site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31793 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

10
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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 don't think that poverty or inequality substantially explains crime, and a while ago a wrote a long post explaining why: https://devinhelton.com/inequality-crime

The most compelling evidence to me is just the existence of so many communities that are far poorer or more unequal than poor areas in America, while having extremely low rates of crime -- whether this be the slums of Edwardian England, post-war South Korea, Chinatown in old San Francisco, or the peasant areas of contemporary China. By any objective standards (such as calories and protein the average person can afford) these places were way poorer than the ghetto in a modern American city. Yet the crime rates were below that of modern America as a whole.

The second most compelling branch of evidence is the failure of policy based on the "poverty causes crime" thesis. We have foodstamps, government housing, and formerly had "general assistance" specifically to pull people out of the worst of poverty. And these public housing buildings became notorious for extreme high rates of crime, worse crime than is recorded in many far more impoverished areas.

Any link between poverty and crime is probably mostly the inverse -- the prevalence of anti-social habits and behaviors that create high-crime, also make for bad employees and make a community a bad place to build wealth.

I don't think simple "studies" will ever convince anyone, as I show in my post, there can always be accusations of confounders and cherry-picking. One actually has to make an attempt to read a variety of quantitative and qualitative sources and really try to understand the world.

One sophistic tactic I see in this debate, is to abuse the word "poverty." So people will admit that there are many food-poor populations will have low crime, but say that "poverty" is much more than that. For instance the UN defined poverty as:

Fundamentally, poverty is a denial of choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. It means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society. It means not having enough to feed and cloth[e] a family, not having a school or clinic to go to, not having the land on which to grow one’s food or a job to earn one’s living, not having access to credit. It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and communities. It means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living on marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or sanitation.”

Note that "susceptibility to violence", ie crime, gets baked into the definition of poverty, so the link between crime and violence becomes tautological!

Note that by making the definition of poverty basically "all bad things", it becomes a great blender where any bad thing gets linked to poverty and then pretty much any NGO or government agency that has a mandate to tackle some specific issue is also addressing poverty. So the argument becomes, if you want to address crime, just expand the budget for all the things that the government is doing ...

whether this be the slums of Edwardian England

Which were an improvement upon their predecessors, the rookeries of London. There was a concerted public campaign of private benevolent do-goodery, social agitation, the government instituting slum clearance policies, and an improvement in the economy which helped alleviate poverty somewhat:

At their zenith, they were a problem that seemed impossible to solve, yet eventually they did decline. Changes in the law, the growing effectiveness of the police, slum clearances, and perhaps the growing prosperity of the economy gradually had their effect.

Comparing Edwardian slums to 21st century inner city American ghettos is also not comparing like-with-like. For instance the claim that increased policing made crime rates drop:

Violent crime was not as much of a concern in 1901 as it is today and was seen as falling. A report by the Criminal Registrar, published in 1901, noted that the period had 'witnessed a great change in manners: the substitution of words…for blows…an approximation in the manners of different classes; a decline in the spirit of lawlessness'. This was partly due to policing: the historian V.A.C. Gatrell has argued, in his article in The Cambridge Social History of Britain, that the Edwardian working classes were heavily regulated and that the falling indictable crime rate between 1860 and 1914 reflected a period when policing was able to obtain 'a peculiar and transient advantage…over ancient forms of popular lawlessness visible on the street'.

And imprisonment rates ≠ crime rates:

In 1901, imprisonment was the commonest form of punishment; at the time this could involve hard labour. 199,875 people were sent to prison in 1901, nearly 75% of whom were men. Statistics for 1900 show that 52% of those convicted of indictable offences were sent to prison, a proportion that would fall to 18% by 1950, but rise again to 23% in 1998. Fines were imposed on 22% of such offenders in 1900 and a further 9% were punished by whipping.

In 1901, juvenile offenders could be sent to reformatories or industrial schools (replaced by borstals in 1908). Stockport Industrial School admitted 32 children aged between 9 and 13 in 1901 for offences such as 'frequenting company of reputed thieves'; 'beyond [parental] control; 'larceny'; 'found habitually wandering and not under proper control'; 'stealing rabbits'; 'non-attendance [at school]'; and 'refractory in workhouse'.

