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Record number of environmental activists murdered

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#101

Post by Sebb767 »

happymellon wrote: post #51
ArchieMaclean wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course we should be doing all we can to prevent murder! It is just always hard to tell with statistics and having a more honest statistic (that, say, shows that murder rates have doubled while number of activists have increased 30%) would be preferable.

So you are okay with corporate murder, as long as they don't murder more than have become activists as a ratio? If murder rates have doubled that is bad, regardless of the number of people becoming activists.

It's important to see the direction we're going in. If the number of activists increased by an order of magnitude (for example), we would be on a great trajectory to reduce these murders. If the number of activists stayed the same, this would be a horrible development.

Of course corporate murder is horrible, but the world is on fire (quite literally). Without putting the numbers in perspective, there's no way to tell whether we need to put our resources towards fighting activist murders or, for example, clan criminality.

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#102

Post by TeMPOraL »

markenqualitaet wrote: post #72
TeMPOraL wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not entirely about environment issues, but there's a TV show with something similar as a premise - Continuum . A crime solving drama/sci-fi, where the protagonist is a time traveler coming to our times from year 2070-ish, time when the world is ruled by a Corporate Congress, consisting of thinly veiled allusions to well-known corporations of today. In between all the action and emotional drama, it also delivers some…

Do you recommend it? It's one of the few scifi shows I haven't seen but stumble upon from time to time. It seems a bit low-budget and oldschool TV (pre-breaking bad quality of TV).

I do. It's pretty decent. It does go a bit downhill later on, but I'd say in the late S3 and S4 (I blame it on the show being cut short and having to wrap up everything too quickly).

In the genre of "seemingly a crime show, but really a deep sci-fi", I'd strongly recommend Person of Interest, if you haven't seen it already. It contains what I consider to be, to date, the best discussion of the topic of general artificial intelligence, and all its ethical and safety implications.

> It seems a bit low-budget and oldschool TV

It's definitely not big-budget, but there's decent FX in there, just judiciously used. Future tech is impressive, but not crazy flashy.

> (pre-breaking bad quality of TV).

Could you elaborate on that one? I've only seen the first three episodes, after which I gave up, but from those three I thought Breaking Bad is a low-quality and extremely low-budget show.

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#104

Post by TeMPOraL »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #87
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is not necessarily a reason to assume that the percentage of murder of activists is going to stay the same if you increase the number of activists If activists are being murdered for activism, the rate among activists will go up. If a greater share of the population is becoming activist, and are being randomly murdered for non-activist reasons, that’s a different story.

if the number of police rise does the ratio of police being killed on the job stay the same? what if 5% of the workers at big corporations are willing to kill activists for activism, those 5% are busy killing activists, if the activists increase unless the corporations increase the number of people they have willing to kill activists it follows that there are not going to be a significant increase in the number of mu…

All you wrote is exactly why you want to know the base rate (or several, against different possible hypothesis). Otherwise, it's not possible to even speculate about these things productively.

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#105

Post by anshumankmr »

So I was a little curious about some of the names from my country. I checked out the name of Isravel Moses. According to The Wire.in, an online publication, whose credentials one would not doubt when it comes to criticizing the government or corporations had this to say

> On the night of November 8, Moses was hacked to death by alleged drug dealers, as a fallout of his reportage on the distribution and sale of ganja and the illegal encroachment of poramboke lands.

ganja is weed for those who don't know.

https://thewire.in/media/tamil-nadu-journalist-isravel-moses...

Though he was an activist, I am not sure he was an activist against global warming. His death is regrettable and India has had an alarming rate of murders of journalists and activists along with a rise in nationalism. And most people never really hear about it, which is even worse.

Though this country has never been good to whistleblowers, journalists and activists. This has been happening for decades, not something very new honestly.

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#107

Post by rendall »

yunohn wrote: post #92
rendall wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They’re reporting on the increase in evil activities by anti-environmental mega corps Is there an increase, though? The BBC has sadly become known to be rather loose with facts. The answer to the upstream question here would let us know if there is an increase and what kind . Absolute? Relative? How big of a problem is this, really, or is it more of the BBC fomenting noise and anxiety for clicks. We're trying to ge…

You know what? Sure, let’s assume the BBC is “FUDing for clicks”. We’ll ignore the source report, and general common sense. Do you think that these murders (as stable or as decreasing as you believe them to be) should not be reported on? And that your statistical skills somehow matter to the real world activists dying?

> Do you think that these murders (as stable or as decreasing as you believe them to be) should not be reported on?

Personally, I don't like this kind of discourse. It gets people excited, anxious, and not thinking clearly, as intended. That would be ok with me maybe, if there ever were some good results from that (e.g. effective environmental control, or good legislation), but there never, ever is.

I could go through and answer your questions as if we were talking for real, but your response is kind of a poison pill, designed to put me on the defensive ("Oh, of course I didn't mean...")

No. The adults in the room do need to know if activists are being murdered at an ever increasing rate, or if we can devote our limited time and attention to other very important matters. We don't like to be guided to the "proper" opinion by people who will shout But it's murder, you cold-hearted nerd! if we go off track and ask for accurate information

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#108

Post by cornel_io »

hazza_n_dazza wrote: post #65

reading all the threads here, about murder ratios is a really good reason not to have engineers as politicians

Being fully informed and cognizant about the true systemic machinations of the system that you're manipulating as a politician seems like it's a good thing, not a bad thing. Asking for more carefully split-out info before YOLOing a policy prescription is something I've pretty much never seen but would love to. On the other hand, declaring that you're right without a goddamned shred of statistical info is just wrong, no matter what side you're on (and that's most of the debate on this article, since there's no useful info presented).

The best engineers (and math/science people) I know ask tough questions about policies that their own parties are pushing; I've rarely seen a humanities major do that unless it was because of some niche "against-the-grain" identity issue they were plumping for. I do know a couple humanities folks who eventually realized they needed to learn more about math/stats to be able to justify their statements, and in every case they became more rationalist once they understood the toolkit.

So: bad tech people are dumbasses, just like bad humanities majors are (and they will always be if they don't understand math, science, and tech). We should stop electing both, but we never will.

But let's not throw the fucking baby out with the bathwater when it comes to preferences, please.

Re: Record number of environmental activists murdered

#110

Post by yunohn »

rendall wrote: post #107
yunohn wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what? Sure, let’s assume the BBC is “FUDing for clicks”. We’ll ignore the source report, and general common sense. Do you think that these murders (as stable or as decreasing as you believe them to be) should not be reported on? And that your statistical skills somehow matter to the real world activists dying?

> Do you think that these murders (as stable or as decreasing as you believe them to be) should not be reported on? Personally, I don't like this kind of discourse. It gets people excited, anxious, and not thinking clearly, as intended. That would be ok with me maybe, if there ever were some good results from that (e.g. effective environmental control, or good legislation), but there never, ever is. I could go throug…

Effectively you’re saying that a status quo of stable-percentage murders is okay. I (and others on this post) are saying that any non-zero percentage is bad. So I guess we fundamentally disagree then.
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