Sometimes I wish I could start a wildcat opinion polling operation because existing (public) polling tends to avoid open-ended polls, it rarely asks interesting questions.
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This is coming up because I'm trying to understand the American obsession with "crime"
Crime, all across the country was worse in the 70s and 80s in nearly any way you might want to quantify it. Number of murders, number of reported crimes, public disorder etc. It's a very broad and obvious trend.
A large portion of the US population nonetheless think that crime has gotten WORSE not better in this period.
How large of a portion? Why?
This is harder to find out.
Some of the few numbers I can find point to something even stranger. A group of people who simultaneously think that "crime is worse than ever" now but also that "crime was worse in the 80s"
HOW.
These polls are having a big impact on public policy and MY life. Specifically, for example that there were 12 NYPD at my subway station yesterday. When I asked them why they were there (which I always do, very politely) they said "for visibility"
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Some of the few numbers I can find point to something even stranger. A group of people who simultaneously think that "crime is worse than ever" now but also that "crime was worse in the 80s"
HOW.
These polls are having a big impact on public policy and MY life. Specifically, for example that there were 12 NYPD at my subway station yesterday. When I asked them why they were there (which I always do, very politely) they said "for visibility"
"visibly" is a major "crime prevention" tactic of the NYPD. It's not even totally disconnected from evidence... but there are a lot of unsolved cases in NYC. Should they be investigating those cases? Responding to the people who have experienced an accrual crime and trying to solve it?
There is a beauty supply shop where the owner is annoyed by petty theft. He has video of the theft but the NYPD has not watched it.
More pressing there are unsolved violent crimes
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"visibly" is a major "crime prevention" tactic of the NYPD. It's not even totally disconnected from evidence... but there are a lot of unsolved cases in NYC. Should they be investigating those cases? Responding to the people who have experienced an accrual crime and trying to solve it?
There is a beauty supply shop where the owner is annoyed by petty theft. He has video of the theft but the NYPD has not watched it.
More pressing there are unsolved violent crimes
But really I'm curious about what is going on in people's head and how that intersects with how limited resources are distributed.
After 9/11 NYPD adopted a "data driven" system to decide how their "visibility" would be deployed.
Relative fluctuations in reported crimes result in officers being sent to the general area to stand around. This would make sense if crime were a miasma like a viscus gas... but ... why not investigate the reports?
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But really I'm curious about what is going on in people's head and how that intersects with how limited resources are distributed.
After 9/11 NYPD adopted a "data driven" system to decide how their "visibility" would be deployed.
Relative fluctuations in reported crimes result in officers being sent to the general area to stand around. This would make sense if crime were a miasma like a viscus gas... but ... why not investigate the reports?
The previously mentioned beauty supply shop owner makes a ton of calls and reports about the ongoing petty theft problem. Another beauty shop half a block away has a similar issue. Could there be 12 NYPD standing in the subway because of their calls?
I can't prove it but from what I understand that's how the system works.
It's very... depersonalized.
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But really I'm curious about what is going on in people's head and how that intersects with how limited resources are distributed.
After 9/11 NYPD adopted a "data driven" system to decide how their "visibility" would be deployed.
Relative fluctuations in reported crimes result in officers being sent to the general area to stand around. This would make sense if crime were a miasma like a viscus gas... but ... why not investigate the reports?
@futurebird Predictive policing software uses an approach originally used for earthquakes.
Around the center of an earthquake, minor earthquakes might appear in the hours and days after the big one.
Does is make sense to treat crimes as earthquakes? Of course not.
But the data "backs up" the idea.
For a simple reason: Officers can only witness a crime when they are near the crime.So if you send officers to every donut shop in town, crime around donut shops will go "up" in the statistics, because officers were there to witness them.
(I imagine one reason for the "earthquake" idea simply being "broken window" logic.)
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The previously mentioned beauty supply shop owner makes a ton of calls and reports about the ongoing petty theft problem. Another beauty shop half a block away has a similar issue. Could there be 12 NYPD standing in the subway because of their calls?
I can't prove it but from what I understand that's how the system works.
It's very... depersonalized.
What is really going on? My guess is it's summer and teens are stealing $8 hair bleach because dying your friends hair is something to do. These are small items and the stores are very large with only one person on staff.
In my ideal world someone would show the video to their parents. It would be a lot of work to do that but also very effective.
Instead the shopkeeper is thinking about banning teens from the store.
