drumbo

11 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Sure we can, survive...

If that were true we'd have it already...

The problem is, the wealthy can't imagine why it's a good idea to keep people alive with money to spend. 🙄

I think the wealthy want the poor to breed in great numbers since that would provide a large supply of surplus labor which cannot do much beyond menial labor which drives down their wages. The wealthy wisely have fewer children which ensures the jobs which the wealthy tend to do will have a lower supply of candidates in the next generation, increasing their own earnings. If you are innately smarter and more dominant it may actually be wise to avoid having too many bastard children lest you dilute your advantage by sharing your precious DNA.

On 8/21/2020 at 10:29 AM, paulsutton said:

Would a universal basic income be far better for society,  ?

We can't even identify what the goals of society are so we are moving forward blindly. But yes I think basic income makes sense to just about everyone. People who have great empathy and concern for others regardless of where it leads will always support basic income, and clinical robot eugenicists will probably also support it since giving the poor more money slows their breeding.

On 3/24/2020 at 6:24 PM, Michael McMahon said:

Some exotic creatures may possess a mind so “alien” to ours that it becomes repulsive when we try to project a degree of consciousness onto it. So might the creepiness of spiders and snakes be more of our instinctive reaction to their unfathomable psychology rather than the actual biology of them?

It's not that complicated. We hate them because they're threatening and ugly.

5 hours ago, dimreepr said:

You're just blindly gainsaying every valid point presented to you 🙄, this is a discussion site not a playground; I'll not be participating further.

I gave fair and valid responses to each source. I'm glad you've found an excuse to leave, I've never seen you make a constructive post.

On 8/8/2020 at 1:52 PM, Michael McMahon said:

“Be cruel to be kind”

There's nothing wrong with results oriented thinking, but to actually carry it out when it involves cruelty requires the recognition of onlookers that you are actually behaving in the best interests of the recipient. Good luck convincing people.

14 hours ago, iNow said:

Interestingly, this too is mistaken. Decades of evidence shows rather consistently that the riots get more out of control and the property damage gets worse the more police are present.

From 50 years ago:

https://belonging.berkeley.edu/system/tdf/kerner_commission_full_report.pdf?file=1&force=1

From 5 years ago: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/05/01/when-police-ratchet-up-the-force-riots-get-worse-not-better/

And from 5 months ago: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/06/01/why-so-many-police-are-handling-the-protests-wrong

 

I'm not sure where you learned how to cite a source, but if you have specific pages you want to cite in that 431 page Kerner commision report then do so, otherwise you are just engaging in the classic unethical tactic of dumping paperwork on someone with limited resources.

The second article is behind a paywall.

You have misrepresented the content of the third article. It claims that disproportionate police force is one of the things that can make a peaceful protest not so peaceful, and therefore it does not address the problem of dealing with a riot that is already out control prior to any disproportionate police intervention.

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

the fair and equitable treatment of all individuals under the law

Unfortunately the goals of maximizing the protection of property and maximizing the potential to rehabilitate criminals are at odds with one another. In order to make a logical and coherent policy, we need to decide what the acceptable minimum levels are for those goals. Both absolutely cannot be maximized.

38 minutes ago, Area54 said:

And yet we saw the example where, a police chief in the US, prior to the riot beginning, defused the situation by offering to walk with the protestors.

If only all riots were announced so that the police had advance notice. Riots can often result because of sudden and unpredictable events, and therefore you cannot count on a preemptive police response. Once a riot is out control, maximizing the police presence is almost certainly the only way to maximize the protection of property, and that is juxtaposed with minimizing the number of harmful interactions with rioters.

45 minutes ago, Area54 said:

Note: looking through your posts it seems you have an inclination to be disagreeable. IF you continue with that attitude with me then my side of the conversation is at an end.

Don't take it personally. I only disagree with wrong ideas.

44 minutes ago, CharonY said:

the lengthy argument that leads nowhere

Au contraire, it is vital to establish what the goal of the criminal justice system should be, and that includes establishing whether we should prioritize the protection of property or the potential to rehabilitate criminals. Without clearly established goals we are just moving forward blindly.

