Politics - Jason X

[Agiel]

  On 10/3/2017 at 8:52 PM, Gromnir said:

 

  On 10/3/2017 at 8:29 PM, Guard Dog said:

 

  On 10/3/2017 at 8:24 PM, Rosbjerg said:

 

  On 10/3/2017 at 7:19 PM, Gromnir said:

am honest curious how such a thing happened, seeming w/o most folks noticing or caring.  takes a charlottesville moment to wake people (a few at least) up from torpor? am genuine curious, and a little concerned.

 

HA! Good Fun!

From the late 80s there's been an ever increasing militancy to political discourse - and discourse in general. We're in a period of hyper-normalilzation, a slow boiling of the pot, where most have noticed somethings up, but can't quite put the finger on it.

 

Even the discourse on this little random corner of the net has seen a dramatic change in the last 10 years.

 

Now the discussions around dinnertables all over the world, have always been a little casually racist and objectifying. Not good, but at least managable... But today we're seeing mass generalisations on big network newsshows, accussations flung out without a shred if proof or remorse and huge political scandals that are just 'par the course'.. People are numb to it, which only invites even more.

 

 

Actually I think the political discussion here on the Obsidian WoT board have never been better than now. It used to be bloodsport here. People really got insulting and angry. Bans and warning were common. Now, points are usually ably argued no one gets too angry. We are an example to the world! Who'da thought?

 

 

am not certain if obsidian is an example to the world, but am expecting if you spoke to an activist who were in washington in the 60s when ranks o' soldiers were positioned outside the pentagon, white house and capitol to prevent protesters from literal storming the gates, and asked if the dialogue o' today is more or less militant or polarized than what he/she recalls from times now past, the answer would be obvious.   

 

 

 

I'd add that for all the talk of "Lib-ruhl Nazis," as insufferable as the "SJW" crowd might seem we're certainly quite a ways from them having the kind of disruptive effect on civil society the Baader-Meinhof Gang and the like had. How lucky are we they're content debating with strangers on the internet rather than robbing banks, hijacking airlines, bombing airbases, and kidnapping businessmen and politicians (or as was the case with Colombian far-left revolutionaries in their heydays, any random people they can get their hands on).

 

Edited October 4, 2017 by Agiel

[injurai]

Is that like champagne socialist and radical chic? I've noticed a large and growing number of "kept youth" with the resources and time to spare on vapid socialite pursuits develop extreme aversions to criticism on their livelihood, and resentment towards anyones who would little them below more transcendently valuable pursuits. It's these people that they crave recognition from those on noble endeavors that require great sacrifice, but if they don't receive reciprocal acknowledgment they'll put you in their targets. It's become a defame game.

[Raithe]

  On 10/3/2017 at 8:31 PM, Rosbjerg said:

You're just saying that because everyone matured and is more right-leaning than 10 years ago

 

What was that old saying..

"Anyone under 30 who is not a liberal has no heart. Anyone over 30 who is not a conservative has no brain."

 

Or at least, something to that effect....

[Raithe]

Heh, saw this on a Politics/Guns thing that blew up online..

 

 

[Gromnir]

  On 10/4/2017 at 3:55 PM, Raithe said:

Heh, saw this on a Politics/Guns thing that blew up online..

 

 

image

 

 

also, keep in mind if we combined mass bombing and mass shooting incidents, russia would rank #2 and belgium would rank #3.

 

the mass killings is always what prompts these debates, and the per capita death rate from mass shootings in the eu as a whole is 55% greater than the US. given the larger and more diverse (economic, social, ethnic, etc.) population o' the US compared to other western nations, is difficult to compare US. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Malcador]

US gun ownership is pretty high and crime isn't negligible, so not sure the original meme has much for it.

 

Breivik sure screwed Norway's numbers up, hah.

Edited October 4, 2017 by Malcador

[HoonDing]

i rember when they came for my guns

[Zoraptor]

  On 10/4/2017 at 5:40 PM, Gromnir said:

 

  On 10/4/2017 at 3:55 PM, Raithe said:

Heh, saw this on a Politics/Guns thing that blew up online..

 

 

image

 

 

 

Source, for those wondering. It's utter irredeemable garbage- you can get a good idea of why from that chart and without checking the website though. eg 55% more deaths in the EU per capita than the US from mass shootings is claimed. From that chart, 5 countries out of 28 EU ones have a higher rate than the US (NOR, SRB, FYROM, ALB, SWZ aren't in the EU) representing about 1/4 of the EU's population- and unsurprisingly countries with zero are left off the chart, again. Even just using the chart's data we can see the 55% claim is rubbish*, since the combined pops of ENGGERITY is far more than those 5 countries, and their rate is a quarter that of the US's which more than counters France having a high rate.

