5 ms·

This is murder, not people falling off the cliff because of some accidents. There is probably nothing logically wrong with that question, and you are probably

This is murder, not people falling off the cliff because of some accidents. There is probably nothing logically wrong with that question, and you are probably right that there is a correlation. But... seriously?

TeMPOraL 5y ago
Yes, seriously. Number one failure in sensationalized reporting is base rate fallacy: they point out a high absolute number, implying something strange is going on, whereas usually the denominator - which they neglect to mention - has rose proportionally, meaning there's nothing newsworthy there. I don't mean this is the case here (I'm yet to read the article itself) - but this failure mode in reporting is so common that it's a good habit to immediately look for / question lack of base rate data.
- kingkawn 5y ago
  Other than the increase in Murder of activists
- krageon 5y ago
  I get that at some point murder becomes statistics, but I still feel the need to re-emphasize that this is murder. Not more folks getting the flu because there are more folks.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Fair enough, and I agree. People are being murdered, and that's the more important topic.
  - jamesrcole 5y ago
    i disagree with the implication that murder somehow shouldn't be looked at in statistical terms. I am not saying it should only be looked at in statistical terms, but it is one important way of looking at it.
  - Sebb767 5y ago
    The larger point is that some (very small) percentage of people will be murdered every year. If the number of climate activists increases, the chance of one of them being murdered increases with it - possibly just by being involved in a random shooting or family drama, completely unrelated to their activism. I agree that murder is horrible, but the article seems to try to sell that these murders are related to their activism, which is not something you can say just based on the absolute number. You need to have the ratio to compare to the last year and to the base rate in the general population to make a better statement. Without it, we can't be sure of the real cause and might try to fix this at the wrong place, leading to us to not prevent murders effectively - so yes, you need to get your statistics right, even when talking about horrible incidents.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  >whereas usually the denominator - which they neglect to mention - has rose proportionally, meaning there's nothing newsworthy there. there is not necessarily a reason to assume that the percentage of murder of activists is going to stay the same if you increase the number of activists, although it may be the case.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    The point of having the denominator is so that you don't need to assume anything, you can just know which way the rate is going. Perhaps you're right that in this case, the rate isn't going to stay constant. But in general, with news reporting, I found it safe to assume that if the rate was rising, they would've reported on the denominator too - the reason to omit it is usually because it would kill the story. EDIT: To expand on this further - and again, I'm defending the original question as a perfectly legit one, not trying to diminish the fact that we're talking about murders here - you always want to see the whole fraction spelled out, numerator and denominator, because the other common trick to deceive with numbers is by providing only the ratio itself. E.g. "over past year, incidents of $crime rose by 80%", or "$substance increases your cancer risk by 300%", where the unmentioned denominator is "3" and "0.00001", respectively. The way I see it: even if we're talking about clear tragedies or acts of evil, it's always better to have an accurate picture of what is being talked about.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > there is not necessarily a reason to assume that the percentage of murder of activists is going to stay the same if you increase the number of activists If activists are being murdered for activism, the rate among activists will go up. If a greater share of the population is becoming activist, and are being randomly murdered for non-activist reasons, that’s a different story.
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      if the number of police rise does the ratio of police being killed on the job stay the same? what if 5% of the workers at big corporations are willing to kill activists for activism, those 5% are busy killing activists, if the activists increase unless the corporations increase the number of people they have willing to kill activists it follows that there are not going to be a significant increase in the number of murdered activists. In short there can be all sorts of reasons why the percentage of activists killed for activism would not remain constant.
- playpause 5y ago
  These are murders of people. The pertinent comparison (for those interested in the whole "murders" thing) is with how many murders there were in previous years, whether it's gone up, etc, information which is covered in the article. To say there's nothing newsworthy about these murders, just because you were personally interested in a number you couldn't find in the article, is crass.
  - cornel_io 5y ago
    No. These are murders of "people who do XYZ". If we looked at murders of people who play Fortnite from 5 years ago until now, we'd see a clear trend, for no reason other than the fact that the number of people who play Fortnite has ebbed and flowed. I don't know anything about this particular situation, but your callous dismissal of this indisputably correct warning is wrong.