42 minutes ago, CharonY said:

A simple example is looking at other countries

Other countries do not have the same demographic and socioeconomic conditions as the US, and therefore the variation in the amount of police shootings between the US and European countries is likely not significantly explained by differences in the criminal justice system, but rather by differences in the demographic and socioeconomic conditions.

25 minutes ago, Area54 said:

If you genuinely have no model then you are just farting into the wind and your comments may be disregarded. However, i think you do have a model, it is just over-simplified. I suggest you reflect on the meaning of the word 'model' in a scientific context. You should then, readily, recognise that you do have a model.

I say your model is over-simplified since you fail to consider, for example, having police deployed with 'social workers', or psychologists. Or having improved physical safeguards for the protection of property. Or adjusting the training of officers to reduce or eliminate harmful interactions. And those are just some of the options that are ignored in your simple model, or, as you call it, your "abject truth".

So, I should like to understand on what basis you reject these (and similar) examples. Unless you are able to do so your argument is refuted.

I'm not sure why you're so obsessed with using the word model as your sword and shield, it will not save your nonsensical position. Rejecting each example is trivial since it suffices to consider a realistic scenario. Let's consider a riot, very similar to the ones we've been seeing in the US over these past few months. The rioters are destroying property. In order to maximize the protection of property you must increase the police presence otherwise the rioters will trash the city, physical safeguards can always be bypassed. Increasing the police presence will result in more injuries and life ruining criminal records for the rioters. Sending in social workers or psychologists will do jack to protect property and it certainly won't completely mitigate the harm to the protestors,  and thus the potential for rehabilitation has not been maximized. See? No need for models. You just have to find one example to reject something.

I am very grateful for you teaching me about your innovative way of arguing, I think I will use it now. Please describe an example where the protection of property is maximized while harmful interactions with suspects are simultaneously minimized. Unless you are able to do so your argument is refuted.

7 minutes ago, Area54 said:

It appears valid if, and only if, one has a closed system with two goals, yet that is not a sound model of the real world.

Completely nonsensical. There is no model here, just an abject truth that maximizing the protection of property almost certainly requires the deployment of more police officers than we would like if we wanted to minimize harmful interactions with suspects.

52 minutes ago, iNow said:

Wow. 10 neg reps all at once, exactly when drumbo then replied. Must have hit a nerve 

I was extremely patient with you, giving you apparently at least 10 replies to explain your position. You have failed to do so, and I made my judgement.

11 minutes ago, Strange said:

The Terrible Sea Lion: http://wondermark.com/1k62/

Poor analogy, I am not figuratively following anyone into their house. This is a space to debate, and if you cannot do that properly then you are free to leave and I will not "follow you".

29 minutes ago, iNow said:

But this is untrue and remains a false dichotomy regardless of how frequently you reintroduce it

Do you care to point out where my analysis is incorrect? If you are unable to understand the analysis then it does not mean it is incorrect, it only implies that you lack the aptitude to understand it.

5 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

What goalposts are you aiming at?

Lol muh GoAlPoStS

I originally claimed that it was not possible to maximize both the protection of property and the potential to rehabilitate criminals, and that we needed to decide what should be prioritized in order make a logical and coherent policy. We can only maximize one or the other within a constraint where we do not allow the potential to rehabilitate criminals to fall below a certain level, or where we do not allow the protection of property to fall below a certain level. We need to choose where our priorities lie. It is not a fAlSe DiChOtOmY if you have an ounce of deductive reasoning and the aptitude to follow the arguments I gave.

24 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

But you don't seem to know what rehabilitation is, nor the role of the police in its execution, i.e. none...

The police do not perform rehabilitation, but if their interaction with the suspect occurs prior to the suspect receiving said rehabilitation then receiving that rehabilitation is conditional upon a risky encounter with the police! That is why Americans are talking about sending social workers rather than police to certain domestic calls. I feel like I'm interacting with people who have zero sense of logical deduction here, it's so frustrating.

