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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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You seem to be trying to compute probabilities by counting occurrences within a reference class, and then forgetting to divide by the size of the reference class. That's odd.

(# of sandy hook and synagogue shooters) / (# of white men) = small

(this one guy) / (# of transvestite puppy play wtf this guy is) = much bigger

I understand that. I didn't want to get down to the nitty gritty of accurately defining or sizing the reference class since it's a fairly inexact and tedious thing to do.

Let's take the example of men who commit sexual violence - obviously 'men' is a large group. But studies show that a certain population of men - ranging from 1% to 5% - have committed some sort of sexual crime (regardless of prosecution). So even at the best estimates 1/100 isn't exactly the smallest proportion. I don't know the specifics of how large Brinton's group is nor do I know the estimated number of sexual crimes they commit. But I think you're giving the OP quite a pass to use assumptions about a group that they probably couldn't name as justifications for discrimination.

Lets actually roll with your example:

Does a story of a man repeatedly abusing and eventually murdering their young child move the needle for how you'll trust, hire, or promote other men?

Apparently it has, for professions where this is relevant. 89% of childcare workers are women and about 85% of elementary school teachers are. So it does appear that we, as a society, have decided that it's too risky to let men work around children.

https://www.zippia.com/child-daycare-worker-jobs/demographics/

This story discusses that the suspicion you describe is rampant.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/men-teach-elementary-school/story?id=18784172

I would be curious to see your studies which claim 1-5% of men do sexual crime. A quick google search suggests that about 1.5% of America has ever been in jail and about 1/10 of violent crime is rape. Assuming another 1.5% of America got away with a crime, all criminals are men, and everyone in jail is a violent criminal, that gets us a ballpark of (1.5% + 1.5%) x (10% of crime is rape) / (50% of america is men) = 0.6% of American men did a sex crime.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

I don't know the specifics of how large Brinton's group is nor do I know the estimated number of sexual crimes they commit. But I think you're giving the OP quite a pass to use assumptions about a group that they probably couldn't name as justifications for discrimination.

Consider an experiment one might run:

  1. Allow gattsuru to select a person he considers central in this group.

  2. Put that person, along with 9 randomly selected other people of the same gender and race into a lineup.

  3. Me, an internet rando who believes he understands gattsuru's point, has to pick the person from (1) out of the lineup from (2).

With what odds do you think I'll get it wrong?

To be fair, if you can pick the reference class, you can do anything.

Guess what, you can pick the reference class. I'm giving you permission. "The reference class is left as an exercise for the reader," sounds far better than "I left it vague on purpose." So thanks for that phrase.