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Rule of 400 (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 45 points 10 months ago

If at least 1 person in the room of 400 is shot per day they'd be dead in just over a year...

Last I checked the population of the US wasn't plummeting, so what else is wrong here?

[-] [email protected] 77 points 10 months ago
[-] [email protected] 40 points 10 months ago

Oh no I see the point, but I'm hardly going to believe a point that's surrounded by obvious mistakes or embellishments

[-] [email protected] 28 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

In this case, being more accurate would have distracted from the overall point.

Granted, attracting the dismissive comments of insufferable pedants and the wilfully obtuse isn't ideal either, but here we are 🤷

[-] [email protected] 28 points 10 months ago

How would being more accurate distract from the point? I agree with what the post is saying, but making up statistics doesn't really help IMO and takes away from the credibility

[-] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago

Hyperbole and hypotheticals aren't "making up statistics"

[-] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago

It doesn't seem like this post was meant to be hyperbolic though? Hyperbole doesn't work well in the context of numbers. If someone said 1 in 100 people drive a Toyota, how would I differentiate that from being an actual figure or hyperbole? It's not obvious unless you look into it. Likewise, if someone told me that 1 in 400 people in the US get shot every day I'd struggle to tell if that's true or not, given how much I hear about gun crime over there.

This post is quite clearly framed in a way that sounds like fact.

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[-] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

Im pretty sure those users a legitimately, unironically autistic.

Not being abelist, just trying to prevent others from taking this argument for more than it is: someone incapable of thinking outside explicit literals.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

Lol fair enough, I can understand why you'd think that.

I'm quite capable of thinking figuratively. But in the way that this post is framed, I'm pretty sure any layperson would take the figures as being based on some actual statistics. It's deceptive, and I don't think that's a good look if anyone were to look into this in any detail. If you're going to make an analogy, make it actually analogous. And if you want to use hyperbole, use it in a way that's clear (i.e. by not mixing in numbers)

[-] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

That's not how autism works, and saying you're not being ableist doesn't actually mean you're not being ableist, as you've demonstrated here.

(and before you even try, because I'm not coming back to debate this, I am autistic, and those assholes are just being deliberately obtuse and pedantic, throwing autistic people under the bus to defend them is gross. And if you are autistic too and think that means you can't be ableist, let me introduce you to lateral and internalised ableism which are what your reply would be if not "run of the mill" ableism)..

[-] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

now how autism works

I have aspergers, I was in special ed for two years in elementary school because I was disruptive to class. I have met hundreds if others on the spectrum in my life.

I can tell you that this is exactly how many people with autism approach situations.

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[-] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

Expressing the number of people shot as a tiny fraction of 400 million people would raise at least as many questions about accuracy and make it EASIER for people like you to distract from the point by obsessing over an unimportant (to the point being made) detail.

Analogies and third decimal-accurate statistics just don't fit together.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'people like me'. To be 100% clear, I agree with the point of the post but I just don't think they've gone about explaining it in the best way. To somewhat agree with what you're saying, I'd say yes, analogies and accurate statistics don't fit well together, but neither do analogies and statistics in general. Either stick to written analogies/hyperbole OR use actual statistics.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'people like me'

Pedants, the easily sidetracked, those who will jump at the opportunity to distract from the message itself by hyperfocusing on an insignificant technical detail.

Take your pick.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

You seem to have a very binary view of things though. Is it not possible for someone to agree with a message, but think we can improve on how we tell it? If we want to convince people of something, is it not best to provide as convincing an argument as possible? I'm not trying to distract from the message, I'm wondering how we can tell it better.

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[-] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Ok so you're saying that you need to outright lie to get people to side with you?

That makes you sound like a politician, not a human rights advocate, but sure

[-] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

Burning Man called. They want their gigantic strawman back.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

How about you address the fact that you're saying that telling the truth would distract from the point instead of pulling up distractions? Sounds like whataboutism to me

[-] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Let me put it another way.

There's 4,947,342.562 kinds of people in the world: those who obsess over needless numeral exactitude when faced with a rhetorical argument, and those who don't.

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[-] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Hyperbole and hypotheticals aren't "outright lies"

[-] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Exact and false numbers given as proportions aren't hyperbole, they're misrepresentations, ie lies.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

"Say you're in a room"

It's literally at the start of the post. Anyone who has eyes and can read now understands this is hypothetical

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[-] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago

If anything the people pointing out how others are missing the point, are actually missing the point…

There’s a middle ground between ‘autistically measuring in decimals’ and blowing something completely out of proportion to make a forced point.