26 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Now you're just talking bollox

Just because you cannot understand it does not mean it's "bollox". Here, let me bring out the big crayons and construction paper, as iNow likes to say. Let's say you can either spin a dreidel with 4 sides numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4, or you can roll a 6-sided die instead numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. The number it lands on determines the number of marshmallows you can eat. Mmmm yummy marshmallows! Now I tell you if you wait one hour, you can instead roll the six-sided die or an eight-sided die numbered 1-8. Again, the number it lands on determines the number of marshmallows you can eat. Now if you decide to eat your marshmallows immediately, you can maximize your potential locally by choosing to roll the die rather than spin the dreidel. However, you have made a choice that decreased your global potential to each as many marshmallows as possible, since if you had waited one hour you could have rolled the eight-sided die instead.

11 hours ago, iNow said:

No, it doesn’t. 

At least here we can finally agree 

I see you're back to your "nuh uh!" style of argumentation. When an individual such as Ryan Whitaker https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-gone-rogue/watch-phoenix-cops-kill-man-after-responding-to-noise-complaint-over-video-game-AsvFt-AHpkeQlcgNj5qiTA interacts with law enforcement the probability of a poor outcome increases and if there is a poor outcome the  potential to rehabilitate him decreases drastically. If a social worker was sent instead of the cops then Ryan Whitaker would still be alive, and if he needed rehabilitation there would still be the potential for that. You have to think about how these cases play out on an individual level and the worst case scenario, not holistically and assuming nothing goes wrong. Please explain why you think otherwise, I can't read your mind. If you aren't able to explain yourself because your opinion is based on a feeling rather than careful analysis then you are likely to be wrong.

I think your problem is that you are unable to see the difference between a local change (local as in within a constrained set of possibilities) in someone's potential to be rehabilitated versus a global change (global as in within the full set of possibilities). When the cops interact with a suspect there is the possibility where they do not kill him or injure him greatly, and instead book him into the system and perhaps once he is in the system he would be exposed to resources which could rehabilitate him. Therefore since the interaction between the police and the suspect increases the likelihood that the suspect gets exposed to rehabilitation there is a local increase in the suspect's potential to be rehabilitated. I use the word local, because we are talking about a local region of possibilities where the suspect has already interacted with the police and rolled the dice on getting killed or injured which totally eliminate the potential for rehabilitation. On the other hand, if the suspect interacts with a social worker the probability that the suspect is killed or injured is greatly diminished, and the suspect can be exposed to resources for rehabilitation just as they were before. Now with the social worker we have attained a higher potential for rehabilitation than we did in the case where we sent the cops, because we maximized the potential within a global set of possibilities rather than a constrained set where we always send the cops. This is why I asked you if you understand the concept of optimization, you don't seem to. That is why I claim that the potential for an individual suspect to be rehabilitated decreases when they are subject to a risky encounter with law enforcement, since their global potential to be rehabilitated decreases even if it locally increases within the constrained possibilities of the events where an interaction with the police occur.

21 minutes ago, iNow said:

No

If you are making the more general claim that additional interactions between the police and the general public does not lead to a greater amount of negative outcomes, then that already concedes that there would be additional interactions between suspects/criminals (who are a part of the general public) and therefore a greater amount of negative outcomes.

If you are instead using the word outcomes in a holistic sense then you are avoiding my point entirely, since the potential for an individual suspect to be rehabilitated decreases when they are subject to a risky encounter with law enforcement rather than a low risk encounter with a social worker.

minutes ago, iNow said:

I also am not refusing to acknowledge anything. I’m simply poking at obvious holes in your rather remedial and illogical arguments. 

You haven't poked a hole in anything, you just keep making claims without any follow up or justification.

minutes ago, iNow said:

I can explain it to you

You are welcome to start trying. Please bring out the fat crayons, my inferior brain needs all of the help it can get to read your mind because you're too lazy to explain yourself properly.

