TaleWorlds News: New News Necessary for the OT Neophytes

[Adorno]

Why would you think I disagree with solving problems?

I said we must be able to talk about the problems. We were talking about crime in Sweden by immigrants. Then you shifted the conversation to "white people" in general, in Europe and the US, and their hidden crimes because they use smarter ways to avoid the law. It might be to bring nuance to the discussion, but you ignore all the other "hidden" crimes that are never reported/solved. Drug dealers and bankers can be equally "smart" in hiding their crimes e.g.

When you wrote "playing a blaming game...", I thought it was directed at me. So I replied about skin colour and religion.

 

[eddiemccandless]

I don't think that you can come to the conclusion that people from a certain country are inherently more likely to commit a crime based on crime statistics. I have said this before while talking about other topics, correlation does not equal causation. And honestly all the geographical areas that you mention have one thing in common, which is that they are poorer and have worse quality of life. I think that any disparity in crime has statistics is much more likely to be caused by that rather than cultural factors (and in fact the thing that all nordic countries have in common is a really strong welfare system which limits the number of native borns that end up struggling).

 

[Adorno]

It sounds like a contradiction. First you say statistics don't show the "real" crime committed, and then you say immirants come from areas where people are more criminal (poor/low quality of life).
So statistics show non-western immigrants commit more crime, and they come from areas with more crime.

The fact that there are reasons for a person being criminal doesn't change anything about that fact. It's of course important to understand the nature of the behaviour and preventive measures. But that's a whole other discussion.
There are also reasons so many bankers commit fraud/financial crimes. They grew up in, and live in, that environment.

 

[Nega-Brutus]

I said we must be able to talk about the problems. We were talking about crime in Sweden by immigrants. Then you shifted the conversation to "white people" in general, in Europe and the US, and their hidden crimes because they use smarter ways to avoid the law. It might be to bring nuance to the discussion, but you ignore all the other "hidden" crimes that are never reported/solved. Drug dealers and bankers can be equally "smart" in hiding their crimes e.g.

When you wrote "playing a blaming game...", I thought it was directed at me. So I replied about skin colour and religion.

Cool so you still haven't gotten the point.

 

[eddiemccandless]

I also don't care much about religion and skin colour - when crime is being debated - but more about country of origin and culture. (Eastern Europeans also top the crime charts here in Denmark).

Maybe I really am not doing a good job at explaining myself, but this is what I was referring to. Even assuming that there are difference in statistics (and I am kind of taking your word for it and conceding that it's true which, well, maybe I shouldn't ), I dispute the notion that this difference is based on culture. I don't think you have any way of proving that people form a particular nation/culture are more prone to crime even when the statistics seem to suggest so, because there are confounding factors that those statistics do not consider. So if you come to the conclusion that "ok, people from Eastern Europe/Muslims/insert your favorite stereotype here are more likely to be criminals based on where they are from" you are at danger of making mistakes such as, the demographics of population moving to your country from that particular area changes and then suddenly you see more crime from other parts of the world (which honestly happened with Italians, we used to be the "criminal immigrants" not too long ago, now for the most part it's well educated and semi-well off people moving for better work opportunities).

I am of the opinion that all the effort spent on tracking ethnicity is wasted because it does not address the real problem, with is that people who are struggling can and will turn to crime if they don't have better options. And, fun fact, there is scientific evidence that in general poor people tend to make really dumb decisions in their life (not because they are inherently dumber, but because anyone will be dumber when they are poor).

 

[Adorno]

That is a good thesis. When you correlate for socio-economic factors non-western immigrants come closer to similar groups. They have high rates of unemployment and poverty.
However in a Danish context (Sweden don't have such detailed statistics) people from certain countries are still more criminal than their socio-economic native counterparts.

(Google translate)
Although for some of the descendant groups there is a relatively large decrease in the crime indices when correcting for the different background information, changes the overall picture is not clear: Descendants have a higher index than immigrants, and people from non-western countries have higher indices than people from western countries, which cannot be explained by differences in age, socioeconomic status, family education level, or family income.
If divided into different types of offenses, it turns out that the index for
male descendants from non-western countries are highest for criminal offenses
- and including especially for violent crimes, where it is almost three and a half times so
high as for the average of all men when corrected for the age composition. For the male immigrants from non-western countries, the index is for both
violent and property crimes twice as high as the average for all men.
Also for the male descendants from western countries, it is the criminal law index that
is highest. It is 43 per cent. above the average for all men, while the indices for
traffic law violations are slightly below average and special law violations are 16 per cent. above average.

https://www.dst.dk/Site/Dst/Udgivelser/GetPubFile.aspx?id=29446&sid=indv2019 (page 121)
(DST is a Danish governmental organization under the Ministry for Economic and Interior Affairs)

So that doesn't hold up. There are some cultural factors at stake, especially in violent crimes. That's why it's good to look at countries of origin because some stand out much more than others.

Cool so you still haven't gotten the point.

Yes, I'm afraid so.

 

[eddiemccandless]

If this was in English and I could actually understand what they are doing I just might be persuaded! Apparently you can now also use Google translate to translate documents but the results were... underwhelming.

