ObserveandReport

I like this. Brevity is great, but nuance is sometimes necessary. That being said, I am often too wordy. Thanks. Whether or not it is rare, it tells us about what personal identity is. The rarity of some resource doesn't make it less real. Moreover, either there are two people conjoined in one organism, or there aren't. On the full body transplant bit, the argument runs as follows: If successful, I would survive a full body transplant. Therefore, whatever "I" am, is not my body, but rather my mind. If we are minds, you can't agress/ harm/hurt/murder/kill that which does not exist yet. No mind=no person. Are you denying you would survive a brain transplant or asserting that the conjoined twins featured above are merely one person? If not, you have not read my argument carefully. There is a difference between consciousness and a lack thereof. Which of my arguments/premises are you attacking exactly? I'll try and make the siamese twins argument concise: Siamese twins are two people in one body, therefore a person is not their body. The organ that makes two people present in siamese twins is the brain. Therefore, we are our brains. If something does not have a brain sufficiently similar to ours (meaning all necessary conditions for consciousness are present) then it is neither good, nor bad to kill it. In short, the twins are not some exception to the people rule. They ARE two people, who happen to share one organism. This informs us about what personal identity is reducible to. That is an excellent abridgment of my arguments! I'm not sure what you were getting at with the last bit, but if you were referring at all to animals, there is an interesting argument to be had about ascending levels of consciousness in the animal kingdom and how this may affect the morality of farming/eating meat. My argument may be weaker than how far you push it because I am merely alleging that fetuses up until a certain stage of development are necessarily not conscious. Only up until then do I believe it neutral to abort; until we know more about the mind and consciousness I think we should er on the side of caution. Bonus argument: A man has had his brain eaten away all the way up until the very base of the brain stem by a rare fungus. However, the hospital has kept his body fed and externally cared for. If it is not murder to cut this mans throat, then it is because we are conscious beings and early abortion is morally neutral because no conscious being is harmed.

I'll be happy to admit my error when you provide the source confirming your assertion. I'll even thank you for correcting me and doing the research that I struggled to do. I can't apologize however, because my statistical error doesn't make your uncle not a racist. That burden is much higher, as we know incidence of racism in uncles is several standard deviations from the mean. As a quick follow up, the NCVS did record victim data about Hispanics vs. non-Hispanics prior to 2004: http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hvvc00.pdfThis doesn't prove that offender data did not lump Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic whites together. However, it is also more than possible that the main source of my original post was merely a reflection of black and non-Hispanic white crime. Let my know if you all find something definitive.

Abortion This topic is important for at least two reasons: one, if we are wrong about our thinking here we are possibly endangering many lives and two, we may be assigning blame wrongfully, in a very destructive manner. Many years ago I took a class called “Contemporary Moral and Social Issues.” In that class we discussed personally identity and specifically we did an overview of the views expressed in the following academic paper (you don’t have to read it, but I will reference it): http://jeffersonmcmahan.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Animalism-and-the-Varieties-of-Conjoined-Twinning.pdf The bottom line being that because of conjoined twins and the possibility of body transplants, our identity is no more than a brain or, so that we can avoid a lengthy philosophical tangent, consciousness which supervenes on that brain. Further, that brain is simply one part of a larger organism that is the culmination of all our organs. If this is true, then before certain parts of the brain form, which are necessary conditions for consciousness, we simply do not exist (and under these conditions abortion is morally neutral). The Conjoined Twin Argument Animalists are those who say we are identical with the whole of our body, that is we are the entire organism composed of both a mind and body. Dicephalus is a variety of conjoined twin where two heads share one body. This presents an interesting question for animalists: are dicephalus one person because there appears to be one organism? Or is it that there are two people sharing one organism? If this is the case, then who we are is not identical with the whole of the biological organism that gets called by our name. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K57IcN9DWXo Are there two people here, or is it one person? Do the parents have daughters, or a daughter? Now while it is true that there are two tracheas and other various organs, it would be strange to say that this is why there are two organisms. Mainly because there is a variety of conjoined twin that is two bodies, with one head. Is this two people? This seems implausible. The Transplant Argument If we are the sum of all our organs, then when a full body transplant occurs (a head is removed from one body and kept alive until it is attached to another) another problem occurs. Did that person die when their head was removed? Was a new person “born” when the head was attached to the new body? It appears that we survive a body transplant, especially if, throughout the procedure, we are kept conscious via some artificial blood supply. Such a transplant has been done on a monkey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwkkmsoo4a4 Also this surgery may be done to a human soon: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/292306.php If we survive such an operation, clearly we are reducible to something less than the whole of our body. Resisting the Conclusion I’ve forwarded this thesis before, if not with these exact words. When I did so, there was one objection (or an unconvinced objector perhaps) who argued that my mistake was assuming it possible to separate the mind and the body. He went on to emphasize the close relationship between the mind and the body: the fact that chemical processes in the latter drastically effect the former. Without any advanced knowledge of human neurophysiology, it can still be asserted that such a relationship is irrelevant. The ongoing stimuli from the body is not different in substance from normal external stimuli such as those that activate our sensory organs. The origin of the stimuli is simply closer to home (about as close to home as you can get). Additionally, the above form of argument sidesteps the “future like ours” argument against abortion put forward by Don Marquis because cells don’t have a future like anything. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/philosophical/future.shtml Conscious entities may have a future like ours, but before those conscious entities exist, they cannot be harmed. In the same way, posthumous harm is incoherent. To truly resist the conclusion that we are identical with our minds, which are themselves a part of the body, you would do well to say that murdering the twins above is simply killing one person and that we do not survive the head transplant. Short of this, it seems we are stuck. Last Word The real problem then, if we are our minds/brains, is that saying abortion is wrong before there is a thalamus or amygdala, is itself wrong. After all, what would be harmed in such a procedure simply wouldn’t be a person. I therefore hold that abortion before those structures develop is morally neutral.