23 minutes ago, iNow said:

That does not, however, mean additional interactions lead to negative outcomes.

Are you seriously claiming that additional interactions between suspects/criminals and police does not lead to a greater amount of negative outcomes for the suspects/criminals? That's like claiming that additional interactions between wolves and deer does not lead to a greater amount of negative outcomes for the deer. It's just immediately wrong. The police are there to enforce the law. They aren't there to be the suspect's best buddy therapist and help them get their life back on track. That's what social workers do, but social workers won't protect your property.

The entire premise of the "defund the police" movement is that in some cases social workers should be sent to a situation rather than police officers, precisely because it is anticipated that sending officers increases the likelihood of a negative outcome. I am not saying that I agree with the movement, since I value the protection of property, but it is the fundamental premise of the entire debate that the country is having right now. Your refusal to acknowledge that premise puts you at odds with most of the political left in the US at the moment, and you don't seem to care much about protecting property either which puts you at odds with the political right. So you just have a completely odd position which makes little sense.

45 minutes ago, iNow said:

Those outcomes are not a function of how many police there are or how many interactions with police there are. Those outcomes are a function of how the interaction goes and what steps the officers take to de-escalate. 

I’m hearing / reading you just fine, but merely repeating inaccurate points and incorrect assertions doesn’t magically render them valid. 

Perhaps, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with rehabilitation or the original point you were trying (and failing) to make. Stop trying to move the goal posts. 

You are plainly wrong, they are a function of both the number of interactions and how the interactions tend to go. Given what we read in the news and what we know about American cops the interactions can go catastrophically poorly, and those unfortunate cases increase as the number of interactions increase. I don't know where you are planning on getting these angelic cops who never pull the trigger when a seemingly belligerent person answers the door with a gun, but in the real world many of those cops are going to shoot the man no matter how well you train them to use de-escalation techniques. The outcomes are a function of how many interactions there are, the trivial proof being that if there were zero interactions then nobody would ever be shot by a police officer.

Maximizing the protection of property versus maximizing the potential to rehabilitate criminals is exactly the point that I made originally, and is completely consistent with everything I said thereafter. I added the detail about absolute maximization versus constrained maximization because you seemed to be unable to grasp the difference, forgive me for assuming that those concepts were intuitively understood by most people.

2 hours ago, iNow said:

More police bring more people into the system. Rehabilitation begins after the system has been entered. This isn’t exactly rocket science. 

Also, property can be protected in other ways. More police is not the only option. 

You aren't listening. More policing results in more confrontations between police and citizens, resulting in more deaths and injuries for them before they can be booked into any system. Read, this just happened:

https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-gone-rogue/watch-phoenix-cops-kill-man-after-responding-to-noise-complaint-over-video-game-AsvFt-AHpkeQlcgNj5qiTA

Quote

Ryan Whitaker was sitting at home with his girlfriend playing video games when he was killed by police.

A noise complaint from an annoyed neighbor resulted in cops shooting and killing a man within five seconds of him opening his front door.

Ryan Whitaker opened the door holding a gun in his right hand which is legal in Arizona but it made the cops fear for their lives.

However, the cops never gave him a chance to put the gun down which he appeared to be trying to do when one cop shot him in the back three times.

It is astounding to me that you cannot grasp this, perhaps this is rocket science for you. Your claim "Also, property can be protected in other ways. More police is not the only option.", is moot since you made no effort no show that it doesn't concede the point that maximizing the protection of property in an absolute sense likely involves a well funded police force.

There, you see what a proper elucidation of a viewpoint looks like? Now you do that.

5 minutes ago, iNow said:

Of course you can. Why do you keep asserting otherwise?

Do you understand the concept of optimization subject to constraints? Have you ever taken an economics course or a course in optimization techniques (KKT conditions, etc...)? You can maximize something in the absolute sense, or you can maximize it subject to some constraint. Of course you can maximize the rehabilitation of criminals subject to the constraint of first maximizing the protection of property. But if remove that constraint then you could rehabilitate criminals to an even greater degree. I already gave an explanation that the number of police encounters with criminals/suspects increases the number of poor outcomes for the criminals/suspects, thus reducing the opportunity for rehabilitation.

