4 ms·

I view the drop in crime as the result of a perfect storm of many factors, and perhaps this is another one. The explosion of media and the Internet occurred ar

I view the drop in crime as the result of a perfect storm of many factors, and perhaps this is another one. The explosion of media and the Internet occurred around the same time, so it's hard to say what caused it.

lhnn 14y ago
I think that's where "they" would point to the "distribution" evidence, that shows varying rates of the same correlation geographically. If we go on that, then you'd have to find another event that occurred at similar rates in similar geographic areas. Now, if only there were medical indications that lead causes violent behavior... the article only points to IQ issues, though there is likely more evidence elsewhere.
- marcosdumay 14y ago
  > If we go on that, then you'd have to find another event that occurred at similar rates in similar geographic areas. There are lots of events that correlate with income (thus, with the geographical distribution). And lots of them correlate with the fall or raise of crime in the article. Getting an event that correlate with both raise and fall of crime, like lead intoxication does, will be harder. But I doubt it's impossible. The thing is, we have a causal nexus, we have the correlation, but we have no idea how strong the nexus actualy is, so we can't conclude the correlation is caused by the nexus. And we won't discover, because we won't conduct the kind of experiments needed for it.
sliverstorm 14y ago
In 1996, the New York Times reported that crime had plunged for the third straight year, the sharpest drop since the end of Prohibition. Since 1993... Need I remind you that HTML 1.0 was released in mid-1993? The Internet wasn't exploding like you are thinking quite yet. Sure, it was on the rise, but certainly not among the sort of folks breaking windows and selling drugs.
- knowaveragejoe 14y ago
  This is true, I didn't mean to imply that the initial drop was caused by the explosion in media. More accurately I believe the continued decline and absence of crime could be attributed to those things.

lhnn 14y ago

I think that's where "they" would point to the "distribution" evidence, that shows varying rates of the same correlation geographically. If we go on that, then you'd have to find another event that occurred at similar rates in similar geographic areas. Now, if only there were medical indications that lead causes violent behavior... the article only points to IQ issues, though there is likely more evidence elsewhere.

marcosdumay 14y ago
> If we go on that, then you'd have to find another event that occurred at similar rates in similar geographic areas. There are lots of events that correlate with income (thus, with the geographical distribution). And lots of them correlate with the fall or raise of crime in the article. Getting an event that correlate with both raise and fall of crime, like lead intoxication does, will be harder. But I doubt it's impossible. The thing is, we have a causal nexus, we have the correlation, but we have no idea how strong the nexus actualy is, so we can't conclude the correlation is caused by the nexus. And we won't discover, because we won't conduct the kind of experiments needed for it.

sliverstorm 14y ago

In 1996, the New York Times reported that crime had plunged for the third straight year, the sharpest drop since the end of Prohibition. Since 1993... Need I remind you that HTML 1.0 was released in mid-1993? The Internet wasn't exploding like you are thinking quite yet. Sure, it was on the rise, but certainly not among the sort of folks breaking windows and selling drugs.

knowaveragejoe 14y ago
This is true, I didn't mean to imply that the initial drop was caused by the explosion in media. More accurately I believe the continued decline and absence of crime could be attributed to those things.