5 ms·

Saying NYC being one of the safest places to be in the country is why LLMs will never be accurate. People will just say anything no matter how irrational it is.

reducesuffering 2y ago
Want to back that up with some data? NYC is half the per capita murder rate of the US. What swath of places do you think are safer such that "one of the safest places" for NYC is inaccurate? On >250k population list, NYC is #20/100 safest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... On a 100k to 250k list, NYC is above average safety.
- AndyNemmity 2y ago
  The statement that "NYC is one of the safest places in the country" and the relevance of per capita crime rates are two different discussions. When we say a place is "the safest," we're referring to the absolute level of safety. Per capita crime rates, while useful for comparing the likelihood of crime between areas with different population sizes, don't determine the absolute safety of a place. They normalize crime data by population to show relative safety, which is a different metric.
  - reducesuffering 2y ago
    > When we say a place is "the safest," we're referring to the absolute level of safety. Idk who you think "we" is. It's not in my definition of safety, nor probably the general populace to think of Stockton, California as "safer" than NYC, just because Stockton had 50 murders a year compared to NYC's 240... Because Stockton has a 17.77 murder rate per 100k, and NYC 3 per 100k. You bet your ass you'd be "safer", as in less likely to get shot or stabbed to death, living in NYC.
    - AndyNemmity 2y ago
      NYC hasn't had as little as 240 murders in a year since murder data was recorded.
      - reducesuffering 2y ago
        My argument is clear about how ridiculous absolute values of crime pertain to how safe it is for someone. That you instead want to nitpick the exact # of murders in NYC (when I just winged a 3 per 100k at 8m population) is indicative that you can't refute it and your original assertion is incorrect. If anything, the real # in 2023 of 386 only further proves my point. That it's ridiculous to assert even that many more murders is less safe than Stockton, CA. Safety is about "am I more or less likely to have something happen to me" and no one is thinking that means moving to the tiniest country of 2,000 people where only 10 murders happened in the entire country last year.
        AndyNemmity 2y ago
        Apologies, I wasn't aware you were making up numbers. That isn't useful, or helpful in conversation in my opinion, but clearly you feel strongly that's a reasonable thing to do. I contend it is significantly safer in the majority of cities in the US than New York City.
        Nimitz14 2y ago
        His argument remains valid with the correct number, proving that his made up number was close enough. You're factually wrong.
        mgce 2y ago
        Like everyone else here I'm having trouble parsing what you're trying to say. You seem to be implying per capita is a bad measure of safety. But you're not being clear why. Can you elaborate?
        reducesuffering 2y ago
  - kurikuri 2y ago
    “Absolute level of safety” what does this even mean? Per capita crime rates seem quite relevant to this underlying property and can be well defined.
    - hyperadvanced 2y ago
      There’s a psychological reason (rational or not) people equate cities with violence, and it’s this same “absolute level of safety”. When you could live in a town of 5000 where 1 person gets murdered every year, it’s very different than scaling those numbers up by 1,000. Realistically, 999 of those murders will be of/by people you will barely interact with, whereas in a small town, it’s all but guaranteed that you will know both the murderer and the victim (and they will know each other). That said, I understand the desire to frame crime in the absolute. Either you’re the 1 guy who gets unlucky and experiences a crime in your small town, or there are 999 people like you in the big city). Crime is a problem of scale, and a bigger scale freaks people out even if the coefficients are the same.
      - watwut 2y ago
        It is not just the scale issue. It is also that for your personal safety, only statistics on killings of random strangers matters. Majority of murders are among people who know each other. You personal risk is all about who your partner is, who your friends are, how much aggressive your uncle is. A guy you never met that is just about to murder his wife has nothing to do with your personal risk.
        reducesuffering 2y ago
        Who your partner and friends are can very much be influenced by your location. Your own safety is in some ways influenced by the overall people around you, not just stats on random killings.
      - wolverine876 2y ago
        > a bigger scale freaks people out even if the coefficients are the same. It freaks out people who live elsewhere and all they know of cities is what they see on cable news, especially a certain channel. > There’s a psychological reason (rational or not) people equate cities with violence Maybe it's simply that it's repeated at them endlessly - a simple, effective tactic used by conservatives for decades.
