via brandishing a gun in public (more people in danger if not caught)?
    - rahimnathwani 5y ago
      Usually robbers pull the gun before determining how much money the victim has in their wallet. They could ask the potential victim first, and then, if the value is too low, not bother pulling a gun. But all potential victims have an incentive to lie and say they only have $1. Knowing that, a rational robber would pull a gun without requesting the info first. Regarding police responding immediately: you can't call the police until after robber has lowered their gun and/or left the scene. So by the time you call the police, you're no longer being threatened.
      - jmckib 5y ago
        I was agreeing with your comment until I looked at the OP's reply, apparently the robber literally requested a single dollar. Super weird.
      - sizzle 5y ago
        Still good to report it so they can look at cctv footage and figure out what criminal looks like pulling guns on people
    - sabarn01 5y ago
      They walked up and indicated they had a gun in their pocket. They had a buddy that was across the street. They asked for 1$ which is what I gave them. Other people I knew in the area were also robbed at gunpoint for 1$, but on their porch. They did call the cops. As for why I don't know.
- scythe 5y ago
  > In your opinion [...] was it all faked? Please don't flamebait. The poster is talking about year-on-year changes in a neighborhood, not decade-on-decade changes in a whole country. The relevance of personal experience is drastically higher in the first case. But I think it's worth noting that "crime is rising" and "crime is not rising" tend to be aliases for the real opinions: "crime is too high" and "crime is not too high".
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  It's all real. Violent crimes had a multi-decade drop. SF is a very localized anomaly in regards to property crimes.
  - adventured 5y ago
    Definitely not localized. Los Angeles and New York to name two other prominent cities, are drowning in an epic ongoing crime wave. SF, LA, NYC all have the same malfunction in terms of city governance. LA - LA Mag, July 2021: "‘It’s a Puzzle’: Experts Are Trying to Figure Out What’s Causing L.A.’s Crime Wave" A puzzle. Experts. Ha ha ha ha. Ha. Bullshit. https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/crime-in-los-angeles/ https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/crime-in-los-angeles/ NYC - "NYPD Announces Citywide Crime Statistics for May 2021" "For the month of May 2021, overall index crime in New York City rose 22% compared with May 2020, driven by a 46.7% increase in robbery (1,182 v. 806) and a 35.6% increase in grand larceny (2,848 v. 2,101). Felony assault saw a 20.5% increase compared to May 2020 (1,979 v. 1,643), and shooting incidents increased to 173 v. 100 in May 2020 (+73%)." https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/pr0603/nypd-citywide-crime-statistics-may-2021 https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/pr0603/nypd-citywide-cri... Some of that is Covid reductions in 2020 (year over year comps), and some of it is still up considerably over 2019 figures. Murders in May were up 100% vs 2019 for example, burglaries were up around 17%. Felony assaults were up slightly vs 2019. Grand larceny was up about 25% vs 2019.
    - RobAtticus 5y ago
      Is there a reason May 2021 should be particularly instructive vs year-to-date (YTD) for NYC? [1] has murders down 1.3% (299 vs 303) and burglaries down 24% YTD. Felony assault is up 5%, but overall crime is down 0.9%. It's definitely a stretch to say NYC is "drowning in an epic ongoing crime wave", given those numbers. [1] https://compstat.nypdonline.org/2e5c3f4b-85c1-4635-83c6-22b27fe7c75c/view/89 https://compstat.nypdonline.org/2e5c3f4b-85c1-4635-83c6-22b2...
skybrian 5y ago
That’s how it works online. You may be trusted by people you know in person, but here you’re just another random stranger, and we don’t know where you live anyway. Don’t take it personally. Creating trusted data is a social process that many forums aren’t designed to facilitate.
- cirgue 5y ago
  From 1993: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you're_a_dog https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_know...
Aerroon 5y ago
Humans like having justifications for their actions. We prefer the tool that can do 5 things to the tool that can only do 2. We like charts and graphs because we can use them to justify our policy positions. The trouble, as always, is that when you rely too much on metrics then the metrics become the target instead of the real thing (Goodheart's law). It makes you wonder how many (economics and sociology )studies exist to provide support for policy rather than further science.
tornato7 5y ago
It's almost like training an ML algorithm for the first time, it'll almost always find a bug in your fitness measurement instead of actually solving the problem.

seph-reed 5y ago

This is a toughy. People who don't believe in covid vaccines -- for instance -- are living in a world of anecdotes, untrusting of easily manipulable data. But it's where we're at. In a world where you can't trust the data and your friends are addicted to consuming propaganda, what the fuck is truth?

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

In your opinion, did the multi-decade drop in American crime, regularly discussed by academics who have some tentative theories to explain it, happen or was it all faked? https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/americas-faulty-perception-crime-rates https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/amer...

