Unarmed teen shooting: the debate rages on...

[FBM]

Seems to me that there are people on both sides of the issue engaged more in rhetoric, spin and wild, unhelpful and inflammatory speculation/accusation than analysis of the available evidence and the relevant laws. But maybe I'm the only one who sees it that way.

[mistermack]

Well, if we were debating physics, then cold rational weighing of facts would of course be the way to go.
But as we are discussing people, who are notoriously unpredictable and illogical, then cold logic might be less helpful than intuition.
In fact, intuition of human nature is one of the best ways of solving human crimes. And you get that intuition by experience of living among people, and learning how they think and act.

Sorry, but but without strict qualifiers, the bolded part is pretty undiluted bovine excrement.

We certainly often live under the illusion that we understand other humans intuitively, and that that understanding is accurate. But it is an illusion, and IMO not something a justice system can be based on. To wit:

1) People are born with genetically varying temperamental differences, and their environment when growing up sometimes mitigates these differences but can also sometimes intensify them. [will dig up the references if needed] It is difficult to truly grok someone who's temperament differs a lot from one's own.

2) At least in the (mostly relatively tolerant) Western world, pretty much every state or major region has at least some subcultures, often one or more minority languages, "races" and/or religions etc. These subcultures differ in what is seen as admirable / expected /neutral / reprehensible behavior in one situation/context or another. [ditto about references] It is difficult to truly grok someone who's cultural context differs a lot from one's own.

3) It follows therefore (from 1 and 2 and also due to the shortness of individual human life), that no one person can have an extensive enough experience = large enough sample to really understand how all or even most people from their own region think and act. (and we have not even started on immigrants, guest students/workers or tourists here...)

4) We cannot reliably mitigate that limitation (point 3) simply by adding more experience to the "intuitor team". Even if we put a group of individuals together (forming e.g. a police force or a jury), the totality of their experience will not necessarily cover the correct "intuitive frame of reference" for either the victim nor the alleged perpetrator. And as research has shown, under positive circumstances a group can embrace a larger territory of problem solving approaches than any one individual or smaller subgroup could, but under negative circumstances restrictive groupthink and a punitive group culture can emerge, and such a group does far worse than an independent expert in problem solving (including figuring out the who+where+when+what+how+why of an alleged crime). [again I can find references if they are needed]

IMO all the above forms one (but not the only) strong motivation for why all activities that try to pass as justice MUST rely on evidence. Our intuition will sneak into the process whatever we try to do, but if the formal requirements of evidence are made as clear as humanly possible, there is at least a chance that justice can be done. Not a certainty, mind you, but at least a chance.

Sorry, Ronja, but fancy calling my perfectly reasonable post bullshit, and then writing that.

Firstly, I said that intuition is one of the best ways of SOLVING human crimes. Not proving a case in court. Surely you can see the difference?

Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple would agree with me, as well as Hercule Poirot, and even Columbo.
You can't argue with the great detectives.

And anyway, even the dumber agencies, like the FBI, like to do a bit of offender profiling. Which is applied intuition. In fact, any unsolved serious case will have people working on what what kind of person they are looking for.

And in court, while that kind of stuff shouldn't be used as evidence, ( though it has, in the past ), both the defence, and the prosecution freely use it in their ARGUMENTS, and it swings many cases either way.

So ignore intuition at your peril. You won't solve many cases, or win many in court, if you do.

[FBM]

IIRC, the fictional Holmes was a walking encyclopedia of facts, not one to rely solely on blind intuition based on single-perspective anecdotes.

[mistermack]

IIRC, the fictional Holmes was a walking encyclopedia of facts, not one to rely solely on blind intuition based on single-perspective anecdotes.

He was very wise. And fictional indeed !! How dare you?
And he was right not to rely solely on blind intuition based on single-watsitsnames.

That's bad. Don't do that.

[Tyrannical]

Tyrannical, AFAIK it is not an ad hominem to call the content of one or more of your posts "racist" or "crap" or any other epithet, with or without evidence (though the presence or absence of evidence will likely be noted by the readers).

An ad hominem attacks the speaker/poster as a person, and then makes the fallacious leap into "therefore what you said/wrote is invalid."

I just knew where he was going when he ended his sentence with "..."

But there is a long correlation between stating views that are considered racist to being considered racist, and being labelled as racist is an ad hominem, as it is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it.

Just wondering, Ty, are you offended by the term 'racist'? Is it derogatory to you? At times you defend racism but now that you're saying that it's a negative characteristic, I had to wonder. Or do you mean 'percieved negative characteristic'?

Racist is generally meant as an insult with the intention of stifling debate rather than as a neutral description of beliefs. There have been attempts to use the similar word racialist instead,but it all comes down to the same thing. That behavior and cognitive ability is significantly influenced by genetics, and these characteristics are inheritable.
I firmly believe that you can not accept evolution or natural selection without being racist.

Perceived negative characteristics, I was keeping with the Wikipedia definition of ad hominem. Assigning a negative or positive value to a characteristic is generally subjective and situational anyways.

[FBM]

Gotcha. But are YOU personally offended if someone refers to you as a racist? For example, there are people who refer to white guys in Asia who are obsessed with Asian poontang as having 'yellow fever.' They mean that in a derogatory way, but for those of us who have this metaphorical yellow fever, it's not taken as an insult.

[Coito ergo sum]

I don't think it's that simple.

You say that, but then you advance a very simple, black and white, view on the subject. What FBM pointed out was that it is not as simple as you make it out to be.

Sad story, unfortunatelly, we all have to pay the price for the choices we make, even if they were not meant to be made, on purpose from beginning, bottom line is one person is dead, one is alive. One can defend himself in court, the other one cant.