    - playpause 5y ago
      You are right, I missed that point.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    I didn't say there's nothing newsworthy about these murders. I said, in my paragraph, that sensationalized articles in general (and note that I didn't say this one definitely is in this category) often don't report the base rate, because it would reveal they're reporting a non-story. And I said that to counter cenophor's objection to ArchieMaclean's question, by pointing out it's pretty much the first question one should be asking when discussing an article/report that doesn't provide that number. > The pertinent comparison (for those interested in the whole "murders" thing) is with how many murders there were in previous years, whether it's gone up, etc, information which is covered in the article. It wasn't, at least not directly. The numbers I saw are: - 227 activists killed in 2020, the titular record number - 4 activits / week on average being killed since the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015[0] You can tease out some insight from deconstructing the average (e.g. the 2020 number is above the average), but not much really. Not enough to tell you whether something has changed about this situation. Also, please don't assume people asking for more clarity and better data are ignoring the human life context of the story. -- There seems to be an error in the reported context of that figure - Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, but signed in April 2016 and became effective from November 2016 - per - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement.
- Paradigma11 5y ago
  This assumes that there is an infinite capability and willingness to kill activists. If you have 100 ppl demonstrating against a hydro dam and 1 gets murdered later that night it does not follow that there likely would have been 2 killed if 200 ppl demonstrated.
ArchieMaclean 5y ago
Of course we should be doing all we can to prevent murder! It is just always hard to tell with statistics and having a more honest statistic (that, say, shows that murder rates have doubled while number of activists have increased 30%) would be preferable.
- yunohn 5y ago
  I’m not sure what kind of number you’re looking for. There’s no global registry tracking the population of environmental activists - just that when people are murdered by anti-green corporations, we can figure out that the person’s activism is what caused it.
  - ArchieMaclean 5y ago
    While you won't be able to get a hard number of people, you could get a general number/trend (e.g. by counting the increase of people to rallies)
    - yunohn 5y ago
      I’m pretty sure activists are not just “people who show up to rallies”. Especially not the kind that a megacorp is trying to murder.
      - jamesrcole 5y ago
        the idea that there's no possible way to reasonably estimate the number of environmental activists seems very unlikely to me.
        yunohn 5y ago
        Do you happen to have some sources for a reasonable estimation on the number of, say… • hackers? • crackers? • political activists?
        5y ago
IMTDb 5y ago
Yes, seriously. The real question is : "Is environmental activism today more dangerous than it was yesterday". The typical way of computing "dangerosity" is through a ratio. Eg: number of death / kilometer for transportation systems, number of injury / game for sports, ... Why should the dangerosity of the "environmental activism" activity be computed differently, by only taking into consideration a numerator, and dismissing the denominator ?
- coldtea 5y ago
  >The real question is : "Is environmental activism today more dangerous than it was yesterday". Why would that be the "real question"? Just because all we have is the hammer of statistical analysis? More people are getting killed, whether they are environmental activists is not that relevant. What's relevant is that there is increased willingness to kill in favor of anti-environmnet interests. >Why should the dangerosity of the "environmental activism" activity be computed differently, by only taking into consideration a numerator, and dismissing the denominator ? It shouldn't be computed at all, the concern here is not to give people some dangerocity score to help them avoid being killed. The concern is to stop the interests that kill -- that is, to stop the murders and the murderers, not to avoid them by having people not be environmental activists or be more careful about it. (Same way we would want to reduce racist crime, not e.g. tell blacks to be more careful. We might also want that, but not as a first priority, as a treatment to the symptoms, not the cause).
- yunohn 5y ago
  Despite this weird sub-thread, the article isn’t talking about “dangerosity”. They’re reporting on the increase in evil activities by anti-environmental mega corps, who are also murdering opposing activists.
  - andriesm 5y ago
    What indication do we have that environmentalally unfriendly companies are murdering activists? I cannot imagine that being their best PR strategy, not to mention the fact that murdering your opposition attracts a lot of scrutiny, investigation, and which corp exec would want to risk going to jail for ordering a hit on an activist. Far more practical to lobby or spread counter marketing spin.
cies 5y ago
> This is murder Worse, it's corporate murder. Not some "crime passionel" or a marginalized mental patient going bezerk. This is big corps silencing dissent, premeditated and usually paid for. It's hard to get justice in these cases, like in this case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaltrainal_v._Coca-Cola_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaltrainal_v._Coca-Cola_Co.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