Spoiler: Clearly Google has not mastered Danish

Table 6.9 shows how the crime index changes for the individual
income groups when standardizing for the various social and economic
team. It appears, for example, that a standardization for the person's own socio-economic status
tus most changes the index of immigrants from non-western countries. Standardization for
family education changes the index for descendants and immigrants from non-
Western countries in a downward direction and in an upward direction for
more and immigrants from western countries. The index for descendants of non-westerners
countries also change in a downward direction when adjusting for family income

Without knowing anything else about this study, I would expect them to use a metric for crime (e.g., number of convictions or number of reported crimes, and each come with its own pros and cons as we discussed earlier) and run a two, three or four way ANOVA depending on what factors they are considering. Then you can see if there is an overall effect (which there will be, I expect) and check on all the interactions and pairwise comparisons. Does that sounds similar to what they report? I see them referring to "indices" which sounds like they defined some arbitrary parameters instead, but I am suspecting it's just a bad translation from Google.

Edit: also, once would have to thread carefully because some of the different factors might not be independent (and in fact we already mentioned that they are not), which would kind of make it difficult to separate things. I really wish I could understand that document

 

[Adorno]

Yes. The language barrier is not ideal. They use index/indices instead of for example percentages.
For example an index of 300 means 3 times as high as for the average population.

Spoiler: Crime index for all sentences for 15-79 year old males after country of origin

Indvandrere = immigrants
Efterkommere = descendants (of immigrants)
Alder = age
Uddannelse = education
Indkomst = income

It's especially worrying that descendants are even more criminal than their parents.

 

[Nega-Brutus]

Yes, I'm afraid so.

All good, take your time.

 

[eddiemccandless]

Do they explain how the index is defined? What I am missing is how they account for the socio-economic status.

Edit: something that already jumps up to my eyes though... According to this table, Americans are model citizens with very low crime rates. But, all statistics on US crime point to immigrants committing less crime than non immigrants. So what gives? Americans are culturally predisposed to commit more crime than people from the rest of the world in their own country, but suddenly become model citizens after moving to Denmark? Seems to me like there is something missing in this picture.

 

[Mad Vader]

I shouldn't go to Denmark, I may just start robbing people there as a crime-prone Jugoslavien. Denmark brings the worst in you!

 

[Adorno]

Socio-economic status is income/education.
About Americans: Like other immigrants from the western world and parts of Asia they are model citizens
In Denmark many of them commit even less crime than the native population, such as Spaniards, Chinese and Indians (relative to their numbers).
Western immigrants are typically better educated and often come because of work, whereas non-western immigrants are more often uneducated and end up being unemployed.

 

[eddiemccandless]

Right, that makes sense, but some of those indexes should decouple the effects of country of origin vs education/social status no? The fact that Americans still appear to commit less crimes tells me that they did not do a good job at separating the different effects. Hope that makes sense. That's why I would be curious to better understand how those indexes are defined (i.e , the math behind them).

 

[Nega-Brutus]

Eddie, I don't understand why you didn't just bite the bullet that culture is a variable, because now this moron thinks he's justified deporting refugees or something.

 

[Adorno]

Right, that makes sense, but some of those indexes should decouple the effects of country of origin vs education/social status no? The fact that Americans still appear to commit less crimes tells me that they did not do a good job at separating the different effects. Hope that makes sense. That's why I would be curious to better understand how those indexes are defined (i.e , the math behind them).

But that's what it does. It correlates for age, age + socio-economic status, age + education of the parents, age + family income.
The publication is from 2019, so it's the most recent numbers from the government.
In the case of Libanese you see they commit crimes at about 3 times (index 291) the average correlated for age (because young men commit most crime, in all groups). But when correlated for socio-economic status that number drops to just over 2 times (index 224), and drops even further when looking at family income (index 204). But it's still higher than the average.
The worrying part here is that the descendants of those immigrants in most groups (the columns to the right) have higher indices than their parents. So there's a vicious cycle where the children end up in criminal environments.

 

[eddiemccandless]

Eddie, I don't understand why you didn't just bite the bullet that culture is a variable, because now this moron thinks he's justified deporting refugees or something.

Because I haven't seen any evidence that it is relevant to the discussion, and there are inconsistencies in the data that he is offering so I am curious to understand better. But now we are kind of running around in circles on this one so I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

 

[Adorno]

The fact that Americans still appear to commit less crimes tells me that they did not do a good job at separating the different effects.

It's the official crime statistics. Americans in Denmark commit very litle crime because US immigrants do not represent the average American (like immigrants in general).
When 10 Americans move to Denmark it's not a black, a white, a Hispanic, a drug dealer, a soccer mom, a trucker, a doctor, a scientist, a carpenter and a masseuse.

 

[Mad Vader]

A black, a white, a Hispanic, a drug dealer, a soccer mom, a trucker, a doctor, a scientist, a carpenter and a masseuse walk into a bar.
"We don't serve samples here" says the bartender.

 

[Nega-Brutus]

Because I haven't seen any evidence that it is relevant to the discussion, and there are inconsistencies in the data that he is offering so I am curious to understand better. But now we are kind of running around in circles on this one so I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

You can just bite the bullet on culture being a variable and criticize what the appropriate response/measures would look like in the immigration process accounting for that. He'd lose hard if he went by anything remote to the Danish model. If any harm is incurred, the response always needs to proportional. You can't start flying refugees into war zones because a minority ends up doing crime.

 

[eddiemccandless]

You can just bite the bullet on culture being a variable and criticize what the appropriate response/measures would look like in the immigration process accounting for that. He'd lose hard if he went by anything remote to the Danish model. If any harm is incurred, the response always needs to proportional. You can't start flying refugees into war zones because a minority ends up doing crime.

I don't really care about "winning" whatever that might mean. I care about figuring out things as best as I can.