What Makes Someone Do This?

[RainMan]

We're humans Turtle, we're allowed to be incredulous about something we find personally repulsive. You may not agree with that, but that doesn't make my feelings any less true or valid. What were you saying about incredulity?

 

Craig, you could very well be right about the decline in immoral and legally unacceptable behaviour, but I would have to see proof of that from sources who have no financial gain in publishing reports of that nature. I'm skeptical, but not to the point where I will never believe that I'm wrong about something.

 

My views about this are based on what I have seen in real life, and what I have seen may very well not be covered in scientific data. The main reason being is a simple one: There are a great many people out there who do very bad things to people and never get caught, nor are those actions reported by the victims. The data reflects the information it receives, and the information it receives is by no means conclusive. 

[Turtle]

We're humans Turtle, we're allowed to be incredulous about something we find personally repulsive. You may not agree with that, but that doesn't make my feelings any less true or valid. What were you saying about incredulity?

I'm saying that just because you can't understand/believe explanations given is not a valid logical argument that those explanations are wrong. You have a right to your own opinion, but you do not have a right to your own facts.

 

My views about this are based on what I have seen in real life, and what I have seen may very well not be covered in scientific data. The main reason being is a simple one: There are a great many people out there who do very bad things to people and never get caught, nor are those actions reported by the victims. The data reflects the information it receives, and the information it receives is by no means conclusive.

Again; your personal experience is not a valid argument and it is also a fallacy to argue that unknown data alters known data in a predictable manner. This is the kind of double talk nonsense that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld used to justify the invasion of Iraq. :hammer:

[sanctus]

 

 

and it is also a fallacy to argue that unknown data alters known data in a predictable manner.

 

Turtle, although wrt to Iraq having weapons of mass destruction I completely agree. To generalize that it (it=unknown data alters known data in a predictable manner) is a fallacy is a fallacy too.

 

See it this way, what you are saying is that predictive analytics is a fallacy, but every bank (eg. working on fraud detection), stock market forecasters, insurances will tell you that it works. If you meant that saying unkown data alters known data in predictable manner without having an underlying model then I agree.

 

Example wrt to the topic of this thread,  if I make a model which based on some parameters predicts how many infanticiders one is to expect in the US population and I get 0.00001%. If the reported crimes of this type are only 1e-7% and I have reason to believe that my model is trustworthy then the unkown data becomes "know" through the model forecast and will influence the known data in a predictable manner...