 

Always depends on what you want to look at of course, but that site doesn't stand up to even cursory scrutiny and is pure PR/ fake news. It doesn't even consistently follow a skewed methodology, it's a Fox News 'opinion' piece.

 

*while I won't check I'm fairly sure they've just added together all the rates- including Norway etc despite them not being EU- then divided by X countries to get the 55% claim. They should have added EU populations and incidences together to get the rate, not added the per capita rates directly- which gives a result significantly lower than the US's pre capita death rate, by a quick estimate about 50% less.

Edited October 4, 2017 by Zoraptor

[Gromnir]

low energy fact check.  can't use only the chart.

 

"The average fatality rate for the 28 EU countries is 0.114 with a 95% confidence Interval of -.0244 to .253. The US rate is 0.089 is lower than the EU rate, but they are again not statistically significantly different."

 

though in the spirit o' fairness, the 55% bit specific references "europe and the eu," so no smoking gun so to speak.  and again, as with the US, all of these events is anomalous.  take out the anomalies and you have little to compare. 

 

perhaps compare maine, massachusetts, vermont and new hampshire to switzerland... or norway?

 

oh, and you don't cherry pick data.  explain the data is fine, but simple throw out anomalous is typical referred to as "academic dishonesty."

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Volourn]

So.. any official word on this piece of crap's 'motive'?

Edited October 4, 2017 by Volourn

[ShadySands]

Nothing reliable that I've seen but if you want wild speculation then I hear Infowars has a lot

[Guard Dog]

I saw in the Washington Post that 79% of shootings where the weapon and shooter are identified are commited with firearms the shooter does not legally own. Reminds me of the old saying "If guns are outlawed, the outlaws will still have guns"

[Guard Dog]

  On 10/4/2017 at 9:27 PM, ShadySands said:

Nothing reliable that I've seen but if you want wild speculation then I hear Infowars has a lot

 

A journalists job is sooo much easier when they can just make s--t up!

[Malcador]

  On 10/4/2017 at 9:40 PM, Guard Dog said:

I saw in the Washington Post that 79% of shootings where the weapon and shooter are identified are commited with firearms the shooter does not legally own. Reminds me of the old saying "If guns are outlawed, the outlaws will still have guns"

What percentage of all shootings are those?

[Raithe]

It's basically a conspiracy theorists wet dream at the moment.

 

They're deep diving his background, but the general word that seems to be leaking out is there are no signs in his background, no odd websites viewed, no strange behaviour, no extremist leanings, no training, no ptsd issues.  And then he got x many guns up to a hotel room, disabled security devices in the area, got the window out all without attracting attention from Vegas Hotel security, before actually commiting the act.

 

There are already pictures going out with "Look, broken windows floors above him, that's where the real snipers were. It's a false flag, its this that or the other."

 

Oh the sheer joy of the many, many opinions that will crop up.

[Guard Dog]

  On 10/4/2017 at 9:46 PM, Malcador said:

 

  On 10/4/2017 at 9:40 PM, Guard Dog said:

I saw in the Washington Post that 79% of shootings where the weapon and shooter are identified are commited with firearms the shooter does not legally own. Reminds me of the old saying "If guns are outlawed, the outlaws will still have guns"

What percentage of all shootings are those?

 

 

All violent crimes committed using a firearm where someone was shot in Washington DC in 2016. Given DC's near total prohibition on pistols I'm guessing the 18% committed by legal owners was shotguns, or something else other than pistol. 3% was unknown. Don't know what that means.  

Edited October 4, 2017 by Guard Dog

[Raithe]

The one that amused me a few years back was when Fox pulled up statistics that compared single person murders with handguns in the US, with all murders commited by any means possible in the UK as a "See, gun control doesn't matter, the UK is a dangerous placce to visit."

 

Of course, as it later turned out, they didn't include drive by gun murders, a variety of gang related deaths by firearms, mass shootings, or a few other numbers from the US side of things..

[Zoraptor]

  On 10/4/2017 at 8:50 PM, Gromnir said:

low energy fact check.  can't use only the chart.

 

"The average fatality rate for the 28 EU countries is 0.114 with a 95% confidence Interval of -.0244 to .253. The US rate is 0.089 is lower than the EU rate, but they are again not statistically significantly different."

 

though in the spirit o' fairness, the 55% bit specific references "europe and the eu," so no smoking gun so to speak.  and again, as with the US, all of these events is anomalous.  take out the anomalies and you have little to compare. 

