quote: If you want to kill someone and get away with it, do it before the NBA All-Star game.
Appoint yourself captain of the neighborhood watch . Don't set it up with the national program. The national program won't let you carry a gun or pursue suspects. Do it in a gated development where your black neighbors — 20 percent of the community — are targets of suspicion afraid of leaving their homes . Drive around in an SUV and keep an eye out for suspicious individuals. Look for young black men, the kind you've warned people about, the kind you think "always get away." Monitor the 7-11. Find someone who "looks like he's up to no good, or [is] on drugs, or something," someone "carrying something," someone "looking about." Call 911 .
Describe the suspicious person to the dispatcher, the way you always do, the way you've done at least nine times before. There have been a lot of break-ins in this neighborhood. You've probably spoken to this dispatcher before. You called the police 46 times last year. Say, "He's a black male... He's got a button on his shirt. Late teens." Tell the dispatcher that "something's wrong with him." The dispatcher will tell you that police are on their way. He'll tell you not to follow the kid.
Do it anyway. He's running. Find him. Wrestle with him. Shoot him, once.
If you want to kill someone and get away with it, tell the police that he attacked you. Tell them you stepped out of your SUV, because you wanted to look at the name of the street you were on. Tell them the kid jumped you from behind. Even if he didn't have a criminal record. Even if he was an A and B student. Even if you have 110 pounds on him . Even if he was staying at his father's fiancé's house, and carrying Skittles and iced tea he'd bought before the game at the local 7-11.
Tell them you shot him because you were afraid for your life. When the police tell you that neighbors heard someone cry for help, tell them that was you.
Don't worry if you sound drunk or high; the police won't test you for drugs . Don't worry about your gun; it's licensed. Don't worry about your seven-year-old arrest for "resisting arrest with violence and battery on a law enforcement officer"; the charges were dropped. Don't worry about the cell phone that the kid was on, calling his girlfriend , as he fled from you. No one knows where it is, and no one's going to investigate it.
The cops will drop it. They won't charge you. If you want to kill someone and get away with it, do it in Florida, where the self-defense laws don't require you to retreat before using deadly force . Do it in Florida, where a former sheriff's deputy "pumped several shots into an unarmed homeless man " in a Haagen-Dazs just a few weeks ago; where prosecutors have routinely declined to even bring charges in shooting cases.
Even better, do it in Sanford .
Do it in Sanford, Fla., and there's a good chance the lead investigative officer will be the same guy who didn't arrest a lieutenant's son who'd been videotaped attacking a black homeless man . Do it in Sanford, where seven years ago two security guards — one a cop's son — shot and killed another black teenager whom they claimed was trying to run them down after dropping his friends off at an apartment complex.
Do it in a town where the police chief will say without any trace of irony that his "investigation is color blind and based on the facts and circumstances, not color," and that he "can say that until I am blue in the face, but, as a white man in a uniform, I know it doesn't mean anything to anybody." Kill someone under the jurisdiction of a police chief who'd say that both you and your victim would "probably do things differently" if you both relived that night.
If you want to kill someone and get away with it, do it in a country where two of the three major news networks will barely cover your crime , and where it takes three weeks to become a national story. Do it in a country where the only possibility that you might get prosecuted is when the federal government steps in .
If you want to kill someone and get away with it, declare yourself the protector of your neighborhood. Drive around looking for black kids. Carry a gun. Do it before the All-Star game.
Since that article pressed, the story probably worked out between Zimmerman and the inept police department has had a few holes shot through it too. Not that it was really a stellar example of a reasonably non-suspicious tale to begin with.
Sure. Sounds pretty clear. Thank god we've got Stand Your Ground laws to auto-exonerate the obviously innocent Zimmerman.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Bullshit. Things are NOT as that article presents them, and the issues are not clear cut at all. He was not a 14 year old kid, he was a 6 foot tall, 180 lb young man; Zimmerman DID have documented injuries to the back of his head and nose, and the Sanford police WANTED to arrest him for manslaughter but the DA's office said not to....yet....and Trayvon's own dad denied the voice on that tape was his son's voice.
Please remember that while I am white, I am not a Fox News watcher, Bible Thumper, or believer in the White Man's Burden. I don't buy into everything ANYONE says about this, as they all have agenda's.
But enough of the which hunt crap. The water is already murky enough as it is.
Here's what I buy into: Zimmerman was a failed cop whose wife took out a restraining order against him who was told not to follow who carried a firearm on his unrecognized neighborhood watch from which he made enough 911 calls to, if I lived to be half a millennium old, I wouldn't likely catch up with, for things such as kids in the street and open garage doors.
Thankfully I'm not on a jury, nor will I be, so I see no need to give Zimmerman much benefit of the doubt. We are *almost* to the point where, as a society, we default to disbelief and scorn for the suspect if he killed a white guy as if when he kills a black guy.
Is there an agenda behind, for example, pointing out how *strange* it is that Martin supposedly skipped like half a dozen warning signs of violence straight to attacking strangers while on the phone? What's the hidden intent behind pointing out that it's OK to say that, y'know, there's just something wrong with someone with Zimmerman's history to be in ANY post in even *Mayberry's* neighborhood watch, unless it's concessions director?
Let this happen to a pretty suburban white girl some time, and let's see just how important it is that nobody get all sensationalistic and jump to conclusions. It's like some people in this country are surprised and irritated that, wait, we're NOT allowed to just take someone's word for it that that black male teen was a scary aggressive thug? But...I mean, well *you* know, cmon, right!
I don't say you believe these things I'm ridiculing here, Kwea. It's more a commentary on some of society's reaction, wherein it took some serious kicking and screaming even to get this to big news. What I am saying is that no, we don't know what happened, of course, and we shouldn't say we do. But we know what is quite likely to have happened. Zimmerman was full of crap on his nearly *50* 911 calls over the past few years, and now because things were even worse this time, he gets *more* credibility?
If you were presented with some of the salient details of Zimmerman's crime-stopping biography and then asked 'want him on voluntary armed patrol in your neighborhood?' Would you even have to pause to think before you said no way?
