5 ms·

Is the problem really the predictive optimization algorithms themselves, or rather how we think about these problems / solutions in the first place? I don’t kn

Is the problem really the predictive optimization algorithms themselves, or rather how we think about these problems / solutions in the first place? I don’t know, it may just be that I’m getting old (45), but my impression is that there has been a substantial shift in our culture around these issues over my adult lifetime (at least in Sweden where I live). For example, only 20 years ago it was extremely rare that the Swedish police shot anybody, and e.g. holding a knife and being non compliant with police instructions was not considered enough to warrant getting shot. There has been no change to the relevant law AFAIK, but there has been a cultural change where many people now think the police is responsible if such a person suddenly runs away and attacks someone with that knife. And there’s also a constant stream of cases where the police has shot someone essentially for being non compliant (mentally ill, addicts, distraught people and so on). I think in general 20 years ago in Sweden most people in positions of influence were a lot more principled in thinking about these issues, and the principles were the classic ones ironed out by Voltaire et al. Nowadays, not so much… The thinking seems much more primitive. One of those principles was that it was wrong to punish (or take similar action) against someone for what they could potentially do in the future. Another was that each person is (with very few exceptions) morally responsible for their own actions. Pretty good principles in my view.

dgb23 4y ago
Is it naive to think that police officers can restrain someone holding a knife and being non compliant, potentially dangerous? I’ve seen police in Switzerland do this. Specifically once a large man with a large knife. He made a very weird, unstable, unnerving impression on me. He got surrounded and restrained by about three policemen. They had some kind of gloves on. Happened very quickly. I think they did tge right thing there. They predicted potentially life threatening danger and then handled it in a non-lethal way. If they pulled a gun and shot the guy I would have some questions...
- bjornsing 4y ago
  > Is it naive to think that police officers can restrain someone holding a knife and being non compliant, potentially dangerous? Swedish law is not that the police should attempt this. The basic idea (which today is hard to understand, I know…) is that it’s a rather minor crime to hold a knife in public and it’s not a crime at all to be non compliant with police instructions. So the police does not have legal authority to shoot [1]. They essentially have to wait it out and see what happens. But what has changed over the last 20 years is that the concept of self defense (“nödvärn”) has been expanded enormously when applied specifically to the police, in an extrajudicial way, so that it now more matches your expectation: “if he seems dangerous / could do something bad in the future, shoot!” 1. https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/kungorelse-196984-om-polisens-anvandning-av_sfs-1969-84 https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-lagar/dokument/svensk-f...
  - naasking 4y ago
    > But what has changed over the last 20 years is that the concept of self defense (“nödvärn”) has been expanded enormously when applied specifically to the police, in an extrajudicial way This is a dangerous road that leads to US-style policing.
    - bjornsing 4y ago
      I agree. Sweden has changed a lot since 1984 when the current police law was passed. I really like it, but it was written for a different time. It would be much better to pass a new one with more formal authority for the police to use force (“laga befogenhet”), instead of letting a culture of courts looking the other way / bending the law build up even further.
  - the_af 4y ago
    I think the person you are responding to is not arguing they should shoot, but quite the contrary. I think you're essentially in agreement. My own opinion: I think shooting someone should always be the last resort. Obviously police officers must look for their own well-being and should not expose themselves to obvious risk of death if possible. On the other hand, someone holding a knife or being non-compliant is not something that must be immediately handled by shooting at the person. Maybe waiting it out, maybe talking, maybe swarming him/her with multiple officers, maybe using tranquilizers, who knows. Every option has a risk and nothing is foolproof, but killing someone is the ultimate, irreversible option and should not be the default, even when the person is resisting or noncompliant. I don't understand why in some countries, like the US, police officers are so eager to resort to violence or killing -- though it's certainly the easy way out.
    - bjornsing 4y ago
      Yea, sorry if I wasn’t clear. I was referring to the expectation that the police must somehow apprehend the person (immediately).
    - lo_zamoyski 4y ago
      > I don't understand why in some countries, like the US, police officers are so eager to resort to violence or killing Police training has become heavily influenced by military tactics (take the case of Israeli training of American officers and "police exchanges"). This was not always the case. Now, I do not deny that such tactics can be useful in certain circumstances, but overemphasis on them can be a problem just as much as laxity.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Grappling a knife wielding man is a wildly unreasonable ask of police officers.
  - pwthornton 4y ago
    People get very unrealistic ideas from movies and TV shows. If you go to attack someone who has a knife and you are barehanded, you almost assuredly will lose that altercation.
  - bjornsing 4y ago
    Of course it is. And I explicitly address that in my comment… There is no such ask.
  - uoaei 4y ago
    It is something they signed up for. This is the cost of protecting your community. Not all of us are so brave as to become a police officer. But there comes a time when you need to stand up not just for the people around you, but the values you all organize yourselves into communities for. Protecting a community's way of life is literally the job description of the police. This includes protecting your community from being dominated by a police force empowered to murder with no warning or accountability. The officers are the ones who make the decisions to ensure that their communities remain safe from threats of all kinds. We don't give our armed forces excuses when they violate the Geneva convention and ROE, why would we do it with police?