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    By that logic, somewhere with no people would be the safest area. Good factoid to know but for most people, it's not useful to live with no others around.
    - wolverine876 2y ago
      As I said elsewhere, people in cities know that having more people around is safer. Deserted alleys are more dangerous than busy streets.
    - Slava_Propanei 2y ago
      [dead]
  - wolverine876 2y ago
    As any person who lives in a city knows, more people means more safety. It's the empty, dark street - especially non-residential - that you want to avoid. Also, the NYPD is always nearby if that suits you (I've never needed them personally).
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - outop 2y ago
    One of the worst and most tendentious numerical arguments I have ever seen.
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  When you have so many people per square mile, it slightly skews the metrics. The reality might be you're less likely to be murdered, but you might be way more likely to witness a crime. That matters.
  - wolverine876 2y ago
    > you might be way more likely to witness a crime. That matters. People are just reaching for possible straws. Do you have any factual basis to say that? We can make up anything and put the word 'might' or 'maybe' in front of them. I've spent lots of time in NYC and other dense, major cities, and I think I've seen one crime ($20 stolen). The interstate highway is more threatening, with the aggressive drivers. Really, go to NYC. Look at the millions of people walking around without a care, going about their days.
    - jvanderbot 2y ago
      I think it's gotten polarized enough around here that it's not going to be helpful to defend my statement, but here goes: I was just saying something that must surely be true... If you measure crime by the person, in a dense place you're more likely to be near a crime when it happens than a place with more crime per person, but much less people per space.
      - shkkmo 2y ago
        To me, this sounds like the rate of unreported crimes would be lower in dense areas, making them even safer than they appear in the statistics. You are correct that if the average number of observers per crime is higher, that could indeed make a place feel comparatively more dangerous since the while the liklihood of being a victim is lower, the liklihood of seeing a victim is higher. However, I would posit that a lot more goes into feelings of safety and we haven't seen any data on how large this effect size might be.
      - wolverine876 2y ago
        > If you measure crime by the person, in a dense place you're more likely to be near a crime when it happens than a place with more crime per person, but much less people per space. Yes, agreed (of course). I'm not sure what that says about the original statement. > The reality might be you're less likely to be murdered, but you might be way more likely to witness a crime. That matters. First, it seems like we are really shifting the goalposts. Being victimized by crime is a lot different than witnessing it, though the latter isn't pleasant, of course. How much does it matter? In a place that dense, you see a lot more of everything. For people there, it's a feature and not a bug. That's why people pay so much to live there. Is witnessing a crime so bad? I suppose something traumatizing would be, but I think NYers are used to seeing 'everything, all the time', and they would not be traumatized by most crime. Murder? I think that would leave a mark, depending on what you saw, but that's very rare. Shoplifting? Public intoxication? A carjacking would be alarming, I suppose, speaking for myself.
- jahewson 2y ago
  Sorry but moving the goalpost from “one of the safest places to be in the country” to “one of the safest big cities in the country” is not fair game. The US has over 19,000 cities and you discarded all but 91 of them.
  - reducesuffering 2y ago
    I've not discarded them, it's just the the largest portion of data for where people in the US are, which NYC has an objectively good per capita murder rate compared to where most people live in the US. If we want to get data for the US as a whole, please point me in the direction where we can find the safety level of the median person, besides NYC having a 3.3 murder per capita rate while the US is ~6.5. Idk what % it is, but a large portion of Americans live in those lists of 100k+ cities.
- eptcyka 2y ago
  Instead of crime per capita, what’s the likelihood of being the victim of a violent crime in NYC?
  - oblio 2y ago
    Aren't those inherently related?
    - cabalamat 2y ago
      Not if a small number of people are victims of multiple crimes.
      - nix0n 2y ago
        How many people are murdered more than once?
