I think gun folks are touchy about such trivial distinctions because a) they've seen a lot of their fellows sent to prison on the basis of such trivial distinctions, and b) they've heard a lot of ill-informed and consequential public discourse built up on sloppy language and bad terminology (much of it deliberate).
Re: Re: Re: Why not dosomething that actually addresses the problem?
You have completely missed the point. I don't want to sound like a munchkin, but you have really, truly, heatedly, repeatedly, emphatically, dramatically, totally missed the point.
I was not implying that your ideas are the result of inebriation, I was suggesting that you yourself may have some ordinary habits, quite innocuous of themselves, which may well be more prevalent among mass murderers than among the general population, so that by your own logic you should be stripped of your rights. Maybe I should have gone with cigarettes or computer games instead of alcohol, but it never occurred to me that anyone would make such a false leap.
"As I pointed out in another response... yes, many people consult psychiatrists, very few of them go on murderous rampages. But of the people who go on murderous rampages as far as I know every last one of them has been a psychiatric patient. That's a 100% correlation. Don't you think that's something worth taking seriously?"
That is NOT a 100% correlation by any mathematical definition of "correlation" I've ever heard of, and in any case it's a lousy test for murderous lunatics; its false positive rate is huge.
Honestly, your argument seems to be based on three things:
1) You look down on people who have gone to psychiatrists (in the other thread you cite, you refer to them as "the crazy, dangerous ones" --or else you're using words in such a way that they have no meaning at all).
2) You do not consider possession of guns to be an important right (and you haven't even tried to address my questions above, about what other rights psychiatric patients should lose).
3) You are willing to pass a law to strip the people you look down on of a right you don't care about, based on ludicrous overestimation of the predictive power of an extremely weak indicator.
I was trying to rebut by pointing out that by your own logic you could lose rights that you do care about because of harmless things you do, but maybe I was wasting my time.
When someone points out that your statistic is wrong, instead of trying to correct it, you quote a different statistic. And you're starting to argue by anecdote...
"...In fear of what others might report about you, you stoned the woman when your heart revolted at the act... There were sixty-eight people there, and sixty-two of them had no more desire to throw a stone than you had. Oh, it's true. I know your race. It is made up of sheep... It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it... Speaking as an expert, I know that ninety- nine out of a hundred of your race were strongly against the killing of witches when that foolishness was first agitated by a handful of pious lunatics in the long ago. And I know that even to-day, after ages of transmitted prejudice and silly teaching, only one person in twenty puts any real heart into the harrying of a witch. And yet apparently everybody hates witches and wants them killed. Some day a handful will rise up on the other side and make the most noise--perhaps even a single daring man with a big voice and a determined front will do it--and in a week all the sheep will wheel and follow him, and witch-hunting will come to a sudden end."
--Satan, "The Mysterious Stranger", Samuel Clemens
The emotional approach has always been strong in politics, but I think that's finally starting to change, thanks to information technology. Decades ago the popular story would fill the front pages and the radio and TV dials, and those who doubted its validity would feel isolated and embarrassed, and keep quiet. (The alternative, stories from political extremists, would be even worse.) But now we can easily look up the facts for ourselves, and find online communities that discuss these things rationally.
When I first read "The Mysterious Stranger", it occurred to me that they could have stopped the stoning, if they'd only had an anonymous communication protocol.
"Tens of thousands of Americans are murdered every year with guns,..."
The CDC says you're exaggerating. Where do you get your statistics?
"If [armed citizens could stop crime], they would. Instead, they don't. In the dozens upon dozens of mass gun slayings catalogued by the Brady foundation, there wasn't a single incidence of intervention by an armed citizen."
Do I really have to point out the logical fallacy there? Try it like this: "In the tens of thousands of cases in which gun owners have intervened to prevent crime, not one has become a mass slaying that made it into the annals of the Brady Foundation."
There may be a case you can make for stricter gun control, but this isn't it. Statistics, like guns, should not be handled by people who don't know what they're doing.
Re: Why not dosomething that actually addresses the problem?
This is the "connect the dots" fallacy. Many people own guns legally, very few of them go on murderous rampages. Many people consult psychiatrists, very few of them go on murderous rampages. For heaven's sake, didn't we all just read an article about overestimating the danger of rare and spectacular events?