People are just getting defensive because it’s an underlying point they agree with (rightly so) and going on attack for anyone calling it out for being disingenuous.

[-] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

Why are you using 'autistic' as an insulting word?

[-] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago
[-] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

And that makes it okay for you to do it?

[-] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

I used it as an example and put it in quotes…

I’m literally calling people out for using it incorrectly.

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[-] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Nope. That's just objectively wrong.

The choice of 1 almost certainly wasn't a deliberate exaggeration of the actual amount. It's just the nearest number that isn't too specific to distract from the overall argument and/or small enough that pro-gun advocates can use it as an argument for gun violence not being a problem at all.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

You can’t say they’re just rounding up when they randomly decided to choose 400 as the starting point…

[-] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

So what you're saying is that 400 is completely random and because of that, it follows that 1 is meant to be accurate? 🤔

I'd say that it's much more likely that they're operating under the (incorrect but commonly believed) assumption that the US population is closer to 400m than 300m and both numbers are rounded up for simplicity.

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[-] [email protected] 40 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Shot does not mean killed. Of the 327 average daily people shot, 210 survive. I will however admit that 1 in 400 people being shot a day does not represent the same ratio as the 327 out of the 330,000,000 a day at all.

Also birthrate

[-] [email protected] 31 points 10 months ago

Pedantry is a great distraction when you don't want to address problems.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Very true, which is why it's important not to give easy fuel for pedantry like this gun stat does. It undermines the entire point if the numbers aren't at least close to the real statistics.

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[-] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Not to detract from the overall message, buuuut....

48,313 gun deaths in US in 2021.

333,000,000 people in US

On those rates 0.05 people in a room of 400 would be shot per year, so 1 person per 20 years.

It'd 1 person every 2 years in a room of 4,000.

Also those mental health numbers are off given the lifetime prevalence of most disorders being around 5%.

2/400 (0.5%) of the population identifying as trans would be 1,665,000 people - which may be plausible but idk, I generally work on the figure of ~4% of any population being LBGTQI.

Poverty numbers are probably bang on.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

"shot" does not mean "killed".

What I can find is roughly 315 people getting shot every day in the US. Out of 333m, that's roughly 1 in 1m daily. In a room of 400 that's 1 per 6.8 years.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Good point. Still, though your numbers get to a similarly outlandish time period.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

absolutely, it's 3 times more, but still 3 orders of magnitude short.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Where did you get the 4% being LGBTQI number from?

[-] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I did the fact checks with references on everything else in another comment. NIH numbers actually made mental illness worse, but must keep in mind the lack of "serious" in OPs definition. Other stats were spot on. Where did you get these numbers? I couldn't find anything I trusted on non-fatal gunshots.

(Note: just realized you found the same number I did for deaths vs gunshots)

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[-] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Only 15-20% of single GSWs are lethal. The post doesn't say "shot and killed", just shot

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[-] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Fact time. You don't always die when shot, and the US is a baby factory. I can't find good stats on non-lethal gunshot, so I'll do the rest.

Verdict: Pretty accurate.

  • 8.4% without health insurance (33 in 400)
  • 11.5% poverty rate (46 in 400)
  • 20% adults below literacy level 1 (80 in 400)
  • 57% mental illness untreated (228 in 400) (requires math from NIH source)

References:

[-] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

I guess hyperbole isn't your thing

[-] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

There's a new person thrown into the room each time someone is shot.

That should fix the analogy?

[-] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

No the rate is still too high, unless one of the people in the room is a serial killer but frankly that'd skew the untreated mental illness score pretty badly by giving everyone PTSD

[-] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Youre probably just trolling to troll, but

  1. Being shot doesn't mean being killed
  2. Why do you assume the population doesn't change? Ya know people can make babies right? We're actually pretty good at it. Probably too good at it.
  3. Also, not the fucking point.
[-] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago
  1. Yes, but the average person doesn't get shot once every 400 days
  2. It's reasonable to assume any new arrivals also get shot on 0.25% of days
  3. It's not the point, but frankly your point is more of a rounded curve than a point because anyone who doesn't support trans rights is going to call BS on your numbers immediately so you're just posturing, and why make up numbers to do that when you're not actually having to convince anyone?

I really don't get why people with all sorts of beliefs lie to people with the same beliefs to convince them they have the right beliefs... It's a waste of time, why not actually go out and make a difference if you support human rights and have enough time to make posts to your echo chamber about it?

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this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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