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
Here is what I think:
I think we don't have all the facts. But from what I've heard, I've formed several opinions.
1) Zimmerman sounds like a cop wannabe with a vigilante bent. Not the kind of guy I want patrolling my neighborhood with a gun when I have a teenage daughter who likes to go running at night.
2) Trayvon sounds like a lot of young black males I know and teach - a kid who has gotten in some minor trouble at school and with the law and been bounced around a bit because of it. that doesn't mean he doesn't have the right to walk somewhere in a hoodie. That doesn't mean that he wasn't capable of attacking someone either. We just don't know.
3) The cold hard truth is that we were not there. We don't know who was the initial physical aggressor. Maybe it was Trayvon who doubled back and attacked Zimmerman. Certainly there is plenty of reason why Zimmerman shouldn't have been following him in the first place - but again, we weren't there and don't know exactly how it happened.
3) Florida's stand your ground law establishes that IF Zimmerman were attacked, he has the right to defend his life and there is NO requirement that he try to retreat first. Alabama has a very similar law, and I was reading up on it at the end of last week. So, it is quite possible that even though he killed an unarmed teen, he did not commit a crime under Florida law.
4) Based on the way my students and other community members are reacting, I would not be surprised if the powder keg goes off and we see more violence before this is all done....I've got students (black male teens, especially) who are very angry and upset to the point I have been concerned at the threats I'm overhearing. I've let them talk and not gotten involved because I can understand they are angry and blowing off steam...but it's concerning me some.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Yeah, it's my understanding that even under some of the most unfavorable possible casting of events for Zimmerman, he may not be guilty of a crime.
This story brought good old Marion Hammer's name back up into regular discussion. The last time she was in the mainstream news, not just political news, in a big way in FL that I recall was back when it was so very important that people be allowed to bring firearms to work with them and left in their cars if they have concealed weapons permits, even if those employers would rather no firearms be brought at all.
Which, y'know, might not be so worrisome if you didn't also know that failed policemen wannabes with a lengthy and documented history of paranoia (911 calls), domestic...concerns, let's just say, questionable past with maybe or maybe violence towards police officers...if you didn't also know that in this state, at least, you can still be all of that and be permitted to bring a gun with you to work. Because goodness knows, people in America are so regularly and reliably attacked at their workplaces that it's VITAL to be strapped.
So strange. I hopefully don't flatter myself to think I know the minds of the Founding Fathers as expressed by their words better than most people, though very much less than people who have made a serious study of them, yet I have a hard time imagining that when the Second Amendment was agreed upon, what they had in mind was that anyone who isn't clearly totally nuts or devious can have, at any time, the ability to kill six or a dozen people with just an ordinary handgun and a few movements of arms, fingers, eyes, etc.
It's a good thing the NRA is here to make sure we keep the bar for gun ownership as low as we can get away with, regardless of how very much likelier it is for a gun to kill a family member in a fight or by accident than to defend one against danger. It's important for freedom that when, say, someone calls 911 for open garage doors, nobody asks, "Wait, maybe this guy's judgment about what is and isn't a dangerous emergency is *questionable*...should he have a license from us to carry out in the world, outside his own home?" No. Oh, God no. How will he then feel safe enough to keep an eye on the dangerous skittles eating black teens out there? So dangerous! Scary! You just never know, never, and man it's important that when you never know, you have the tools at hand to react in the most irrevocably violent way possible...just in case.
[ March 31, 2012, 11:38 PM: Message edited by: Rakeesh ]
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Martin was 140lbs, I believe, but was indeed over 6' tall. Zimmerman is, from the police video, more fit than initial reports and the ubiquitous mug shot would have us believe.
The lead investigator did want to charge him with manslaughter but was told by the state attorney's office there wasn't a case.
There had been several burglaries in Zimmerman's area, and his patrolling had evidently prevented a few.
I do not know that Zimmerman was racist; he may very easily have been mistrustful of any young male who didn't look squeaky clean.
I have no idea who attacked whom. I personally don't think the Stand Your Ground law was intended to cover someone who picks a fight, and I think Zimmerman should be brought in and the case investigated to determine what actually happened.
But I do know is that the national outrage wouldn't have happened if the police hadn't done such a poor job of investigating the case, a police dept. with a rep (whether earned or not) of bias.
I can't see this ending well for anyone.
Posted by AchillesHeel (Member # 11736) on :
He's an adult who was armed and in a car, who left the car to follow a teenager closely enough (if earlier reports are true, despite the police station footage) to be physically attacked by the person he was following after being told by the 911 operator not to. I don't understand how this could be strictly self-defense.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: Bullshit. Things are NOT as that article presents them, and the issues are not clear cut at all.
No; they're not. Like I have pointed out in article point aftermath: I highly doubt Zimmerman's injuries were simply invisible to a camera, I think they did not really exist to even remotely the extent claimed by the involved police department. I highly doubt that Trayvon managed to assail the physically larger Zimmerman with absolutely no evidence of a scuffle on his corpse, I think Zimmerman much more likely forged the account after the fact.
Yes, there's bullshit present. The rest of the energy of your post is misplaced.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
The voice on a 911 call tape shouting for help is not Zimmerman's, but did resemble the type of voice expectable from a young man (no sample of Trayvon's voice has been given to the public or the authorities for comparison as yet). Zimmerman sought no medical treatment or evaluation after the alleged attack. And the police didn't demand the medical examination which is standard for victims in cases in which recent assault or battery was alleged. Zimmerman made no attempt to help the person he shot.
A nasty aging bigot driven by machismo-challenged 'roid*rage jealousy into committing point-blank murder when his healthy young victim began shouting for help. Nothing more. Nothing less.
[ April 01, 2012, 08:58 AM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
quote:Bullshit. Things are NOT as that article presents them, and the issues are not clear cut at all. He was not a 14 year old kid, he was a 6 foot tall, 180 lb young man; Zimmerman DID have documented injuries to the back of his head and nose, and the Sanford police WANTED to arrest him for manslaughter but the DA's office said not to....yet....and Trayvon's own dad denied the voice on that tape was his son's voice.