To be frank, I'm not sure if they are actually lumped in. I didn't see anything in the data set saying so. However Wikipedia mentions that the UCR have this weakness. I assumed it was a possibility because of the UCR having this error and so put it as a caveat. Ill see what I can scrounge up.

Then do we ignore statistics linking race and crime? The FBI UCR are just as plagued by problems.

Why do I have little "-1" on each of my comments? Both of my statements are well sourced conclusions made in good faith. Curious.

Indeed they do! About 1.4 times their percentage of the population. This is a far cry from what the FBI UCR reports say, where blacks commit crimes at 3 or 4 times the rate of whites. This number is far from alarming, though less so for the reasons you mentioned and then EVEN less so when you factor in the notion that the NCVS is done in urban settings, automatically over representing blacks. That being said, the NCVS is probably the best thing we have due to the uniformity of how crime is defined in all the jurisdictions where it is distributed. More than that, the sample is quite likely more inclusive than UCR because not only would people who reported crimes answer, but also many people who are considered "dark horse crime" victims.

I'd like raw data showing that immigrants commit higher rates of crime/violent crime than their native counterparts. Mind you, FBI crime statistics are not rates of committed crime, merely prosecution and conviction, so I would look elsewhere (National Crime Victimization Survey). For drug offenses, all races use drugs at about an equal rate, yet prison populations tell a different story. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jul/28/arianna-huffington/arianna-huffington-calls-drug-imprisonment-rates-b/ I would not be surprised if similar disproportions were present in violent crimes and non drug related crimes. If anyone has Stefan's videos which particularly look at these questions, before responding look at the sources for his statistics. Are they arrest and convictions rather than victimization reports? Could these be similarly affected by biases of law enforcement and motivations of prosecutors to pad conviction records? Further, how might this tie in with the fact that the more money you have, the better legal representation you can afford? Then look at how "crime" disproportion aligns with poverty disproportion: http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/ Is there a connection? or is it IQ and race and culture?

"money has been transferred against the domestic population’s will through the violence of taxation?" This is holding the world responsible for not seeing through Libertarian glasses. Regardless of whether such a standard is fair (which personally I do not think it is) It's also completely disconnected from the kinds of lives these people are living. Yes Stephan grew up poor in a single parent household with an abusive mother and a number of other troubles, but I would wager he did not grow up a daughter of a peasant farmer in a country most Americans can't point out on a map. This matters because risking you lives and the lives of your loved ones, spending you life savings, to travel hundreds or thousands of miles covertly in some of the harshest conditions imaginable, just to find yourself faced with migrant farming as your first step in entering society and barely subsisting, might frame how you view the public resources made available to you. I don't know about you, but I like paying very little for my food. Now, either one of two things could happen if we like having crops not rot in the fields: Either A, migrant workers can continue to get absurdly low wages, forcing them to rely on social services, and doing everything through taxation and government or B we have a truly free society and allow migrant workers the same right to be here as anyone, giving them bargaining power and raising the price of food, and allowing the market to work out the details. As a Libertarian I prefer the latter.

