The two of you seem to be talking past each other, so I think it would be useful if you both stepped back and stated in specific, concrete terms, what position you’re actually arguing for.
kodos96
Karma: 818
??? Ok, skipping over the bizarre irrationality of your making that assumption in the first place, now that I’ve clarified the situation and told you in no uncertain terms that I am NOT planning on conducting such an experiment (other than inside my head), are you saying you think I’m lying? You sincerely believe that I literally have a pen and paper in front of me, and I’m going through MixedNuts’s comment history and writing out sacred names for each occurance of “G-d”? Do you actually believe that? Or are you pulling our collective leg?
In the event that you do actually believe that, what kind of evidence might I provide that would change your mind? Or is this an unfalsifiable belief?
Thank you for your well-researched response.
it might be the case that the methodology in that study is significantly more reliable than that of other studies on this subject. If you are aware of an argument to that effect, I’d be interested to hear it.
As you pointed out, the study you’re citing is gated, so I can’t really evaluate it. However, based on the portions you quoted, I don’t see any reason to believe that either study is more or less methodologically sound than the other. However, I also don’t see any reason to believe that the two studies actually contradict each other, despite first appearances. The study I cited evaluates national-level crime stats, whereas yours evaluates household-level victimization stats. Both studies’ conclusions could easily be true simultaneously.
As noted in your citation:
None of the studies can prove causation and none have completely eliminated the possibility that the association might be entirely due to reverse causation
My intuition is that reverse causation is at play. That may sound like a cop-out, but keep in mind, I also argued reverse causation for my own citation, despite that being against my political interests, so I’m not just privileging my own position here. In the case of your citation, the intuitive case for reverse causation sounds even more convincing to me: people who live in high-crime neighborhoods are much more likely to decide to buy a firearm, in response to their local crime rates—I can attest to this from personal anecdotal experience.
Since prevalence of violent crime varies neighborhood-by-neighborhood, while gun control laws typically vary only nation-by-nation, there could very well be a positive correlation at the neighborhood (or household) level, while simultaneously having a negative correlation at the national level… especially in light of the fact that your study’s abstract concedes that its results are dominated by a single nation (the US).
The (informal) null hypothesis—that gun control laws have no significant causal effect, either positive or negative, on violent crime rates, would seem to explain both studies’ results equally well, whereas assuming the existence of (non-reverse) causation, either positive or negative, would require either one or the other of the studies’ conclusions to be wrong somehow. Parsimony would therefore seem to recommend this hypothesis.
So, while nobody in the West is facing ten-year sentences for speech these days, I don’t think the chilling effects are much less severe than in the WW1-era U.S.
Yes and no. In the last several decades there has certainly been a troubling trend of disregard for free speech in civil law—i.e. “cyberbullying” kinds of things, where people are now basically able to sue because their feelings got hurt. And you’re absolutely correct about the cost of litigation having a strong multiplier effect on the “chillingness” of such suits. But in criminal law, things are definitely MUCH better today than they were in the WW1 era. For one thing we now have a de facto Shelling fence around punishment of speech which is explicitly political in nature (like protesting the draft).
Wow. The ‘fire’ thing doesn’t even fit well as an analogy in that context. Your country scares me!
That era, and those rulings, are pretty widely regarded as the low point of American first amendment jurisprudence. Things have rebounded significantly since then, and, as Vladimir points out, those cases have long since been superseded as binding case law.
Edit: spelling.
I concur. As I said, I find these results counterintuitive, despite the fact that they superficially seem to support my political position. They seem to support my position TOO WELL, and that makes me quite suspicious of them.
If I had to take a guess, I’d say that in reality, gun control laws have very little effect, in either direction, on crime rates, and that the causation behind this correlation, if there is any at all, runs in the opposite direction as would be implied by the naive reading: countries which have high crime rates tend to pass strict gun control laws as a reaction to those high crime rates, while countries with low crime rates never bother passing gun control laws, since they don’t see the need. In other words, I think it’s more likely that high crime rates cause strict gun control laws, rather than strict gun control laws causing high crime rates.
