crucify bill bennett!
Sep. 30th, 2005 22:46![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
piranhaok, i am peevish because the blogosphere (sorry, telophase!) and howard dean are going nutso over bill bennett's badly considered remarks to a caller on his radio show the other day. now, i don't like bennett at all, and can find plenty of things he's said and done to get offended by, but i feel this is a tempest in the tiniest teapot in the world, and i've therefore taken out my tiny violin to accompany the screams that he's a genocidal maniac.
IMO, bennett was making a reductio ad absurdum argument, in order to point out to the dimwit caller that zie was being a dimwit, without actually saying so. this is not a thing one should try on national radio, of course, or indeed on any sort of radio show, other than maybe the one on local access that only your two best friends are watching. stupid, ok? not genocidal. and his argument actually holds, and no, it does not require that one have a racist mindset and presume one ethnic group commits more crime than others.
and because somebody on mefi was telling me that i should spend more time thinking than protecting racists, i did the math
caution: of course real populations don't work like this, what with ornery people intermarrying, moving, offspring having babies too, etc., and nevermind changing economic factors. ignore all that for the moment. we're just doing some simple math.
the crime rate is defined as the number of crimes per unit of population of 100,000.
let's say we start with 120,000 people, of whom 80,000 are beige, and 40,000 pink.
this is a nasty and brutish population, 1% of both groups commit a crime:
1200 crimes total, 800 committed by beige perps, 400 by pink perps
that's a crime rate of 1200/120000 * 100000 = 1000
for 20 years babies are conceived and people die. except we abort all the pink babies.
1000 babies a year are born to beige people = 20,000
5% = 600 people die each year, 400 beige, 200 pink = -12000 (-8000/-4000)
after 20 years we now have a population of
128,000, of whom 92,000 are beige, and 36,000 are pink
there's still 1% of beigies who commit crime. but 5% of the pink criminals have died off, so percentagewise fewer crimes are committed by pinkies:
1262 crimes, 920 by the beige breeders, 342 by pinks
1262/128000 * 100000 = 986
lower crime rate, see?
(somebody will now pop up and show that i can't add. or divide. or something. because that always happens. :)
IMO, bennett was making a reductio ad absurdum argument, in order to point out to the dimwit caller that zie was being a dimwit, without actually saying so. this is not a thing one should try on national radio, of course, or indeed on any sort of radio show, other than maybe the one on local access that only your two best friends are watching. stupid, ok? not genocidal. and his argument actually holds, and no, it does not require that one have a racist mindset and presume one ethnic group commits more crime than others.
and because somebody on mefi was telling me that i should spend more time thinking than protecting racists, i did the math
caution: of course real populations don't work like this, what with ornery people intermarrying, moving, offspring having babies too, etc., and nevermind changing economic factors. ignore all that for the moment. we're just doing some simple math.
the crime rate is defined as the number of crimes per unit of population of 100,000.
let's say we start with 120,000 people, of whom 80,000 are beige, and 40,000 pink.
this is a nasty and brutish population, 1% of both groups commit a crime:
1200 crimes total, 800 committed by beige perps, 400 by pink perps
that's a crime rate of 1200/120000 * 100000 = 1000
for 20 years babies are conceived and people die. except we abort all the pink babies.
1000 babies a year are born to beige people = 20,000
5% = 600 people die each year, 400 beige, 200 pink = -12000 (-8000/-4000)
after 20 years we now have a population of
128,000, of whom 92,000 are beige, and 36,000 are pink
there's still 1% of beigies who commit crime. but 5% of the pink criminals have died off, so percentagewise fewer crimes are committed by pinkies:
1262 crimes, 920 by the beige breeders, 342 by pinks
1262/128000 * 100000 = 986
lower crime rate, see?
(somebody will now pop up and show that i can't add. or divide. or something. because that always happens. :)