Re:Bob Lee, Former CTO Square, Creator of CashApp, Stabbed t...
by komali2 on Friday April 07, 2023 @08:58PM
(#35489248)
Well for one I appreciate you sticking around for so long. For another, I admire almost nobody more in the world than a person willing to say "on second thought, you're right." My side, I'm grateful you pushed back on me when my tone was clearly insulting, because I think I'm also here to learn better how to communicate with people, and a big one for me is making sure to watch my tone. Though fwiw I really was and am fascinated by your reply, I didn't mean that condescendingly but you were right to assume so.
I think I don't want to line by line you and link bomb, though the temptation is there, but before we go our separate ways I want to somewhat address what you brought up.
I think you're probably right that the usa is a unique environment to apply the reformative justice principles, as you say and for reasons I've mentioned elsewhere in the thread, such as difficulty of achieving true universal healthcare for example. I think a key reason though is the political divide in America and the outsized ability of various people and organizations to make or break a policy.
This is important in the SF case because my running theory, backed I believe by evidence (I won't link bomb) is that for example a relatively progressive politician like Chesa Boudin can be hamstrung by the cops not making as many arrests. For reasons I can't quite comprehend Boudin seems to be hated by a lot of people, but what I've found is that before he was elected the police union was already putting out hit pieces. In reality, Boudin's prosecution rates were the same or higher than his predecessor. In terms of actually putting people in jail, he was just as happy to do it as any other prosecutor, he just was brought less people to put in jail.
Now maybe he deserved to be recalled for his inability to work with the sfpd, I'm not sure, but that doesn't seem related to the two things in line with reformative justice that he did, eliminating cash bail and pretrial detention. Here's the key: there were iirc one or two high profile instances of a person out of pretrial detention that then committed a heinous crime. This is fodder for yellow journalism and confirmation bias. "See, it doesn't work, and furthermore this is an indictment of reformative justice and progressive politics!"
What is never mentioned is that certain forms of crime, particularly violent forms, did drop during his tenure, and in fact rose again after his recall.
The situation with him also seems fodder for misattribution. How much affect can one DA over the course of, what, two years, really have, in the face of record inflation and a historic pandemic? Property crime rose during his tenure but it rose across America (murder rates did too). I have lots of evidence showing that crime rates correlate more strongly with economic disparity than anything else, so if crime is going up in SF, it's probably because of that, rather than a single polarizing politician.
Basically my point is, yeah, your eyes are seeing things, no way I can deny that, but the news never reports the mundane, and the truth of it is San Francisco is a relatively boring place. There are far more violent cities in America, but for whatever reason the media loves to paste a sensationalist story of every single murder in SF, every single robbery. Your eyes can only see what's put in front of them, and crime stats aren't being put in front of them. Little Rock had 119 murders last year, twice San Francisco's, but the media doesn't tout every single one as either the personal failure of a socialist DA or the collective failure of progressive politics in general, so nobody talks about it.
So that's why I argue so strongly in favor of the boring: awareness of cognitive biases and rhetorical fallacies, research, and statistics, because I don't think the more exciting way of being aware of the world will give you an accurate picture. Maybe the job of people like me is to find ways to get this information in front of people that doesn't involve insulting them on internet forums lol
In any case having previously lived in SF I feel like what you're seeing on the streets there is less to do with murderers and more to do with the outsized homeless population and lack of public restrooms. I suppose the car break-ins thing is bad but from what I've read the sfpd is neither defunded nor under staffed (compared to cities with worse or more crime), so I'm not sure what's preventing them from making arrests? My pet theory is they're just kinda shit at their jobs, maybe on purpose. Plenty of stories on here of people showing them GPS tracking for a stolen bike and them shrugging their shoulders.
As for your ideal world, that certainly agrees with the evidence that certainty of punishment is the best deterrent (though deterrence is not necessarily the best way to reduce crime). Having though lived in a pervasive surveillance police state (the PRC) I hesitate to throw my weight behind it. Then again Taiwan has somewhat pervasive surveillance and I haven't found any privacy issues as a result, perhaps because the digital minister is an advocate for privacy, or maybe because much of the surveillance is from private businesses on their stores. There's other considerations with the AI thing such as AI can fail to face recognize on black people more frequently than white depending on the model which could deepen inequalities of the application of justice in the USA. Also such a tool, if built with good intentions, could be abused upon the election of some kind of fascist, and used to target political enemies. In general I'm on board with ideas that reduce brutality and profiling.
