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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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Surely you are not suggesting that it’s not possible to reason probabilistically about who is more or less likely to shoplift?

Demographically no, behaviorally on the other hand...

I half suspect that the prog preoccupation with idpol and demographics stems from an underdeveloped sense of social awareness. IE that in lacking the normal predator/danger sense and background theory-of-mind they find themselves defaulting to coarser easier to read signals.

Demographically no

This is false. Some demographics shoplift at drastically higher rates than others. You can never be certain someone is or isn't a shoplifter demographically but you can definitely reason probabilistically.

This is false.

No it is not. At least not with sufficient reliability to be useful. P = 0.5 might be enough to publish if you're working in a particularly "soft" academic field but it don't mean shit in the real world.

  • -19

Where the hell are you getting p=0.5 from? Do you even know what a p value is? A p value is the probability of observing a result at least as far from the mean by random chance if the null hypothesis (in this case the hypothesis that all demographics commit shoplifting equally) was true. We have a ton of data on shoplifting. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of incidents spanning decades all across the country. The data shows a very clear trend that certain age groups (teens and 20's) and certain races (blacks) commit shoplifting at much higher rates than other ages or groups. This isn't some tiny marginal difference that only shows up on large datasets. We're talking double, triple, quadruple the rates. If you were to calculate a p value for this effect it would be astronomically tiny due to the huge sample size and large effect size.

Do you even know what a p value is?

I do and that's the joke. Lies, Damned lies, and Statistics. ;-)

What I'm suggesting is things like "evasive body language" and "baggy coat on a summer day" are far more indicative of "shoplifting" than any demographic quality, but because people raised in a upper-middle class progressive milieu have an underdeveloped sense of social awareness they are less able to read such signals.

  • -15

What I'm suggesting is things like "evasive body language" and "baggy coat on a summer day" are far more indicative of "shoplifting" than any demographic quality,

That's not what you said. You said "demographically, no" when asked whether it was possible to reason probabilistically about who was more likely to shoplift. There is a huge difference between saying that behavioral data gives more information than demographic data and saying that demographic data gives no probabilistic information at all. It sounds like you're backtracking here.

That's not what you said.

No, it's exactly what I said. An unreliable indicator is not a reliable indicator at all.

  • -13

we my not agree on much, but I agree here. I'm not sure where Isometric is getting his data (he supplies none)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4104590/#:~:text=Native%20Americans%20had%20higher%20odds,increased%20the%20risk%20for%20shoplifting.

The overall lifetime prevalence of shoplifting in the general population was 11.3% (95% CI=10.6%–12.1%). The odds of shoplifting were significantly higher in men than in women. Native Americans had higher odds than whites, although blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Americans had lower odds of shoplifting than non-Hispanic whites. Being U.S.-born, never married, or in the youngest cohort (ages 18–29) also increased the risk for shoplifting. S

This is a dead thread months later, but here. Incident reports and shoplifting records from retail firms paint a clear picture.