Please remember that while I am white, I am not a Fox News watcher, Bible Thumper, or believer in the White Man's Burden. I don't buy into everything ANYONE says about this, as they all have agendas.
But enough of the which hunt crap. The water is already murky enough as it is.
The Guardian (please, stuffy right wing British paper that loves this kind of thing) doesn't say that it's not clear that Trayvon Martin attacked Zimmerman, only says that it may be difficult for the prosecution to make a case against Zimmerman becase of evidence that is legally murky.
Someone who had not committed an obvious crime was followed and shot and killed unnecessarily. This, by itself, is worthy of reporting. No agenda necessary.
The youth of the US should be upset about this, among other stupid things that go on in that country. In other more gun-restrictive countries, someone as paranoid as George Zimmerman would likely not be carrying a gun. A fight between two unarmed men usually results in maybe a bloody nose, a concussion and a trip to the hospital, not someone dead on the grass.
The fact that Zimmerman felt it was okay to first follow and then shoot someone is pretty apalling in of itself and shouldn't be taken as normal in the modern world.
Let's turn this situation around. A teenager realises he's being followed by a large man in a car who suspects him of some unknown criminal activity. Because he is seventeen years old and not level headed-- and probably offended by such an assumption of being a criminal--, he probably questions, then yells, at the man. As the verbal exchange heats up, a physical fight breaks out. During the scuffle, the older pursuer pulls out a gun and shoots the teenager.
I work with some troubled (but otherwise successful) kids. Some of them are on a hair trigger. They are lovely people most of the time, but they do not have the emotional capacity to deal calmly with a threatening situation. They are fine with most interaction but if someone teases them, instead of crying in a corner, they can easiy throw a punch.
Teenagers in a culture of violence (as the majority of young males exist within in the US and possibly the entire world) are even more prone to solve problems with personal aggression rather than measured responses such as calling the police.
But a lot of these altercations are based in emotional and sometimes even physical self-defense. These people get pushed by a bully, they push back. These people get followed, they fight back.
I have no problem believing that, after being followed, perhaps realising the nature of Zimmerman's pursuit, a young teenager guy could feel angry enough to approach and engage with his follower.
What should have absolutely not happened in the first place is the being followed and the older man having a gun that he was willing to use in a fist fight with a teenager. Yes, the young man shouldn't have engaged the older-- perhaps he should have done the equivalent of "tell a teacher" for younger children, call the police. But like many aggressive people, it doesn't work like that. The teacher could be standing right there and a person who fine a moment ago can punch someone in the face for calling him "gay".
But if the taunter, follower, teaser then pulls out a knife or a gun, well I'm afraid that's not excused by the response.
When I'm reporting to a headteacher about the violence that occurred in my classroom, I would never omit the initial incident that cause the violent outburst because it makes the difference between the young person being excluded from school or the young person being talked to and discussing a more proper response to someone else's semi-aggressive action (such as being teased, taunted, pushed or followed).
It's not fair that Trayvon Martin is dead, whether he was wanted by the police or not, or fought or attacked Zimmerman or not-- the same way it wouldn't be fair to always blame the bullied kid who snaps every so often. Zimmerman did not report him as such so he had no idea that he was or not such a suspect. Zimmerman was the one with the gun. HE was the armed man following someone for no obvious reason.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
To be fair, if the neighborhood had experienced some break ins and Zimmerman had broken them up, then someone walking at night who is not part of the neighborhood might indeed be slightly suspicious.
Then again, Zimmerman had apparently called 911 and reported dozens and dozens of "suspicious people" so it doesn't sound you have to do much to be considered suspicious.
That's the one thing that makes me think this is not racially motivated - I think it unlikely that Zimmerman would have not followed a white teenager...I think he was seeing criminals everywhere and race was not really the factor that caused him to follow Martin.
I agree with virtually everything teshi wrote about the tendency for some young men to react violently - my students are on a hair trigger most days as well. Some days I can ask a kid to sit down in his seat and have him blow up, yell, throw things, and violently storm out of a room. Often it has nothing to do with what I said to him, I was just the catalyst that set him off. In that moment I am the representation of authority he he lashing out against, he's not lashing at me personally.
Of course, it can get out of control. I've never been physically assaulted but a friend of mine has. She wasn't injured, but it was a huge deal and she had to complete a ton of paperwork and be interviewed several times only to have the kid merely suspended to alternative school for ten days.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I also believe Zimmerman would've followed anybody, and I think it's important people remember that (which is why this should matter to everybody-the self-appointed armed patrollers will follow you for any reason or no good reason, and anyone includes you, friends, and family if you fail their internal nervousness evaluation). But I admit I will be surprised if Zimmerman turns out to be free of the greater fear and suspicion our society is likelier to feel towards young black men than young white men, much less young white women.
Posted by Hank (Member # 8916) on :
Even if Zimmerman had no racial motivation at all, this is still a racially charged situation, because the lack of prosecution and the suspicion of cover-up are all tied back to racial stereotypes in our country, and the way that these stereotypes are acted on in the justice system.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
I also think that just because Zimmerman self-identifies as Hispanic does not mean this cannot be a racially charged situation - I see a lot of animosity and problems between young black males and young Hispanic males where I teach.
In fact, I see more hatred between those two groups than I see between whites and either group, though whites are a very low minority in our student population.
Posted by scholarette (Member # 11540) on :
Belle, when my husband worked at inner city school like 6 years ago there was significantly more tension between black and Hispanic groups then between any other two groups. I seem to remember some newspaper articles looking at that and discussing why the two groups have such horrible relations but I don't remember much beyond the idea that the two groups hate each other. In fact when they said hispanic not white I thought that it was even more likely to be racial than I had thought before.
Posted by Dr Strangelove (Member # 8331) on :
I don't have much to say on all this, as I feel like almost anything I add would be conjecture and/or opinion, neither or which I feel up to articulately formulating or defending. But I have spent a lot of time in Sanford and have a lot of roots there. Heck, if you drive down First Street, I helped put up some of the awnings on a few of the stores. My last weekend in the US was spent on a bar crawl through downtown Sanford. My grandfather was born there back when it was still the "celery capitol of the world."
