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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023

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Difference between victim blaming and common sense advise is when the narrative impacts the perception of the crime and makes it more common.

Flashing a diamond in a bad neighbourhood is an extreme example. Better example is locals in a bad neighbourhood closing an eye to a normal tourist getting mugged there, and even buying stolen goods, because everybody knows he should have know better? The general narrative you repeat influences the reality.

Difference between victim blaming and common sense advise is when the narrative impacts the perception of the crime and makes it more common.

Just like with Murder and Cancer, the optimal amount of victim blaming is non-zero.

Not giving certain kinds of advice also makes certain types of crimes happen more often, e.g. not locking your front door when there's been lots of thefts in your area, or e.g. not warning people of pickpockets in a tube station and telling them to keep any eye on their belongings. The blame for the thefts lies 100% on the thief, but you are an idiot for not locking your door at night and calling out your stupidity serves to get other people to lock their doors more. Yes calling you out here hurts you, the victim, but it is a good deal for society if it prevents further thefts. Same with many other things. Western society does not victim blame anywhere near the optimal amount.

The optimal amount of crime-avoidant advice-giving is non-zero.

The optimal amount of crime-avoidant advice-giving right after the recipient was just raped is zero.

The optimal amount of crime-avoidant advice-giving right after the recipient was just raped is zero.

This quickly gets interpreted into, "The optimal amount of crime-avoidant advice-giving right after anyone is a victim of a crime is zero." Which, of course, means that since crimes happen pretty much every hour of every day, it can be easily rounded off to, "The optimal amount of crime-avoidant advice-giving is actually always zero, due to Rule 2."

Alternatively, we can just ask you to give one example of an acceptable time/place to give crime-avoidant advice. Note that the OP here has literally nothing to do with anyone in particular being raped.

This is assuming the advice is meant for the person who just got raped, it's not, the advice is meant for the rest of society, and giving it temporally close to when a incident happened when the event is fresh in society's minds is actually the best time to do it. The person who got raped is irrelevant, they could spontaneously combust and the right amount of advice to be given would be unchanged.

Even better would be to give the advice right before the rape happened, because the victim might have benefited from it beforehand an the incident may never have taken place (just like how "best practices to avoid getting struck by lightning" advice is normally given close in time to events with lots of lightning), but unfortunately unlike the weather we can't predict when a rape will happen with much degree of accuracy, so we're forced to give it after the event.

the optimal amount of victim blaming is non-zero

I agree with you in many things and disagree in some.