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A comment on Fugitive on run for seventeen years found living in cave by a drone. Parent comment

Re:Fugitive on run for seventeen years found living in cave ... by stallmanite on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @04:05PM (#21129959)
How can one examine a couterfactual in cases like this? Barring access to Marty McFly’s time machine unless you have two identical copies of a state to experiment on how would you go about this?

Edit: legitimately curious, not trying to be nitpicky

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Re:Fugitive on run for seventeen years found living in cave ... by joshuamorton on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @04:10PM (#21130010)
You probably can't, which is my point.

Generally the best ways to analyze the impact of similar social changes is to compare two similar locations, one that makes a change and one that doesn't, over the same time period, and hope that controls for broader social change.

It's not perfect by any means though.

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