Originally posted by no1marauder
Look up what a "strawman" argument is, you idiot, and you may eventually realize that you are using the term incorrectly. I've told you what a real "strawman" argument is before, but apparently you can't get it through your thick skull. Making an argument by analogy, which is what I did, is making an argument by analogy, NOT a "strawman argument", moron.
Listen you dumbo, when I'm talking about a "strawman" I'm talking about a "strawman", you idiot. I am not using the term "strawman" incorrectly, you moron. You'd better start reasoning correctly without your obvious two-bit-lawyer tricks, you airhead.
Originally posted by ivanhoeYou don't know what a "strawman" is, jerkwad. Read a book.
Listen you dumbo, when I'm talking about a "strawman" I'm talking about a "strawman", you idiot. I am not using the term "strawman" incorrectly, you moron. You'd better start reasoning correctly without your obvious two-bit-lawyer tricks, you airhead.
Originally posted by zeeblebotYou keep moving the target; the original premise you came up with is that Levitt's original argument that legal abortion caused a drop in crime rates was "nonsense" and that Guiliani-type reorganization of police forces in the nineties caused crime to drop. As stated in the Introduction to Donohue & Levitt's paper The Impact of Legal Abortion on Crime http://www.cnsnews.com/pdf/nber.pdf:
freakonomics' own stephen leavitt writes on police and deterrence:
http://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v87y1997i3p270-90.html
"Previous empirical studies have uncovered little evidence that police reduce crime, possibly due to simultaneity problems. This paper uses the timing of mayoral and gubernatorial elections as an instrument variable to identify ...[text shortened]... lts provide empirical support for the resource saturation hypothesis (Fisher and Nagin, 1978).
Moreover, the widespread nature of the crime drop argues against explainations such as improved policing techniques since many cities that have not improved their police force have nonetheless seen enormous crime declines.
You've now dropped back to a simple more police = less crime argument trying to use Levitt, the purveyor of "nonsense", as support for this view. The article you cited is restricted on the net and I can't read the body; the abstract conceded that previous empirical studies have not shown evidence that more police reduce crime. Without seeing Levitt's data and argument, I cannot conclude that he is right and all prior empirical studies are wrong. I will try to find the article at my law school's library and comment on it after I have read it.
You are confusing several things in your "deterrance" assertions; no one has argued that criminal penalties don't deter crime. The death penalty argument comes down to whether the death penalty AS OPPOSED to life in prison is a deterrance and the best way to determine that is to look at states that have either A) Abolished the DP; or B) Adopted or reinstated the DP. Studies have been done doing just that and they show no correlation between changes in murder rates in those disparate circumstances. This issue is different from the last factor you mention: perceived risk of punishment. Again, no one denies that a greater chance you will be punished has a deterrance effect, but that is seperate from the marginal value of enhanced severity of punishment. In the DP case it seems clear that the increase from life imprisonment or very long prison terms for 1st degree murder to the DP simply does not show any deterrance effect.
it's not a moving target and i haven't dropped back to anything. it's just that it's a complex issue.
your original post said: "he postulated that legalizing abortion in the early 1970's was the major factor contributing to the drop in crime rates during the 1990's". (thanks for the Donohue & Leavitt link, i will take a look.)
THE major factor. did it take into account the social levels at which abortions take place, as a variable not as a binary? that unwed births drop in locales where paternal child support laws are strictly enforced, implying the converse, that they are higher? taht abortion rates have been dropping since 1980 and so we should now see an uptick in 2005 in crime rates if it's THE major factor? did you read the www.americadebates.com thread link i posted early on where they are discussing Leavitt's premise unfavorably when compared to nationwide locales?
i wasn't joking when i posted the WWW argument on the other thread. one of the FBI links had several graphs showing dropoffs in various crime rates starting in the early nineties. Salus, Peter H., Casting the Net: From ARPAnet to Internet and Beyond ..., 1995, p. 226, "1992 : World Wide Web (WWW) invented by Tim Berners-Lee and others at CERN (European Nuclear Research Center)."
addition of CD players, MP3 players, etc. only adds to the mix. with technological diversions increasing, the pool of criminals is gradually reduced to those for whom boredom is not a motive. or, gradually reduces the weighting factor of boredom as a motive.
another weighting factor is the increasing use of computers in police work, with an assumed increase in productivity. do you remember the computers that were around in the early nineties? 286's - 486's! Here is Factoid #12 from www.nationmaster.com (statistics site): "The USA has more personal computers than the next 7 countries combined."
and all this IS complex. applying either-or doesn't work. these researchers are all applying multivariate statistical analysis to the problem, trying to pick each other's arguments apart, i wonder what they will wind up with.
consider also the possibilities that:
- the productivity of the population as a whole has increased due to computers,
- the general welfare has increased due to the productivity increase,
- increase in personal entertainment options has reduced interpersonal contacts leading to reduced chances for criminal encounters.
Originally posted by ivanhoeHere, I assume you won't have anything to do with a book that hasn't been blessed so http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/straw.htm. Now please point to where in this thread I have not discussed my opponent's arguments and have used a "weaker" form of them. And it might also be nice if you would actually offer something relevant to the thread rather than flamming in violation of the TOS for childish, personal reasons.
Which one would you advise ? The one you got for your birthday ? "Formal Logic For Dummies" ?