Nah, that's not it. When the temperature and the humidity are both in the upper 90's, as is often the case in Houston, you just can't stand to shoot anybody. If you're that mad, it's worse punishment to just let the son-of-a-bitch live, and suffer.
LR1, that's probably what the computer would have spit out if it wasn't destroyed right before it finished calculating. Rotten Vogons! But at least now we know.
Tex: I spent most of my life in Houston and never shot anyone.
I'm vaguely disappointed :(
As for the chart, there also seems to be a strong correlation between decimal points in the demographic breakdown and violent crime. There are no decimal points at all in the Houston demographic breakdown, but every single demographic in Chicago has a decimal point, and non-Hispanic whites have 2!
Clearly, the only logical conclusion is that math is racist and racism causes violence.
I read somewhere this week the suggestion that if you're buying all this, you should wear a helmet every time you get into a car and bathe with a snorkel.
Innumeracy definitely accounts for a lot of inability to weigh one statistically unlikely risk against another. Could the virus kill you? Unlikely. Could the vaccine kill you? Also unlikely. For myself, I was completely convinced that a few unlucky people were dying from the virus. I couldn't 100% rule out the possibility that a few unlucky people were dying from the vaccine, but I'm spectacularly unpersuaded. I wanted the shot ASAP, and I didn't feel even a twinge of worry about its side effects.
Still, that's just me. Other people have to make up their own minds.
Having taken both risks seriously and done my best to get accurate numbers, I estimate the known risks of the vaccine to be about two orders of magnitude lower than the virus. If the average odds of dying are 2 in 10,000 for Americans of good health and middle age, the odds of dying from a vaccine seem to be a few in 1,000,000.
Of course, there may be unknown risks; but that’s true for both horns. If widespread vax encourages super deadly mutations by helping them out compete this very mild risk, we may in retrospect regret allowing vaccination of those at small risk.
Well, it's also due to population, and we're jumping the gun (to coin a phrase) here.
ReplyDeleteChicago plainly hasn't finished culling, and the city is doing the best it can.
Eric Hines
Good chart, summing things up with a "gotcha."
ReplyDeleteBecause "climate change," not 42, is the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. :P
ReplyDeleteLittleRed1
Nah, that's not it. When the temperature and the humidity are both in the upper 90's, as is often the case in Houston, you just can't stand to shoot anybody. If you're that mad, it's worse punishment to just let the son-of-a-bitch live, and suffer.
ReplyDeleteThat must be it. I spent most of my life in Houston and never shot anyone.
ReplyDeleteI grew up spending summers in Houston and winters in Nebraska. People say that explains a lot about me.
ReplyDeleteLittleRed1
Memphis in June,
ReplyDeleteHell's comin' soon.
I spent one summer in Alexandria VA. When I read that European ambassadors got hardship pay when sent to Washington back in the day, I understood why.
Cousin Eddie
LR1, that's probably what the computer would have spit out if it wasn't destroyed right before it finished calculating. Rotten Vogons! But at least now we know.
ReplyDeleteTex: I spent most of my life in Houston and never shot anyone.
I'm vaguely disappointed :(
As for the chart, there also seems to be a strong correlation between decimal points in the demographic breakdown and violent crime. There are no decimal points at all in the Houston demographic breakdown, but every single demographic in Chicago has a decimal point, and non-Hispanic whites have 2!
Clearly, the only logical conclusion is that math is racist and racism causes violence.
And yet there are decimal points in both of the homocide/100K statistics. There is a deep truth somewhere in there.
ReplyDeleteI agree the double decimal is particularly troubling, possibly code, like "88."
Indeed. I think you're on to something with that code idea.
ReplyDeleteThough, it may be as simple as "homicide is racist" or "math is homicide."
I mean, if racism causes homicide, and math is racist, then math causes homicide. QED.
I think I can now offer another slogan to Orwell's Ministry of Truth:
Innumeracy Is Safety
I read somewhere this week the suggestion that if you're buying all this, you should wear a helmet every time you get into a car and bathe with a snorkel.
ReplyDeleteInnumeracy definitely accounts for a lot of inability to weigh one statistically unlikely risk against another. Could the virus kill you? Unlikely. Could the vaccine kill you? Also unlikely. For myself, I was completely convinced that a few unlucky people were dying from the virus. I couldn't 100% rule out the possibility that a few unlucky people were dying from the vaccine, but I'm spectacularly unpersuaded. I wanted the shot ASAP, and I didn't feel even a twinge of worry about its side effects.
Still, that's just me. Other people have to make up their own minds.
Having taken both risks seriously and done my best to get accurate numbers, I estimate the known risks of the vaccine to be about two orders of magnitude lower than the virus. If the average odds of dying are 2 in 10,000 for Americans of good health and middle age, the odds of dying from a vaccine seem to be a few in 1,000,000.
ReplyDeleteOf course, there may be unknown risks; but that’s true for both horns. If widespread vax encourages super deadly mutations by helping them out compete this very mild risk, we may in retrospect regret allowing vaccination of those at small risk.
we may in retrospect regret allowing vaccination of those at small risk.
ReplyDeleteHere, too, though, it's less a matter of what Government deigns allow and more a matter of what grown adult humans choose to do.
Related is this essay, brought to my attention by my wife: https://empathy.guru/2020/11/29/innumeracy-and-the-crisis-in-memetic-understanding/
Eric Hines
Empathy dot guru? :)
ReplyDeleteThe essay runs a little longer than the URL.
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
It’s an interesting concept, seeing if students can translate the math into kinetics.
ReplyDeleteChicago had 506 homicides in 2012, not over 1800. Where did that number come from?
ReplyDeleteAll that information and Not One WORD about where the people in Chicago are getting all that ammo... Come on!
ReplyDeleteThat’s fair! I can’t lay a hand on anything I would normally shoot around here. Sometimes you can find stuff on internet sales.
ReplyDelete