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Comment by soco | Hacker News Reader

Games about killing people are not a problem, as long they are labeled properly (enforcing that, that's another story). Do we have a bigger problem with objectification, than with plain murdering, or with drug dealing? And how's the argument about having sex with prostitutes in GTA? Really all this only confuses me - people are cherry-picking topics to be upset about, while ignoring similar glaring ones right there. I'm not even saying about what one should be upset, just expecting some consistency in it.

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Cherry-picking is fundamental to most people’s views, sadly, and they always use “we have to draw the line somewhere” as an excuse for why it is valid to ignore similar or even far worse situations. Worse still, they focus their time creating elaborate objections to what are mostly meaningless topics, mostly due to not being able to exercise their control over those much bigger and broad issues. For example, known effects from cigarettes versus theorized effects of e-cigarettes. Same goes for debates on alcohol vs pot, electric car accidents vs ICE vehicles, so on and so forth. It also happens when placing extraordinary value on an individual cherry-picked life or theoretical life, rather than any of the actual lives lost every day to solvable problems.

End of the day, it’s all about people trying to control other people’s thoughts and actions by forcing them to conform to the box the debater has created and lined with cherry-picked facts. You can see that in the arguments of this article and in this thread.

Just as a note, I’m not advocating one way or another on any topic, just addressing the issue of cherry-picking that happens regardless of which side anyone falls on an issue.

Anecdotally, I would like to mention that my partner has been sick for over a month with some kind of lung shit he got from an e-cigarette (vuse something disposable crap). He has been literally unable to sleep through a night for over a month, multiple doctor visits, 3 courses of antibiotics, lung xray that apparently confirmed it was viral pneumonia, but yeah. I have been smoking for over 6 years and still alive, but he smoked that shit for less than a few weeks and he is barely functional. I can't remember the last time I got a full night's sleep anymore, because I constantly have to apply muscle relaxants and ensure he has proper medication to be able to remain asleep.

So yeah, not really the point of your argument, but fuck e-cigarettes, for the rest of time I will have this stance. And yes, I am brutally aware of what cigarettes do as well, but don't knock the "theoretical" effects of e-cigarettes.

If it's viral, how can you tell it's from the e-cigarettes and not a direct human-to-human infection?

As said, another example of cherry-picking. They smoked a vape, therefore it must be vapes. They got the vaccine, therefore it must be vaccines. Rinse and repeat for whichever argument.

What is worse, pointing out these selective facts generally makes people become defensive, so they dive into searching for more cherry-picked arguments as ammunition to prove themselves right, rather than accepting that they might actually be wrong and objectively looking for information. It is the core of the problem of politics on both sides and we can easily see how extreme it can make people regardless of the thing being advocated.

Cherry-picking and self-reinforcement go hand-in-hand.

On the topic of cherry picking and vapes, one of the biggest absurdities is that it's now cheaper and more convenient to purchase meth or fent in San Francisco than it is a flavored vape. I can respect people having different levels of libertarian or public health concerns than me, but there's absolutely no consistent pairing of them that should result in vapes being more restricted than fentanyl.

In Germany more than half of all murder victims are women. I presume it's not much different in other countries, although gang on gang violence may distort the picture a bit.

If you look into research on femicide, you see there is a specific dynamic at work, objectification and feelings of possession in men are causal. These motives are universal, as femicides are otherwise frequently happening across all economic, cultural and social backgrounds.

> I presume it's not much different in other countries, although gang on gang violence may distort the picture a bit.

If you count all homicides i would expect women to usually be the minority in most countries due to gang crime as you say. In france its the reverse, 67% of all murder victims are men. The data looks similar in the US.

In the french statistics certain crimes affect mostly women and other mostly men. 97% gang related deaths are men while 66% of intra-family deaths are women.

Germany: https://www.bka.de/DE/AktuelleInformationen/StatistikenLageb...

France: https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/5763555?sommaire=576363...

US: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

Yeah, my "expectation" was meant in regard to non-gang violence, which varies by country a lot. Gang on gang, or inner crime violence is for the most part irrelevant to the argument, as it's not something the general population is involved in, usually.

My point is, femicides are a much bigger problem than people realize. Considering the majority of murderers and other criminals are men, I don't think it's wild to presume some form of gender specific motivations in those murders, without getting all academic here.

Don't know about you infographic, here is recent stats for Germany:

https://www.bka.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Publikationen/Pol...