  - cess11 4y ago
    OK. Would it be unreasonable to ask them to form a barrier between the violent person and other people in the area and defuse the situation with either patience, wit or talk?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
    I agree. We should have a special body of people trained explicitly to deal with violent behaviour and threats to life, such as men wielding knives and similar weapons. They should be given training and equipment to disarm, or otherwise neutralise,such threats, without putting anyone's lives in danger, their own, the general public's, or the people acting in a threatening manner.
- pwthornton 4y ago
  If the police have a taser or other weapon that can immobilize someone, sure, but otherwise, you should not try to attack a person wielding a knife with your bareheaded. Knives are incredibly dangerous. Police also do not wear body armor to protect against knives. Their body armor protects against bullets. In places where guns are very uncommon, they could switch to body armor aimed at protecting against knives, but I am not sure if there are places where that tradeoff is common. I don't think it is reasonable to expect the police to risk their lives to try to subdue someone with a weapon. Taser first and then a gun is preferable to someone using a knife to kill someone.
- chrisweekly 4y ago
  I will never understand why non-lethal force (eg taser) isn't given more consideration. It's a false dichotomy! Using lethal force (guns with bullets), or risking officer harm (wrestling suspects into submission) are not the only options!
  - speed_spread 4y ago
    "Non-lethal" weapons are actually lethal enough (they can kill) that their use is considered similar in outcome to bullets BUT they can also be completely ineffective against intoxicated and or somehow "shielded" targets (clothes, etc.). So it's really a dice shot. Given this, the logic is that if you're gonna need a gun because you fear for your life, better pull a real one. Otherwise, just keep you distance and wait for backup.
    - chrisweekly 4y ago
      > "need a gun because you fear for your life" To me this is an essential part of the problem. "Kill or be killed" is an escalation relative to the vast majority of situations. The percentage of suspects killed by police shootings who actually posed a direct, imminent, lethal threat to the arresting officers is a very small minority. The idea that guns and tasers are considered similarly lethal is ~laughable. Consider "don't tase me, bro" vs gunfire. Your point about potential ineffectiveness in a critical situation is well-taken. But improving the quality / effectiveness of mace and tasers (or equivalent non-lethal tech) would be a budgetary rounding error compared to the cost of the status quo.
      - speed_spread 4y ago
        Let's just make sure that all usage of non-lethal weapons follows rules of engagement as strict as firearms. For example, non-lethal weapons should not be a quick cop-out from proper deescalation tactics nor should they be used against non-violent political action.
  - cess11 4y ago
    A common criticism regarding tasers is that since they're perceived by police as safe they'll be overused, including in cases where it would rather amount to torture than policing, or as a method to punish suspects that are otherwise complient for things like name calling or spitting on the ground. Personally I prefer that police risk something when they use force, that encourages them to have solid reason for it.
nivenkos 4y ago
> Nowadays, not so much… The thinking seems much more primitive. But the threat is so much greater. I live in Sweden too, and there was a bombing near my apartment. A shooting at the metro station, etc. With the massive influx of weapons from the remnants Yugoslavia, and criminal young men imported from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. - Sweden just isn't the same as 20 years ago, and law enforcement has to adapt to that too. Sweden still has laughably light sentencing for gang crime compared to Denmark for example (nevermind the UAE, Singapore, etc.) so it's no wonder that the situation has spiralled out of control.
- bombolo 4y ago
  > and criminal young men imported from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc Yes Sweden was truly a paradise before all this immigration. When a prime minister could just wonder around the streets and be killed. Try giving equal opportunities to people instead of passing the message: "you are born poor, and such you shall remain" and see that people might be less inclined to become criminals. > Sweden is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with its so-called Gini-coefficient, as calculated by Credit Suisse, higher than every country apart from Bahamas, Bahrain, Brunei, Botswana, Brazil, the UAE, Yemen, Laos, Russia, South Africa and Zambia. > Sweden’s billionaires own 16 percent of Sweden’s national wealth, double the share they had in June 2016, and quadruple what they had in 1996. In 2021, the wealth of Sweden’s billionaires amounted to 68 percent of GDP, up from just 6 percent in 1996. > The richest 0.1 percent of Swedes hold about 29 percent of total household wealth. In the US, the richest 0.1 percent hold only 19.3 percent. > Sweden’s 542 billionaires, who Cervenka points out could all just about fit into a single Airbus 380, own as much as the poorest 6.2 million Swedes. Source: Girig Sverige. But sure… immigrants are the sole problem here. /s Keep voting SD and keep avoiding stressing your brain. Immigrants=bad. Ok. Sure.
  - nivenkos 4y ago
    I don't vote SD, and I agree with you. We need a lot of tax reform - it's crazy how working is punished so much meanwhile there is no inheritance tax or land value tax. But I'd also support the death penalty for violent criminals - we need the carrot and the stick, and a lot more of both.
sva_ 4y ago
You're conveniently leaving out the part that the event of someone holding a knife and not being compliant has been happening much, much more frequently recently, compared to 20 years ago. So since the situation didn't use to happen often, obviously the reaction of shooting them did not either.
- cess11 4y ago
  Could you please show us the data you base this on?
CuriousSkeptic 4y ago
> Nowadays, not so much… The thinking seems much more primitive. You might enjoy the book just released by https://waitbutwhy.com/ https://waitbutwhy.com/ Just started reading it, but its basically a deep dive into that observation.

