From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,e6a2e4a4c0d7d8a6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-03-02 19:13:07 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.airnews.net!cabal12.airnews.net!usenet From: "John R. Strohm" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: status of PL/I as a viable language Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 21:03:24 -0600 Organization: Airnews.net! at Internet America Message-ID: X-Orig-Message-ID: References: Abuse-Reports-To: abuse at airmail.net to report improper postings NNTP-Proxy-Relay: library2.airnews.net NNTP-Posting-Time: Sun Mar 2 21:11:55 2003 NNTP-Posting-Host: !Yp&-1k-YBeN)]2 (Encoded at Airnews!) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:34814 Date: 2003-03-02T21:03:24-06:00 List-Id: "Georg Bauhaus" wrote in message news:b3u73c$7uo$1@a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de... > John R. Strohm wrote: > : Meanwhile, some years back, the small town of Kennesaw, > > it is puzzling to see that people who professionally deal with > logic (programmers) start falling for any particular evidence supporting > something, despite its logical incompleteness, as long as it is in favour > of their views. On either side. I find it amazing that an individual who allegedly deals professionally with logic should apparently be so totally unfamiliar with the concept of "experiment". I will simplify it for you. The hypothesis is that legal availability of firearms correlates positively with violent crime rate. This suggests that curtailing the legal availability of firearms should, if the hypothesis is correct, reduce the violent crime rate. A simple analysis would reveal a questionable assumption, namely, that an individual who is predisposed to commit a violent crime might nevertheless obey a law that denied him the right to own a firearm, but we will neglect that particular contradiction for the purpose of this analysis. An experimentalist immediately realizes that it is easy to test the hypothesis by curtailing personal firearm ownership and seeing whether the violent crime rate goes down, as the hypothesis would predict. This, Herr Bauhaus, is called "conducting an experiment." We first observe that this experiment has been conducted in varying degrees in quite a number of places in the United States. The results of those experiments have been UNIVERSALLY negative: in EVERY venue in which it has been tried, the result has been an INCREASE in the violent crime rate. It is a trivial exercise with an almanac to verify the statistical truth that those locales in the United States with the toughest local gun control laws also have the HIGHEST violent crime rates. We further observe, Herr Bauhaus, that similar experiments were conducted, on much larger scales, national rather than local or regional, in Australia and the United Kingdom. Both of those trials gave the same negative results: both nations experienced a dramatic INCREASE in their violent crime rates. This evidence, by itself, should be enough to indicate that the proposed hypothesis is, at best, faulty. However, another trial was performed, at Kennesaw. If the hypothesis was true, then REQUIRING all citizens of Kennesaw to own firearms SHOULD have resulted in an immediate and statistically-significant INCREASE in the violent crime rate. However, when the experiment was tried, It Didn't Work Out That Way. Kennesaw instead saw an immediate, almost heart-stopping, decrease in the local crime rate. It should be noted in passing that Kennesaw is not much different from other small towns in that part of Georgia. Before the ordinance was passed, they all had pretty comparable demographics, populations, institutions, and crime rates. After the ordinance passed, only Kennesaw saw the dramatic reduction in crime. The first-order interpretation of the data would tend to suggest that, in this CONTROLLED study (the other towns being, of course, the control group), the ordinance made a difference and the result emphatically did not support the hypothesis, but rather argued forcefully that the hypothesis was false. > - Of course, one has to ask what kind of place Kennesaw is. > One has to ask how high the percentage of social cohesion > and homogeneity in a town like this is. From what I hear there > is no need to force people to get a gun in parts of Los Angeles, > however it is not particularly silent there. Actually, it is quite difficult. California requires a three WEEK waiting period between purchase and delivery. This caused significant difficulty during the civil unrest after the Rodney King verdict: local shopkeepers who realized there was trouble brewing, and who wished to purchase weapons to deter rioters and looters from destroying their businesses were prevented from doing so. Those few shopkeepers who had a more jaundiced view of the local animals, who already owned firearms, had no difficulty persuading the looters to go elsewhere: it is amazing how effective the mere sight of a weapon is in deterring a cretin. > - One has to ask why it is--again--not seen that the Kennesaw > success might as well have had to do with the "Hawthorne > experiment" effect. It works