> Why didn't these people casually turn to crime? Isn't violent crime at an all time low, historically [0]? It seems like every other day some rationalist is t

> Why didn't these people casually turn to crime? Isn't violent crime at an all time low, historically [0]? It seems like every other day some rationalist is trumpeting the relative safety of our affluent society. > Would it ever be socially acceptable for large groups in the past to run amok and violently burglarize others? This happens all throughout history. Periods of acute poverty are rife with examples of people turning to banditry, literally Kurasawa made a movie about it. > No, I don't think it's poverty. I would recommend reading any of the studies linked elsewhere in the thread, empirical evidence disagrees with you big time. > trying to explain the behavior of very dumb criminals I think that writing off criminals as "low-IQ" is a huge error. Sure they may be less educated, but I don't know if it's possible to concretely prove that the potential for intelligence is lower among someone committing a B&E than some random office worker. I would actually argue that many criminals are much smarter than they are given credit for. Certainly any successful criminal able to evade arrest for a serious amount of time is probably quite intelligent. Pretending like everyone who decided to rob a liquor store at age 19 is some idiot brute whose sole motivation is acting like a thug I think is one of those convenient narratives that feels true, but which overlooks a lot of what would push a person to actually act that way. [0] https://www.vrc.crim.cam.ac.uk/system/files/documents/manuel-eisner-historical-trends-in-violence.pdf https://www.vrc.crim.cam.ac.uk/system/files/documents/manuel...