And I have a hard time believing that race did not play a significant role in this, whether on an individual level from Zimmerman or an institutional level from the police department. Maybe it's just the side of Sanford I've seen, but in my experience there is a great deal of racial tension. Or, to put it another way, I'm reasonably positive that I could walk all over Sanford, through gated communities and beyond, with a hoody on, and not have a single problem from the cops or any neighborhood watch (I'm young, 150 lbs, over 6 feet, and white). The specifics of this particular case may go one way or another (and I certainly hope that an investigation will bring some sort of resolution), but I think that the sheer amount of attention it has received is indicative of a deeper, more general issue.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Yeah, that struck me as sadly funny, when some of the talk when this hit big media was about how 'now wait, it's not exactly a racial thing, since Zimmerman is Hispanic.' You've got to be pretty out of touch in America not to realize that, hey, 'minority' isn't just a catch-all group that sticks together with itself and dislikes only whitey. Hidden in there I think is the subconscious notion that the only racial issues that matter are white/everyone else.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
But they're all dark people, what could they possibly have to fight about?
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
I was dismayed at first at the amount of federal attention to this case-- it's a local issue, thought I, so why are these members of Congress and Washington bigwigs getting involved? More political gaming, I thought.
Considering what's come to light about Sanford's reputation in regards to race, though, I'm glad of it now.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
quote:Originally posted by AchillesHeel: He's an adult who was armed and in a car, who left the car to follow a teenager closely enough (if earlier reports are true, despite the police station footage) to be physically attacked by the person he was following after being told by the 911 operator not to. I don't understand how this could be strictly self-defense.
Anybody who needs to look farther than this is a fool or a racist.
In my view, Zimmerman gave up any presumption of self-defense the second he got out of his car. Only fools and racists think otherwise.
Again, not to be blunt, that's just how I see it. I don't know how law enforcement or a district attorney could see it otherwise.
You can't just chase down random people and apprehend, confront, or harass them. The fact that he got out of his car pretty much implies that's what happened.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
It doesn't sound like you're very familiar with the actual law in question, I'm afraid. It is entirely possible that, legally speaking, he DIDN'T give up his self-defense angle. And maybe I flatter myself that I'm not a fool, but I'm certainly not a racist.
Posted by dem (Member # 2512) on :
Anyone that is saying that they are 100% sure about what happened at this point seems to be less than objective to me. Anyone that says you're a racist for wanting to wait for all the facts to come out before assigning responsibility seems to be more interested in their agenda than the truth (kind of what they are accusing others of being)?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Who's saying they're 100% sure of what happened? Isn't there a word for that, bringing in an argument nobody is making and then attacking it?
As for assigning responsibility...it's NOT too soon to say a few things: one, Zimmerman should not have had a concealed weapons permit. His judgment on what did and didn't constitute an emergency, a dangerous situation, were clearly seriously flawed-unless he lived in downtown Kabul or something, for all of those 911 calls. Two, he should not have been the person patrolling his neighborhood. Three, he absolutely shouldn't have been carrying a gun on neighborhood self-appointed unrecognized watch patrol. I don't think that can possibly be overstated. Four, he shouldn't have called 911 on a 'suspicious' teen whose only move towards anything criminal, even by his own words, was with his eyes. Five, when told by 911 not to follow, he should've listened. There's often a reason dispatch or cops tell people what to do in 'emergencies'. And finally, he shouldn't have gotten out of the car.
Even if every single thing Zimmerman says about what happened next is true, it's quite likely none of this, or at least much less of it, would've happened had Zimmerman not done even one of those things. Again, assuming he's being totally honest about what went down after exiting his vehicle (said car, whoops!), if he hadn't had a gun it's just extremely unlikely that the supposedly aggressively violent Martin would've killed him, just attacked him. If he hadn't gotten out of the car, it's incredibly unlikely Martin would've reached in to attack him. If he hadn't been on his self appointed patrol, leaving it to people who could keep their fingers off those three keys on the phone, all would've been avoided. If he'd listened to dispatch, he wouldn't have followed, instead going about his patrol.
It's not too soon to say ANY of that. It's so curious, isn't it, that so many Americans who generally think our justice system is a joke, that it grants too many rights to the accused, that sometimes we just KNOW someone is guilty...whoa, whoa, whoa! Let's wait till all the facts are in! We need to give the system time to work!
...because let's face it, black teen wearing...well, a hoodie but damn near anything at all will do...a black teen in YOUR neighborhood that you don't already know? Who wouldn't be a little scared!
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
You can hear a lot of yelling before the gun shot. Experts apparently say that the yelling is NOT Zimmerman, so whatever went down seems messed up. You can also hear someone yell "help" at one point. All this before the gun shot, and then silence.
It sounds like there was either a confrontation or an altercation.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I guess as Zimmerman was catching a serious beatdown, he didn't yell for help from the neighborhood he was protecting. Probably just too much man for that.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:You can hear a lot of yelling before the gun shot. Experts apparently say that the yelling is NOT Zimmerman, so whatever went down seems messed up.
And, just so everyone's on the same page on this one, the salient bullet points are that (1) Zimmerman's story to police is that he was the one yelling for help, and (2) forensic analysis from multiple sources is confident that he was not.
Posted by dem (Member # 2512) on :
Rakeesh,
I didn't say anyone said that, though many on both sides of the issue have made up their minds. I said that to point out that calling someone a fool or racist for 'wanting to look further than this', as drummer said, is ridiculous. One can agree with many of your opinions about Zimmerman and his actions and still think it is right to wait to make up their minds about the guilt of Zimmerman.
I just feel that comments like drummer made are irresponsible and do harm. Throwing out the racist label toward someone that debates something that reasonable people can disagree on is wrong. It has elements of crying wolf. It also damages drummer, because he will tend to label people as racist and ignore logical arguments that he might normally find persuasive.
I had an old management professor 20 years ago that loved to talk about how racism was self defeating for a white person (pragmatic selfishness was his term). I think that calling a white person racist just because they take the side of the nonafrican-American (or in this case don't immediately say that the nonafrican-American is definitely guilty of murder or couldn't have been acting in self defense) is racism and does harm to both the person being called a racist and the person calling someone a racist.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Well, if you were referring specifically to Drummer, that's one thing. I thought you were speaking more generally.