      - shkkmo 2y ago
        Thats not how statistics work. The average number of crimes per person is going to be the same so the crime per capita is the same as the amount of crime an person should expect to experience on average. You may be thinking of a median or mode, which can differ based on the shape of the distribution curve.
- elzbardico 2y ago
  This is a problem that everyone who has lived in the developed world knows very well. As the police is able to solve less and less crimes, and less criminals are convicted, people stop thinking it is worth their time to report every crime. As less persecutions end up in convictions, and as accusations of bias can mean the end of a police officer career, there's also a more lax attitude from the police force. Crime becomes less risky and more rewarding, what drives crime force recruitment up, the culture becomes more and more accepting, and petty criminals over time graduate to more serious crimes. Substance abuse, violence, it all just adds to the culture. Soon you'll start noticing that there areas of the city where police presence is virtually inexistent, and the people who live on those places realize that involving the police could bring unpleasant consequences. Those liberated areas are for all practical purposes, outside the reach of the State. Soon, murders start going unnoticed, fights against rival gangs lead to deaths, but unless the bodies are found, nobody is going to involve the police. People simply cease to exist and disappear, no records. Politicians, prosecutors and police chiefs soon realize the political advantage of not digging too much into reality and promoting the lie that the official statistics, utterly corrupted by the incomplete data collection, are trustworthy and represent the reality. Terminally political people and journalists, that are nowadays basically propaganda officers, start gaslighting everyone that dares to say otherwise. You can't feel safe in the subway, but you are either crazy or a simpleton if you don't believe NYC is one of the safest places in the world, look at the data!
  - reducesuffering 2y ago
    If you want to throw out the data because it doesn’t suit your bias, fine, ultimately it’s your safety on the line based on your decision, so you better hope you’re correctly evaluating. But I also think it’s odd that you think NYC is underreporting murders and not going after serious crimes, when if you go into rural areas, you’ll find many that are a few Sheriffs stretched thin over hundreds of miles, and infinite more potential for “murders going unnoticed.” https://magazine.atavist.com/outlaw-country-klamath-county-oregon-guns-murder/ https://magazine.atavist.com/outlaw-country-klamath-county-o... Paints a picture
    - elzbardico 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

reducesuffering 2y ago

Want to back that up with some data? NYC is half the per capita murder rate of the US. What swath of places do you think are safer such that "one of the safest places" for NYC is inaccurate? On >250k population list, NYC is #20/100 safest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... On a 100k to 250k list, NYC is above average safety.

AndyNemmity 2y ago
The statement that "NYC is one of the safest places in the country" and the relevance of per capita crime rates are two different discussions. When we say a place is "the safest," we're referring to the absolute level of safety. Per capita crime rates, while useful for comparing the likelihood of crime between areas with different population sizes, don't determine the absolute safety of a place. They normalize crime data by population to show relative safety, which is a different metric.
- reducesuffering 2y ago
  > When we say a place is "the safest," we're referring to the absolute level of safety. Idk who you think "we" is. It's not in my definition of safety, nor probably the general populace to think of Stockton, California as "safer" than NYC, just because Stockton had 50 murders a year compared to NYC's 240... Because Stockton has a 17.77 murder rate per 100k, and NYC 3 per 100k. You bet your ass you'd be "safer", as in less likely to get shot or stabbed to death, living in NYC.
  - AndyNemmity 2y ago
    NYC hasn't had as little as 240 murders in a year since murder data was recorded.
    - reducesuffering 2y ago
      My argument is clear about how ridiculous absolute values of crime pertain to how safe it is for someone. That you instead want to nitpick the exact # of murders in NYC (when I just winged a 3 per 100k at 8m population) is indicative that you can't refute it and your original assertion is incorrect. If anything, the real # in 2023 of 386 only further proves my point. That it's ridiculous to assert even that many more murders is less safe than Stockton, CA. Safety is about "am I more or less likely to have something happen to me" and no one is thinking that means moving to the tiniest country of 2,000 people where only 10 murders happened in the entire country last year.
