downerending (u/downerending)

downerending commented on What ‘less lethal’ weapons do scientificamerican.com/ar... · Posted by u/Bender

williamdclt · 5 years ago

> How do you get people to obey the law, in a way that is safer for all concerned?

Start by not shooting at them, especially when the protest is legal.

Escalation is the big problem here, nobody is complaining about using rubber bullet against dangerous armed people. They're complaining about using rubber bullet against people in a non-violent protest. If the police is using significantly more force than their "targets", there's an escalation problem

downerending · 5 years ago

I don't think they are using significantly more force. Looking at the riots across the US, the police appear in general to be showing an almost saintly level of restraint, and being killed and severely injured as a result.

This is simply too much to ask.

downerending commented on What ‘less lethal’ weapons do scientificamerican.com/ar... · Posted by u/Bender

jasonwatkinspdx · 5 years ago

Your last sentence is what you've got wrong. I've been down to the protests in pdx. The police escalate pointlessly every 15 min or so. Our chief resigned, which briefly led to the police backing off for a bit. What did these super dangerous protestors do? They tore down the stupid fence around the justice center that's been so obnoxious. But then after discussion decided that might seem too confrontational, so they re-assembled it. Well apparently that really pissed off the police, because shortly after the fence was restored they came charging out as a group firing rubber bullets indiscriminately.

The police's actions during this protest have nothing to do with public safety. It's entirely about them abusing their authority to try to silence and suppress legal protests attempting to hold them accountable.

downerending · 5 years ago

This is one of the things the protesters did, and they bear responsibility for it.

https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/watch-man-tries-to-help-...

downerending commented on What ‘less lethal’ weapons do scientificamerican.com/ar... · Posted by u/Bender

minikites · 5 years ago

>There are a lot of people breaking the law, and we need to reduce that with as little harm as possible.

Cops are the ones breaking the law. The way to "reduce that with as little harm as possible" is to abolish the police and replace them with a public safety department that isn't systematically power hungry, racist, and violent.

downerending · 5 years ago

You should start looking at the videos. I've seen a couple of unconscious people being kicked in the head this week by "protesters". These people are nothing like law-abiding.

downerending commented on The Value of Life overcomingbias.com/2020/0... · Posted by u/cinquemb

alex_young · 5 years ago

The troubling question here isn’t really what price to put on saving lives, but rather why we would divide our resources in such a way that such questions are meaningful in the first place.

We live in a world of great abundance of every measurable sort, and insistence on putting economic expansion ahead of protection of our friends, families, and neighbors would be better analyzed using the lens of ethics rather than that of finance.

downerending · 5 years ago

To quote the movie: Gotta be rich in the first place to think like that.

downerending commented on What ‘less lethal’ weapons do scientificamerican.com/ar... · Posted by u/Bender

Pfhreak · 5 years ago

Rubber bullets have steel cores, and are aimed indiscriminately. Imagine getting hit by a steel paintball. Without a mask or protective clothing. People get hit in the face, losing eyes.

Chemical weapons like CS gas are an aerosolized powder, dispersed using a burning canister. It was never meant for anyone who might be infirm, and it floods the area, getting into people's homes.

Flash bangs will permanently damage hearing and create shrapnel that can cause injury.

In Seattle, police were firing these weapons into packed crowds of peaceful protesters, and specifically targeted medical tents.

Thankfully, the Seattle City Council just voted to outlaw the possession or use of crowd control weapons, including all the weapons in this article, by the police. Here's hoping other cities follow suit. (Contact your city council member! Get a friend to do the same!)

downerending · 5 years ago

The "targeted medical tents" part sounds rather dubious, but yes, "less lethal" most certainly does not mean "harmless".

What would be better, though? How do you get people to obey the law, in a way that is safer for all concerned?

downerending commented on What ‘less lethal’ weapons do scientificamerican.com/ar... · Posted by u/Bender

TACIXAT · 5 years ago

I think protestors should be able to be armed with whatever police are. If they're alright firing it at someone they should be alright getting hit by it.

This would be really cool because it would turn protests into paintball matches. Show the police that the citizens have the numbers and with equal weaponry they would be overpowered. Remind them who they answer to.

Another thing, somewhat of an extension of the first, is that any less-lethal weapon the police carry for use on protestors should be legal to every day carry. I carry a pocket knife (legal in California) for emergencies. I really don't want to stab someone and deal with blood. It is illegal to carry a ton of less lethal alternatives like blackjacks, clubs, or batons. That has always struck me as strange. I'd much rather give someone a few bruises if it comes down to it.

downerending · 5 years ago

> I think protestors should be able to be armed with whatever police are.

That's insane. A fundamental tenet of (US) law is that using a weapon while committing a crime is itself a crime.

We're not at war. There are a lot of people breaking the law, and we need to reduce that with as little harm as possible.

downerending commented on Narrative Collapse theconvivialsociety.subst... · Posted by u/cetera

downerending · 5 years ago

This sounds incisive, but I'm not really smart enough to follow it. Certainly narrative as "story-telling" seems crucially important. And probably like many, it's hard for me to see a really satisfying story coming out of what we're going through. People screaming madly, people being senselessly maimed and killed. It seems more like tragic chaos.

downerending commented on The systemic racism black Americans face, explained in charts vox.com/2020/6/17/2128452... · Posted by u/laurex

downerending · 5 years ago

These charts point out a lot of issues, most real problems, in my opinion. It's far less clear that this is the result of "systemic racism", though. The idea that "poverty begets poverty" could explain a lot of it more simply.

Also, I am very dubious about survey questions. Asking someone how they feel about the police is going to draw a lot of noise and crosscutting motivations. It would be far more useful to know what they do in a situation where they need a policeman.

downerending commented on Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings nature.com/articles/d4158... · Posted by u/pseudolus

SomeoneFromCA · 5 years ago

I wonder if any of the scientist or commenters in this thread have ever lived in a bad hood. The hoods require more and better policing, the worst offenders, who kill orders of magnitude more people are criminal gangs. You remove police - you'll get spike in homicides.

downerending · 5 years ago

No doubt, and at least anecdotally, that seems to be happening in real time.

As to the larger question, I'm having a very hard time seeing adding knowledge and science as a bad thing. Without those, any proposed improvement to policing (including abuse) is simply flailing guesswork.

downerending commented on The Art of Prolog (1994) mitpress.mit.edu/books/ar... · Posted by u/tosh

tom_mellior · 5 years ago

The reason you have trouble thinking of an example is that there isn't one. If you know enough Prolog to write idiomatic Prolog code, you also know enough Prolog to think of the cases where your code will backtrack and where it won't. Because idiomatic Prolog code doesn't do unnecessary backtracking.

downerending · 5 years ago

You may well be right. As far as I can recall, though, as of the last time I was regularly using Prolog, trying to do serious work on a (say) 1000x1000 array was a recipe for disaster.

The exception would be Turbo Prolog, but it was a rather restrictive subset of the language. Fast as hell, though.