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There's nothing wrong with dueling - it's voluntary by definition. Mixing it up with crimes of passion, drive-bys, and all other forms of homicide just shows h

by moldbug 15y ago

There's nothing wrong with dueling - it's voluntary by definition. Mixing it up with crimes of passion, drive-bys, and all other forms of homicide just shows how easy it is to lie with statistics. It's also undeniable that until the Victorian period, Europe was generally becoming more orderly. (You'd probably see a drop in testosterone levels if you could measure this.) The trouble is that we live on the other side of that curve. See under: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_urban_zone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_urban_zone. ("ZUS" is French for "no-go zone.") But fudge and blur enough and you can hide the peak. I'd love to see Professor Spierenburg take a walk in Les Musiciens someday. His name sounds Jewish. Perhaps he'd be kidnapped, tortured and burned alive, like Ilan Halimi. But before he died, would he change his mind? Statistics suggest the contrary.

onemoreact 15y ago
Assuming there is nothing wrong with dueling, then should you include two gangs having a voluntary shootout as part of the overall murder rate? In there minds and abstractly there may be little difference between a shootout in 12th street and one in Iraq but it's hardly a sign of a 'safe' area. And what about Union busting. 50 people died from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint_Creek-Cabin_Creek_strike_of_1912 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint_Creek-Cabin_Creek_strike_... can you imagine what would happen today if the same level of violence became national news? Yet, for the time while it was larger average such things where not all that uncommon. Looking at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-... you can see a 11x difference in 2010 murders between Louisiana 11.2 and New Hampshire 1.0. But, considering the amount of migration within the country I think a national perspective is necessarily. And nationally, 200 years ago things where a lot more violent. PS: Granted, it's not hard to twist these statistics if you include vehicle accidents the numbers start to change dramatically.

by moldbug 15y ago

onemoreact 15y ago

Assuming there is nothing wrong with dueling, then should you include two gangs having a voluntary shootout as part of the overall murder rate? In there minds and abstractly there may be little difference between a shootout in 12th street and one in Iraq but it's hardly a sign of a 'safe' area. And what about Union busting. 50 people died from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint_Creek-Cabin_Creek_strike_of_1912 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint_Creek-Cabin_Creek_strike_... can you imagine what would happen today if the same level of violence became national news? Yet, for the time while it was larger average such things where not all that uncommon. Looking at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-... you can see a 11x difference in 2010 murders between Louisiana 11.2 and New Hampshire 1.0. But, considering the amount of migration within the country I think a national perspective is necessarily. And nationally, 200 years ago things where a lot more violent. PS: Granted, it's not hard to twist these statistics if you include vehicle accidents the numbers start to change dramatically.