      - AndyNemmity 2y ago
        Apologies, I wasn't aware you were making up numbers. That isn't useful, or helpful in conversation in my opinion, but clearly you feel strongly that's a reasonable thing to do. I contend it is significantly safer in the majority of cities in the US than New York City.
        Nimitz14 2y ago
        His argument remains valid with the correct number, proving that his made up number was close enough. You're factually wrong.
        mgce 2y ago
        Like everyone else here I'm having trouble parsing what you're trying to say. You seem to be implying per capita is a bad measure of safety. But you're not being clear why. Can you elaborate?
        reducesuffering 2y ago
- kurikuri 2y ago
  “Absolute level of safety” what does this even mean? Per capita crime rates seem quite relevant to this underlying property and can be well defined.
  - hyperadvanced 2y ago
    There’s a psychological reason (rational or not) people equate cities with violence, and it’s this same “absolute level of safety”. When you could live in a town of 5000 where 1 person gets murdered every year, it’s very different than scaling those numbers up by 1,000. Realistically, 999 of those murders will be of/by people you will barely interact with, whereas in a small town, it’s all but guaranteed that you will know both the murderer and the victim (and they will know each other). That said, I understand the desire to frame crime in the absolute. Either you’re the 1 guy who gets unlucky and experiences a crime in your small town, or there are 999 people like you in the big city). Crime is a problem of scale, and a bigger scale freaks people out even if the coefficients are the same.
    - watwut 2y ago
      It is not just the scale issue. It is also that for your personal safety, only statistics on killings of random strangers matters. Majority of murders are among people who know each other. You personal risk is all about who your partner is, who your friends are, how much aggressive your uncle is. A guy you never met that is just about to murder his wife has nothing to do with your personal risk.
      - reducesuffering 2y ago
        Who your partner and friends are can very much be influenced by your location. Your own safety is in some ways influenced by the overall people around you, not just stats on random killings.
    - wolverine876 2y ago
      > a bigger scale freaks people out even if the coefficients are the same. It freaks out people who live elsewhere and all they know of cities is what they see on cable news, especially a certain channel. > There’s a psychological reason (rational or not) people equate cities with violence Maybe it's simply that it's repeated at them endlessly - a simple, effective tactic used by conservatives for decades.
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  By that logic, somewhere with no people would be the safest area. Good factoid to know but for most people, it's not useful to live with no others around.
  - wolverine876 2y ago
    As I said elsewhere, people in cities know that having more people around is safer. Deserted alleys are more dangerous than busy streets.
  - Slava_Propanei 2y ago
    [dead]
- wolverine876 2y ago
  As any person who lives in a city knows, more people means more safety. It's the empty, dark street - especially non-residential - that you want to avoid. Also, the NYPD is always nearby if that suits you (I've never needed them personally).
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- outop 2y ago
  One of the worst and most tendentious numerical arguments I have ever seen.
jvanderbot 2y ago
When you have so many people per square mile, it slightly skews the metrics. The reality might be you're less likely to be murdered, but you might be way more likely to witness a crime. That matters.
- wolverine876 2y ago
  > you might be way more likely to witness a crime. That matters. People are just reaching for possible straws. Do you have any factual basis to say that? We can make up anything and put the word 'might' or 'maybe' in front of them. I've spent lots of time in NYC and other dense, major cities, and I think I've seen one crime ($20 stolen). The interstate highway is more threatening, with the aggressive drivers. Really, go to NYC. Look at the millions of people walking around without a care, going about their days.
  - jvanderbot 2y ago
    I think it's gotten polarized enough around here that it's not going to be helpful to defend my statement, but here goes: I was just saying something that must surely be true... If you measure crime by the person, in a dense place you're more likely to be near a crime when it happens than a place with more crime per person, but much less people per space.
    - shkkmo 2y ago
      To me, this sounds like the rate of unreported crimes would be lower in dense areas, making them even safer than they appear in the statistics. You are correct that if the average number of observers per crime is higher, that could indeed make a place feel comparatively more dangerous since the while the liklihood of being a victim is lower, the liklihood of seeing a victim is higher. However, I would posit that a lot more goes into feelings of safety and we haven't seen any data on how large this effect size might be.