But I will say this: I will be surprised if racism doesn't play a key role in Zimmerman's motives for whatever happened, just as it has in the long delay in this story becoming mainstream news (this can be seen in imagining what the response would've been if a white teen had been gunned down for being suspicious near his own neighborhood). I say I'll be surprised because 'Oh, man, there's a strange black kid walking openly along the street...LOOKING at stuff' well, that's simply racism. A hoodie? Please.
Posted by dem (Member # 2512) on :
I wouldn't be surprise if racism was involved in the case. But I wont assign racists motives to zimmerman w/o evidence of one, because it could cloud my judgment. I will leave it as a possibility. Honestly, if I had to give an opinion of what I thought happened, it would probably sound a lot like drummers opinion. However, I think drummer's willingness to label people racists that aren't willing to say that they are sure it wasn't self defense is wrong and self defeating.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I am not saying Zim isn't a moron, or that he was a model person. Nor am I saying that Tray deserved to die, or even be followed.
But Tray was hardly the little 14 year old boy he was in the picture we were shown, and he wasn't an angel. He had been suspended 3 times for drugs, and was 6' tall.
I just hate how so many people rushed to stick their fingers in the pie, and wonder how many of them will write books about it in the near future.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: I am not saying Zim isn't a moron, or that he was a model person. Nor am I saying that Tray deserved to die, or even be followed.
But Tray was hardly the little 14 year old boy he was in the picture we were shown, and he wasn't an angel. He had been suspended 3 times for drugs, and was 6' tall.
I just hate how so many people rushed to stick their fingers in the pie, and wonder how many of them will write books about it in the near future.
Zim? You two sound awfully cozy...
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I also posted Tray. I am not close to either. I am lazy when typing after 2 AM. Get it right.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
I find it rather sad that you are so willing to scapegoat the victim here Kwea. I'm over six feet tall. Now all I need is a few minor drug offenses (god knows, it could have happened when I was in school), and I won't be an angel if someone shoots me. Except, I'm white. And a white kid who gets busted for marijuana is in need of guidance and direction. A black kid is clearly dangerous.
I think if you really work at unpacking what you've said, you'll find there isn't much of substance there worth repeating.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
We know that Zimmerman had injuries on both the back and the front of his head. Trayvon on the other hand didn't seem to have any injuries other than the killing shot.
This seems consistent with Trayvon attacking Zimmerman, not vice versa.
All the rest is race-motivated bullshit. I'd bet 80% in favour that Zimmerman *was* struggling for his life at the time he shot Tray. He is being witch-hunted by people that *assume* he was the bad guy. Celebrities like Roseanne Barr and Spike Lee attempted to form lynch mobs, attempting to tweet his address and posting things like "nobody can hide" and "reach out and touch him".
This is unacceptable. This is *criminal*.
quote:I find it rather sad that you are so willing to scapegoat the victim here Kwea. I'm over six feet tall. Now all I need is a few minor drug offenses (god knows, it could have happened when I was in school), and I won't be an angel if someone shoots me.
Yeah, well, I suggest you don't go around bashing people's heads on pavements, Orincoro. If the people whose heads you bash on pavements are armed, you may indeed get shot.
Right now every piece of physical evidence seems in favour of Zimmerman, and every piece of testimony seems to be in favour of Zimmerman.
And to the contrary we have what, exactly? Just a popular narrative that in every confrontation between a black guy and a white guy, the white guy is most likely the villain.
Well, find a better case than this one, because right now Zimmerman is not looking a villain. Atleast he looks far from *certainly* a villain.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Do we know that? The police video of Zimmerman shows no damage at all, and his "injuries" required no medical care.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I am generally "pro-gun" but find it unforgivable that this guy could even get a concealed weapon permit with a history of violence, and then take his legal gun and go patrol his neighborhood. The police are highly trained, have non-lethal weapons, the ability to do background checks, back up, etc. Zimmerman should be arrested as vigilante the second he followed someone that he was instructed not to follow. Let alone confront the person, let alone physically confront him, or hell, I don't know, kill him deader then dog crap.
P.S. I was shocked the first time I heard a Hispanic call a black the n word. But once I was clued in, yea, lots of bad blood between those two groups. And here I thought everyone just hated whitey. Go figure.
Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :
quote: As exposed by Fox News and media watchdog site NewsBusters, the “Today” segment took this approach to a key part of the dispatcher call:
Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.
Here’s how the actual conversation went down:
Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about. Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic? Zimmerman: He looks black.
Posted by AchillesHeel (Member # 11736) on :
Aris, are you aware of the police station footage where no sign of injury is visible on Zimmerman? and I would note that after supposedly having his bashed on the ground he sought no medical attention beyond first aid in the back of a cop car. I have been the victim of random assault and lost about a pint of blood from a cut above my left eye, I never lost consciousness or felt especially woozy but for four hours at the hospital I was treated as if I had cracked my skull and only after the x-rays showed I was okay was I even allowed to drink water, that is how serious head wounds are treated and I didn't have a single other scratch on me.
Or that the voice on the 911 call could not have come from Zimmerman? after he has claimed that he was the one yelling help.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: We know that Zimmerman had injuries on both the back and the front of his head.
We do not know that. *We* have been told that. The evidence was not properly collected.
quote: Trayvon on the other hand didn't seem to have any injuries other than the killing shot.
I'd say a fatal gunshot wound is a pretty serious injury.
quote: Yeah, well, I suggest you don't go around bashing people's heads on pavements, Orincoro. If the people whose heads you bash on pavements are armed, you may indeed get shot.
Don't be obtuse. The shooter, by his own admission, followed and approached the young man- an encounter resulting in a fatal shooting. That he was "going around bashing people's heads on pavements," is ridiculous. You're talking complete nonsense.
quote: Right now every piece of physical evidence seems in favour of Zimmerman, and every piece of testimony seems to be in favour of Zimmerman.