The topic came up in one of my classes. I assembled some stats and reflected on them. Love to see what you make of the work. Race, Violence, and Other Lighthearted Topics So I thought a lengthy post about everyone’s two favorite things, race and math, would be a great way to alienate friends. All kidding aside, I realize the topic of race as it relates to crime is a contentious one. All the more reason it should be evaluated with rigorous objectivity. Before we dive into the numbers, a caveat from Wikipedia 4 about a source I rely upon, the Nation Crime Victimization Survey: “NCVS statistics do not represent verified or evidenced instances of victimization. As it depends upon the recollection of the individuals surveyed, the NCVS cannot distinguish between true and fabricated claims of victimization, nor can it verify the truth of the severity of the reported incidents. Further, the NCVS cannot detect cases of victimization where the victim is too traumatized to report. These factors can contribute to deficits in the reliability of NCVS statistics.” Further… “The NCVS program is focused upon metropolitan and urban areas, and does not adequately cover suburban and rural regions. This can lead to misrepresentations regarding the nature and extent of victimization in the United States.” That being said I’ve chosen to rely on this source because unlike FBI Uniform Crime Reports (which I reference for other reasons later), the NCVS is based on surveys which may include unreported crimes and be more representative of crime statistics on the whole. 5 What The Numbers Say Now when it comes to the breakdown of who is hurting who, there are two major issues. First, I only found extensive tables from 2004. Just to give you an idea, the U.S population was 293 million in 2004 with approximately 12.8% African-American, 14.1% Hispanic/Latino, and 80.4% white. 6 The second problem is that at this time, the NCVS didn’t set out a category for Hispanics or Latinos in the data below, so numbers may be skewed somewhat, again. On to the numbers (I know your chomping at the bit). 52% of all violent crimes against whites were committed by whites, whereas a mere 9.8% of the total violent crimes against whites were committed by blacks. Both blacks and whites committed crimes at levels lower than their perspective population percentages. Conversely whites committed 10.8% of violent crimes against blacks, whereas blacks committed 73.6% of all violent crimes committed against blacks 7 (see table 42). This reflects the oft repeated “black on black” talking point. That is, blacks are victimized by other blacks at a far greater rate than by any other demographic. But what about as a whole? Well about 17.7% of all violent crimes are committed by blacks (see tables 42 and 43) 8 , which is disproportionate, but while not statistically insignificant how this 4.9% overrepresentation translates to the average person’s risk assessment is far from clear. This is shown by the previous numbers, showing white’s to be more likely to be attacked by whites and blacks by blacks. Ought one focus more on their own race? Perhaps. Consider that when it comes to what kills us (other than disease and other natural causes) the usual culprit is medical errors, not violent crimes. 9 10 A good question is, how could you effectuate a 1.4 increase of normal attention paid to any individual racial demographic? Is such a thing plausible, or cost effective as far as time spent versus resulting safety and other means of threat prevention? How could these questions be measured? These aren’t rhetorical questions… any sociology majors feel free to chime in. Does this mean that there is not a problem of where violence is occurring across racial lines? No. Unfortunately, a disproportionate (not a majority or anything close) amount of violence is occurring in black communities, the root cause of which is probably an entire field of sociology unto itself. The Criminal Justice Response While to many of you this may not be surprising, it bears substantiation: Blacks and minorities are overrepresented in arrests and charges filed, even when compared with the actual rate of committed crime. For instance when it comes to non-negligent homicide blacks were charged at a rate of 27.5% of the total charges filed (see table 43). 11 This effect is not limited to violent crime however. When it comes to drugs, whites, blacks, and Hispanics use drugs at about the same rates, yet 20% of inmates are Hispanic and 45% are black. 12 If one were to look at the actions of our officers and DA’s, it would be easy to think that minority communities pose a greater threat to the peace, but the actual rates of crime show a far murkier picture of crime and those who commit it. Final Thoughts Personally, I don’t think crafting risk assessments on racial lines is effective for the average person. Highly trained professionals may be able to use these methods to great effect, 13 14 but in general humans are bad at dealing with numbers15 on the fly (not to mention high-stress situations tossing emotion into the mix). Also, not mentioned here is the disproportionate representation of minorities below the poverty line. I’ll look for my sources if any are interested, but from what I remember it correlates closely with the arrest records, which is suspicious to say the least (and raises a host of other questions.) Here's a quick reference point: http://www.npc.umich.edu/poverty/ We should also remember that we suck at empathizing with others, especially as the numbers go up. 15 Next time you hear your uncle talking about how the (insert racial group here) is ruining America, you can bore them to pieces with all the information contained here. To quote the late, great Christopher Hitchens, “Evolution has meant that our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenal glands are too big, and our reproductive organs apparently designed by committee; a recipe which, alone or in combination, is very certain to lead to some unhappiness and disorder.” Sources 1. http://www.crimeinamerica.net/2010/12/13/what-are-my-chances-of-being-a-victim-of-violent-crime/ 2. http://time.com/4117442/us-terror-attacks-infrastructure-paris/ 3. https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/september/fbi-releases-study-on-active-shooter-incidents/pdfs/a-study-of-active-shooter-incidents-in-the-u.s.-between-2000-and-2013 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Victim_Surveys 5. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ntcm_2014.pdf 6. http://www.census.gov/population/pop-profile/dynamic/RACEHO.pdf 7. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus0402.pdf 8. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus0402.pdf 9. https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/violent-crime/murder 10. http://journals.lww.com/journalpatientsafety/Fulltext/2013/09000/A_New,_Evidence_based_Estimate_of_Patient_Harms.2.aspx 11. https://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/documents/CIUS2004.pdf 12. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jul/28/arianna-huffington/arianna-huffington-calls-drug-imprisonment-rates-b/ 13. https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/in-defense-of-profiling 14. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-wagner/what-israeli-airport-secu_b_4978149.html 15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Z0raWIHXk