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This is exactly what I mean. What do you do when institutions tasked with truth-finding do not make raw data available to the public, and only publish when it reaches the conclusions they wanted to reach to start with? We're indeed left with pretty unreliable ways to figure out the truth, but one thing is for sure "Uh, source?" is very disingenuous.
There's several issues here. Like I mentioned, the datasets are not public, so the work is not replicable by anyone who'd want to double-check it. Secondly, the category of "US-born" has little to no implications on the debate. Members of the various rape-gangs in Britain were all "British-born", and yet none of them would exist, if Britain had a more strict immigration policy.
I haven’t seen that the data isn’t available. I doubt that the data underlying the study I linked isn’t public. You should be able to access it. You might look into this. I honestly don’t care to.
(It’s not my job to go digging into these datasets).
But, it is my job to say:
Hey, one news article about a psycho is nowhere near enough to categorize an entire class of people as violent.
That’s just silly, and obviously so. Yet for some reason I get more pushback for pointing that out than the original claim got.
Honestly might be a sign of some heavy motivated reasoning going on in this forum. You guys are an offshoot of the rationalist movement for Pete’s sake. Isn’t pushing back on simple logical fallacies to be expected around here?
It is my experience that studies in general do not publish raw data at all, only aggregated end-results that make the point that the authors want to make. You can sometimes ask the authors to give you the raw data, but they tend to ignore internet randos doing it, and it's not unheard of for them to dismiss even other academics when they get a whiff that they might want to see the data to refute the original study.
Is the crime rate of the country they're coming from enough to consider it plausible that they're more violent?
Yeah, but an offshoot can go more than one way. For example "post-rationalism" is still an offshoot of rationalism (though I think we still have a decent amount of unrinoic Rats). In any case my personal belief is that the Rationalist movement was an utter failure as far as truth-seeking is concerned, and that is because of, rather than despite, Rationalist principles.
It's certainly within the bounds of acceptable discourse, and so is pushing back on the pushback.
Studies typically don’t publish the raw data but often work from public datasets. This type of data wouldn’t be something that the study authors collected, but data that the state of Texas in this case collected.
I doubt that it’s not public.
That’s an actual argument worth discussing.
Data would be what we use to see if that intuition is correct or not.
But posting one news article that supposedly defines an entire class of millions of people, then defending that by saying “at least I posted one example”, is just obviously a poor way to make any given point.
Similarly, saying “we don’t have the data showing that X is Y therefore you should believe that X is Y” also is not a convincing argument. It’s just how you feel, and opinions are nothing special, everyone’s got one.
I mean, we’ve got to reason about the world somehow.
You can do so using logical errors if you want, it sure is comfy.
Sorry, I think I initially misunderstood you. Yeah, crime data is likely to be available to the public, but there's the "in an easily parsable format" part of my initial statement. Generally, I think you should make it as easy as possible for others to double-check your work, and minimize "fuck you citations".
What do you do when the only data you have is from a time when a more strict and selective immigration process was applied, or refers to to completely different groups, or ignores immigration background and just lumps everyone into "US born"? By the time you get proper data, it's too late, the immigration is fait accompli.
I agree with that, I just don't think "data" is a particularly good argument either.
Yes, and doing it right will always include a certain amount of Witchcraft, because any systemic approach that gains widespread adoption will be gamed by people vying for power. Even Rationalists flirt with that idea when they talk about Goodhart's Law, though they never take it to it's obvious conclusion.
If you want to use Rationalist lingo, I'm just saying Rationalism is full of logical errors, often ones that are more likely to lead you astray than primitive grug-brained heuristics. It's the IQ Bell Curve Meme come to life.
Data literacy is your own responsibility. Most people don’t have it, but that’s not the fault of the people who did learn to work with data. I think it should be more of a responsibility to learn this skill in our society.
As far as making your analysis available to double check, it’s often common to publish the code you used to run your analysis in the supplemental material section. Not always, but not uncommon. If so you can explore the assumptions that were made.
I feel for you, but you should use other methods to try and convince me that you’re right and we need to shut down immigration levels rather than relying on cheap tricks.
You could have convinced me of anything using such rhetorical tricks, so clearly I should have antibodies against those if I aim to get by in the world.
Furthermore, you’re implying that recent immigration is obviously related to higher crime, but how did you come to that conclusion? Can I trust that your reasoning is based on anything other than what social media algorithms show you? You would obviously say no, but I know that there are powerful algorithms and echo chambers which pump out fear content about immigrants 24/7, so don’t be surprised when I am skeptical and ask for harder proof.
It’s not that I’m saying that there’s no way that immigrants post 2018 are committing high rates of crime, it’s just that all the other data I can get my hands on makes me doubt that this is the case.
But you can take solace in the fact that the emotional rhetorical stuff is the language that 90% of the population speaks anyway, so you have a clear advantage in the court of public opinion if your goal is just to reduce immigration no matter what actual data on rates of violence say.
Yeah, but I'm talking about availability and legibility, not literacy. If you don't think people who already worked on the data should pass on their work on the former two, there's no point in publishing any numbers in the paper at all. Just say "Immigrants commit less crime. Don't believe me? Check for yourself, chud!".
a) How much you want to bet they didn't do it in this case?
b) The code on it's own is not particularly useful without the input data, and just constitutes a "fuck you citation". This is the entire thing I've been driving at all along
I'm doing no such thing. I'm pointing out how trivial it is to manipulate data, even if the actual truth is the opposite of what the data is showing.
Idk. $50?
It’s not that uncommon of a practice.
Here, fuck it. I’ll save you the trouble.
Let’s find the study. Here it is:
https://nij.ojp.gov/library/publications/unauthorized-immigration-crime-and-recidivism-evidence-texas-0
Very first line: tells you where to get the data. Good sign.
Now open the actual pdf.
Go to the end of the report.
Hey, look at that! There’s a link for all the code and data used in the study.
https://www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/project/124923/version/V1/view
That page is interesting, they share metrics and it looks like 224 people have all downloaded the data and code they shared. Open science is definitively the way to go!
I’m digging around, and wow, they even provide a document called replication_instructions to walk people through the process of replicating their analysis. That’s really going all the way for open and reproducible analyses.
I’ll drop the $50 down to just an: “I was wrong, maybe I shouldn’t make such quick assumptions”.
I was wrong, maybe I shouldn’t make such quick assumptions
...Though they are fun (which is why this probably won't get me to stop)!
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