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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28218 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024

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It would be crazy if this is just some long term strategy by the FBI to make themselves look good. Each year they publish juiced figures that the media can gush over then later on they retract the juiced figures. Retracting the juiced figures is necessary because otherwise each year the FBI would have to make progressively larger adjustments until juicing was no longer feasible.

Also, why does the FBI need to make itself look good to the public? It's not an elected position. Also, it can work either way: rising crime is evidence more funding is needed; falling crime is evidence funding is working.

The explanation is that the FBI doesn't need to make itself look good to the public, it needs to make the party in power look good to the public, so they can get the funding they want.

they have investigated many prominent democrats this year or recently. For example, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, and also Eric Adams, Robert Menendez.

Cause or effect? Are these Democrats investigated because they have been declared PNG by the party? Or are they out with the party because they were investigated (or for the underlying reasons)?

Aren't organizations incentivized to make the problem they're fighting look worse? Students reach new lows on standardized tests - give more funding to schools; We're falling behind in a particular field of research - give more money for researchers; No one wants to pay for elite art - subsidize elite art; More generally, if you express even the faintest interest in supporting a charity or a nonprofit, they will bombard you with newsletters about how terrible things are, and how the world will end if you don't send them money RIGHT NOW!

And correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most of these crimes outside of FBI jurisdiction to begin with?

Whoever those fudged numbers are supposed to make look better, it's probably not the FBI, and outside political pressure seems pretty likely, especially when we know for a fact it goes unpunished in the event it's discovered, and undisputable.

Aren't organizations incentivized to make the problem they're fighting look worse?

Organizations are incentivized to make the problem they're fighting look maximally affecting - you don't want to push your constituents over the edge to thinking that the problem is insurmountable. You're also incented to make your own efforts look seriously busy and important - or at least like you're forestalling worse outcomes - otherwise you get a reputation as useless.

It's weird how that happens. We should do the opposite. When a problem gets worse, we should defund and replace the failing organizations who are responsible. (For example, San Francisco area homeless orgs).

On the other hand, when organizations succeed we should give them more money (For example, SpaceX).

I'd argue we should do neither. whether the amount of homeless went up or down, it may not have anything to do with the homeless orgs at all. They didn't make the problem, and they may deserve anywhere from 0-100% of the credit for each person who is no longer homeless, or 0-100% of the blame for failing to solve the problem.

For best results, you'd need metrics that represent what the homeless org did, how well it worked, and the reasons why it didn't work better. In the FBI's case it would be things like the number of cases investigated vs solved, time spent per investigation, etc.

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