Other than the call that the victim placed to his girlfriend, which contradicts Zimmerman's testimony- his being the shooter and the only direct witness. Sure, why not believe him after he followed a young man down a dark street, approached him, and shot him. Perfectly reasonable.
The fact is that for all we can know out of this situation, ZImmerman may very well have accosted the young man, he may have attempted to fight back, and Zimmerman then shot him. This is why the police asked Zimmerman *not* to approach the boy, and *not* to follow him. And he *did* follow him and he *did* approach him. And the boy died as a result of the encounter. What scant evidence there is, of anything, does not make the sequence of events in the least clear. And in the case of a fatal shooting on a street involving an unarmed minor, I find it interesting that you feel the burden of proof is on everyone else to prove that Zimmerman did something wrong. Other than disobeying police advice, and putting himself into a situation he clearly could not handle on his own without *killing* someone- these being the facts that are well established.
quote: And to the contrary we have what, exactly? Just a popular narrative that in every confrontation between a black guy and a white guy, the white guy is most likely the villain.
Seriously? You think that's the popular narrative. Ok. Whatever. I don't know what universe you live in.
In the universe where I live, this specific case seems *extremely* suspect. If it was a black man shooting a young white man, I would have the same impression. And, sadly, if it had been a black man shooting a young white man, he would have been arrested, and it would not have been a national story.
[ April 02, 2012, 06:41 AM: Message edited by: Orincoro ]
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:The shooter, by his own admission, followed and approached the young man- an encounter resulting in a fatal shooting
Approaching someone is not illegal or criminal. The thing that matters is who started the potentially-lethal violence.
quote:We do not know that. *We* have been told that. The evidence was not properly collected.
And if the medical records show it true, would you care? Or would Zimmerman *still* be guilty in your mind, even if you knew for a fact that Treyvon was bashing his head on the ground?
quote:Seriously? You think that's the popular narrative.
Yes, nowadays that's the popular narrative. We're not the 1950s anymore. We're not even in the 1980s anymore. The popular narrative nowadays is that whites don't get victimized by blacks, it's only the other way around.
quote:In the universe where I live, this specific case seems *extremely* suspect. If it was a black man shooting a young white man, I would have the same impression.
I doubt it.
quote:And, sadly, if it had been a black man shooting a young white man, he would have been arrested, and it would not have been a national story.
Indeed, my very point is that it would not be a national story if a black guy had shot a white guy, because nobody treats it like racism when that happens, and so it's supposedly nothing to be concerned about.
Racism is only talked about and suspected and fretted about when it's a white person shooting a black person. That's the narrative I'm talking about.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
You're way beyond your depth, Aris.
quote: Approaching someone is not illegal or criminal. The thing that matters is who started the potentially-lethal violence.
No, I rather think it matters if someone carrying a lethal weapon follows and harasses someone who is not carrying one, and the encounter ends in the unarmed *minor's* death. The adult in this situation was Zimmerman. And though we do not know who "started the violence," the we are very well aware of the fact that Zimmerman followed and engaged with this boy, and that the result was the boy's death. None of that matters to you, I suppose.
quote: RThe popular narrative nowadays is that whites don't get victimized by blacks, it's only the other way around.
Please.
You wanna go on and on about social justice and the 1950s and black and whites, fine. Your insecurity is hilarious. I'm rather more interested in this specific situation- you know, an armed adult confronts an unarmed minor and shoots him. But yeah, totally, I see that as a problem because I'm buying into some narrative, wah wah wah. Let me go stick my head in a bucket.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:And if the medical records show it true, would you care? Or would Zimmerman *still* be guilty in your mind, even if you knew for a fact that Treyvon was bashing his head on the ground?
Wait, I'm confused. A minute ago we 'knew' Zimmerman had been seriously beaten-injuries which he didn't get extra medical care for, which didn't leave signs that could be seen from looking at his face, and which also apparently left no signs on Martin's body from causing-but now that you've been called on it, it's 'if'.
I thought we knew Zimmerman had been injured...because, well, he told us he was, I guess, and therefore it's true.
I'm just wondering, as far as Martin's not being an 'angel', has anyone seem ANYTHING that suggests be made a habit of attacking strangers with very serious violence? And I wonder what happened to the bloody clothes Zimmerman was surely wearing, clothing which of course bore blood from his own body, front and back.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Yes, nowadays that's the popular narrative. We're not the 1950s anymore. We're not even in the 1980s anymore. The popular narrative nowadays is that whites don't get victimized by blacks, it's only the other way around.
That must be why it's usually easier to bag a death row spot for a black guy than a white guy, because of anti-white racism.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:No, I rather think it matters if someone carrying a lethal weapon follows and harasses someone who is not carrying one
What does "harass" mean in this context? Being annoying? Asking them who they were? Calling them bad words?
And you expect me to believe that if some black guy had called names a white guy, and the white guy launched lethal violence against the black guy, you would supposedly take the side of the white guy? Because it supposedly matters who "harassed" the other, not who initiated violence?
No, I don't believe you. If some black guy had followed and "harassed" a white teenager, and the white teenager had killed him, you'be again accusing the white teenager.
Either way, you've made it clear that you don't actually *care* whether Trey was bashing Zimmerman's head on the ground, because for you the whole situation is Zimmerman's fault from the simple fact that he followed Trey.
To me, simple disputed facts determine the guilt or innocence: Who initiated the potentially lethal force. If it was Trey, then Zimmerman is innocent. If it was Zimmerman, then Zimmerman is guilty
For you, Zimmerman is guilty, even if he was engaging in self-defense against Trey's initiation of lethal force.
quote:I'm rather more interested in this specific situation- you know, an armed adult confronts an unarmed minor and shoots him.
Being armed is a right in the United States.
And being a "minor" means less than nothing when the minor is physically stronger than the adult (as a 17-year old footballer is stronger than a fat 30-year old).
As for me, I consider it of a very low prior probability that deliberate murderers call the police beforehand.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Wait, I'm confused. A minute ago we 'knew' Zimmerman had been seriously beaten
.
Rakeesh, let's pretend for a moment that we don't know whether he was beaten or not.
I'm telling you right now, that if he *wasn't* beaten, I'll consider Zimmerman guilty of murder.
