Science can solve most mysteries says Peter Atkins and David Papineau - Peter S Williams disagrees.
Sunday, 21 July 2013
Thursday, 20 June 2013
Pareto and Policing: The need for UNcommonsense
Last week's New Scientist reminds me that crime is not random. Criminals, victims and the times and places of crimes are all much more likely to follow a Pareto distribution ('20% of the villains commit 80% of the crimes') than a random distribution.
This is hardly a new idea. Police officers and criminologists know about habitual offenders and the likelihood of violence outside pubs on Saturday nights. So far so obvious. Yet police forces have been reluctant to apply these insights systematically. And the public still like to see patrols on their streets - even if their streets see little crime. (Which is, in any case, not actually reduced by random patrols.)
Just as some kinds of people are more likely to become criminals than others (men rather than women, young men rather than older ones just for a start) so some people and properties are more likely to become victims. It makes good sense to at least ensure that those concerned know of the enhanced risk and understand what they could do about it. For civil liberty reasons there should be no criticism of those who do not adjust their behaviour but many people will be only to happy to fit better locks and keep out of dangerous areas.
In fact the evidence about crime if often counter-intuitive. Most people believe that crime is rising and that primitive societies are more peaceful than ours. Neither is true. In the UK, for instance, violence, criminal damage and burglary have all fallen since 2006. Theft, exceptionally, fell until 2009 but then rose.
As humanists we should ask for evidence whenever people say silly things about crime.
Hmm - sounds like a lifetime job!
This is hardly a new idea. Police officers and criminologists know about habitual offenders and the likelihood of violence outside pubs on Saturday nights. So far so obvious. Yet police forces have been reluctant to apply these insights systematically. And the public still like to see patrols on their streets - even if their streets see little crime. (Which is, in any case, not actually reduced by random patrols.)
Just as some kinds of people are more likely to become criminals than others (men rather than women, young men rather than older ones just for a start) so some people and properties are more likely to become victims. It makes good sense to at least ensure that those concerned know of the enhanced risk and understand what they could do about it. For civil liberty reasons there should be no criticism of those who do not adjust their behaviour but many people will be only to happy to fit better locks and keep out of dangerous areas.
In fact the evidence about crime if often counter-intuitive. Most people believe that crime is rising and that primitive societies are more peaceful than ours. Neither is true. In the UK, for instance, violence, criminal damage and burglary have all fallen since 2006. Theft, exceptionally, fell until 2009 but then rose.
As humanists we should ask for evidence whenever people say silly things about crime.
Hmm - sounds like a lifetime job!
Monday, 6 May 2013
Baloney Detection Kit, (Dr. Michael Shermer) - YouTube
Baloney Detection Kit, (Dr. Michael Shermer) - YouTube
reposted from:
reposted from:
crabsallover highlights, key points, comments / links.
Tuesday, 30 April 2013
Comment on draft of book on "Humanism: reason, science and skepticism"
source: http://stephenlaw.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/rough-draft-for-comments.html#more
This is the draft of the first chapter of a book sent to Stephen Law to make comments on. Add YOUR comments here on Stephen Laws' blogspot. Please remember to say you heard about this request for comments via Humanists4Science.
This is the draft of the first chapter of a book sent to Stephen Law to make comments on. Add YOUR comments here on Stephen Laws' blogspot. Please remember to say you heard about this request for comments via Humanists4Science.
What are science and reason?
Humanists expound the virtues of science and reason. But what are science and reason? And we should we think it wise to rely on them?
By science, I shall mean that approach to finding out about reality based on the scientific method. This is a method that was fully developed only a few hundred years ago. Science, as I’ll use the term here, is a comparatively recent invention, its development owing a great deal to 16th and 17th Century thinkers such as the philosopher Francis Bacon(1561-1626).
So what is the scientific method? Here’s a rough sketch. Scientists collect data through observation and experiment. They formulate hypotheses and broader theories about the nature of reality to account for what they observe. Crucially, they then test their theories. Scientists derive from their theories predictions that can be independently checked by observation.
Tuesday, 16 April 2013
New Scientist returns to nature/nurture debate
Did you know that "lower heart rates are a better indicator of criminal behaviour than smoking is of lung cancer"? Nor me, yet this is a key point in understanding the biological, often genetic, origins of crime.
Most humanists, I guess, think of crime as a response to bad circumstances. We don't like to call people evil because that sounds religious and because it sounds incurable. Yet there's lots of evidence to implicate the effects of the physical environment (eg lead poisoning) and, more controversially, genes as causes of crime.
Humanists should be guided by the evidence so its worth looking at NS's review of The Anatomy of Violence by Adrian Raine.
Most humanists, I guess, think of crime as a response to bad circumstances. We don't like to call people evil because that sounds religious and because it sounds incurable. Yet there's lots of evidence to implicate the effects of the physical environment (eg lead poisoning) and, more controversially, genes as causes of crime.
Humanists should be guided by the evidence so its worth looking at NS's review of The Anatomy of Violence by Adrian Raine.
Saturday, 6 April 2013
Are Humanists4Science Positivist-ish or Scientistic-ish or Naturalisic-ish? - Part 1 of 4 - Positivism
I was prompted by Brian Cox twitter profile @ProfBrianCox to investigate Positivism - wikipedia.@ProfBrianCox Ultra-naïve positivist-ish, although science can't explain the existence of antipositivists Positivism en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivis…
@ProfBrianCox
— Chris Street (@ChrisGStreet) April 6, 2013
Alex Rosenberg (personal website) is very pro Scientism & describes himself as a Naturalist - NY Times blog (Naturalism - wikipedia).
Wednesday, 23 January 2013
Policing: Less is More
All the parties want to "protect front-line policing", see for example this. It seems that everyone wants more policing. But why?
Crime in the UK has been falling for over ten years. It’s long been known that this is not primarily due to either policing levels or policing tactics. Many explanations have been suggested but there’s now a growing acceptance (articles in Mother Jones and the Guardian) that the real cause of the decline may be the removal of lead from petrol.
Lead is a poison known to damage children’s brains. It’s not much of a stretch to believe that is causes dyslexia and problems with impulse control – the very problems that underlie much crime.
Of course we’ll need a police force for as long as there is crime; and that’s probably as long as there are human beings. Human society demands a balance between individual initiative, even greed, and social responsibility. We don’t always get this right either as individuals or as societies and when individuals get it wrong we need laws, courts, police and, sometimes, prisons.
Crime in the UK has been falling for over ten years. It’s long been known that this is not primarily due to either policing levels or policing tactics. Many explanations have been suggested but there’s now a growing acceptance (articles in Mother Jones and the Guardian) that the real cause of the decline may be the removal of lead from petrol.
Lead is a poison known to damage children’s brains. It’s not much of a stretch to believe that is causes dyslexia and problems with impulse control – the very problems that underlie much crime.
Of course we’ll need a police force for as long as there is crime; and that’s probably as long as there are human beings. Human society demands a balance between individual initiative, even greed, and social responsibility. We don’t always get this right either as individuals or as societies and when individuals get it wrong we need laws, courts, police and, sometimes, prisons.
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