    - wolverine876 2y ago
      > If you measure crime by the person, in a dense place you're more likely to be near a crime when it happens than a place with more crime per person, but much less people per space. Yes, agreed (of course). I'm not sure what that says about the original statement. > The reality might be you're less likely to be murdered, but you might be way more likely to witness a crime. That matters. First, it seems like we are really shifting the goalposts. Being victimized by crime is a lot different than witnessing it, though the latter isn't pleasant, of course. How much does it matter? In a place that dense, you see a lot more of everything. For people there, it's a feature and not a bug. That's why people pay so much to live there. Is witnessing a crime so bad? I suppose something traumatizing would be, but I think NYers are used to seeing 'everything, all the time', and they would not be traumatized by most crime. Murder? I think that would leave a mark, depending on what you saw, but that's very rare. Shoplifting? Public intoxication? A carjacking would be alarming, I suppose, speaking for myself.
jahewson 2y ago
Sorry but moving the goalpost from “one of the safest places to be in the country” to “one of the safest big cities in the country” is not fair game. The US has over 19,000 cities and you discarded all but 91 of them.
- reducesuffering 2y ago
  I've not discarded them, it's just the the largest portion of data for where people in the US are, which NYC has an objectively good per capita murder rate compared to where most people live in the US. If we want to get data for the US as a whole, please point me in the direction where we can find the safety level of the median person, besides NYC having a 3.3 murder per capita rate while the US is ~6.5. Idk what % it is, but a large portion of Americans live in those lists of 100k+ cities.
eptcyka 2y ago
Instead of crime per capita, what’s the likelihood of being the victim of a violent crime in NYC?
- oblio 2y ago
  Aren't those inherently related?
  - cabalamat 2y ago
    Not if a small number of people are victims of multiple crimes.
    - nix0n 2y ago
      How many people are murdered more than once?
    - shkkmo 2y ago
      Thats not how statistics work. The average number of crimes per person is going to be the same so the crime per capita is the same as the amount of crime an person should expect to experience on average. You may be thinking of a median or mode, which can differ based on the shape of the distribution curve.
elzbardico 2y ago
This is a problem that everyone who has lived in the developed world knows very well. As the police is able to solve less and less crimes, and less criminals are convicted, people stop thinking it is worth their time to report every crime. As less persecutions end up in convictions, and as accusations of bias can mean the end of a police officer career, there's also a more lax attitude from the police force. Crime becomes less risky and more rewarding, what drives crime force recruitment up, the culture becomes more and more accepting, and petty criminals over time graduate to more serious crimes. Substance abuse, violence, it all just adds to the culture. Soon you'll start noticing that there areas of the city where police presence is virtually inexistent, and the people who live on those places realize that involving the police could bring unpleasant consequences. Those liberated areas are for all practical purposes, outside the reach of the State. Soon, murders start going unnoticed, fights against rival gangs lead to deaths, but unless the bodies are found, nobody is going to involve the police. People simply cease to exist and disappear, no records. Politicians, prosecutors and police chiefs soon realize the political advantage of not digging too much into reality and promoting the lie that the official statistics, utterly corrupted by the incomplete data collection, are trustworthy and represent the reality. Terminally political people and journalists, that are nowadays basically propaganda officers, start gaslighting everyone that dares to say otherwise. You can't feel safe in the subway, but you are either crazy or a simpleton if you don't believe NYC is one of the safest places in the world, look at the data!
- reducesuffering 2y ago
  If you want to throw out the data because it doesn’t suit your bias, fine, ultimately it’s your safety on the line based on your decision, so you better hope you’re correctly evaluating. But I also think it’s odd that you think NYC is underreporting murders and not going after serious crimes, when if you go into rural areas, you’ll find many that are a few Sheriffs stretched thin over hundreds of miles, and infinite more potential for “murders going unnoticed.” https://magazine.atavist.com/outlaw-country-klamath-county-oregon-guns-murder/ https://magazine.atavist.com/outlaw-country-klamath-county-o... Paints a picture
  - elzbardico 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]