 

perhaps compare maine, massachusetts, vermont and new hampshire to switzerland... or norway?

 

oh, and you don't cherry pick data.  explain the data is fine, but simple throw out anomalous is typical referred to as "academic dishonesty."

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

That site is rubbish, so bad it's almost impossible to critique it effectively as you have to go back to 5th form maths to do so and write a text book. In this case it has nothing to do with anomalous data, since Breivik is excluded by simple dint of not being in an EU country. In this case he wouldn't make enough of a difference anyway. Problems are

• 10 fold difference in confidence interval renders it irrelevant as the 'true' figure is anything from 3x the US to 1/4 of it. Sample size is too small. They've screwed up the maths anyway, so it's doubly irrelevant.
• They also claim to exclude sovereignty based issues yet include ISIS attacks which are all about establishing the sovereignty of the Caliphate. About the least of their problems, to be fair.
• Their claimed rate is wrong whether just using the chart or not
• The averaged EU rate comes out about half that of the US, even when including the ISIS stuff, and is far lower when not.
• No sources provided for data used
• Data which is shown is inconsistent with conclusions and descriptions in text (EU only or Europe and EU? who knows, certainly not the author)

To illustrate the mistake they've made (so far as I can tell, it's so bad it's impossible to be sure), the rate of a theoretical Norway/ Germany union is not the ~1 you get from adding 1.88 and 0.02 together and dividing by 2, because Germany has 15 times Norway's population; thus the combined rate is a bit less than 0.2 and not 1. So far as I can tell they've used the first method with a mix of EU and non EU countries- again it's impossible to tell since they don't provide what data they've actually used- but in any case they clearly haven't used the second method, for either EU countries or Europe as a whole, as they should have. Ironically, if you do method 1 for the EU you still end up with a lower rate than the US, you have to both use method 1 and include non EU Norway to get it above.

[Guard Dog]

Great article from the Washington Post on gun control: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-used-to-think-gun-control-was-the-answer-my-research-told-me-otherwise/2017/10/03/d33edca6-a851-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html?utm_term=.8ea673f4b288

[ShadySands]

How about universal healthcare? If now is not the time to discuss guns can we discuss healthcare?

 

Look at all the GoFundMes set up for medical bills

[Malcador]

  On 10/4/2017 at 10:23 PM, ShadySands said:

How about universal healthcare? If now is not the time to discuss guns can we discuss healthcare?

 

Look at all the GoFundMes set up for medical bills

That'd require caring about others too much for the average American. Interesting article on gun control, though. The real answer though, is bullet control.

Edited October 4, 2017 by Malcador

[Gromnir]

speak o' the busted math then make the following observation:  "The averaged EU rate comes out about half that of the US, even when including the ISIS stuff, and is far lower when not." dear lord.  didn't the board just go through the mistake o' averages?  would be as ridiculous as using the averages o' each US state to come up with an overall death rate for the US. thank goodness for all those states such as maine and new hampshire, eh?

 

but yeah oecd figures and us state department numbers is not gonna have identical confidence intervals.  got a better source?  makes more sense to take oecd numbers at face value than to try and average individual european rates that is for darn certain. btw, brevik/norway weren't actual included in the specific eu comparison, which should have been obvious from the quote we included.   

 

and yes, there were multiple sources provided for the data such as, but not limited to the following:

 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/248845/number-of-victims-of-mass-shootings-in-western-democratic-countries/

http://archive.is/f4gbv (considerable data utilized comes from this site, but only the archived data from 2009-2013 remains, so 2014-2015 cannot be adequate reviewed.  however, the original data is oecd)

https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Results.aspx?expanded=no&casualties_type=b&casualties_max=&dtp2=all&success=yes&region=8&ob=GTDID&od=desc&page=1&count=20#results-table

 

also appears to be reliance on data from jaclyn schildkraut of the state university of new york in oswego and h. jaymi elsass of texas state university... mostly from a politifact article.

 

a book by john richard lott, an economist with his phd from ucla, is also referenced, but no specific footnotes or useful links is available to cross-reference. it is worth highlighting how the cprc site appears to be a pet project of professor lott, so is kinda skeevy to reference the book as a source w/o making more obvious how he is a contributor to the article... though he clear ain't hiding the fact neither as he responds to comments personal. 

 

the linked table, which seems to have confused zor, were specific added to show where switzerland ranks compared to other nations insofar as mass shootings is concerned.  in spite of low crime, switzerland actual suffers from a relative high death rate due to mass shootings. "Even just using the chart's data we can see the 55% claim is rubbish," were low energy.  were never claimed the chart were representative o' the eu.

