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Comment by tompccs | Hacker News Reader

This is a survey by a respected polling company with an overwhelming result that goes against what is clearly the preferred narrative of most people on this site. Naturally, the most upvotes comments are people countering it with anecdotes. I thought people here we were meant to be smart enough to avoid confirmation bias?

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Key takeaway from survey:

"It's not so much the volume of interactions Black Americans have with the police that troubles them or differentiates them from other racial groups, but rather the quality of those interactions."

Not sure what "preferred narrative" you are referring too, but most black people think America has a "police problem". Define that however you like. Bunch of other polls from the same organization for those curious enough to dig deeper. Seek Higher Things friend.

* https://news.gallup.com/poll/316247/black-americans-police-e...

* https://news.gallup.com/poll/315962/americans-say-policing-n...

One thing to keep in mind with open ended polling questions like this is that there is that the questions can shape the response. One interesting display of this is that most Americans don't believe that we should take race into account for college admissions, but most Americans also believe that affirmative action for minorities is beneficial.

I don't know what the preferred narrative here has been on the subject, but I think it's been obvious the vast majority of black folks never wanted police protection to disappear, and the lack of assurance in our interactions with police (confirmed by polls mentioned in the article) demonstrates that reform is something that would be strongly desired.

> the questions can shape the response.

An excellent illustration of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA&t=28s

Although in this case, it doesn't look like they had bad intentions and they seem to have dug at least a little below the surface and drawn what seem like sensible conclusions. I wonder if more detailed results and the full list of questions are available somewhere.

I should say that I do assume there were no bad intentions and believe the data/poll is still useful, though I don't think it describes the sentiment on "Should we reform the police and how?" between demographics very well.

A conclusion based on those polls for affirmative action in college is that people support the general principle of getting more minorities into college, but do not support the current methods applied under affirmative action. When specifics are outlined for respondents the support drops.

This has less to do with the style of shaping the response by what kind of questions are made, and more to do with what the question is. Support for a concept is not the same as support for a specific action. If you ask people to choose between multiple of bad choices in order to achieve a common good then the goal is likely to have a significant higher support than any of the bad choices.

Great explanation - and also why we should be wary of headlines touting polls that don't get into the specifics.

> This is a survey by a respected polling company with an overwhelming result that goes against what is clearly the preferred narrative of most people on this site.

But...it doesn't do that at all. Both because the defund/dismantle/abolish narrative isn't dominant on the site, and because the framing of the survey sidesteps the structural law enforcement issues at the heart of that narrative entirely and asks merely whether people want police to spend the same, more, or less time in their neighborhoods, which isn't the issue at all.

It sounds like you're suggesting that people are making comments along the lines of "This poll must be wrong because all the black people I know think police presence should be reduced."

I scanned the first several posts and didn't see any comments like that. Someone mentioning their personal experience doesn't align with a result isn't suggesting the poll is wrong. Not everything is an argument. To me this suggests the data points could be distributed into homogeneous pockets, and a discussion of this possibility seems fair game.

Some comments raise questions about the experimental methods or muse about hidden nuance in the data, which also seem like fair discussion points for this forum.

Hmm, found at least one like this:

newbie789 6 hours ago [–]

This is fascinating because I am myself half black, lived in many communities of mixed demographics and never once heard a friend (of any race) say they want more police at all, ever.

Depending on people’s age, it would be very surprising to hear anyone advocate for more police. Police generally are seen as the folk who take the fun out of things. So until you start getting affected by their absence you don’t advocate for them.

>Police generally are seen as the folk who take the fun out of things

You must live in a very safe/upper-class neighborhood if that's how you think.

I’ve lived in many kinds of neighborhoods, from one where there were six murders in a school year to one where there wasn’t one in living memory. At one time I was poor enough that taking the bus was a luxury and I’d rather walk and save the change. I’ve met and known lots of kinds of people.

I agree that comment uses anecdotal data. However, I don't think that it is attempting to refute the findings of the original post.

Anecdotal data isn't inherently bad; it just shouldn't be used in attempt to prove or disprove anything, which I don't think that comment does. Using anecdotal data to suggest the possibility of alternative or more-nuanced hypotheses in an informal discussion thread is a totally appropriate use of it.

Furthermore, this is only one example. Drawing conclusions about a trend from a single example is ironically what the original commenter said is not "smart."

The answer is the Black community isn't a monolith and has have swaths that support more police and others that support less. No conspiracy or cherry-picking.

And if you study a lot of opinion polling you'll notice, across all racial demographics, there tends to be a generational rift forming between the young and the old. Older generations likely remember the crime wave that took hold in the 80s and early 90s and its subsequent decline. And the younger generation lives under a larger, more aggressive police presence that was instituted since then.

81% is actually pretty monolithic.

What this tells me is that the rioters do not represent the people.

From the article:

> Fewer than one in five Black Americans feel very confident that the police in their area would treat them with courtesy and respect.

> It's not so much the volume of interactions Black Americans have with the police that troubles them or differentiates them from other racial groups, but rather the quality of those interactions.

> the vast majority believe reform is needed, with upward of 90% favoring specific reforms aimed at improving police relations with the communities they serve and preventing or punishing abusive police behavior.

Seems to me like the protesters do represent the people.

If a person (not accusing you) only read the headline and not the article, they might get the wrong impression.