There is an interesting aspect when looking at gender in intra-relationship violence. The rate of violence is fairly independent on the gender of the couple, meaning that same-sex relationships has the same rate of violence as any other relationship. This statistical phenomenon mean that women in same-sex relationships are twice as violent as other women, and men in same-sex relationships are about half as violent as other men.

The big question then is what (if any) gender specific motivations is causing this to occur.

Can you link the source for that? It's not that I would completely dismiss it, I think I read it before, but I still would like to see the meaning of "same" here.

I think there are many possible explanations, but one certainly shouldn't be ignored over essentialist ones: Co-morbid mental illness and maladapted behavior in LGBT folks, caused by their upbringing and coping with discrimination or alienation. They usually don't have a blueprint for life and have to make up their own gender and community roles. Then there is all sorts of violence imaginable in relation to "gay panic" and self-acceptance.

It may be cishet gender roles and the male archetype finding their way into these relationships.

Maybe people are just violent opportunists. (I doubt there are as many murders in F4F relationships...)

Maybe there are biological causes. Personally, I think it's misguided to separate sexual orientation and identity as fundamentally different. The whole of "sex difference" is produced by effective androgenic and estrogenic signaling throughout life. Like, a cell has no sex. The Y chromosome does about nothing, except for a brief moment mid development, and everything else is genetically identical. All genes affecting androgen effectiveness are located elsewhere. Funnily enough, the androgen receptor is encoded on the X-chromosome, so typically women got the information twice, making it functionally more robust.

Androgens role in aggressiveness is well documented, and it's usually relative levels making the difference. Maybe there is some sort of selective order in the lesbian community too. Things like PCOS come to mind.

Or a mix of all... There won't be data to give a definitive answer.

Honestly, I think it would be more interesting, if murder rates in M4M relationships were lower or higher. Cause sexual objectification definitely is present in some parts of the gay community. Although often in concert with sexual liberation and reciprocity, and I don't think possessive thinking is frequent.

I would point to the government report that the Swedish government did, or the study from Turell (2000) or Messinger (2001), or Kelley et al. (2012). I also recall hearing it from a professor.

There are many theories but one of the more reasonable one (in my view) is the simple one. Humans are humans and culture is usually a better explanation than biology. It also fits the challenge hypothesis of the relation between androgens and aggressiveness, which is that androgens function actually has nothing to do with aggressiveness but everything to do with social status and the amount of behavior towards defending against perceived social status threats. Only in a culture where social status is defended through the use of aggression is there a relation between androgens and aggression (An experiment using a setup where social status was defended through non-aggression showed a link with increased androgens and a reduction in aggression, which would indicate this theory to be true).

There are also multiple studies looking at self-reported amount of violence in relationships, which tend to show that while the rate of violence by women and men is fairly similar, what is different is how that violence get applied. This would also support the theory that the difference sits in how men apply violence against women, women applies violence against men, men against men and women against women. Same rate of violence, but not the exact same behavior when violence is being applied.

> In Germany more than half of all murder victims are women. I presume it's not much different in other countries, although gang on gang violence may distort the picture a bit.

No? For 2022 in Sweden the numbers were 93 men, 23 women. Men has been overrepresentative by 200% or more for as long as we have statistic data. You can look at the graph at the government statistic department on crime here: https://bra.se/statistik/statistik-om-brottstyper/mord-och-d...

From that same page, 9% of cases involve violence within a couple relation.

It would surprise me if the data looks that much different in other Nordic countries.

I don't speak Swedish. What's the proportion of gang on gang violence? Because I think it's irrelevant for the argument, as the general population isn't much directly affected by it.

In Germany, 2022, there were 114 male and 150 female murder (§ 211 StGB) victims. Mind you, that's all murders, including gang violence.

https://www.bka.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Publikationen/Pol...

The number of deaths has increased in the last 10 years by 20%, so say around 20% can be attributed to gang violence? There is no official definition of gang on gang violence in the statistics, so we can only really guess here.

One thing of note is that the use of a gun sits at around 50%, which has also had a similar 20% increase in the last 10 years. The gang on gang violence that get media attention usually involve shooting or explosives.

I think he has a better point if he focused on intra-relationship murders. In these cases its usually women who are the victims in most country statistics i have seen. From the swedish one:

> I alla 10 fall av dödligt våld i en parrelation 2022 var offret en kvinna, vilket var 5 fall färre jämfört med 2021

=> In all 10 cases of fatal violence in a couple relationship in 2022, the victim was a woman.

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