 

the isis exclusion comment were pretty much rhetoric.  the kinda soverignty conflicts referenced were as follows: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-12/macedonia-charges-30-with-terrorism-after-kumanovo-shooting/6461990. isis terrorism 'round the globe is hardly the kinda insular sovereignty bloodshed being referenced. rhetoric.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited October 4, 2017 by Gromnir

[Zoraptor]

Averaged EU rate = total number of deaths/ 100k population over the whole EU- that's method 2 in my example. Call it aggregate or EU wide rate if you prefer, makes no difference. It's still the only measurement that is relevant when you're talking about the EU as a whole.

 

Let's go by the OECD numbers. As that's the only link that provides relevant data, and was indeed the source of the misleading chart with all the zero countries tripped from Last Time. Handily that means I can reuse the maths.

• US rate is 0.72; 227 deaths from ~320 million people
• European rate is ~0.33; total Euro population for provided countries is ~480 million, total deaths, 162. In order to get up to the claimed 55% more than the US you'd need (1) literally no more deaths in the US, and (2) an extra ~320 deaths in Europe, over the missing data period. That seems... unlikely. Indeed, it certainly didn't happen.
• EU rate? Without Uttoya the total deaths is 85, minus Switzerland and Iceland it's 79. And that removes about 14 million people only. I'll be generous and call the new rate 0.2 and, very generously, 1/3 of the US rate. So you'd need the small matter of 400 (!) extra deaths in the EU in 2 years to reach 1.55x the US rate.

TLDR, your site is garbage and cannot into maths.

[Gromnir]

look at the date.

 

...

 

will give you a moment to consider the ramifications o' such a simple oversight.

 

the data at the site is using death rate through 2015, so by using only the single link, you convenient drop a fair number of european deaths, including 130 from the november 13, 2015 paris attacks. 

 

pretty obvious 'oversight,' eh? you naughty boy.

 

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps obvious we missed both american and euro additions, but france had a particular rough year in 2015. can add another 12 deaths in january 2015 for france. also another 4 deaths in august.  weren't the only euro addition over two years.

 

wth, might as well add a few more... just to drive the point home.

 

5/24 2014 belgium-- 4 fatalities

1/9 2015 france-- 4 fatalities

2/24 2015 czech republic-- 9 fatalities

5/10 2015 switzerland-- 4 fatalities

5/15 2015 italy-- 4 fatalities

 

might be others, but a quick google search found those.

 

during same additional two years, US adds 49? 

 

not hard to see how balance changed.  

 

and again, as has been stated before, the 55% is actual a europe comparison as 'posed to only eu.  is why we posted the relevant eu quote, which still shops eu ahead of US but not 55%. "The average fatality rate for the 28 EU countries is 0.114 with a 95% confidence Interval of -.0244 to .253. The US rate is 0.089 is lower than the EU rate, but they are again not statistically significantly different."  oh, and switzerland were still beating the US too, which were the original point which got lost somewheres.

Edited October 5, 2017 by Gromnir

[213374U]

"There were 55% more casualties per capita from mass public shootings in EU than US from 2009-15"
 
EU. Not Europe.
 
Yeah, the chart itself is labeled "Public Mass Shootings in Europe and the EU" (and then goes on to include Norway in the EU... Russia is also bolded because why the **** not), but then it's at best a case of data not supporting the original assertion.
 
But even the website shows that it's casualties per million that are "higher" in the EU than the US, whereas fatalities are still higher in the US. You seem to be talking about one when referring to the other.
 
So, back of the envelope calculations still puts the US per capita deaths in mass shootings at 75% more than in the EU. "Europe" in general? Who knows. Perhaps if we consider only countries where mass shootings happened and exclude the rest, and maybe if we count deaths in Russia but not her ~140 million inhabitants, etc.
 
It's also worth noting that mass public shootings are defined (per the website) "as as four or more people killed in a public place, and not in the course of committing another crime, and not involving struggles over sovereignty", which is useful because it excludes other incidents that may further tip the scales such as gang-related violence, "private" shootings etc. Not sure where you're getting the 49 additional deaths 2013-2015, but consider that the criterion was lowered to 3 from 4 in a single event to qualify, in 2013. I think it's actually close to double that number.

Not that it was a very useful comparison to begin with, with arbitrary cutoff points and distinctions between Europe, the EU, and casualty/fatality, but yeah, there's just no salvaging that hodgepodge of "statistics".

Edited October 5, 2017 by 213374U