And there are a dozen cops in the subway.
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What is really going on? My guess is it's summer and teens are stealing $8 hair bleach because dying your friends hair is something to do. These are small items and the stores are very large with only one person on staff.
In my ideal world someone would show the video to their parents. It would be a lot of work to do that but also very effective.
Instead the shopkeeper is thinking about banning teens from the store.
And there are a dozen cops in the subway.
I can parse out what's happening in my own neighborhood. But I have no idea what's going on across the country.
"What have you seen or experienced that has lead you to think crime is rising?"
Media play a huge role in driving these ideas. But it can't all be media.
What are the little wrinkles in day to day experience that shape this worldview.
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F myrmepropagandist shared this topic
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@futurebird Predictive policing software uses an approach originally used for earthquakes.
Around the center of an earthquake, minor earthquakes might appear in the hours and days after the big one.
Does is make sense to treat crimes as earthquakes? Of course not.
But the data "backs up" the idea.
For a simple reason: Officers can only witness a crime when they are near the crime.So if you send officers to every donut shop in town, crime around donut shops will go "up" in the statistics, because officers were there to witness them.
(I imagine one reason for the "earthquake" idea simply being "broken window" logic.)
"broken windows"
Is a broken name for this kind of policing because they never really looked into how the windows were getting broken. The only reason why broken windows aren't a problem in the Bronx now is because there are almost no abandoned buildings anywhere and it was nearly always abandoned buildings being vandalized in that way.
This whole approach to crime prevention came out of a time of under-staffing which also isn't a problem now.
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"broken windows"
Is a broken name for this kind of policing because they never really looked into how the windows were getting broken. The only reason why broken windows aren't a problem in the Bronx now is because there are almost no abandoned buildings anywhere and it was nearly always abandoned buildings being vandalized in that way.
This whole approach to crime prevention came out of a time of under-staffing which also isn't a problem now.
There are SO MANY cops and most of them are doing nothing.
But to the beauty shop owner and everyone he complains to (I asked him how much total was stolen and it's about $300 over the past few years) crimes are happening all the time and the police are swamped with "more serious" crimes and no one else is helping him.
It's kind of easy to be annoyed at the guy but at the same time I get why he's exasperated.
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I can parse out what's happening in my own neighborhood. But I have no idea what's going on across the country.
"What have you seen or experienced that has lead you to think crime is rising?"
Media play a huge role in driving these ideas. But it can't all be media.
What are the little wrinkles in day to day experience that shape this worldview.
@futurebird
The CVS on my block keeps locking up more and more shelves making it feel like crime must be going up. If you ask the people working there, it's because the same two guys keep sweeping the shelves. It's on camera. They know who they are and where they live, but the cops "can't" do anything about it. -
@futurebird
The CVS on my block keeps locking up more and more shelves making it feel like crime must be going up. If you ask the people working there, it's because the same two guys keep sweeping the shelves. It's on camera. They know who they are and where they live, but the cops "can't" do anything about it. -
This is coming up because I'm trying to understand the American obsession with "crime"
Crime, all across the country was worse in the 70s and 80s in nearly any way you might want to quantify it. Number of murders, number of reported crimes, public disorder etc. It's a very broad and obvious trend.
A large portion of the US population nonetheless think that crime has gotten WORSE not better in this period.
How large of a portion? Why?
This is harder to find out.
@futurebird I think all of the police and detective shows on TV have something to do with it.
But why has crime gone down. The best explanation seems to be unleaded gas and removal of lead from the environment, especially peoples’ homes.
But the average person doesn't like this explanation. It takes 18-20 years to see the results of less lead in crime statistics, and it doesn't involve punishing "bad" people.
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I can parse out what's happening in my own neighborhood. But I have no idea what's going on across the country.
"What have you seen or experienced that has lead you to think crime is rising?"
Media play a huge role in driving these ideas. But it can't all be media.
What are the little wrinkles in day to day experience that shape this worldview.
Something that really gets me-- like it feels like it's gnawing on the back of my tonsils, this deeply unpleasant thought-- is that if somebody felt like trying to make far-reaching calculations about what groups of humans think (or, at least, are saying online...) well, isn't that what these LLMs and massive city-sized data centers are basically FOR?