And what types of crime are we measuring? And how, and by whom, are they prosecuted?

Crime, 1780-1925

As with all periods in history, there were many illegal acts which could, if detected (and the perpetrator was prosecuted) appear as "crimes". However, the vast majority of crimes were never prosecuted. Modern historians can sometimes study unprosecuted acts of violence or theft, but this is more difficult for historians of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Many acts we would describe as crimes today - sexual predation or domestic violence, for instance - were largely unprosecuted before the mid-nineteenth century, as were many minor property offences. We cannot, therefore, estimate the number of domestic violence incidents that took place. In fact, we can only determine the number of prosecuted crimes from 1856 onwards, when annual statistics were published.

The vast majority of crimes prosecuted between 1780 and 1925 were property offences, and many of these offences, including larceny, pickpocketing, burglary, and robbery, changed little. But there are some significant differences in the commission of crime and the apprehension of offenders that took place over the period covered.

So, the numbers and types of crimes that were prosecuted relied on an active victim who was determined to take the cases to court. We have to remember that victims of crime had many options. They could come to terms with the perpetrator, and accept money in damages or compensation (a process known as compounding). Employers could sack workers who stole their workplace materials. Victims of assault could use physical retribution themselves; violent husbands could be subject to "Rough Music" (community sanctions) in their neighbourhood.

The crimes that did not make it into court tell us as much as the crimes that did, but it is the latter which the evidence forces us to focus on. We can see what kinds of crimes people thought were worth prosecution, and who brought those cases to court. Unfortunately, this tends to skew our view of the type and amount of crimes that predominated. It was not until the mid-nineteenth century that the government published annual crime statistics. Although these were deeply flawed, it is possible to see how crime (or prosecution) trends were presented, and determine why the Victorian State and the general public reacted to apparent outbreaks of crime at particular times.

The years between the 1880s and 1930 has been characterized as the era of the “Policeman State” by Vic Gatrell (1992). Over this time, the police slowly grew to exert a powerful influence over recorded crime through the centrality of their role in the detection and prosecution process. They effectively replaced the victim in court, taking the main role as both the apprehenders and prosecutors of criminality. This affected prosecutions for violence, especially, and they fell dramatically. For example, in England and Wales, assault prosecutions fell from about 75,000 in 1870 to just over 22,000 by 1930. The much-vaunted English miracle of reducing violent crime was, more likely, a function of the changes in the way offenders were brought to court.

If violent crime did appear to be falling, it did not prevent the public (or the newspapers) reporting on a number of crime-related panics in the mid- to late nineteenth century.

Thus, when you are looking at "crime rates in Edwardian England" and comparing them with "crime rates in US ghetto", you are comparing a period which was the result of what had been a sustained and prolonged effort to reduce crime, the rise of an increasingly professional police force, changes in prosecution, changes in imprisonment, and the general social and economic improvements. In other words, the "after" photo in a "before and after" comparison.

Thus, when you are looking at "crime rates in Edwardian England" and comparing them with "crime rates in US ghetto", you are comparing a period which was the result of what had been a sustained and prolonged effort to reduce crime, the rise of an increasingly professional police force, changes in prosecution, changes in imprisonment, and the general social and economic improvements.

That is my point -- policing, prosecution, along with general morality and habits instilled by family and community -- is what matters for crime. The level of material well-being matters much less, if at all, it is rounding error compared to other factors.

Sure, but that is not the same as "District A has income of $10,000 per family, District B has income of $15,000 per family. District B is better-off compared to District A, but District A has a lower crime rate, therefore poverty is not the reason".

If crimes are not being reported in District A, then the true rate is higher. If there are more cops on beat patrol in District A, then there is a disincentive to commit crime. If District A is newly built council housing and District B is an uncleared slum, same. A lot of factors can go into "District A has less crime than District B". Think of the infamous bike cuck cartoon - if people in San Francisco no longer bother reporting bike theft, car break-ins, shoplifting and the like, then simply looking at 'reported rates' or 'arrests made' could lead someone in the future to think "One hundred years ago, San Francisco had less crime than modern Brownville" (if they didn't have access to all the media about how crime is running rampant, etc.)

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats