Saying NYC being one of the safest places to be in the country is why LLMs will never be accurate. People will just say anything no matter how irrational it is.
On a 100k to 250k list, NYC is above average safety.
Per capita crime rates, while useful for comparing the likelihood of crime between areas with different population sizes, don't determine the absolute safety of a place. They normalize crime data by population to show relative safety, which is a different metric.
Idk who you think "we" is. It's not in my definition of safety, nor probably the general populace to think of Stockton, California as "safer" than NYC, just because Stockton had 50 murders a year compared to NYC's 240... Because Stockton has a 17.77 murder rate per 100k, and NYC 3 per 100k. You bet your ass you'd be "safer", as in less likely to get shot or stabbed to death, living in NYC.
If anything, the real # in 2023 of 386 only further proves my point. That it's ridiculous to assert even that many more murders is less safe than Stockton, CA.
Safety is about "am I more or less likely to have something happen to me" and no one is thinking that means moving to the tiniest country of 2,000 people where only 10 murders happened in the entire country last year.
I contend it is significantly safer in the majority of cities in the US than New York City.
You're factually wrong.
You seem to be implying per capita is a bad measure of safety. But you're not being clear why. Can you elaborate?
Your conclusion is without any evidence and is in fact, wrong, based on the crime metrics we can easily compare.
It's quite uncanny that it's the people who most fear crime, think they're going to something like "stay the hell away from crime infested NYC" and proceed to move somewhere where they're more likely to be affected by crime.
Rational or not, proximity of crime freaks some people out much more than probability of being the victim.
That said, I understand the desire to frame crime in the absolute. Either you’re the 1 guy who gets unlucky and experiences a crime in your small town, or there are 999 people like you in the big city). Crime is a problem of scale, and a bigger scale freaks people out even if the coefficients are the same.
Majority of murders are among people who know each other. You personal risk is all about who your partner is, who your friends are, how much aggressive your uncle is. A guy you never met that is just about to murder his wife has nothing to do with your personal risk.
It freaks out people who live elsewhere and all they know of cities is what they see on cable news, especially a certain channel.
> There’s a psychological reason (rational or not) people equate cities with violence
Maybe it's simply that it's repeated at them endlessly - a simple, effective tactic used by conservatives for decades.
I lived in NYC for 20 years, people who live there too long develop stockholm syndrome excusing the shit that goes on on a daily basis. Every new yorker experiences it given enough time.
The common saying is that when a 'transplant' moves and starts questioning the filfth, noise, qol issues and minor crime they are told to go back to Ohio.
I used to be that person , then I realized that living in an environment where you excuse this behavior as normal... is not normal.
So you can spread your message of "statistically safe" as much as you want but everyone knows that new yorkers put up with a different amount of s*t than most.
Lots of NYers love living there, obviously - they are willing to pay far more for the privilege (another objective fact). You dismissing their preferences is just one person's baseless speculation.
People are just reaching for possible straws. Do you have any factual basis to say that? We can make up anything and put the word 'might' or 'maybe' in front of them.
I've spent lots of time in NYC and other dense, major cities, and I think I've seen one crime ($20 stolen). The interstate highway is more threatening, with the aggressive drivers.
Really, go to NYC. Look at the millions of people walking around without a care, going about their days.
You are correct that if the average number of observers per crime is higher, that could indeed make a place feel comparatively more dangerous since the while the liklihood of being a victim is lower, the liklihood of seeing a victim is higher. However, I would posit that a lot more goes into feelings of safety and we haven't seen any data on how large this effect size might be.
Yes, agreed (of course). I'm not sure what that says about the original statement.
> The reality might be you're less likely to be murdered, but you might be way more likely to witness a crime. That matters.
First, it seems like we are really shifting the goalposts. Being victimized by crime is a lot different than witnessing it, though the latter isn't pleasant, of course.
How much does it matter? In a place that dense, you see a lot more of everything. For people there, it's a feature and not a bug. That's why people pay so much to live there.
Is witnessing a crime so bad? I suppose something traumatizing would be, but I think NYers are used to seeing 'everything, all the time', and they would not be traumatized by most crime. Murder? I think that would leave a mark, depending on what you saw, but that's very rare. Shoplifting? Public intoxication? A carjacking would be alarming, I suppose, speaking for myself.
You may be thinking of a median or mode, which can differ based on the shape of the distribution curve.
As less persecutions end up in convictions, and as accusations of bias can mean the end of a police officer career, there's also a more lax attitude from the police force.
Crime becomes less risky and more rewarding, what drives crime force recruitment up, the culture becomes more and more accepting, and petty criminals over time graduate to more serious crimes. Substance abuse, violence, it all just adds to the culture.
Soon you'll start noticing that there areas of the city where police presence is virtually inexistent, and the people who live on those places realize that involving the police could bring unpleasant consequences. Those liberated areas are for all practical purposes, outside the reach of the State.
Soon, murders start going unnoticed, fights against rival gangs lead to deaths, but unless the bodies are found, nobody is going to involve the police. People simply cease to exist and disappear, no records.
Politicians, prosecutors and police chiefs soon realize the political advantage of not digging too much into reality and promoting the lie that the official statistics, utterly corrupted by the incomplete data collection, are trustworthy and represent the reality.
Terminally political people and journalists, that are nowadays basically propaganda officers, start gaslighting everyone that dares to say otherwise. You can't feel safe in the subway, but you are either crazy or a simpleton if you don't believe NYC is one of the safest places in the world, look at the data!
But I also think it’s odd that you think NYC is underreporting murders and not going after serious crimes, when if you go into rural areas, you’ll find many that are a few Sheriffs stretched thin over hundreds of miles, and infinite more potential for “murders going unnoticed.”
https://magazine.atavist.com/outlaw-country-klamath-county-o...
Paints a picture
Averages, per-capita, even if we could trust the data, and we definitely can't because NY government is a cesspool of corruption means absolutely nothing, because every one who lives in the real world knows that violence is not uniformly distributed. You can lie to yourself as much as you want, it is your choice, but I've seen this movie before, that's how things start, and them there's a moment when even people like you can't deny it anymore, but it will only get there exactly because of folks like you that prefer to live in the bizarre illusion that being a member of your ideological bubble makes you a high status person.
People like you make me remember the old soviet joke when they get astounded with the faith Americans had in their media, because the soviets at least were able to recognize propaganda for what it is.
'Everyone knows' is a group of people repeating something to each other enough that they believe it must be true. Those are the things that most need skepticism, an objective factual basis. Look at your comment - there is no factual basis for any of the claims. Some is conspiracy - if they disagree, they are gaslighting, incompetent, etc.
Objective facts are our only salvation from our own delusions - which we're all subject to. There is factual basis to say that NYC is very safe, but it's not conclusive. That doesn't support baseless claims. If you have an alternative claim, there's not reason to believe it without factual support.
Almost everyone you're talking to here lives in the developed world, and it doesn't seem like they 'know' the same thing.
> You can't feel safe in the subway
You can, and many do. I do.