dgb23 4y ago

Is it naive to think that police officers can restrain someone holding a knife and being non compliant, potentially dangerous? I’ve seen police in Switzerland do this. Specifically once a large man with a large knife. He made a very weird, unstable, unnerving impression on me. He got surrounded and restrained by about three policemen. They had some kind of gloves on. Happened very quickly. I think they did tge right thing there. They predicted potentially life threatening danger and then handled it in a non-lethal way. If they pulled a gun and shot the guy I would have some questions...

bjornsing 4y ago
> Is it naive to think that police officers can restrain someone holding a knife and being non compliant, potentially dangerous? Swedish law is not that the police should attempt this. The basic idea (which today is hard to understand, I know…) is that it’s a rather minor crime to hold a knife in public and it’s not a crime at all to be non compliant with police instructions. So the police does not have legal authority to shoot [1]. They essentially have to wait it out and see what happens. But what has changed over the last 20 years is that the concept of self defense (“nödvärn”) has been expanded enormously when applied specifically to the police, in an extrajudicial way, so that it now more matches your expectation: “if he seems dangerous / could do something bad in the future, shoot!” 1. https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/kungorelse-196984-om-polisens-anvandning-av_sfs-1969-84 https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-lagar/dokument/svensk-f...
- naasking 4y ago
  > But what has changed over the last 20 years is that the concept of self defense (“nödvärn”) has been expanded enormously when applied specifically to the police, in an extrajudicial way This is a dangerous road that leads to US-style policing.
  - bjornsing 4y ago
    I agree. Sweden has changed a lot since 1984 when the current police law was passed. I really like it, but it was written for a different time. It would be much better to pass a new one with more formal authority for the police to use force (“laga befogenhet”), instead of letting a culture of courts looking the other way / bending the law build up even further.
- the_af 4y ago
  I think the person you are responding to is not arguing they should shoot, but quite the contrary. I think you're essentially in agreement. My own opinion: I think shooting someone should always be the last resort. Obviously police officers must look for their own well-being and should not expose themselves to obvious risk of death if possible. On the other hand, someone holding a knife or being non-compliant is not something that must be immediately handled by shooting at the person. Maybe waiting it out, maybe talking, maybe swarming him/her with multiple officers, maybe using tranquilizers, who knows. Every option has a risk and nothing is foolproof, but killing someone is the ultimate, irreversible option and should not be the default, even when the person is resisting or noncompliant. I don't understand why in some countries, like the US, police officers are so eager to resort to violence or killing -- though it's certainly the easy way out.
  - bjornsing 4y ago
    Yea, sorry if I wasn’t clear. I was referring to the expectation that the police must somehow apprehend the person (immediately).
  - lo_zamoyski 4y ago
    > I don't understand why in some countries, like the US, police officers are so eager to resort to violence or killing Police training has become heavily influenced by military tactics (take the case of Israeli training of American officers and "police exchanges"). This was not always the case. Now, I do not deny that such tactics can be useful in certain circumstances, but overemphasis on them can be a problem just as much as laxity.
nonethewiser 4y ago
Grappling a knife wielding man is a wildly unreasonable ask of police officers.
- pwthornton 4y ago
  People get very unrealistic ideas from movies and TV shows. If you go to attack someone who has a knife and you are barehanded, you almost assuredly will lose that altercation.
- bjornsing 4y ago
  Of course it is. And I explicitly address that in my comment… There is no such ask.