Excellent essay, thanks for the link. Since I was already familiar with most of the facts, this was the part that stood out to me the most:
This meant that prices for these firearms and magazines shot up along with demand. Manufacturers had churned out as many soon-to-be-banned items as they could before it went into effect, then sold them at nearly twice what they had originally cost. Individual dealers who had already stocked up made small fortunes.
So my main take away from the essay was “damn, I should start stockpiling assaulty-looking guns as an investment, since they’re likely going to be re-banned now”. Does that make me a horrible person?
This kind of argument is what I like to call “motivated majoritarianism”. You’re essentially assuming that public opinion is rational—something that most LWers would be loath to do in the general case.
This comment is exactly as useful as saying “no gravity, no problems of this kind” to an aerospace engineer.
Yeah, I’m not saying jokes (with no other content to them) should be upvoted, but I don’t think they need to be downvoted as long as they’re not disruptive to the conversation. I think there’s just a certain faction on here who feels a need to prove to the world how un-redditish LW is, to the point of trying to suck all joy out of human communication.
Well, back of the napkin style comparisons like the one in the OP. And the press releases put out by the lobbying groups (on both sides of the issue).
Yeah, I know… I just wanted to get the culprit to come right out and say that, in the hope that they would recognize how silly it sounded. There seems to be a voting bloc here on LW that is irrationally opposed to humor, and it’s always bugged me.
Thanks, I apppreciate that. My pique was in response to Eugine’s downvote, not his comment.
I don’t know. That’s why I asked.
Downvote explanation requested.
Not in general, but in this particular instance, the error is in seeing any “conflict” whatsoever. This was not intended as a challenge, or a dick-waving contest, just a sincerely proposed thought experiment in order to help me better understand MixedNuts’ mental model.
What???!!! Are you suggesting that I’m actually planning on conducting the proposed thought experiment? Actually, physically, getting a piece of paper and writing out the words in question? I assure you, this is not the case. I don’t even have any blank paper in my home—this is the 21st century after all.
This is a thought experiment I’m proposing, in order to help me better understand MixedNuts’ mental model. No different from proposing a thought experiment involving dust motes and eternal torture. Are you saying that Eliezer should be punished for considering such hypothetical situations, a trillion times over?
No. Allowing yourself a line of retreat helps disincentivize the less-rational parts of your brain from stubbornly insisting on continuing to defend a proposition after it is no longer viable.
While it’s almost certainly impossible to answer this question to anywhere near the level of “smoking causes cancer”, it’s surely possible to get much closer than just comparing those two statistics you cited. One of the best attempts I’ve seen (and not just because it happens to support my position, I swear) is this study from the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.
It attempts to find a statistically rigourous correlation between gun ownership rates and murder/suicide rates—importantly, not JUST gun-related deaths, but murder/suicide rates in general. Its results were counterintuitive even to me—a supporter of gun rights: they found a statistically significant NEGATIVE correlation:
Nations with stringent anti-gun laws generally have substantially higher murder rates than those that do not. The study found that the nine European nations with the lowest rates of gun ownership (5,000 or fewer guns per 100,000 population) have a combined murder rate three times higher than that of the nine nations with the highest rates of gun ownership (at least 15,000 guns per 100,000 population). For example, Norway has the highest rate of gun ownership in Western Europe, yet possesses the lowest murder rate. In contrast, Holland’s murder rate is nearly the worst, despite having the lowest gun ownership rate in Western Europe. Sweden and Denmark are two more examples of nations with high murder rates but few guns.
Now of course I understand that doesn’t really speak to causation, and the confounding factors are legion… but it seems like at least a step in the right direction toward rational analysis of the question.
Edit: Downvote explanation requested. Do you dispute the cited statistics, or are you just downvoting enemy soldiers?
How about instead of outright censorship, such discussions be required to be encrypted, via double-rot13?