Here is a part that I think makes things clear:

"Bottom Line

It's not so much the volume of interactions Black Americans have with the police that troubles them or differentiates them from other racial groups, but rather the quality of those interactions."

It is political.

If we take the gallup and normalize it by social economic status then the result seems to pretty much align with a desire for more police presence at the lower end and less police presence at the higher end, which in turn reflect the crime rate at regions with higher social economics status vs low social economic status. This would unlikely surprise anyone here on HN.

But if you proxy social economic status with demographics then the result becomes political, and so people desire to find an different answer.

Of course, many people in the site see themselves as heroes because they joined the BLM protests during the pandemic. Their self awarded virtue would loose its shine if the data shows that the people they are demonstrating for aren't the victims they thought they were.

This is just an utterly baseless comment with no evidence at all.

"many people?" How many? "Self awarded virtue?" Who is doing this?

This was clear right from the outset too. Upper middle class white people in "nice" neighborhoods don't even interact with police.

I interacted with a police officer a grand total of 3 times in the last 20 years: one traffic citation, one traffic ticket (missing front plate on the car - deserved), and an officer stopped by after someone broke into our mailbox and asked if I'd press charges (I said I would, but they never found the perp).

Compare that to a bad neighborhood in e.g. Chicago or Detroit where the situation is worse than in Kabul, and without constant, heavy, aggressive police presence a lot more people will be murdered.

The belief that we do not need police and that a "social worker" is sufficient in e.g. Chicago is what someone has astutely called a "luxury belief", a modern equivalent of "let them eat cake". It comes from the tower so ivory, you can't look at it without hurting your eyes in broad daylight.

> The belief that we do not need police and that a "social worker" is sufficient

I think most people still believe that we need some policing. But that policing isn't solving the longer term problems. We know that sending people to prison has a tendency to turn people into criminals even if their original crime was minor (not everyone of course). So why is that our strategy for dealing for crime rather than tackling the underlying social and economic issues? There's good reason to think that crime levels would be reduced if half the police budget was put into social programs (specifically in the US where police budgets are ridiculous).

While social workers might be useful in Detroit, we are unlike Chicago in that we don't have a very heavy handed PD, but also one with significantly less funding and man power - we could use more funding to improve our abysmal response times in many neighborhoods.

However Detroit's PD still has bad cops even if they are miles ahead of other police departments, even though we could use more police in general - I don't think more "heavy handedness" or "aggressiveness" is useful or desired.

But that's not what you're going to get, folks. Now you're going to get half as many officers, and "social workers" trying to talk sense into armed meth heads. Good luck. All because upper middle class white youth has never interacted with a police officer and thinks you don't need them. Note also that I didn't say "heavy handed". I said "heavy", meaning visible presence, patrols, monitoring.

Detroit had 4 mass shootings in July. I don't agree.

Yes, one of them happened very close to my childhood from home, but I don't understand where there's a disagreement.

It should be noted that aggressive policing - distinct from increased police presence - has been shown to contribute to violent/major crimes rather than decrease it: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5

Significant community trust has been built by police in Detroit by keeping their limited resources focused on what helps prevent violence rather than broken windows policing - I believe the community would agree and the police leadership here have voiced support for this as well.

When you define the police you get less police presence or police with less training budget.

There just isn't any good news to either the a abolitionists or the motte and Bailey argument of "we don't mean completely" argument to the future of policing or society. Violent rioters are demanding we defund our defenses against violent rioters.

I don't believe that being "smart" inhibits confirmation bias, as it's an inherent human trait that our brains have evolved into.

Being smart makes confirmation bias worse because you can reason yourself into believing your confirmation bias away.

Many so called "enlightened people" will discard any data that doesn't fit with their opinions if that opinion is seen as virtuous/fashionable.

What narrative is that?

You’re making a strong statement here so you’re getting a lot of responses, but it’s completely vague so people just have to guess what you mean.

Police? Sure. THIS police? haha nope thanks.

This is pretty much the only way you can read the last poll in the article. Not sure why you're being down voted.

This is exactly the sentiment of the article! Spot on statement.

I bet you don't have a single poll to prove that. I think the truth is in the middle. Most of us think the police state has gone too far and needs to dial back the military and shoot first ask questions later mentality (and learn something from other countries). The police unions need to be taken down a couple of notches as well. I know very few people who want zero cops. I consider those people radicals and extremely short sighted. They along with just thugs are the ones burning down black communities and saying "riots aren't violence!"

> I thought people here we were meant to be smart enough to avoid confirmation bias?

I think that's actually impossible. I often try to check my confirmation bias, I can make myself consciously aware of it, but I can't undo it. Like an optical illusion, you can't unsee it. Like riding the bike, you can't unlearn it.

Aside: I think you can unlearn riding a bike to some extent - or any deeply ingrained actions; but it seems you need a similar activity. If you switch the gearing so you pedal backwards, and the handle bars to move opposite, then ride that bike until it becomes second nature (years probably) .. now get on a normal bike, you'll have to learn to ride it again. You've "unlearned".

I've had this experience recently with a video game: played for a decade, switched to another game for a few months, moved back to first game - unlearned the controls (instinct is to use controls of second game). Interestingly now I've re-learned my ability seems to have improved.

I think it works with optical illusions too: sort term as well, if my kids are anything to go by (they might have misreported seeing the illusion - eg lady in hat|hag with big nose).

N=1~, but across various activities. I'm a bit older, so brain plasticity is not what it used to be.

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