Accurate or not, biased or not, slop and self-digestion notwithstanding, somebody out there is trying to keep a pulse on the culture-- all cultures, every discourse-- and making sweeping decisions based on what amounts to the "AI" goddamned summary of how likely which proles are to revolt on any given day, and why. And the 1984/brave new world/fahrenheit451 alarm bell in my brain starts going off again. Forget mere tinfoil hat crinkling, this is blinking lights and claxons.
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@bmoe @futurebird
They can, they are refusing to do their jobs. 🪻To be fair they seem to have only two modes:
1. Do nothing
2. Beast modeEven the beauty shop owner I've been talking about, who is very annoying and conservative lamented that he hates the thought of calling cops on local teens because the police over-react. But, he's also getting fed up, and plenty of people seem strangely excited to see a child beaten into the ground for horsing around on a bicycle, for example:
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To be fair they seem to have only two modes:
1. Do nothing
2. Beast modeEven the beauty shop owner I've been talking about, who is very annoying and conservative lamented that he hates the thought of calling cops on local teens because the police over-react. But, he's also getting fed up, and plenty of people seem strangely excited to see a child beaten into the ground for horsing around on a bicycle, for example:
I think the beauty shop owner would be happy if he had some help tracking down the parents of the the teens who keep stealing bleach to do bathroom sink highlight jobs. And in nearly every case this would be sufficient to solve the problem.
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@futurebird I think all of the police and detective shows on TV have something to do with it.
But why has crime gone down. The best explanation seems to be unleaded gas and removal of lead from the environment, especially peoples’ homes.
But the average person doesn't like this explanation. It takes 18-20 years to see the results of less lead in crime statistics, and it doesn't involve punishing "bad" people.
"The best explanation seems to be unleaded gas and removal of lead from the environment, especially peoples’ homes."
I don't know if this is the "best explication" At least where I live I think it has more to do with increased population density and our neighborhood having a substantial number of poor but stable families so the social fabric is functional again.
In the 80s there were a lot of abandoned buildings and lots and just fewer people around who would respond ... normally.
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Something that really gets me-- like it feels like it's gnawing on the back of my tonsils, this deeply unpleasant thought-- is that if somebody felt like trying to make far-reaching calculations about what groups of humans think (or, at least, are saying online...) well, isn't that what these LLMs and massive city-sized data centers are basically FOR?
Accurate or not, biased or not, slop and self-digestion notwithstanding, somebody out there is trying to keep a pulse on the culture-- all cultures, every discourse-- and making sweeping decisions based on what amounts to the "AI" goddamned summary of how likely which proles are to revolt on any given day, and why. And the 1984/brave new world/fahrenheit451 alarm bell in my brain starts going off again. Forget mere tinfoil hat crinkling, this is blinking lights and claxons.
I'm not convinced that LLMs are a reliable statistical tool.
For example. If I did my fantasy intensive polling and interviewing project and had little text paragraphs from thousands of carefully sampled people would an LLM be a good way to summarize all of those responses?
How would it compare to human sorting and reading and statistics about word frequency?
I want to see some side by side comparisons.
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@futurebird @AnnyJoe @bmoe another case where facial recognition and vigilante justice would solve problems but also be problems themselves. Although maybe "extra-juditial justice" would be a better term than "vigilante" for the shopkeeper finding the parents and showing them the video.
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I'm not convinced that LLMs are a reliable statistical tool.
For example. If I did my fantasy intensive polling and interviewing project and had little text paragraphs from thousands of carefully sampled people would an LLM be a good way to summarize all of those responses?
How would it compare to human sorting and reading and statistics about word frequency?
I want to see some side by side comparisons.
In my experience polling firms skimp on leg work. They hate paying people to go and find and interview their sample because it's expensive.
There are a lot of data out there, but it's very biased in unpredictable ways.
Pulling text from facebook twitter or X has nothing on doing interviews on a sample you have randomized well.
And it's critical to try to find the entire sample to the best of your ability.
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I'm not convinced that LLMs are a reliable statistical tool.
For example. If I did my fantasy intensive polling and interviewing project and had little text paragraphs from thousands of carefully sampled people would an LLM be a good way to summarize all of those responses?
How would it compare to human sorting and reading and statistics about word frequency?
I want to see some side by side comparisons.
Not reliable, no. And I'm starting to think that's one hell of a double-edged sword. Because on the one hand, no they don't REALLY have solid or accurate conclusions on what the resistance is up to, but on the other hand these egomaniacal bastards sure would love to BELIEVE they do which is just as scary in its own very special horrible way as they seem plenty confident enough to use the data to target arrests and bombings.
