Google Engineer bails out student in jail

Post by JonnieCache » Fri, Dec 24, 2010, 8:38 PM UTC

Helianthus16 wrote: post #135

JonnieCache wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope one day not to have to say this in one of these debates: Anecdotal evidence is not evidence. At all. Not only is it invalid reasoning but it taints the rest of the debate because it often sounds so convincing, going hand in hand as it usually does with appeals to emotion. This applies doubly when discussing macro-level societal issues like the justice system.

However, anecdotal evidence can point to a line of inquiry that might uncover important statistical evidence. It presents categories: "Crimes not addressed" as a cause of low incarceration. Truly, to combat his assertion, you should find statistical evidence to show that his anecdotes are actually contrary to the trend. Anecdotal evidence _is_ evidence. It is just not strong statistical evidence.

Post by true_religion » Fri, Dec 24, 2010, 8:47 PM UTC

JonnieCache wrote: post #105

Anechoic wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: Here's another fun stat: america has more black people in prison than in college: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/ americas/2223709.stm This claim is a little misleading - the absolute numbers are true (or close enough depending on your source) but it compares blacks in all age groups in jail with blacks going to college. If you limit the comparison to college-aged blacks, there are far more blacks in college…

A good point. It is still not exactly encouraging that these two figures should be anywhere near each other, considering it is not only young people that should be going to college. EDIT: I wonder what would happen if you injected the racial makeup of the prison/university management and staff into the calculations.

Post by true_religion » Fri, Dec 24, 2010, 8:50 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #60

Confusion wrote: post #54

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And yet, somehow, over the last 20 years the crime rate in the US has dropped tremendously. Crime rates in all Western countries have dropped over the last 20 years. More interestingly, the crime rate in the US does not significantly differ from that in other countries[1]. Even taking the statistics from [1] at face value (they are probably skewed by various different definitions for 'crime'), The Netherlands has the…

This is where the lack of controlled experimentation makes the data harder to read. To match the Dutch imprisonment rate, the US would have to release some 84% of its prison population, or in other words, to not have imprisoned those people to begin with. But if we did that, the crime rate would be different because, presumably, at least some of those people would have gone on to commit crimes! I'll readily concede t…

Post by rbanffy » Fri, Dec 24, 2010, 9:04 PM UTC

JonnieCache wrote: post #141

Helianthus16 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, anecdotal evidence can point to a line of inquiry that might uncover important statistical evidence. It presents categories: "Crimes not addressed" as a cause of low incarceration. Truly, to combat his assertion, you should find statistical evidence to show that his anecdotes are actually contrary to the trend. Anecdotal evidence _is_ evidence. It is just not strong statistical evidence.

>Truly, to combat his assertion, you should find statistical evidence to show that his anecdotes are actually contrary to the trend. It is never my responsibility to disprove any assertion, as that is fundamentally impossible. It is the responsibility of the person making the assertion to provide a sufficient quantity of relevant evidence.

Post by pyre » Fri, Dec 24, 2010, 9:15 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #39

pyre wrote: post #29

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The way that Bradley Manning is being treated doesn't surprise me too much. He is suspected of "leaking classified information," so it would make sense to keep him in solitary confinement from a government/military bureaucrat's point of view. If they don't segregate him, he might leak more secrets to other people. The other stuff (no mattress or pillow) just seems like pettiness on the part of the people in power tha…

Anyone can be suspected of anything. Let's have a trial, a real trial, and then worry about punishment after he's guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. (And by real trial, I mean a jury of Americans, not some bullshit military tribunal. Yeah, yeah, he signed some papers that said he can't have a real trial. Fuck that. This is America, not Saudi Arabia.)