in part because everyone gets > involved, the emphasis being on getting involved, not on being > cretin or not, and not on weapons. The Hawthorne Effect is that both positive and negative changes in the control variable produce the same kind of change in the controlled variable. For a Hawthorne Effect hypothesis to be supportable in this area, BOTH increasing AND curtailing the legal availability of firearms must have had the SAME qualitative effect, that of either increasing or decreasing the crime rate. A quick review of the experimental data, however, shows that this is most emphatically not the case, and so the Hawthorne Effect hypothesis must be rejected. > - One has to ask whether an average sample town is free > of Montagus and Capulets. And for practical purposes the > average has to be the modus of towns of this kind, because > otherwise it is just one sample that seems to have displayed > some characteristics that cannot really be predicted to occur > elsewhere, given the same requirements. Montague-Capulet feuds have historically not been common in the United States. While it is true that Kennesaw is a small town of a certain character, there are MANY such small towns of similar character in the United States. It is, as I have discussed above, also the case that Kennesaw is not by any stretch of the imagination the only data point under consideration. > - One has to assume(!) that there are no cretins in each town > to wich this model can be ported, if it can, see above. For > otherwise people couldn't trust each other; I guess you haven't > missed the "trust discussion" in the USA. Imagine: Every step > you make you will have one hand near your weapon. - There is > more to add, as to every one-factor-theory. - So, ... > > - Facing community issues, one has to remember, how, for example, > men and women of (protestant christian) god, with no weapons > and a very homogeous social life > deal with people in their community who chose to obey differing > moral rules. Rules which, as moral rules, are o.K. even for the > conservative U.S. citizen but not for the chiefs in the community. > For (an extreme) example, consider the Hutterer communities: > At best, the "disobedient" will have to leave, banned (without any > possesions). (Not exactly "fault tolerant social software", these > rules.) This is true in those limited (!) cases. Such communities are VERY rare in the United States, far more so than towns like Kennesaw. > As far as drawing conclusions from this example is concerned, > same thing as in the Kennesaw case: interesting but not near > general enough. > > Certainly "Bowling for Columbine" is biased, but can you > explain, using Kennesaw theory, why there are less killings > per person in Canada, and why they don't lock their doors in > Toronto, apparently? No, I can't. Nor am I crazy enough to assume without testing that the examples of what works in Canada, or specifically in Toronto, are likely to be applicable elsewhere. That is the key point. It is necessary to test the hypotheses in the area of interest. The tests that have actually been performed, in many parts of the United States, and in Australia and the United Kingdom, seem to argue strongly that the Kennesaw model *IS* applicable. As an extreme example, it is for all practical purposes unlawful for a citizen of the District of Columbia, the capital of the United States, to possess a firearm. It is also the case that the District of Columbia has the highest murder rate in the United States, almost all committed with firearms. It is a matter of fact that the District police department is totally and completely outgunned by the local drug gangs, and the District chief of police admitted it on television several years ago, during a highly lethal "turf war" between two rival gangs. > It is almost the same as saying, Ada is The Right Programming > Language because in a particular project, some goal had > been achieved. Even in a largely complexity-reduced field > such as programming, a one factor theory is just not enough, > it is detrimental. Not proven. A one-factor hypothesis that CONSISTENTLY gives the same result, when everything else is held constant, is a strong indicator of ground truth. A one-factor hypothesis that continues to give consistent results when other variables are varied, or that can be calibrated for other variables, is even stronger. A one-factor hypothesis must fail to give consistent results in these cases before multiple-factor hypotheses can reasonably be considered. (Occam's Razor is, after all, required knowledge for programmers.) > And, finally, and most importantly, murder doesn't require the > murderer to have a gun, and gun owners have been murdered more > than once. "Statistical significance" is the important concept here. In Japan, gun-related crime had been almost unknown. There was and is still murder, but it mostly used other weapons. It is also significant to note that gun possession is unlawful in Japan, but gun-related crime in Japan is increasing steadily. The fundamental rule is this: One experimental result is worth a thousand theories. When theory and experimental result conflict, the experimental result must win.