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America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
121–130 of 201 posts
Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
This article cites research that goes way beyond the usual sort of correlation. How much stronger would the evidence need to get?
Well, for starters to prove casuation one doesn't only need to show X moves in sync with Y. One also needs to show that it is not because both X and Y are caused by some reason Z which influences both even though X and Y are completely independent from each other. E.g. correlation between good lead data and good crime data may be caused by the fact that in cities with better law enforcement both criminal laws and env…
One also needs to show that it is not because both X and Y are caused by some reason Z which influences both even though X and Y are completely independent from each other
How do you show that something is not caused by a hidden Z? All one can hope for is a preponderance of evidence. If the following passage from the article is true, then the preponderance here is stronger than a generic correlation-is-not-causation objection can just dismiss:
"In fact, use of leaded gasoline varied widely among states, and this gave Reyes the opening she needed. If childhood lead exposure really did produce criminal behavior in adults, you'd expect that in states where consumption of leaded gasoline declined slowly, crime would decline slowly too. Conversely, in states where it declined quickly, crime would decline quickly. And that's exactly what she found."
Thus your hidden Z would have to move in sync not only with X and Y, but also with their widely varying rates in different states. That's a high bar – especially if there are legal and institutional explanations for why leaded gas was phased out at different rates in those places.
Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Somewhat amazingly, Midgley then went on and worked on the development of Freon.
I believe I read this in Bill Bryson's `A Brief History of Nearly Everything', which is a great book if anyone is interested in the history of how scientific discoveries are made and how credit is taken for them.
I'll go a step further and say its a great book. My wife has little interest in the history of scientific discovery, and she loved it. The audio book sent our baby to sleep every day for months - play count is just over 100 from memory. Even when heard for the 100th time it is still interesting.
Edit: I think a reason that people find science to be a bit dry is that it is often associated with dull library racks of journals on complex subjects with a razor focus. The story behind a particular paper is often far more interesting than the paper would leave you to believe. Something in the publishing process removes the highs and lows of each step and the background to what occurred.
Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Declaring it false does not make it so. Of course not. It was already false, long before I declared it so. > Violence is always a specter (a potential action) in any conflict between people. The question is; How do we minimize the role of violence in coming to resolutions to conflicts? I agree completely. > I think the rules we've evolved to answer that question of the course of human history have done a decent job…
>Of course not. It was already false, long before I declared it so. Show me how it is false. I am a very reasonable person who is prone to change his mind when presented with a solid argument. I am inviting you to make that argument.
How can I prove it, and why should the burden of proof be on me? The statement was that litigation cannot exist with government. I certainly think the burden of proof is on the personal claiming that something "cannot exist."
Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
#125I'm tempted to repeat the oft said correlation is not causation. But really I have never thought that captures the problem I have with studies like this. Of course correlation does not necessarily imply causation. What I really find to be problematic is a small time series of data of a facet of a human behaviour across a population is probably going to correlate extremely well to many other time series across the sam…
So many factors that could have contributed to the crime drop.
Hate to drive by this interesting thread, but wasn't this same crime drop attributed to the legalization of abortion?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortio...
Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What can private insurance do for me if I am killed? What can anything do for you if you are killed? I don't understand the relevance. You could still have private life insurance to provide for your family, but that's no different than today. > What if I can't afford private insurance? What if you can't afford the fees associated with litigation in the government court system? I never claimed that my suggestion wou…
The only reason violence is currently risky is because the government will put forth a lot of resources (more than most businesses or individuals could afford or consider prudent) to stop violence or at least punish the perpetrators. In your system, there is no reason for me not to kill someone in a slightly sneaky manner - basically as long as it can't easily be pinned on me, there is no repercussion. No one will tr…
That's simply not true. Fear of government involvement is not the only thing that makes violence risky. The fact that people can and often do defend themselves is what makes violence risky. Try breaking into an American farm house in the middle of nowhere if you don't believe me.
> Then the security companies would start enforcing rules in their zones (remember property doesn't exist without someone there to enforce the property). Those security guys could take over the zone next door. Oh and prevent people from living. Repeat for larger and larger groups. Suddenly we have government of the feudal or warlard kind all over again.
There are so many leaps there that need justification.
Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So then the insurance company becomes the government. Why? Retail stores don't become the government or merge into one. Neither do private security agencies. It's unlikely that any organization could "become the government" unless a vast portion of society accepts them as the sole legitimate purveyor of violence, which is precisely what I don't want to happen. > Or the insurance company also just says "No I don't l…
... and "in the long run" everything would work out, right? Except for the most part, there's no such thing as "the long run", since the entire concept depends on the universe being relatively stationary (from a probabilistic/statistical perspective). In fact, the universe, and especially the economy/culture/society, is highly non-stationary, making the entire notion of "the long run" fallacious. In other words, your…
> ... and "in the long run" everything would work out, right?
Don't be silly. The world would still be a horrible place. Heinous acts would be committed every day. People would be murdered, tortured, and raped. There would still be a lot of violence—it would just be a lot less than what we have today.
> In other words, your model assumes that aggregate consumer demand for a particular basket of goods will "stay still" long enough for bad actors to get weeded out. But this is an empirical claim, and one that has been shown to be frequently false. Indeed, its falsehood is in part responsible for the 2008 financial crisis.
Of course there is truth in all of this. But how is the government a better solution?
> The world is always changing deeply and unpredictably. In the imagined scenario above, your needs for insurance wouldn't remain constant, and neither would the base of providers.
Again, that's true of insurance just like it's true of cell phone providers, automobile manufacturers, etc. Again, how does government solve any of this?
Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So then the insurance company becomes the government. Why? Retail stores don't become the government or merge into one. Neither do private security agencies. It's unlikely that any organization could "become the government" unless a vast portion of society accepts them as the sole legitimate purveyor of violence, which is precisely what I don't want to happen. > Or the insurance company also just says "No I don't l…
Nope, not even close to a reasonable response. If insurance is supposed to pay out in the cases of the big black swan events, and I in good faith of the insurance agreement have put a significant amount of capital towards restitution, repairs, what-have you, expecting to be reimbursed. Now the insurance says "oh nope, fuck you"... What means do I have of paying a different company? What means do I have of getting wor…
> Now the insurance says "oh nope, fuck you"... What means do I have of paying a different company? What means do I have of getting word out that they have fucked me? I can't afford to buy off majority of reporters like a big insurance company does.
How do people find out that certain automobile are crappy? How do people know to avoid certain hospitals or certain doctors? I would never make the ludicrous claim that any arrangement of society would be utopia. People will get ripped off and bad things will always happen. It would simply be less common without government.
> you adamantly refuse to explain how a bunch of economic policies via collusion of the players, resulting in a scenario of "play by our rules or else get no way of eating or sheltering yourself" is any less violence than "do what we say or we shoot you". To me the difference is a false one: forcing me to do something with one death threat really isn't different than with another.
In the former situation, the "collusion of the players" is offering a crappy deal (with no physical violence) as an alternative to starvation. That means that if you truly would starve without the crappy deal (which would require you to be incapable of growing your own food), you are genuinely better off taking the deal. I don't see how this qualifies as "violence." You could make a decent argument that it is exploitation, which is a different argument altogether.
Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
So then the insurance company becomes the government. (Insurance companies will merge until there is a single one... if the history of companies is to be believed). Or the insurance company also just says "No I don't like you, and since there is no actual way for you to enforce me paying you out, I just won't". Again, if the insurance company decides not to pay, they are enacting bad things on someone and not honorin…
> So then the insurance company becomes the government. Why? Retail stores don't become the government or merge into one. Neither do private security agencies. It's unlikely that any organization could "become the government" unless a vast portion of society accepts them as the sole legitimate purveyor of violence, which is precisely what I don't want to happen. > Or the insurance company also just says "No I don't l…
I worked for an insurance company for five years. A good one with high ethics. The entire insurance industry is predicated on not paying you. It is the very basis of the business model.
I think you have no idea what you are talking about. None.
Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
... and "in the long run" everything would work out, right? Except for the most part, there's no such thing as "the long run", since the entire concept depends on the universe being relatively stationary (from a probabilistic/statistical perspective). In fact, the universe, and especially the economy/culture/society, is highly non-stationary, making the entire notion of "the long run" fallacious. In other words, your…
> ... and "in the long run" everything would work out, right? Don't be silly. The world would still be a horrible place. Heinous acts would be committed every day. People would be murdered, tortured, and raped. There would still be a lot of violence—it would just be a lot less than what we have today. > In other words, your model assumes that aggregate consumer demand for a particular basket of goods will "stay still…
You're the one proposing a radical change, onus of evidence and "how it would be better" is on you. By the way "but there would be no government!" is not a valid argument of how it would be better, only a tautological statement of "if there was no government, there would be no government". We have seen governments arise for as far back as there is history, and not really a lot of evidence of how great things are without government, suggesting (but not proving) that a government is a good thing.