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Notes -
I got into a discussion with someone regarding whether poverty was sufficient to explain disparate crime rates between different ethnicities. To this end, I ended up citing https://www.city-journal.org/poverty-and-violent-crime-dont-go-hand-in-hand this study, which goes into the poverty level of NYC of different ethnicities, and their crime rate. It demonstrated that although Asians had higher rates of poverty in NYC, compared to even African Americans, their crime rate remained the lowest of the various ethnicities studied.
The response of the person was 1) that because NYC was the 'wealthiest city in the US', the city was not going to be representative of the average American. Specifically, he stated "I think if you extrapolate data from the outliers (the highest cost of living city) onto the average American, then you are trying to "smuggle in hidden confounders" which is why I have an issue with your study." Later on, he also noted that 2) the study was not conducted over a long period of time, but rather only looking at data from 2020. Therefore, it could be a temporary effect.
My response to his criticism was pointing out that when trying to see whether there are differences between different groups, it isn't necessarily important for the individuals studies to be the centered around the "average" individual per say. What's important is that the individuals studied all have been subjected to the same incentives and forces which cause this deviation from the average. That way, their effects cancel out, unless we can see some specific reason for there to be an unequal effect on each ethnicity.
Yes, NY is a non-modal city, but the influences that fact has should equally affect white people, black people, and asian people. Therefore, whatever distortion NYC has by its citizens being on average richer, shouldn't matter, because 1) we are explicitly looking at comparative income/poverty level, and there are still poor people in NYC, and 2) the effects cancel out because everyone in NYC being subjected to the special circumstances of NYC.
This in fact makes the study better than a 'naive' use of survey data across the US, because Asian people, Black people, and white people are distributed unevenly across the country, and in fact a more general survey would be liable to confounders like rural vs urban location, north vs south, etc., whereas studying a single city would in fact be a superior methodology.
We never got to actually discuss whether the data being from 2020 was sufficient to ignore the study. I suppose it could have gone to talking about the effects of Covid on crime, especially hate crimes, but the conversation was unable to get even close to this.
On reflection, (since the conversation I had was very unsatisfying with the guy), I wanted to see whether that logic was actually sound, or if in fact it was just me sounding good in the moment.
I also was wondering if people had other similar studies which demonstrated that poverty was not sufficient to explain variable crime rates across ethnicities, especially when it comes to Asians and Asian Americans.
I'm actually pretty interested in this line of questioning, and debating the merits of this in and of itself. I wonder, is this line of reasoning ("what would it take for you to change your mind") questionable in some way? On the surface, I like it a lot, because it tries to operationalize the conversation, make it productive.
But really, do people really know what it would take for them to change their mind? Should people honestly really be able to know what it'd take for them to change their mind, or is it something that no human can really access? In which case, this line of augmentation ends up looking more like some form of sophistry, like "arguments as soldiers" or something. It can just become an excuse to say that your opponent is irrational, even if they're acting the same as you would in a comparable situation. After all, I don't think it's usually hard to find individual studies that support anyone's foregone conclusions, and most people wouldn't change their mind after seeing one, or even several studies contradicting their closely held beliefs, and I'm not sure they should be expected to (See Beware the man of one study and Epistemic learned helplessness).
So as much as I dislike what I personally deem to be irrationality on the left and refusal to change their minds when presented with data, I do also feel like I dislike when this approach is taken towards me, and that this form of argumentation may be making isolated demands for rigor. What do others think?
As I often point out, getting the phrasing exactly right is like writing a computer program and having it work perfectly on all inputs without you ever editing it after you write it. It can happen, but I wouldn't count on it.
The answer to "what would change your mind on X" should always be "I can't tell you because I am no good at phrasing things without loopholes". (It's similar to why it's a bad idea to bet on X; you're no good at phrasing the bet without loopholes.)
If you're playing fair and won't treat it as a gotcha if they can explain why you've found a loophole, and you don't demand absolute submission, you can ask "what would get you to at least consider...."
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No, but most devoted ideologues will just give an impossible standard. Or if you meet their standard, will relentlessly nitpick to justify why it doesn't really meet their standard. It sounds like it should work, but it won't -- a lot of beliefs are just immune to reason because they were never formed from reason in the first place.
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