- uoaei 4y ago
  It is something they signed up for. This is the cost of protecting your community. Not all of us are so brave as to become a police officer. But there comes a time when you need to stand up not just for the people around you, but the values you all organize yourselves into communities for. Protecting a community's way of life is literally the job description of the police. This includes protecting your community from being dominated by a police force empowered to murder with no warning or accountability. The officers are the ones who make the decisions to ensure that their communities remain safe from threats of all kinds. We don't give our armed forces excuses when they violate the Geneva convention and ROE, why would we do it with police?
- cess11 4y ago
  OK. Would it be unreasonable to ask them to form a barrier between the violent person and other people in the area and defuse the situation with either patience, wit or talk?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
  I agree. We should have a special body of people trained explicitly to deal with violent behaviour and threats to life, such as men wielding knives and similar weapons. They should be given training and equipment to disarm, or otherwise neutralise,such threats, without putting anyone's lives in danger, their own, the general public's, or the people acting in a threatening manner.
pwthornton 4y ago
If the police have a taser or other weapon that can immobilize someone, sure, but otherwise, you should not try to attack a person wielding a knife with your bareheaded. Knives are incredibly dangerous. Police also do not wear body armor to protect against knives. Their body armor protects against bullets. In places where guns are very uncommon, they could switch to body armor aimed at protecting against knives, but I am not sure if there are places where that tradeoff is common. I don't think it is reasonable to expect the police to risk their lives to try to subdue someone with a weapon. Taser first and then a gun is preferable to someone using a knife to kill someone.
chrisweekly 4y ago
I will never understand why non-lethal force (eg taser) isn't given more consideration. It's a false dichotomy! Using lethal force (guns with bullets), or risking officer harm (wrestling suspects into submission) are not the only options!
- speed_spread 4y ago
  "Non-lethal" weapons are actually lethal enough (they can kill) that their use is considered similar in outcome to bullets BUT they can also be completely ineffective against intoxicated and or somehow "shielded" targets (clothes, etc.). So it's really a dice shot. Given this, the logic is that if you're gonna need a gun because you fear for your life, better pull a real one. Otherwise, just keep you distance and wait for backup.
  - chrisweekly 4y ago
    > "need a gun because you fear for your life" To me this is an essential part of the problem. "Kill or be killed" is an escalation relative to the vast majority of situations. The percentage of suspects killed by police shootings who actually posed a direct, imminent, lethal threat to the arresting officers is a very small minority. The idea that guns and tasers are considered similarly lethal is ~laughable. Consider "don't tase me, bro" vs gunfire. Your point about potential ineffectiveness in a critical situation is well-taken. But improving the quality / effectiveness of mace and tasers (or equivalent non-lethal tech) would be a budgetary rounding error compared to the cost of the status quo.
    - speed_spread 4y ago
      Let's just make sure that all usage of non-lethal weapons follows rules of engagement as strict as firearms. For example, non-lethal weapons should not be a quick cop-out from proper deescalation tactics nor should they be used against non-violent political action.
- cess11 4y ago
  A common criticism regarding tasers is that since they're perceived by police as safe they'll be overused, including in cases where it would rather amount to torture than policing, or as a method to punish suspects that are otherwise complient for things like name calling or spitting on the ground. Personally I prefer that police risk something when they use force, that encourages them to have solid reason for it.

