swansont

Some things have to be done at the WH level, because presidential authority is required. Compelling companies to do certain manufacturing, for instance.

https://www.wave3.com/2020/07/28/kentucky-town-hires-social-workers-instead-more-officers-results-are-surprising/ "Instead of hiring an additional officer and taking on the added expenses of equipping that officer, the police chief at the time hired a social worker to respond in tandem with officers. ... Instead of working at another agency and waiting for a referral from a police department after a crisis, Pompilio works side-by-side with officers to respond as calls come in. ... After four years on the job, Pompilio said there has been a significant drop in repeat 911 calls with approximately 15 percent fewer people going to jail." They saved $45,000 - $50,000 year, from reducing the policing burden and because they didn't have to spend money on all the peripherals a police officer needs

You shouldn’t speak for others Nobody has claimed otherwise It depends on the details. I would think some information can be obtained. Are you going to answer my question about what you mean by experiment (and pure experiment)? Or can we expect the tap-dance to continue? We understand that mass (Newton) and more specifically energy-momentum (Einstein) cause gravity. You are moving the goalposts. We were discussing testing whether an axiom was true, not whether they are the simplest ones. Simple may be a goal, but it’s not a requirement. We might find one day e.g. that an axiom can actually be experimentally confirmed - that does not make it wrong. Science is concerned with testing its models to see if they explain how nature behaves. Observation is part of that process.

None, of this clarifies what you mean by "experiment" (or worse, "pure experiment" — what is a "pure experiment"?) and why observations don't count under that category. If I observe cloud-chamber tracks and identify particles, is that an experiment? And to extend this: every new observation/experiment is a test of the validity of the axioms. So even though an axiom can't be proven true (which is something one must deal with in math) in science you can potentially falsify anything you have provisionally accepted as being true.

Drakes has been banned as a sockpuppet of Delberty

! Moderator Note Please stick to the topic

That’s a very narrow view of “experiment”

That's not really helpful, nor is it consistent with "things that are bad to the species, individuals, or the commonweal." You were obviously describing effects and not the philosophy itself. And if this is the stance, instead of "good" perhaps we describe it as "valid" so that we are separating ourselves from subjective descriptions. To first order this is probably a decent distinction

motlan suspended for spamming us with variations on rigor-free time reversal ideas

We shouldn't ponder things that might be bad? How else do you prevent them from happening? Isn't pondering bad things that you might prevent them good for the species? Having knowledge and using knowledge are two different things. Which brings us back to the poll. I would divide things between useful and not-useful. Good and bad are somewhat arbitrary distinctions. Eise mentioned fission. I'll make it simpler: the knife. Is it good or bad? People use it as a weapon, but surgeons use it to save lives. A lot of people use them to prepare food. I don't think you'll ever get a clear answer because good vs bad is too simplistic a distinction and driven by context, IMO. "Unchecked by philosophical concerns" doesn't cut it, I think. You can't know the results of an experiment when you are delving into new territory, and can't know how people will use the resulting scientific knowledge. All we know is "here be dragons" probably applies.

IDoNotCare has been suspended for multiple rules violations, including abusive posts and soapboxing

Holding people as the ultimate good sounds like bad philosophy.

There are sci-fi short stories based on this. Niven wrote one called All the Myriad Ways, but I was thinking of another - the synopsis doesn’t jibe with my recollection of the story I was thinking about.

In the US one can be licensed to carry a firearm and there are a number of places that have “open carry” laws, so from a legal standpoint, I don’t think you can say that carrying a weapon can be construed to imply intent to do harm. (not that the police follow this; see e.g. Philando Castile)

Gallup itself is telling us that these results may not be reliable. They tested just over 1000 people all across the country. Fine, that gives you the 4% margin of error, it's (largely) statistical. But that doesn't guarantee it's free from bias. They polled people spread out in different time zones, meaning that any given city, town or village may have only gotten one call, and many got none. There are ~300 medium-size cities (pop>100,000) and a few with a million or more. There are almost 15,000 smaller cities and towns. They only polled a small fraction of places. What you're hoping for is that these people they reached are representative of the country. Are they? At any given location, there are only one or two respondents to the poll - this may very well not be representative. Let me ask this: if you call in the evening, who is more likely to be at home: the person scared to go out, or the person not scared to go out? That's not going to bias land-line results? If the calls were random, who is more likely to get a call, a person in a small town, or a person in a big city? Is the safety factor the same? Central Park in NYC is famous for being unsafe after dark How many people live within 1 mile of the park? Half a million? Does that skew the results at all?

At what value of "violent crimes per 10,000 population" do you consider it safe? I notice that nowhere do they cite crime statistics. Also that a higher percentage of people in the last two decades feel safer than they did in the 70s and 80s (also, as to the survey methods...I have questions)

You cited violent crime statistics without showing any correlation to feeling safe, so that does not answer the question. You also didn't address my question of what value it becomes safe.

It's a legitimate question. How about answering it? Some fraction of these crimes happen in the home, and have nothing to do with being able to safely walk down the street. What is the threshold value of crime rate for being safe to walk down the street?

But if we had better social services, wouldn't the prevalence of such people be reduced? Obviating the need for some of the police?

I’ve seen that attitude elsewhere, and have no reason to think it’s smaller in a profession where it can be exercised as part of the job. I think what’s more damaging is the enabling attitude that gives us the thin blue line. That behavior I have seen, when I was in the military. Covering for a comrade’s bad behaviors instead of doing your duty. So when someone behaves badly, the system fails to expose the culprit, and people fail as well. Can you clarify who are the out of control, hostile ones in this? Aggressive policing is one of the systemic problems.

We’re not talking about a process. We’re talking about the possible configurations that make up one state. Statistical mechanics, not classical thermodynamics. Do you understand why he says “of course” here? To separate this from the previous sentence, where he talks about spontaneous change. Because they aren’t the same thing.

There’s no compression. You keep trying to recast this in terms of some other (probably familiar) problem, which is why you don’t end up at the answer in the book. (which is what my earlier explanation was trying to highlight - no compression needed for the one-ball case.) But I was responding to your claim that work is required for the gas CoM to change, and that’s not the case (the container has mass), which is something one is expected to learn in first-semester physics. Your objection has no basis in physics. But that’s not all he said. He invoked it if you were preparing that state, as opposed to a spontaneous fluctuation. He made a clear (IMO) distinction.

You need to go back and study first-semester physics. No work is necessary.

I'm not convinced you can effectively do the former, but I agree with the latter. As I said above, accountability is one of the main parts of the reform that is needed.

I disagree with this. There are too many people who want power over others, and don't wield it responsibility. The police are a magnet for such people. Your experience is likely with people who joined that culture willingly. Getting martial arts training foisted upon you does not mean you have joined that culture. Just like training in other aspects of society — workplace training on e.g. sexual harassment and sexual assault hasn't won everyone over to a culture that respects women, for similar reasons. (feel free to substitute other culture subsets for that) This is one reason the focus has been on attempts at fixing systemic problems and holding people accountable. You might not prevent one instance of excessive force by an individual, but if you don't tolerate such behavior, you might be able to prevent the next 20 instances the individual might have perpetrated, because they will no longer be on the police force.