j_walter 5y ago
That was real and everyone can agree on that based on what they see as well as the data. However you can't go to a single SF neighborhood and find people that think crime has dropped recently. There are boatloads of articles about people having their cars broken into so often they leave them unlocked because replacing windows was so expensive. Videos of people shoplifting while security stands by and does nothing because of the laws. Articles about criminals that kill someone but had been in and out of the system for years with fairly severe crimes but always let off by a rouge DA or out on bail (or without bail because bail is racist). https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/sf-da-announces-homicide-charges-against-parolee-in-fatal-nye-hit-and-run/2436773/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/sf-da-announces-homici...
- CardenB 5y ago
  ??? A couple of months ago I literally saw a man get tackled for stealing ties from a high end store in SF nearby union square.
  - fnord77 5y ago
    every time I go to target in the metreon, I see someone shoplifting a substantial amount of merch. every. single. time. usually what I see is someone with a roller luggage fill it up and then calmly walk out the door
- bsanr2 5y ago
  No one considers that perhaps ever-increasing inequality in the Bay Area has also increased both the incentive to commit crime and the disincentive to prosecute it. It would stand to reason that the people who are desperate would be more desperate than ever, while the people who are well-off would be more able to eat the costs than ever. No one is happy but the dynamic is grotesquely sustainable.
  - Lucasoato 5y ago
    Why unvoting? Of course it would be too easy for themselves justifying their actions blaming inequality, but if in some place life isn't sustainable for others but the super-rich... That's of course going to push people to commit more crimes.
  - FDSGSG 5y ago
    > the people who are desperate would be more desperate than ever This does not follow from increasing inequality. The poor do not get poorer, rich just get richer (faster).
    - alsetmusic 5y ago
      > This does not follow from increasing inequality. The poor do not get poorer, rich just get richer (faster). The poor stay poor. The lower-middle class becomes poor.
sabarn01 5y ago
murders are hard to fake. The rest of crime data is more subjective than people realize. I was robbed at gunpoint for 1$. I did not report the crime.
- sizzle 5y ago
  That’s really scary, over a damn dollar?!? What was the context here if you don’t mind sharing, why one dollar and not your whole wallet? Why pull a gun?? Isn’t that a felony? Won’t police respond immediately to the report of someone threatening your life via brandishing a gun in public (more people in danger if not caught)?
  - rahimnathwani 5y ago
    Usually robbers pull the gun before determining how much money the victim has in their wallet. They could ask the potential victim first, and then, if the value is too low, not bother pulling a gun. But all potential victims have an incentive to lie and say they only have $1. Knowing that, a rational robber would pull a gun without requesting the info first. Regarding police responding immediately: you can't call the police until after robber has lowered their gun and/or left the scene. So by the time you call the police, you're no longer being threatened.
    - jmckib 5y ago
      I was agreeing with your comment until I looked at the OP's reply, apparently the robber literally requested a single dollar. Super weird.
    - sizzle 5y ago
      Still good to report it so they can look at cctv footage and figure out what criminal looks like pulling guns on people
  - sabarn01 5y ago
    They walked up and indicated they had a gun in their pocket. They had a buddy that was across the street. They asked for 1$ which is what I gave them. Other people I knew in the area were also robbed at gunpoint for 1$, but on their porch. They did call the cops. As for why I don't know.
scythe 5y ago
> In your opinion [...] was it all faked? Please don't flamebait. The poster is talking about year-on-year changes in a neighborhood, not decade-on-decade changes in a whole country. The relevance of personal experience is drastically higher in the first case. But I think it's worth noting that "crime is rising" and "crime is not rising" tend to be aliases for the real opinions: "crime is too high" and "crime is not too high".
908B64B197 5y ago
It's all real. Violent crimes had a multi-decade drop. SF is a very localized anomaly in regards to property crimes.
- adventured 5y ago
  Definitely not localized. Los Angeles and New York to name two other prominent cities, are drowning in an epic ongoing crime wave. SF, LA, NYC all have the same malfunction in terms of city governance. LA - LA Mag, July 2021: "‘It’s a Puzzle’: Experts Are Trying to Figure Out What’s Causing L.A.’s Crime Wave" A puzzle. Experts. Ha ha ha ha. Ha. Bullshit. https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/crime-in-los-angeles/ https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/crime-in-los-angeles/ NYC - "NYPD Announces Citywide Crime Statistics for May 2021" "For the month of May 2021, overall index crime in New York City rose 22% compared with May 2020, driven by a 46.7% increase in robbery (1,182 v. 806) and a 35.6% increase in grand larceny (2,848 v. 2,101). Felony assault saw a 20.5% increase compared to May 2020 (1,979 v. 1,643), and shooting incidents increased to 173 v. 100 in May 2020 (+73%)." https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/pr0603/nypd-citywide-crime-statistics-may-2021 https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/pr0603/nypd-citywide-cri... Some of that is Covid reductions in 2020 (year over year comps), and some of it is still up considerably over 2019 figures. Murders in May were up 100% vs 2019 for example, burglaries were up around 17%. Felony assaults were up slightly vs 2019. Grand larceny was up about 25% vs 2019.
  - RobAtticus 5y ago
    Is there a reason May 2021 should be particularly instructive vs year-to-date (YTD) for NYC? [1] has murders down 1.3% (299 vs 303) and burglaries down 24% YTD. Felony assault is up 5%, but overall crime is down 0.9%. It's definitely a stretch to say NYC is "drowning in an epic ongoing crime wave", given those numbers. [1] https://compstat.nypdonline.org/2e5c3f4b-85c1-4635-83c6-22b27fe7c75c/view/89 https://compstat.nypdonline.org/2e5c3f4b-85c1-4635-83c6-22b2...

skybrian 5y ago

That’s how it works online. You may be trusted by people you know in person, but here you’re just another random stranger, and we don’t know where you live anyway. Don’t take it personally. Creating trusted data is a social process that many forums aren’t designed to facilitate.

cirgue 5y ago
From 1993: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you're_a_dog https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_know...

Aerroon 5y ago

Humans like having justifications for their actions. We prefer the tool that can do 5 things to the tool that can only do 2. We like charts and graphs because we can use them to justify our policy positions. The trouble, as always, is that when you rely too much on metrics then the metrics become the target instead of the real thing (Goodheart's law). It makes you wonder how many (economics and sociology )studies exist to provide support for policy rather than further science.

tornato7 5y ago

It's almost like training an ML algorithm for the first time, it'll almost always find a bug in your fitness measurement instead of actually solving the problem.