By that "logic" any person who successfully defends himself or herself with deadly force has to "pay the price" since their assailant would not be able to defend himself in court.

[Tyrannical]

Gotcha. But are YOU personally offended if someone refers to you as a racist? For example, there are people who refer to white guys in Asia who are obsessed with Asian poontang as having 'yellow fever.' They mean that in a derogatory way, but for those of us who have this metaphorical yellow fever, it's not taken as an insult.

I'm rather thick skinned, so insults generally bounce off. Besides, when you are firm in your beliefs because you have evidence to support it and the counterarguments are personal insults it only serves to strengthen your resolve. Facts & statistics may break my bones, but names will never hurt me

Racist is generally meant as an insult and to end a conversation, just look at some of the examples in recent threads and consider the author's intent. But if it is just used as a descriptive term, I have no problem with that, though the term racialist or race nationalist is preferred to make the distinction. Kind of like going from niggers to negro.

As for yellowfever, it is what it is. Feel free to try and contradict Shakespeare like everyone else has and rename the rose. Asian-inclined?

[FBM]

Gotcha. But are YOU personally offended if someone refers to you as a racist? For example, there are people who refer to white guys in Asia who are obsessed with Asian poontang as having 'yellow fever.' They mean that in a derogatory way, but for those of us who have this metaphorical yellow fever, it's not taken as an insult.

I'm rather thick skinned, so insults generally bounce off. Besides, when you are firm in your beliefs because you have evidence to support it and the counterarguments are personal insults it only serves to strengthen your resolve. Facts & statistics may break my bones, but names will never hurt me

Racist is generally meant as an insult and to end a conversation, just look at some of the examples in recent threads and consider the author's intent. But if it is just used as a descriptive term, I have no problem with that, though the term racialist or race nationalist is preferred to make the distinction. Kind of like going from niggers to negro.

As for yellowfever, it is what it is. Feel free to try and contradict Shakespeare like everyone else has and rename the rose. Asian-inclined?

OK, so we're cool. You're a racist/racialist/race nationalist, I have yellow fever and neither of us is apologetic.

Edit: Mind you, I'm not joining you in your predisposition, and I don't expect or ask you to join me in mine.

[mistermack]

Facts & statistics may break my bones, but names will never hurt me

Nobody wants to break your bones. But I don't think your grip on the facts of evolution or genetics is very strong, and statistics come last, behind lies and damned lies, I believe.
One fact is indisputable. Without selective breeding, evolution takes an incredibly long time.
Yet the statistical performance of various racial groups bounce around, up and down.

Which PROVES that the performance figures are not related to genetics.
Generally, it's easy to spot social factors, coinciding with rises and falls of statistical performance.

So there lies the perfectly obvious answer, to those who care to look.

[Tyrannical]

Facts & statistics may break my bones, but names will never hurt me

Nobody wants to break your bones. But I don't think your grip on the facts of evolution or genetics is very strong, and statistics come last, behind lies and damned lies, I believe.
One fact is indisputable. Without selective breeding, evolution takes an incredibly long time.
Yet the statistical performance of various racial groups bounce around, up and down.

Which PROVES that the performance figures are not related to genetics.
Generally, it's easy to spot social factors, coinciding with rises and falls of statistical performance.

So there lies the perfectly obvious answer, to those who care to look.

I don't even need statistics because in the US we often have entire populations to work with. Statistics takes samples and makes extrapolations, facts represent a population as a whole.

[FBM]

TBH, given what I know of genetics, I don't know why it would be absolutely impossible for there to be a genetic link between race and intelligence. Ty, most people, AFAICT, think environment probably plays a greater role in intelligence than does genetics. There's also the issue that the test-makers skew the questions and problems towards their social indoctrination. You can have, for example, a bushman or aborigine who can identify 759 different plants and explain how, when and where to find, harvest, process and utilize them, plus a wealth of knowledge about animal behavior and so forth, in a way that probably no middle-class Westerner could ever hope to master. IQ tests may say more about the test-makers than they do about the test-takers, no?

[kiki5711]

I don't think it's that simple.

You say that, but then you advance a very simple, black and white, view on the subject. What FBM pointed out was that it is not as simple as you make it out to be.

Sad story, unfortunatelly, we all have to pay the price for the choices we make, even if they were not meant to be made, on purpose from beginning, bottom line is one person is dead, one is alive. One can defend himself in court, the other one cant.

By that "logic" any person who successfully defends himself or herself with deadly force has to "pay the price" since their assailant would not be able to defend himself in court.

II

I only brought in black/white racist issue when it was part of the subject at the moment and there has been many.

Like I said, after days of reviewing all that is said and viewed, I really don't think zimmerman intended from spot one to kill.
It was a set of events that both mind set of zimmerman and martin turned into, (he's gonna hurt me, do something bad) thinking on both sides. Both thought one was going to hurt the other and confrontation turned deadly. Zimmerman having the upper hand because he had a gun. Quite honestly, if martin had a gun, he'd take it out probably the moment he felt threatened by zimmerman. At that point they'd probably shoot at each other.

My first and formost statmenet stands. If that was my son, I would do everything in my living power to avenge my son's death. Be it fired from a white/hispanic/black or white. They would be my target till their death. Now you can say whatever you want about that, it makes no fucken difference to me.

[FBM]

And there's no chance that a teenager - your son or not - might be the aggressor? Would you kill to avenge your son against his intended victim? Not saying your son would be such an aggressor. Just hypothetically speaking. I doubt Martin's parents were clued in to all his questionable behavior or in agreement with it.

[kiki5711]

I know my son. He would not be the agressor.

Now if we're talking about my elder daughter, She would have definitely be the aggressor, and zimmerman would have been dead, with gun and all.