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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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Sure, you can see some potential grounds for profiling and unequal treatment, but the potential for such things is basically ever present in every circumstance ever. To actually say that this vindicates or even provides any support for the kind of systemic oppression narrative espoused by BLM, one would have to, at a minimum, have 2 different events that are very similar except for the race of the person interacting with the cops. This would be anecdotal but at least provide some minimal support. A single incident like this just fundamentally can't provide support for - much less vindicate - such a narrative, at least from an empirical perspective.

I think specific incidents can provide useful frameworks and relatable examples for talking about broader issues, though I agree there's often a methodological kind of issue if we make a habit of starting conversations from individual incidents, rather than bring up an incident as an illustration of a larger problem as I mentioned. Bayes' rule type considerations are absolutely something that should be front of mind.

I mean maybe the location of my replies in this thread might imply otherwise, but fundamentally I'm not one who thinks racial inequity is the biggest problem in policing. I think far bigger problems are principally ones that have to do with the general accountability structure, which is straight up broken. No organization can ever do well indefinitely without these checks and balances. And smaller problems with police mindset and training. For example, cops seem to generally lack some de-escalation skills, though my vague impression is that they've gotten slightly better. Recruiting from the military has always struck me as a problem too, because the fundamental mindset and paradigm are IMO mostly incompatible. I'm also moderately concerned about privacy type issues, though this is rarely a popular concern.