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Comment by joseph_grobbles | Hacker News Reader

Do you really believe that this public discourse occurred on a public train after a theft? Do you think they had a lively debate in the commons about how to solve crime?

I'm a bit surprised people are seriously believing this. This is someone's shower thoughts six hours later when they strawmanned some ridiculous positions to caricaturize "opponents".

I will go further and say that everything the person said seems...dubious, and are claims that are unverifiable. Like, where is this low-income "suburb" (two hours from a major center...) that has no crime? As someone who grew up in a smaller town in the rust belt, I find their claim hysterical.

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> Do you really believe that this public discourse occurred on a public train after a theft? Do you think they had a lively debate in the commons about how to solve crime?

> I'm a bit surprised people are seriously believing this. This is someone's shower thoughts six hours later when they strawmanned some ridiculous positions to caricaturize "opponents".

You're trying to portray the story as fabricated, but that's likely wrong. IMHO, it's more likely exaggerated (e.g. there probably wasn't a "lively debate in the commons," more likely comments directed at no one in particular morphing two opinionated randos getting mad at each other).

>> So if you are an immigrant & safety is a priority, yeah there are many towns in the midwest southwest etc. where you can be very safe. Houses are quite cheap & I was able to buy my house with straight cash, but ironically that cash was earned in SF!

> Like, where is this low-income "suburb" (two hours from a major center...) that has no crime? As someone who grew up in a smaller town in the rust belt, I find their claim hysterical.

He didn't say it was "low-income," just cheaper compared to SF. I grew up in a smaller city in the Midwest (four hours from a major center), and his account rings true to me. There's more to the Midwest than the rust belt.

I can't reply to your other comment because it's dead. However, I wanted to respond to this:

> And FWIW, every single small city I checked around 2 hours outside of Chicago has property crime rates worse than Chicago! Isn't that amazing? No, it isn't, unless you're deluded enough to believe their nonsense.

There's a lot of Midwest outside of that region. Even if what you say is true*, it's a skewed sample that can't reasonably be assumed to represent the whole.

* Which I doubt, especially there can be confounding effects in whatever statistics you're looking at, like differing reporting rates (which was already called out in this thread or a similar one, w.r.t San Francisco).

Yeah that story was amusing at best. I half expected it to end with “That residents name? Albert Einstein” or something equally silly, and yet everyone here is falling for it hook, line and sinker because it confirms their beliefs. HN is supposed to be better than this.

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