"The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it". —Jeff Bezos <https://sports.yahoo.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-explains-2123...>
But at Level 2, I do think there's a kernel of truth to this (Jeff's statement), because sometimes it is hard to measure the same thing that people actually mean when they are talking about something like crime.
For example, in this article: There are "two really visible crises" in the downtown area: homelessness and open-air drug use. "And honestly, people conflate that with crime, with street safety," she said."
So basically the author is saying people feel unsafe about homelessness and drug use, but those aren't really crimes (people "conflate" them with crimes), and so those don't count as higher crime. So people are mistaken about the crime rate. Fair enough, but that's a technicality of what we are actually measuring, VS what people are feeling about it when you ask them about "crime" or safety or something.
People are irrational and we give in to irrational fears. If I heard about one incidence of someone who is homeless attacking a bystander, I would be afraid of all homeless people. I do not have enough data to analyze (nor do I care to analyze) how many attacks have been by homeless vs others. My gut reaction drives the anecdotes and that is not always the reality.
I will give one point to this statement though - you cannot fight an emotional reaction with logic.
The averages are removing information about how crime is distributed and focusing on violent crime when people are more worried currently about property crime. This uneven distribution and the rise in property crime does a lot explain the difference between these national averages and people's personal experiences of crime.
While the plural of anecdote isn't data, it's not some mystery why people look at local temperatures to decide how to dress themselves, instead of the national average, nor are they statistically illiterate for doing so. Nobody with any sense is going outside in a blizzard without a coat just because the national average temperature is warm.
The same is true with crime. It is not evenly distributed and that variance defines people's lived experience with it.
I am taking a more extreme example just to illustrate - If I could not find a job, does not mean there are no jobs for anyone. If I face hardship, does not mean everyone faces hardship.
I am not saying ignore local variances.. however, it is still not anecdote driven. The original article was about crimes dropping in US measured across different cites and not that there is no crime.
My point is that people hearing about crime will still have an emotional reaction and might not reflect the reality. Anecdotes get tainted and exaggerated by emotions. JeffB's statement mean little in this case.
No, it was about violent crimes dropping and comparing that to a survey about people worried about all crime. Given that property crimes are infamously up in some places with mass looting events, those people are not being irrational or ignoring data to believe what they do.
The real data point we should worry about from a policy perspective is that there are a relatively small number of people who do a lot more crime than everyone else.
The last sentence seems to be a dog whistle for something else.
You don't need any such bias to understand there's a difference between all crime & violent crime and that comparing the two measures of entirely different things is not valid.
> The last sentence seems to be a dog whistle for something else.
I was referring to this story about how about one third of all shoplifting in NYC was done by 327 people: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/nyregion/shoplifting-arre...
Please retract your incorrect accusations.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5D4rToJ6IW2JsilsvuKeA1?si=X...
The same is true of crime rates, distribution information is lost when averaging.