6 ms·

I'm not quite sure how to address the fact that in society various biases cloud our perception of safety despite statistics to the contrary.

woodruffw 3y ago
It’s a hard problem. One avenue of improvement that I think about frequently is re-socialization of suburban and rural dwellers to urban life: it’s a lot easier to convince non-urban dwellers that our cities are lawless warzones when their only experiences of their local city are the news or through the windshield of their car. I think re-densification and mass transit will (if we ever manage to do them) do wonders to counter the shrinkage of social spheres/spheres of participation that suburbanization has caused.
kurthr 3y ago
Bring back leaded gasoline! Oh, sorry, we were supposed to be solving problems.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  Banning condoms/p-pills etc would be a good bad idea too with about the same effect on crime. "Womens right" and "eco friendly" policies seems to have had the greatest effect to reduce crime, which I guess is purely incidental. I wonder what could be done about the crime rate if you'd put the EPA in charge ... the people that self select for fighting crime at the political policy level seems bad at it. Maybe literal carrots in schools would help more then 1000 prisons. Who knows.
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  While we're at it, get rid of the condoms and pregnancy tests in all the vending machines! Oh, sorry, we were supposed to be talking about the US.
kazinator 3y ago
Good safety statistics is an outcome that is obtained because everyone is paranoid about safety. :) What good statistics, by the way? I don't see that in the article, which clearly says that killings are plummeting, but from a spike that occurred during the pademic, and have not recovered to the pre-pandemic level.
kccqzy 3y ago
The news is the problem. Crime gets reported and published in newspapers and on news sites. A peaceful day without crime is inherently not news worthy. This clouds people's perception more than any biases do.
- thenayr 3y ago
  [dead]
coldtea 3y ago
Perhaps because statistics themselves often also carry biases, with reality being contrary to what they show. There's a reason for the quip "lies, damn lies, and statistics".
keiferski 3y ago
Because people have real life experience and will always put that above some abstract statistics that can be gamed in a hundred different ways. Ask almost anyone in NYC, for example, and they'll tell you that the city feels less safe than it a decade ago.
- TMWNN 3y ago
  >Ask almost anyone in NYC, for example, and they'll tell you that the city feels less safe than it a decade ago. "The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it". —Jeff Bezos <https://sports.yahoo.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-explains-212315127.html https://sports.yahoo.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-explains-2123...>
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Eh, there is so much that can be gamed here that any simple statement made about this is probably bullshit... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic are prime examples of this. If you get the news (and now social media) blasting a message that you are in danger 24x7 it will have a very stressful effect on a large number of people putting them in a heightened state of fear even when the rate of underlying incidences has not changed. Moreso, because people are afraid and suspicious their average interactions with other people will amplify this effect. People are weird social creatures and by just hearing stories we can fall into harmful lines of behavior. Suicide contagion for example https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207262/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207262/.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  It feels about the same to me. I've lived here my whole life. One notable change is how much expectations of "safety" in the city have expanded: there are neighborhoods my family would not have gone to as a kid that are now considered trendy or even wealthy. The city's progress there has not been uniform (and in many ways continues to punish the city's neediest demographics), but that alone is a substantial factor in the overall feeling of safety. (NYC's blessing and curse is that literally anything out of the ordinary to ever happen gets recorded. This results in paradoxical motion: the crime trendline has consistently gone down decade-over-decade, but there's more public evidence of those crimes for real-time news to report on.)

woodruffw 3y ago

It’s a hard problem. One avenue of improvement that I think about frequently is re-socialization of suburban and rural dwellers to urban life: it’s a lot easier to convince non-urban dwellers that our cities are lawless warzones when their only experiences of their local city are the news or through the windshield of their car. I think re-densification and mass transit will (if we ever manage to do them) do wonders to counter the shrinkage of social spheres/spheres of participation that suburbanization has caused.

kurthr 3y ago

Bring back leaded gasoline! Oh, sorry, we were supposed to be solving problems.

rightbyte 3y ago
Banning condoms/p-pills etc would be a good bad idea too with about the same effect on crime. "Womens right" and "eco friendly" policies seems to have had the greatest effect to reduce crime, which I guess is purely incidental. I wonder what could be done about the crime rate if you'd put the EPA in charge ... the people that self select for fighting crime at the political policy level seems bad at it. Maybe literal carrots in schools would help more then 1000 prisons. Who knows.
082349872349872 3y ago
While we're at it, get rid of the condoms and pregnancy tests in all the vending machines! Oh, sorry, we were supposed to be talking about the US.

kazinator 3y ago

Good safety statistics is an outcome that is obtained because everyone is paranoid about safety. :) What good statistics, by the way? I don't see that in the article, which clearly says that killings are plummeting, but from a spike that occurred during the pademic, and have not recovered to the pre-pandemic level.

kccqzy 3y ago

The news is the problem. Crime gets reported and published in newspapers and on news sites. A peaceful day without crime is inherently not news worthy. This clouds people's perception more than any biases do.

thenayr 3y ago
[dead]

coldtea 3y ago

Perhaps because statistics themselves often also carry biases, with reality being contrary to what they show. There's a reason for the quip "lies, damn lies, and statistics".

keiferski 3y ago

Because people have real life experience and will always put that above some abstract statistics that can be gamed in a hundred different ways. Ask almost anyone in NYC, for example, and they'll tell you that the city feels less safe than it a decade ago.

TMWNN 3y ago
>Ask almost anyone in NYC, for example, and they'll tell you that the city feels less safe than it a decade ago. "The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it". —Jeff Bezos <https://sports.yahoo.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-explains-212315127.html https://sports.yahoo.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-explains-2123...>
- pixl97 3y ago
  Eh, there is so much that can be gamed here that any simple statement made about this is probably bullshit... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic are prime examples of this. If you get the news (and now social media) blasting a message that you are in danger 24x7 it will have a very stressful effect on a large number of people putting them in a heightened state of fear even when the rate of underlying incidences has not changed. Moreso, because people are afraid and suspicious their average interactions with other people will amplify this effect. People are weird social creatures and by just hearing stories we can fall into harmful lines of behavior. Suicide contagion for example https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207262/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207262/.
woodruffw 3y ago
It feels about the same to me. I've lived here my whole life. One notable change is how much expectations of "safety" in the city have expanded: there are neighborhoods my family would not have gone to as a kid that are now considered trendy or even wealthy. The city's progress there has not been uniform (and in many ways continues to punish the city's neediest demographics), but that alone is a substantial factor in the overall feeling of safety. (NYC's blessing and curse is that literally anything out of the ordinary to ever happen gets recorded. This results in paradoxical motion: the crime trendline has consistently gone down decade-over-decade, but there's more public evidence of those crimes for real-time news to report on.)