If he *was* beaten, will you consider him innocent?
Or is that one of the things, where he's damned whether he was beaten or not beaten, and you only *pretend* to care about this bit?
quote:That must be why it's usually easier to bag a death row spot for a black guy than a white guy, because of anti-white racism.
The existence of anti-white racism doesn't affect the existence of anti-black racism. You're perfectly capable of perceiving the many many instances of anti-black racism, it's anti-white racism that you're incapable of perceiving. (Same way that conservatives are often incapable of perceiving anti-black racism)
Or did you somehow think that by claiming anti-white racism exists, I was somehow claiming anti-black racism doesn't? WRONG.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
You haven't claimed it doesn't exist, just that it's not as relevant as anti-white racism today.
As for Zimmerman's injuries, not believing they exist (because evidence for them is...dubious) is not at all the same thing as not caring if he was injured. You're being hysterical.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:You haven't claimed it doesn't exist, just that it's not as relevant as anti-white racism today.
No, I didn't claim that either. I claimed that anti-white racism helps form the popular narrative in a *specific context*, violence that occurs between blacks and whites.
I didn't discuss the role of racism in politics, or in business, or in the academia, or in Hollywood depictions, or in anything else. I've only discussed one particular aspect: violence.
quote:As for Zimmerman's injuries, not believing they exist (because evidence for them is...dubious) is not at all the same thing as not caring if he was injured.
That's not an answer. Tell me plainly: If Trey *was* bashing Zimmerman's head on the ground, would you consider Zimmerman's shooting a justifiable act of self-defense, and therefore Zimmerman would be innocent of any criminal wrongdoing?
If you answer yes, then we're pretty much in agreement about everything, except that we posit different probabilities about whether this actually happened or not.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote: What scant evidence there is, of anything, does not make the sequence of events in the least clear. And in the case of a fatal shooting on a street involving an unarmed minor, I find it interesting that you feel the burden of proof is on everyone else to prove that Zimmerman did something wrong.
That's generally how it's supposed to work though in the US justice system. A certain amount of evidence leads to an arrest; that evidence is evaluated to determine if the state has enough evidence to bring the case to court; but the courts presume innocence until a jury finds the defendant guilty (through examination of the evidences brought by the prosecution).
So...yeah. The burden of proof is on the part of the accusers.
There is certainly enough evidence in this case to make me doubt the veracity of Zimmerman's story.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
While it is the way it's supposed to work, in popular opinion it rarely is. When it's someone we don't know or like, all that 'guilty until proven innocent' stuff that's so vital and so worthy about our system is often considered BS, unnecessary bleeding heart technicalities by people who just aren't common-sense smart enough to 'know' when someone's guilty.
Throw in a 'scary' black teen, though, and suddenly there are quite a few people ready to embrace reasonable doubt who would sneer at it otherwise.
quote:Rakeesh, let's pretend for a moment that we don't know whether he was beaten or not.
We don't actually have to pretend on that, despite your earlier insistence we know Zimmerman was attacked. What does seem highly likely, though, in descending probability: Zimmerman didn't shout for help while being attacked, Martin's body doesn't show the signs of aggressive violence one would expect, and Zimmerman doesn't appear to show injuries from being attacked either. ------
Aris, what is this strawman nonsense? You continue coming back to this. What has anyone said here that suggests it wouldn't be self-defense if Martin did (without any provocation) attack Zimmerman?
And I still would like to talk about how you 'knew' Zimmerman's injuries were not just real but also serious and inflicted by Martin's aggressive attack. You want to talk about everyone else's anti-white racism (and yeah, you do), but somehow when you just cop to Zimmerman's dubious story as told by him...well, that don't mean anything, does it? Naw.
I guess you're just fighting against this supposed mindset where when whites are attacked by blacks, it's a response against racism or something, and nothing else. Never mind, y'know, how much more often blacks are going to be sentenced to stiffer sentencing whoever they attack. Never mind that if you're black, sometimes you might want to think twice before picking up your wallet in front of a cop.
Never mind that if you're walking home I don't know, LOOKING at stuff, and you're a black teen, otherwise innocuous clothing becomes so dangerous that you need to disregard instructions not to follow him, because sweet baby Jesus, a strange black teen pedestrian? Not on MY watch! Of course that's suspicious!
Please, Aris, tell us more about how bad white people have it re: racism, wouldya?
Anyway, aside from all of that, what many seem to have difficulty grasping is one of the big reasons so many are angry about this, particularly blacks. It's because for weeks nobody gave a damn, but if a cute little while girl disappears in Seattle, I may just hear about it on national news inside a day or two. It's because there are many places in America where if you're a black family, you get a sinking feeling rather than one of confident hope if the local police department investigates your child's death, and god knows Sanford is one of them. And it's because of how much easier it is for so many to believe Zimmerman was 'standing his ground' against a black teen than a white one.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: Tell me plainly: If Trey *was* bashing Zimmerman's head on the ground, would you consider Zimmerman's shooting a justifiable act of self-defense, and therefore Zimmerman would be innocent of any criminal wrongdoing?
As long as we're working on the idea: no. There are scores of scenarios in which physical acts from trayvon to zimmerman do not automatically grant zimmerman the right to claim justifiable self-defense.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:I'm rather more interested in this specific situation- you know, an armed adult confronts an unarmed minor and shoots him.
Being armed is a right in the United States.
Shooting someone without justification is not a right. Shooting someone, in general, is not a right. Defending oneself, in a given limited set of reasonable circumstances, is a right. These reasonable circumstances have yet to be established, and I remain highly dubious that they will be.
quote: And being a "minor" means less than nothing when the minor is physically stronger than the adult (as a 17-year old footballer is stronger than a fat 30-year old).
No, I'm afraid it means more than nothing, rather a lot, that a grown man in his late twenties, carrying a deadly weapon, approached a young man who was not an adult, when he was advised by police not to do so, and that he subsequently shot that minor to death in the street. I find the fact that this young man was a minor to be significant.
quote:As for me, I consider it of a very low prior probability that deliberate murderers call the police beforehand.