Yes, seriously. Number one failure in sensationalized reporting is base rate fallacy: they point out a high absolute number, implying something strange is going on, whereas usually the denominator - which they neglect to mention - has rose proportionally, meaning there's nothing newsworthy there. I don't mean this is the case here (I'm yet to read the article itself) - but this failure mode in reporting is so common that it's a good habit to immediately look for / question lack of base rate data.

kingkawn 5y ago
Other than the increase in Murder of activists
krageon 5y ago
I get that at some point murder becomes statistics, but I still feel the need to re-emphasize that this is murder. Not more folks getting the flu because there are more folks.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Fair enough, and I agree. People are being murdered, and that's the more important topic.
- jamesrcole 5y ago
  i disagree with the implication that murder somehow shouldn't be looked at in statistical terms. I am not saying it should only be looked at in statistical terms, but it is one important way of looking at it.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  The larger point is that some (very small) percentage of people will be murdered every year. If the number of climate activists increases, the chance of one of them being murdered increases with it - possibly just by being involved in a random shooting or family drama, completely unrelated to their activism. I agree that murder is horrible, but the article seems to try to sell that these murders are related to their activism, which is not something you can say just based on the absolute number. You need to have the ratio to compare to the last year and to the base rate in the general population to make a better statement. Without it, we can't be sure of the real cause and might try to fix this at the wrong place, leading to us to not prevent murders effectively - so yes, you need to get your statistics right, even when talking about horrible incidents.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
>whereas usually the denominator - which they neglect to mention - has rose proportionally, meaning there's nothing newsworthy there. there is not necessarily a reason to assume that the percentage of murder of activists is going to stay the same if you increase the number of activists, although it may be the case.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  The point of having the denominator is so that you don't need to assume anything, you can just know which way the rate is going. Perhaps you're right that in this case, the rate isn't going to stay constant. But in general, with news reporting, I found it safe to assume that if the rate was rising, they would've reported on the denominator too - the reason to omit it is usually because it would kill the story. EDIT: To expand on this further - and again, I'm defending the original question as a perfectly legit one, not trying to diminish the fact that we're talking about murders here - you always want to see the whole fraction spelled out, numerator and denominator, because the other common trick to deceive with numbers is by providing only the ratio itself. E.g. "over past year, incidents of $crime rose by 80%", or "$substance increases your cancer risk by 300%", where the unmentioned denominator is "3" and "0.00001", respectively. The way I see it: even if we're talking about clear tragedies or acts of evil, it's always better to have an accurate picture of what is being talked about.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > there is not necessarily a reason to assume that the percentage of murder of activists is going to stay the same if you increase the number of activists If activists are being murdered for activism, the rate among activists will go up. If a greater share of the population is becoming activist, and are being randomly murdered for non-activist reasons, that’s a different story.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    if the number of police rise does the ratio of police being killed on the job stay the same? what if 5% of the workers at big corporations are willing to kill activists for activism, those 5% are busy killing activists, if the activists increase unless the corporations increase the number of people they have willing to kill activists it follows that there are not going to be a significant increase in the number of murdered activists. In short there can be all sorts of reasons why the percentage of activists killed for activism would not remain constant.
playpause 5y ago
These are murders of people. The pertinent comparison (for those interested in the whole "murders" thing) is with how many murders there were in previous years, whether it's gone up, etc, information which is covered in the article. To say there's nothing newsworthy about these murders, just because you were personally interested in a number you couldn't find in the article, is crass.
- cornel_io 5y ago
  No. These are murders of "people who do XYZ". If we looked at murders of people who play Fortnite from 5 years ago until now, we'd see a clear trend, for no reason other than the fact that the number of people who play Fortnite has ebbed and flowed. I don't know anything about this particular situation, but your callous dismissal of this indisputably correct warning is wrong.
  - playpause 5y ago
    You are right, I missed that point.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  I didn't say there's nothing newsworthy about these murders. I said, in my paragraph, that sensationalized articles in general (and note that I didn't say this one definitely is in this category) often don't report the base rate, because it would reveal they're reporting a non-story. And I said that to counter cenophor's objection to ArchieMaclean's question, by pointing out it's pretty much the first question one should be asking when discussing an article/report that doesn't provide that number. > The pertinent comparison (for those interested in the whole "murders" thing) is with how many murders there were in previous years, whether it's gone up, etc, information which is covered in the article. It wasn't, at least not directly. The numbers I saw are: - 227 activists killed in 2020, the titular record number - 4 activits / week on average being killed since the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015[0] You can tease out some insight from deconstructing the average (e.g. the 2020 number is above the average), but not much really. Not enough to tell you whether something has changed about this situation. Also, please don't assume people asking for more clarity and better data are ignoring the human life context of the story. -- There seems to be an error in the reported context of that figure - Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, but signed in April 2016 and became effective from November 2016 - per - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement.
Paradigma11 5y ago
This assumes that there is an infinite capability and willingness to kill activists. If you have 100 ppl demonstrating against a hydro dam and 1 gets murdered later that night it does not follow that there likely would have been 2 killed if 200 ppl demonstrated.