I really have to say, that you have consistently failed to explain your viewpoint demonstrates such contempt and a lack of humility. You may have an unshakable belief in the correctness of your beliefs and the infallibility of your mind, but I do not. Why don't you share your thoughts, as I have so that we can all judge if you are as correct as you think you are?

13 minutes ago, iNow said:

No, it's actually not.

Hmm... I'm surprised it's that low, TBH

If you want to repeat yourself without giving any additional explanation so that I can respond and expand upon my viewpoint I welcome your generosity. It's only your case that suffers.

Any time police arrive interact with criminals, or potential criminals, the criminals/suspects are put in harm's way. They could be shot, injured, or given a criminal record that ruins their chances for employment. Increasing policing will necessarily increase the number of these kinds of encounters. You cannot maximize the protection of property while maximizing the potential to rehabilitate criminals.

You are welcome to explain your viewpoint, I am genuinely curious.

8 minutes ago, iNow said:

No, they are not. You're introducing a false dichotomy.

I've seen you claim something I said was not true at least twice now on these forums, without giving any further explanation. How is that constructive? If you aren't able to explain yourself then your input is almost useless. Justify your beliefs.

It seems patently true to me that increased policing protects property during riots and in general in high crime areas, and that protection of property is maximized when the police are well funded. However more policing is necessarily juxtaposed with rehabilitating criminals since it puts criminals in harms way.

46 minutes ago, Ten oz said:

I do not feel you have defined crime yet.

Crime is arbitrarily defined by whoever possesses a credible threat of force. Aron Nimzowitsch said something to the effect of "The threat is greater than the execution." A crime is any act that is forbidden by some authority that possesses a credible threat of force to enforce their rule. For example, I can draft my own law right now, the drumbo law, anyone who disagrees with me shall be imprisoned. However, since I do not possesses a credible threat of force to enforce that rule you will probably not obey it. On the other hand if I was a dictator and had control of the army and police then you would be much more likely to comply, since I would possess a credible threat of force. Not paying your taxes is a crime, since if you do not your paychecks may be garnished forcefully, if you contravene that somehow then your property may be seized, if you try to contravene that physical force will be used against you to seize your property, and if you try to resist that you may be injured or killed. Therefore not paying your taxes is a crime, since it is enforced by a credible threat of force. The execution controls one man, but the threat controls a million.

Well it's clear that the issue is highly politicized. To discuss it objectively we need to identify a goal. Are we interested in maximizing rehabilitation of criminals or the protection of property? Those are juxtaposed goals, if I owned a lot of property I would want more policing preventing rioting and vandalism from damaging it. If I owned little or no property and also had a soft spot for the downtrodden criminals of the world I might want less policing. It all depends on what you value.

The practical question is, if people that do crime are not responsible for their behavior should we still punish them? Well at the very least we should deter or prevent them from committing crime again, and that can require doing something punitive like imprisoning them. I can't think of a good way to stop a serial killer from murdering people other than keeping them in a secure facility 24/7, regardless of whether or not they are responsible for their behavior.

14 minutes ago, CharonY said:

As mentioned there are only few reports, mostly on cases with positive outcomes.  One by Ding et al. (2020) J Med Vir has not found any more severe clinical indicators.

The numbers of co-infection are based on small sample sizes and depending on how the cohorts are built (e.g. severity of symptoms) the outcome may be biased.

I would like to see more data related to covid-19 and influenza virus co-infection in the US. Can anyone find anything? If it is true that co-infection does not result in more severe symptoms then co-infection numbers cannot be biased due building cohorts by selecting patients with pneumonia symptoms. And vice-versa, if the cohorts are biased due building cohorts by selecting patients with pneumonia symptoms then co-infection does result in more severe symptoms.