Anyway my final question I think is: if you were willing to grant there might be something to my idea that the truth may be more hidden away in statistics and studies, is there a way to bring that truth "before the eyes" of a million people all who have their own things they're worrying about?
I think I don't want to line by line you and link bomb, though the temptation is there, but before we go our separate ways I want to somewhat address what you brought up.
I think you're probably right that the usa is a unique environment to apply the reformative justice principles, as you say and for reasons I've mentioned elsewhere in the thread, such as difficulty of achieving true universal healthcare for example. I think a key reason though is the political divide in America and the outsized ability of various people and organizations to make or break a policy.
This is important in the SF case because my running theory, backed I believe by evidence (I won't link bomb) is that for example a relatively progressive politician like Chesa Boudin can be hamstrung by the cops not making as many arrests. For reasons I can't quite comprehend Boudin seems to be hated by a lot of people, but what I've found is that before he was elected the police union was already putting out hit pieces. In reality, Boudin's prosecution rates were the same or higher than his predecessor. In terms of actually putting people in jail, he was just as happy to do it as any other prosecutor, he just was brought less people to put in jail.
Now maybe he deserved to be recalled for his inability to work with the sfpd, I'm not sure, but that doesn't seem related to the two things in line with reformative justice that he did, eliminating cash bail and pretrial detention. Here's the key: there were iirc one or two high profile instances of a person out of pretrial detention that then committed a heinous crime. This is fodder for yellow journalism and confirmation bias. "See, it doesn't work, and furthermore this is an indictment of reformative justice and progressive politics!"
What is never mentioned is that certain forms of crime, particularly violent forms, did drop during his tenure, and in fact rose again after his recall.
The situation with him also seems fodder for misattribution. How much affect can one DA over the course of, what, two years, really have, in the face of record inflation and a historic pandemic? Property crime rose during his tenure but it rose across America (murder rates did too). I have lots of evidence showing that crime rates correlate more strongly with economic disparity than anything else, so if crime is going up in SF, it's probably because of that, rather than a single polarizing politician.
Basically my point is, yeah, your eyes are seeing things, no way I can deny that, but the news never reports the mundane, and the truth of it is San Francisco is a relatively boring place. There are far more violent cities in America, but for whatever reason the media loves to paste a sensationalist story of every single murder in SF, every single robbery. Your eyes can only see what's put in front of them, and crime stats aren't being put in front of them. Little Rock had 119 murders last year, twice San Francisco's, but the media doesn't tout every single one as either the personal failure of a socialist DA or the collective failure of progressive politics in general, so nobody talks about it.
So that's why I argue so strongly in favor of the boring: awareness of cognitive biases and rhetorical fallacies, research, and statistics, because I don't think the more exciting way of being aware of the world will give you an accurate picture. Maybe the job of people like me is to find ways to get this information in front of people that doesn't involve insulting them on internet forums lol
In any case having previously lived in SF I feel like what you're seeing on the streets there is less to do with murderers and more to do with the outsized homeless population and lack of public restrooms. I suppose the car break-ins thing is bad but from what I've read the sfpd is neither defunded nor under staffed (compared to cities with worse or more crime), so I'm not sure what's preventing them from making arrests? My pet theory is they're just kinda shit at their jobs, maybe on purpose. Plenty of stories on here of people showing them GPS tracking for a stolen bike and them shrugging their shoulders.
As for your ideal world, that certainly agrees with the evidence that certainty of punishment is the best deterrent (though deterrence is not necessarily the best way to reduce crime). Having though lived in a pervasive surveillance police state (the PRC) I hesitate to throw my weight behind it. Then again Taiwan has somewhat pervasive surveillance and I haven't found any privacy issues as a result, perhaps because the digital minister is an advocate for privacy, or maybe because much of the surveillance is from private businesses on their stores. There's other considerations with the AI thing such as AI can fail to face recognize on black people more frequently than white depending on the model which could deepen inequalities of the application of justice in the USA. Also such a tool, if built with good intentions, could be abused upon the election of some kind of fascist, and used to target political enemies. In general I'm on board with ideas that reduce brutality and profiling.
I will drop only one link, a quick fact checking of various crime theories in San Francisco, from I think about 2 years ago now https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/San-Francisco-crime-Che...
Anyway my final question I think is: if you were willing to grant there might be something to my idea that the truth may be more hidden away in statistics and studies, is there a way to bring that truth "before the eyes" of a million people all who have their own things they're worrying about?