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A comment on Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts. Parent comment

Re:Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts by rubashov on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @11:10AM (#2580108)
The abortion correlation has been thoroughly dismantled. There were even straight-up mathematical errors in the initial claimed correlation.

http://www.isteve.com/abortion.htm

That this claim is still so often credulously repeated tells you something about how tied to reality the chattering classes are.

The above referenced Steve Sailer also offers a decent unempirical hypothesis about the decline of crime: Technology has made it way harder to do much bad stuff without getting caught. Cell phones and surveillance cameras and better police tech make crime much riskier than it was.

I also suspect everybody's fatter, older, and more couch-potato than they used to be. Obese slobs with 200 channels are too lazy to go gang-banging.

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Re:Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts by chrismealy on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @11:14AM (#2580132)
That dude is a hardcore racist. Unless you want his rep rubbing off on you might want to find another reference.
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Re:Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts by pragmatic on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @11:20AM (#2580157)
I don't know anything about this guy. However when you say "[t]hat dude is a hardcore racist" you're making a very strong claim about his character.

Could you point us to some evidence of your claim?

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Re:Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts by ajju on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @11:36AM (#2580231)
I don't want to debate about whether some random Internet person I first heard about today is racist, but I was curious enough to Google it and found this wikipedia article describing the author of iSteve.com. It may help provide some context to claims made by the parent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sailer

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Re:Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts by dminor on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @11:37AM (#2580234)
He has his very own wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sailer
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Re:Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts by rsheridan6 on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @11:49AM (#2580292)
Which has fuck all to do with the subject at hand, which was the relationship between abortion and crime.
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Re:Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts by ajju on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @11:52AM (#2580306)
Let's try to keep this civil.
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Re:Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts by rsheridan6 on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @12:01PM (#2580369)
I am. Vaguely threatening to label another commenter a racist for citing an argument by Steve Sailer that had nothing to do with race was far less civil than anything I said.
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Re:Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts by ajju on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @12:05PM (#2580388)
Yes I agree, his point that there are better sources could have been made without the ad hominem implication. I also think profanity doesn't help civility.
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Re:Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts by rsheridan6 on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @02:06PM (#2580887)
"Fuck all" is just a slightly course way of saying "nothing." It's not an insult directed at a person. pg himself has used the word "fuck" on this board [1], so I assume it's not necessarily proscribed. We're all adults here - at least I proceed on that assumption.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1766387

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Re:Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts by ajju on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @02:36PM (#2580992)
I myself use profanity from time to time in in-person discussions with people I know, so this may seem a bit hypocritical.

The reason I try not to do it online though (or in person with strangers) is because I have marked that when you use profanity with strangers (especially online) it tends to make the discussion more rancorous because people focus on the profanity instead of the content. It does not seem to matter whether it was meant as an insult, or simply as an "emotional multiplier".

I have certainly realized that I used do it, so may be it's just a bad data point, weighted heavily!

So that's my perspective.

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Re:Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts by rubashov on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @12:00PM (#2580363)
Randomly screaming "racist" is the height of incivility.
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Re:Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts by ajju on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @12:03PM (#2580375)
Agreed that the ad hominem implication to the commenter was unnecessary.
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Re:Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts by ajju on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @11:41AM (#2580258)
There are better sources for a counter-argument than Steve Sailer I think, although even Sailer attributes the decline to a stronger effect of the Crack crack-down, if Wikipedia is to be believed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortio...

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