To put it another way, what rights do you think you should lose if you go to a psychiatrist? Should you be denied knives, matches and rope? Should the police impound your car, and search your home for razor blades and drain cleaner? Should you be barred from schools, playgrounds and places of worship? Should you be locked up? And for how long after you stop going to a psychiatrist should these reasonable safety measures be maintained?
Rats, you're right. I meant to say "column", and even then I was thinking of something like stone(*). A platform suspended by a cable would have been even better, but I was trying not to be too wordy.
Are you sure you didn't just read others' comments and decide to jump on the wagon?
As for your implication that I'll never be excellent at math, well, I haven't won a Fields Medal, but I did figure out an 11-state minimal-time solution to the Firing Squad Problem (without looking up anyone else's solutions(*)). It took me about two weeks, which is less time than it originally took the community, but then I had the advantage of having studied parts of quantum field theory which didn't exist in the 60's.
Also, I would bet everything I have that my math (general) SAT scaled score was not lower than yours.
(*) If you haven't heard of it and want to try it, don't go to wikipedia.
Who's going to carry the explosive vest through security, to give it to the boy after he's gone through security?
If getting explosives past security is trivial, then what does it matter whether there's an 11-year-old involved?
If an 11-year-old can work some kind of jedi-mind-trick attack on security, then what prevents terrorists from bringing him to the airport and buying him a ticket?
Aviation security expert Chris Yates said: “This was a lapse but I don't believe this was a serious security breach. Anybody who passes through Manchester Airport must be screened whether that is through a full body scanner or a metal detector. That did happen in this instance.
This makes so much sense that I suspect this man doesn't actually work for airport security.
Their job was to prevent weapons and explosives from getting onto the plane, and that's what they did. Preventing people from flying without buying tickets is a separate problem, with simpler economics since it has nothing to do with safety. (Let's not get into the idiocy of the No-Fly List.)
I'd like to suggest another hypothesis: the censor didn't actually think that those paragraphs were "inappropriate or defamatory", but just didn't want to go to the trouble of following all those links, reading all those articles-- and taking the risk of declaring them all completely free of evil words.
On the post: Honest Mistake: Order A TV From Amazon, Receive An Illegal Assault Rifle
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Honest Mistake: Order A TV From Amazon, Receive An Illegal Assault Rifle
it's like "theft" vs. "infringement"
On the post: Honest Mistake: Order A TV From Amazon, Receive An Illegal Assault Rifle
life imitates art imitating dada
On the post: Apple's Argument: Samsung Could Have Made Its Phone Large, Thick, Bumpy, Sharp-Edged & Hexagonal
Re: New Samsung Range of Phones
On the post: Apple's Argument: Samsung Could Have Made Its Phone Large, Thick, Bumpy, Sharp-Edged & Hexagonal
correllation vs. causation
On the post: Study Links Violent Video Games And The 'Macbeth Effect'
Control group? What control group?
On the post: When Every Practical Economic Idea Is Political Suicide, Something's Wrong With Politics
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hmmm
On the post: Why Tragedies Result In Overreactions: 'Our Brains Aren't Very Good At Risk Analysis'
Re: Re: Re: Why not dosomething that actually addresses the problem?
I was not implying that your ideas are the result of inebriation, I was suggesting that you yourself may have some ordinary habits, quite innocuous of themselves, which may well be more prevalent among mass murderers than among the general population, so that by your own logic you should be stripped of your rights. Maybe I should have gone with cigarettes or computer games instead of alcohol, but it never occurred to me that anyone would make such a false leap.
"As I pointed out in another response... yes, many people consult psychiatrists, very few of them go on murderous rampages. But of the people who go on murderous rampages as far as I know every last one of them has been a psychiatric patient. That's a 100% correlation. Don't you think that's something worth taking seriously?"
That is NOT a 100% correlation by any mathematical definition of "correlation" I've ever heard of, and in any case it's a lousy test for murderous lunatics; its false positive rate is huge.
Honestly, your argument seems to be based on three things:
1) You look down on people who have gone to psychiatrists (in the other thread you cite, you refer to them as "the crazy, dangerous ones" --or else you're using words in such a way that they have no meaning at all).
2) You do not consider possession of guns to be an important right (and you haven't even tried to address my questions above, about what other rights psychiatric patients should lose).
3) You are willing to pass a law to strip the people you look down on of a right you don't care about, based on ludicrous overestimation of the predictive power of an extremely weak indicator.
