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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
As someone interested in true crime, this is fascinating:
FBI arrests man in Jan. 6 DC pipe bomber investigation, sources say
Jan 6th pipe bomber arrested
This concludes a five year investigation.
My biggest question, and the question on others' mind is, how was he caught when there is apparently so little evidence? A grainy video, a sneaker brand, and that was it pretty much it. The FBI has even outdone the 4chan geolocators, which describes a community of online sleuths who “dox” targets by analyzing geographic details such as weather patterns, cloud formations, and other environmental cues in photos, who were unable to identify him (of course, the FBI has much more resources, evidence and extralegal powers).
The gait analysis pegged a Capitol Police officer. No movement for years, then outsider media identifies a suspect independently, and within a month a different patsy is suddenly identified and arrested.
If you couldn't tell, I'm skeptical.
Looping in @netstack, @Quantumfreakonomics, and @greyenlightenment
I discussed this when the case first came out, and while I said at the time that I didn't need to get into the deep dive I did on gait analysis while at the DMV, it's apparent that I now do. First, to reiterate, when they say 94% match or whatever, what they're saying is that they measure certain features of gait like knee flexion angle and come up with a profile. If 6% of the population is expected to have a similar gait profile, then it would be a 94% match because it theoretically excludes 94% of the population. The reason I went through all the categories of description in my previous post was to demonstrate that anything below 90% isn't even really a match, and anything below 99% is of extremely limited utility. Identifying the suspect is a black female is a 94% match right there, because about 12% of the population is black and half of those are female. Given that the comment was well-received without much pushback and awarded an AAQC, I naively thought that I had made my case, evidently I was wrong. So let's get into why that 94% or 98% is bullshit in and of itself:
Forensic gait analysis relies on the assumption that every person has a unique or nearly unique gait. While this may be true, the extent to which we can determine that it is true is limited by the accuracy with which we can make the relevant measurements. There is currently no evidence to support this assertion.
In some cases, the level of accuracy is not good to begin with if relying on video. For instance, I read about one angle that we could accurately measure to within five degrees. But the total normal variation was seven degrees.
Most of the available research into gait was conducted in a clinical setting. Most of what we know about normal gait comes from studies where we were comparing broadly-defined normal gait to abnormal gait, not from studies where we were looking to categorize subtle differences among normal gaits. This second kind of research has been limited.
There is accordingly no credible database that allows us to assess the frequency of either normal or abnormal gait characteristics.
In the research that exists (which is again mostly clinical), the subjects are analyzed walking at a designated speed indoors, barefoot, wearing minimal clothing to facilitate measurement, are well lit, and are photographed from fixed angles. In other words, the process is standardized.
This standardization, however, is limited to the individual experiment. There is no industry-wide standardized methodology for analyzing, comparing, and reporting gait characteristics.
Gait characteristics are usually dependent, i.e. someone with Characteristic A may be more likely to have Characteristic B. For example, if statistics show that 1 in 17 people have their right knee pointing inwards and 1 in 17 have their right foot pointing inwards, it may be tempting to say that 1 in 238 have both pointing inwards. But in the study I pulled that number from, 1 in 27 had both pointing inwards. Unless we can determine the level of dependence for each gait characteristic, we have to treat any frequency estimates with caution.
Gait on an individual can change over time based on: Walking speed, evenness of surface, grade, footwear, whether the person is carrying something, whether the person is trying to avoid obstacles (as in a crowd), minor injuries/aches and pains, clothing, how tired the person is, and even whether they're talking on a cell phone.
The best available method to determine the reliability of gait analysis would be to conduct a study where various practitioners would view video footage similar to what is used in court proceedings. Some clips would be paired with the same individual and others would be paired with different individuals. The results would then be used to calculate false positive and false negative rates. No such study has ever been conducted.
The only similar study that was ever done asked seven "experienced analysts" to match one individual from five examples. The failure rate was 29%.
Ideally, sample data should be reviewed by three independent experts. Expert A reviews the reference sample, Expert B reviews the comparison sample, and Expert C performs the comparison. Ideally, the reference sample should be of the suspect walking in a standardized manner.
Take all that into consideration and further consider that we don't even have a reference sample here. We're talking about two different surveillance videos of varying quality, in one of which the suspect is intentionally wearing bulky clothing, is carrying a backpack, and is moseying at varying speed along a vacant sidewalk. In the other, the accused woman is in a police uniform with all the police accessories wearing different footwear and working in a crowded area. The Blaze hasn't posted the video they're using for comparison, only screenshots of it, and those look like they were taken at an entirely different angle than the surveillance video of the suspect. And they also apparently use video of her playing soccer to make the comparison. I checked my copy of the SEAK, Inc. Expert Witness Directory, and it doesn't have a heading for forensic gait analysts. It has a heading for gait, but most of those are the kind of person you hire if your gait has been affected by a car crash or medical malpractice. The few I could find all had backgrounds in podiatry, orthopedics, neurology, or some related medical field. I don't know what background the "veteran analyst" for The Blaze had because they don't tell us who he is. They don't produce an expert report. They don't even have him discuss the analysis other than mentioning that it's "closer to a 98 percent match". It's not clear who this bozo is or what he did.
And if you're still not convinced that all of this is complete bullshit, keep in mind that this story didn't disappear as soon as we turned over to a new Culture War Roundup. It turns out that Ms. Kerkhoff was already the object of far-right MAGA fringe ire, as she fired pepper balls into the crowd on January 6 and testified in related prosecutions, and has the distinction of being the first witness to testify in the first January 6 prosecution. Her name was not selected at random. In fact, someone had already submitted a tip to her employer and she was placed on administrative leave while the FBI investigated. The FBI had, in fact, cleared her, before the story even ran. She was quickly able to produce video of herself playing with her dogs the night the bombs were planted, and that was the end of it as far as the FBI was concerned. Beck himself, who hyped the story in advance as being among the biggest in his lifetime, was walking it back by Monday, refusing to name the woman on his podcast, reminding listeners that a match did not equal guilt, and saying that she was still a private citizen who was innocent until proven guilty. I think it's safe to say that this story is dead.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link