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Comment by talldatethrow | Hacker News Reader

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> African Americans commit about half the murders in the US

not disagreeing, but you've also committed the statistical cardinal sin of survivorship bias here as well. It's not half the murders, it's half the _prosecuted_ murders. You don't know how many are not caught or known.

And you left out another major issue. It's half of the homicides convicted as murders. People pleading guilty to negligent homicide or claiming self defense (or simply winning their case) aren't included. Which are outcomes associated with good lawyers, which is associated with wealth, which is highly correlated to race.

Claiming self defense doesn't change the charge from murder unless you are found not to have murdered the person.

Claiming self defense doesn't. Successfully claiming self defense means that you did not murder the person.

Successfully making that claim is associated with expensive lawyers rather than overworked public defenders.

The clearance rate for black victims of murder in black neighborhoods (where the perpetrator is likely to also be black) is the lowest out of all categories, which makes your point actually work against you

Unknown would be its own category, which means some of those unknown might actually make the African American stats even worse if they were attributed.

It's unknown, so the OP's original argument of maths:

> you could argue racism... Or math.

is not supported by the purported statistic of "half the murders are by blacks".

It's not prosecuted murders. The baseline stats aren't built on that number, they're built on the race of the perp when known.

Victimization surveys also corroborate these proportions at least for attempted murders and other violent crimes.

So it could very well be more than half.

Doubtful. Whites have more wealth and better lawyers.

Oh yes, thousands of murders a year dismissed by clever lawyers! Thousands!

The scarier possibility is "thousands of wrongful convictions due to ineffective representation."

... scarier and hard to discount.

And it is imho better for 9 murderers to walk free and prevent 1 wrongful conviction, than to have 1 wrongful conviction to keep 9 murderers off the streets.

Interesting correlation. How well do poverty, education, and other factors correlate regardless of race?

Who cares, none of those cause anyone to murder, just like race doesn't.

Did you really just post an inflammatory, unsourced, incomplete statistic, then when someone points out that all the other correlations you didn't, you say "who cares" ?

He was talking about the cause. I never mentioned the cause. I said which group. I never said what causes that group to do it. It surely isn't wealth or education.. eastern Europe has been poor and no one kills for a pair of fancy shoes.

He was talking about the cause. I never mentioned the cause.

This is a lie, you insinuated the cause and now are pretending you didn't. This is a common dog whistle by extremists.

I never said what causes that group to do it. It surely isn't wealth or education

Now you are directly saying it and basing it on nothing. Being a poorer country overall has nothing to do with anything. There are many other countries that contradict your narrative.

no one kills for a pair of fancy shoes

This is another racist dog whistle and has nothing to do with reality.

If you aren't doing these things on purpose you should reevaluate what you accept as true and look into these assumptions you hold.

Have you considered actually answering why poor polish people didn't kill each other for shoes, instead of saying it's a dog whistle to mention it? You don't add anything besides labeling things randomly. What you're doing doesn't work anymore.

kill each other for shoes

Nobody kills each other for shoes. This is a racist dog whistle you are repeating over and over. It is not backed up by anything. You wrote it multiple times and you haven't even explained why you think that's true.

If you bothered to Google it, you'd see ENDLESS articles about different events exactly like that.

Here's just one for you picked at random:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-no-bail-2nd-...

It isn't someone else's job to prove your claims for you. You don't get to say something outlandish then get mad at the other person for 'not googling it'.

You searching for something specific and finding it has nothing to do with statistics. You moved to finding specific news articles with the title you wanted. That would be like me saying that a lot of polish people are serial killers:

https://www.ranker.com/list/famous-polish-serial-killers/web...

or that polish travelers are murderers:

https://www.nationthailand.com/thailand/general/40027684

Again, this is a racist stereotype you are trying to dig in to.

No, I was not talking about cause.

Take a look. I specifically mentioned correlation twice and nothing else.

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