I was trying to rebut by pointing out that by your own logic you could lose rights that you do care about because of harmless things you do, but maybe I was wasting my time.
On the post: Why Tragedies Result In Overreactions: 'Our Brains Aren't Very Good At Risk Analysis'
Re: Re: Re: Gun Violence Is Not Rare
I will not play whac-a-mole, thank you.
On the post: Why Tragedies Result In Overreactions: 'Our Brains Aren't Very Good At Risk Analysis'
Re: Stories versus data
--Satan, "The Mysterious Stranger", Samuel Clemens
The emotional approach has always been strong in politics, but I think that's finally starting to change, thanks to information technology. Decades ago the popular story would fill the front pages and the radio and TV dials, and those who doubted its validity would feel isolated and embarrassed, and keep quiet. (The alternative, stories from political extremists, would be even worse.) But now we can easily look up the facts for ourselves, and find online communities that discuss these things rationally.
When I first read "The Mysterious Stranger", it occurred to me that they could have stopped the stoning, if they'd only had an anonymous communication protocol.
On the post: Why Tragedies Result In Overreactions: 'Our Brains Aren't Very Good At Risk Analysis'
Re: Gun Violence Is Not Rare
The CDC says you're exaggerating. Where do you get your statistics?
"If [armed citizens could stop crime], they would. Instead, they don't. In the dozens upon dozens of mass gun slayings catalogued by the Brady foundation, there wasn't a single incidence of intervention by an armed citizen."
Do I really have to point out the logical fallacy there? Try it like this: "In the tens of thousands of cases in which gun owners have intervened to prevent crime, not one has become a mass slaying that made it into the annals of the Brady Foundation."
There may be a case you can make for stricter gun control, but this isn't it. Statistics, like guns, should not be handled by people who don't know what they're doing.
On the post: Why Tragedies Result In Overreactions: 'Our Brains Aren't Very Good At Risk Analysis'
Re: Why not dosomething that actually addresses the problem?
To put it another way, what rights do you think you should lose if you go to a psychiatrist? Should you be denied knives, matches and rope? Should the police impound your car, and search your home for razor blades and drain cleaner? Should you be barred from schools, playgrounds and places of worship? Should you be locked up? And for how long after you stop going to a psychiatrist should these reasonable safety measures be maintained?
Do you drink, perchance?...
On the post: California Bet 2% Of Its Budget On Facebook's Stock Price Remaining High
Re: How about...
Wait...
On the post: California Bet 2% Of Its Budget On Facebook's Stock Price Remaining High
Re:
On the post: Would US Education Be Better If We Replaced Algebra Requirements With Stats & Logic?
Re: Re: my intuition tells me...
(*) Or tortoises, but that's a different story.
On the post: Would US Education Be Better If We Replaced Algebra Requirements With Stats & Logic?
Re: Re: Re: Re: my intuition tells me...
As for your implication that I'll never be excellent at math, well, I haven't won a Fields Medal, but I did figure out an 11-state minimal-time solution to the Firing Squad Problem (without looking up anyone else's solutions(*)). It took me about two weeks, which is less time than it originally took the community, but then I had the advantage of having studied parts of quantum field theory which didn't exist in the 60's.
Also, I would bet everything I have that my math (general) SAT scaled score was not lower than yours.
(*) If you haven't heard of it and want to try it, don't go to wikipedia.
On the post: Eleven Year Old Kid Shows That Modern Airport Security Is Not As Secure A You Think
Re: 11 year old suicide bombers
Who's going to carry the explosive vest through security, to give it to the boy after he's gone through security?
If getting explosives past security is trivial, then what does it matter whether there's an 11-year-old involved?
If an 11-year-old can work some kind of jedi-mind-trick attack on security, then what prevents terrorists from bringing him to the airport and buying him a ticket?
On the post: Eleven Year Old Kid Shows That Modern Airport Security Is Not As Secure A You Think
cost-benefit analysis
This makes so much sense that I suspect this man doesn't actually work for airport security.
Their job was to prevent weapons and explosives from getting onto the plane, and that's what they did. Preventing people from flying without buying tickets is a separate problem, with simpler economics since it has nothing to do with safety. (Let's not get into the idiocy of the No-Fly List.)
On the post: Eleven Year Old Kid Shows That Modern Airport Security Is Not As Secure A You Think
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: UK Government Censors Copyright Consultation Submission About How Awful Collection Societies Are
never attribute to malice...
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