nivenkos 4y ago

> Nowadays, not so much… The thinking seems much more primitive. But the threat is so much greater. I live in Sweden too, and there was a bombing near my apartment. A shooting at the metro station, etc. With the massive influx of weapons from the remnants Yugoslavia, and criminal young men imported from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. - Sweden just isn't the same as 20 years ago, and law enforcement has to adapt to that too. Sweden still has laughably light sentencing for gang crime compared to Denmark for example (nevermind the UAE, Singapore, etc.) so it's no wonder that the situation has spiralled out of control.

bombolo 4y ago
> and criminal young men imported from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc Yes Sweden was truly a paradise before all this immigration. When a prime minister could just wonder around the streets and be killed. Try giving equal opportunities to people instead of passing the message: "you are born poor, and such you shall remain" and see that people might be less inclined to become criminals. > Sweden is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with its so-called Gini-coefficient, as calculated by Credit Suisse, higher than every country apart from Bahamas, Bahrain, Brunei, Botswana, Brazil, the UAE, Yemen, Laos, Russia, South Africa and Zambia. > Sweden’s billionaires own 16 percent of Sweden’s national wealth, double the share they had in June 2016, and quadruple what they had in 1996. In 2021, the wealth of Sweden’s billionaires amounted to 68 percent of GDP, up from just 6 percent in 1996. > The richest 0.1 percent of Swedes hold about 29 percent of total household wealth. In the US, the richest 0.1 percent hold only 19.3 percent. > Sweden’s 542 billionaires, who Cervenka points out could all just about fit into a single Airbus 380, own as much as the poorest 6.2 million Swedes. Source: Girig Sverige. But sure… immigrants are the sole problem here. /s Keep voting SD and keep avoiding stressing your brain. Immigrants=bad. Ok. Sure.
- nivenkos 4y ago
  I don't vote SD, and I agree with you. We need a lot of tax reform - it's crazy how working is punished so much meanwhile there is no inheritance tax or land value tax. But I'd also support the death penalty for violent criminals - we need the carrot and the stick, and a lot more of both.

sva_ 4y ago

You're conveniently leaving out the part that the event of someone holding a knife and not being compliant has been happening much, much more frequently recently, compared to 20 years ago. So since the situation didn't use to happen often, obviously the reaction of shooting them did not either.

cess11 4y ago
Could you please show us the data you base this on?

CuriousSkeptic 4y ago

> Nowadays, not so much… The thinking seems much more primitive. You might enjoy the book just released by https://waitbutwhy.com/ https://waitbutwhy.com/ Just started reading it, but its basically a deep dive into that observation.