ArchieMaclean 5y ago

Of course we should be doing all we can to prevent murder! It is just always hard to tell with statistics and having a more honest statistic (that, say, shows that murder rates have doubled while number of activists have increased 30%) would be preferable.

yunohn 5y ago
I’m not sure what kind of number you’re looking for. There’s no global registry tracking the population of environmental activists - just that when people are murdered by anti-green corporations, we can figure out that the person’s activism is what caused it.
- ArchieMaclean 5y ago
  While you won't be able to get a hard number of people, you could get a general number/trend (e.g. by counting the increase of people to rallies)
  - yunohn 5y ago
    I’m pretty sure activists are not just “people who show up to rallies”. Especially not the kind that a megacorp is trying to murder.
    - jamesrcole 5y ago
      the idea that there's no possible way to reasonably estimate the number of environmental activists seems very unlikely to me.
      - yunohn 5y ago
        Do you happen to have some sources for a reasonable estimation on the number of, say… • hackers? • crackers? • political activists?
        5y ago

IMTDb 5y ago

Yes, seriously. The real question is : "Is environmental activism today more dangerous than it was yesterday". The typical way of computing "dangerosity" is through a ratio. Eg: number of death / kilometer for transportation systems, number of injury / game for sports, ... Why should the dangerosity of the "environmental activism" activity be computed differently, by only taking into consideration a numerator, and dismissing the denominator ?

coldtea 5y ago
>The real question is : "Is environmental activism today more dangerous than it was yesterday". Why would that be the "real question"? Just because all we have is the hammer of statistical analysis? More people are getting killed, whether they are environmental activists is not that relevant. What's relevant is that there is increased willingness to kill in favor of anti-environmnet interests. >Why should the dangerosity of the "environmental activism" activity be computed differently, by only taking into consideration a numerator, and dismissing the denominator ? It shouldn't be computed at all, the concern here is not to give people some dangerocity score to help them avoid being killed. The concern is to stop the interests that kill -- that is, to stop the murders and the murderers, not to avoid them by having people not be environmental activists or be more careful about it. (Same way we would want to reduce racist crime, not e.g. tell blacks to be more careful. We might also want that, but not as a first priority, as a treatment to the symptoms, not the cause).
yunohn 5y ago
Despite this weird sub-thread, the article isn’t talking about “dangerosity”. They’re reporting on the increase in evil activities by anti-environmental mega corps, who are also murdering opposing activists.
- andriesm 5y ago
  What indication do we have that environmentalally unfriendly companies are murdering activists? I cannot imagine that being their best PR strategy, not to mention the fact that murdering your opposition attracts a lot of scrutiny, investigation, and which corp exec would want to risk going to jail for ordering a hit on an activist. Far more practical to lobby or spread counter marketing spin.

cies 5y ago

> This is murder Worse, it's corporate murder. Not some "crime passionel" or a marginalized mental patient going bezerk. This is big corps silencing dissent, premeditated and usually paid for. It's hard to get justice in these cases, like in this case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaltrainal_v._Coca-Cola_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaltrainal_v._Coca-Cola_Co.