Humans are violent animals. It is part of our nature. If violence is an "illness", it is one we are born with.
I strongly suggest reading The Myth of Man the Killer, which cites opposing evidence from, among other sources, military experience.
Self defense (i.e., using force to stop violence) is not violence (nor is it vigilantism, but that's another article :).
]]>I suspect they might, after they've fingerprinted the world, swapped for everyone's DNA and combined that with information of each FB's and tweets...
]]>I submit that if the government would like to reduce violence, it can start by ceasing to behave in ways that provoke and justify violence, such as stopping and searching people for no valid reason. Abolish TSA, close all checkpoints that aren't at the border, and generally go back to behaving in ways the government has business behaving, as opposed to unconstitutional attempts to predict crime (or to define it so vaguely that a cop's judgment determines who is a criminal).
In short, the government needs to decide whether it's going to be the people's friend or our enemy.
]]>The reason why the CDC stopped getting funding is pretty clear, it's not about banning research, it's about not spending public money on bogus research.
Here's a fairly quick explanation of Arthur Kellerman's jaded figures, regarding chances of a gun owner being hurt, from this, it's quite clear that his research is not factual. http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdgaga.html
Public health does look at epidemics, but i think it's flawed trying to apply it to everything. Virus' can infect people indiscriminately, so spotting a spreading trend is quite useful with contagious disease; whereas violence, i think it's unnecessarily obfuscating the issues at hand. Some areas just have more violence because people are poorer and there is more social tension in the area.
Ultimately, I have no idea what is the cause and solution, but i think the public health approach is taking some very unscientific leaps of faith in some matters, and also ignoring well established criminological axioms.
]]>The TEL correlation is not to rates of violence, but to trends in violence. So Switzerland has always had less violence than the USA, but in both countries violence declined in similar proportions after the removal of TEL.
Obviously, there are other reasons why Switzerland is less violent than the USA, but TEL's effect is clear.
]]>"TEL was used everywhere. From Switzerland to Indonesia. So pray, why should violence in the USA be higher than in Switzerland because of TEL?"
Population genetics? To quote the classics:
"We're Americans, with a capital 'A.' You know what that means? Do ya? That our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We're the underdog. We're mutts!"
Or it could be something else...
]]>There are also strong environmental factors at play. Consider pets who do not strike unless put into certain scenarios such as being injured. Their environment does not encourage violence and so they tend to shrink away from it.
]]>Here's an interesting article about the links between TEL in the environment (i.e. leaded gasoline usage) and violence rates ~22 years later.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/...
Apparently the correlation is very strong, and might account for as much as 90% of the variation in U.S. crime rates over the last several decades. Also this strong correlation has been found in local and state datasets, and national datasets from many different countries.
This slashdot comment is also interesting:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?...
Apparently, TEL was known to be hazardous on exposure as early as 1923. The inventor of it poured it all over his hands in a media stunt to demonstrate that it was safe. What they concealed from the media was that it took him nearly a year to recover from the lead poisoning he got from that demonstration.
]]>- Humans are violent animals. It is part of our nature. If violence is an "illness", it is one we are born with.
- Could these "geographic patterns of violence" be an example of the so-called clustering illusion?
- There's no credible evidence that exposure to violent media leads to real-life violent acts. If anything, violence has gone down instead of up as media consumption has increased.
]]>TEL was used everywhere. From Switzerland to Indonesia. So pray, why should violence in the USA be higher than in Switzerland because of TEL?
Clive didn't make an exclusive statement; he simply said there is evidence that TEL is a contributing factor in rates of violence.
]]>Personally, it makes a ton of sense to me that the human brain has a dial for violence to match the violence it sees. It's probably one awfully well tuned dial too.
]]>Gathering empirical evidence about the causes of violence is the scientific way to proceed, without which it's not possible to make rational policy decisions. The evidence may lead to one to either favor or disfavor gun control (the facts don't care), but in the presence of active censorship one cannot fairly decry public health oriented researchers of being biased.
]]>There are genetic markers of interest to resilience here that are being looked at. There is also research showing the presence of certain chemical markers after experiencing minor shock waves that might be a warning that PTSD symptoms could develop later.
]]>The TEL studies actual show there is a correlation that is robust in other countries not just in the US. TEL is not an explanation for the total amount on crime in the US, but it may be a better causal variable than income or which is surprising.
]]>Practically speaking, public health people have worked out good ways of slowing down epidemics. Interrupt the spreading. Intervene in identified cases of illness. Educate the public to resist infection. When we cope with suicide epidemics, those tools, properly used, help a lot.
In a recent epidemic (which claimed two lives, and in which interventions worked in a few other cases), I've heard people say, "oh, it's just copycat suicide." Correct, except for "just."
]]>Flipped it:
Is It Time to Treat Violence Like a Contagious Disease?
Is It Possible then to Treat Good Acts Like a Contagious Disease?
(Do violent acts come about because of the absence of good acts? Like an imbalance - another metaphor - in the intestinal flora of good bacteria vs bad bacteria? For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good?)
Tongue in cheek:
I am reminded of this video on the effects of bystanders on escalating and de-escalating potentially violent situations.
Instead of "meme", I would suggest using game theory: In a situation where violence is rive, violence might be an optimal strategy.
Compare evolutionary stable strategies, cf, Hawk vs Dove. (and the evolutionary stable gradually escalating strategy).
]]>But, we could end up with a thought police society if we do not carefully tread in this direction.
There are obviously factors involved here which are unknown to researchers , just as the people of the day of the Black Death were unaware of the factor of rats and fleas.
TEL was used everywhere. From Switzerland to Indonesia. So pray, why should violence in the USA be higher than in Switzerland because of TEL?
While I'm no criminologist, certain sorts of violence have been linked to socio-environmental factors, and socio-cultural factors. The wired article offers no compelling argument why violence is contagious, however all suggestions in the article are treating that like an established fact, which in my opinion, the notion is the critical aspect that should be tested.
]]>There is growing statistical evidence that the anti pinking / knocking agent tetraeythylelead (TEL) is strongly linked to both the rise in crime and where TEL gets banned the fall in crime with in both cases an aproximate offset of 20 years. Further the shape of the rise and fall is in line with the way TEL was introduced and more importantly how it was removed. A phased withdrawal of the use of TEL producing a much more gradual fall in crime than that of a blanket ban on TEL.
The conclusion is that TEL effects basic neurological structure in developing brains, which causes changes towards anti-social behaviour.
It would be interesting to compare the maps from this study to basic crime rate maps and then the historic maps.
There is also "group think" to consider, it's known that whilst one on one violence is not unknown it is more usual to have three or more attackers on another individual, especialy if that individual did not provoke the atttack in the normal sense (that is by facing off / insulting, as opposed to just being in the wrong place or wearing the wrong clothes or being the wrong type).
It has been suggested that this group think is what gives rise to "gang ceremonies" where an individual has to "earn their colours" by committing an apparantly random act of violence at the direction of the gang leader. And if the individual trying to earn their colours baulks or hesitates then they know the rest of the gang will attack them with extream violence.
In some respects it has been likened to "blood rights" practiced in hunting and religion, which are still present all be it symbolicaly in the likes of Christianity (blood and wine of eucharist etc).
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