I have not accused Zimmerman of deliberate murder. I have implied that he was negligent, and reckless, and that he may very well have caused, through his negligence and recklessness, the death of a minor. Don't you dare make this about me calling him a murderer. That's beyond low.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Rakeesh, you've still not replied to my question. Saying a simple "yes" "no" "depends" isn't that difficult, so at this point, I have to assume you're deliberately evading to reply.
And therefore I have to call BULLSHIT, on the idea that what I'm talking about being such a "strawman" -- you *really* don't care about whether Trey initiated violence or not, you really don't care about whether Zimmerman was in legitimate self-defense or not.
quote:Please, Aris, tell us more about how bad white people have it re: racism, wouldya?
Well in this particular case, a particular white person has it bad enough that the media deliberately distorted his words in order to make him appear racist, to pretend that he said "This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black." instead of "This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about."
In regards to this particular story, this is MUCH MUCH MORE RELEVANT that any other nonsense you care to talk about. He's white, and he happened to have killed a black kid, so let's all pretend that he must be a racist.
This was evident in the very first post of this thread also. Are you telling me that Samprimary's initial post wasn't heavily biased in favour of this white dude being a racist that was looking for "young black men" to hunt down and kill?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:I have not accused Zimmerman of deliberate murder. I have implied that he was negligent, and reckless, and that he may very well have caused, through his negligence and recklessness, the death of a minor.
Neither you nor anyone else here used either the words "negligence" nor the words "recklessness" -- or I may very well have agreed with you wholeheartedly.
This thread, judging from its first post, is about Zimmerman wanting "to kill someone and get away with it".
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
eheh. I *implied* that he was negligent and reckless. Neither did I once say the word murder, murderer, or deliberate murder until you brought it up.
This thread, judging from its *content,* is about someone *having* killed someone, and gotten away with it.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
The issue, if one is interested in using common sense, is not whether Zimmerman is a murderer. The ISSUE is, is he stable/calm enough to be allowed back out on the street?
Hell no. And we all know it, too.
This isn't a situation where we don't know who was involved. There are plenty of murders that happen where people are acquitted because we're not absolutely sure who did it. We know EXACTLY who was there that night.
If Zimmerman was 3 feet tall, and 55 pounds, and wheelchair bound, and for certain could never get a gun again, I wouldn't care if he was on the streets or not.
None of those things are TRUE, though. He could walk into a gun show TOMORROW and pick up 50 or 100 guns, if he wanted. For that matter, he probably has supporters who would GIVE him FREE guns.
Even if you took away all his guns, and made it impossible for him to legally buy more, Zimmmerman is not the type to take that as a sign from God that he SHOULDN'T own guns. If he wanted one, he'd just go buy it, legal or not. That's my guess, anyway.
I think the whole thing's a tragedy, but we're not going to solve anything by letting him back out on the streets.
I have a feeling this is going to end up like the Casey Anthony situation, though.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
And yes, I'd like to see him go to jail. Maybe the Muslim Brotherhood would "educate" him re: respecting members of other races. Heh.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Yeah, not a fan of taking pleasure in prison violence. Which is a pretty stupid thing to wish for re: racial justice, given how much more likely it is that blacks will be victims of prison violence than whites, given disproportionate incarceration rates.
--------
Aris, I didn't answer yes or no to your absurd question because it was a dishonest one. I don't think you *actually believe* I don't care if Zimmerman was defending himself, that he was in the wrong no matter what happened. I simply don't think you're that stupid. I didn't answer the question because it was about a claim I never made and never suggested, either. How about I demand an answer from you that, I don't know, you tell me yes or no if cancer is bad! Now! Or I call BS!
As for the first post, read it again. And as for how bad Zimmerman's got it, how's about this for bad? When he roughed up a cop, the charges were dropped. Didn't impact his concealed permit. When he got into domestic trouble with his wife, and she filed a restraining order, didn't impact the permit. When he made dozens and dozens of 911 calls for non-emergencies, didn't impact his permit. When he elected to appoint himself the armed patrolman of his neighborhood watch, not even recognized by police, didn't impact his permit.
Oh, how he suffered!
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Cancer is bad.
Now you answer mine.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Yeah, not a fan of taking pleasure in prison violence.
I'd rather it happen in prison than out here. Unless he hides for a LOOOONG time, some angry brother will kill him, unless he goes to prison.
Wherein he will ALSO be killed by an angry brother, unless he is in protective custody the entire time.
Would he DESERVE protective custody?
What about child molesters in prison? They get protective custody in prison. Do they deserve it?
I'm not saying there are easy answers. It's a discussion forum, and I certainly haven't come to my final conclusions on this subject yet, or hopefully on anything.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Ugh, what on Earth are you talking about? Anybody in danger of being hurt deserves protective custody in prison. Prisoners have rights.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: when he was advised by police not to do so
You keep saying this, but 911 is not the police.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
It is an easy question: prison violence is bad, and we should care more about preventing it. Not just because they do or don't deserve it (which is so often a dangerous question-what do you deserve, or I? What does, for example, a child born addicted to crack deserve, so maybe let's cut the crap about 'deserve'), but preventing peope from being beaten and raped really SHOULD be something we try to prevent wherever it happens, especially when incarcerate someone...but it's also bad because it harms society. Tell me, Drummer, do you think someone who has been shanked or raped while in prison is more likely, as likely, or less likely to exit prison a nonviolent citizen?
There. Easy question.
It's also odd to revel in the idea of someone getting him, given how it's not unlikely he'd y'know shoot first and ask questions later!
------
Aris: no. That's a 'no' to answering your question, btw, not an answer itself. You know the answer. Your trap is incredibly feeble and silly.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Rivka is right, 911 dispatch isn't the police.
To be fair, though, it is in the minds of most people, and the police would very likely not told him to follow Martin. Or, well, they shouldn't but Sanford police are...sketchy sometimes, as it turns out.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Ugh, what on Earth are you talking about? Anybody in danger of being hurt deserves protective custody in prison. Prisoners have rights.
I was just raising the question. Did you read my whole post? I SAID I don't think there are easy answers.
But, for that matter, have you heard of Polly Klaas? Does HER killer deserve protective custody? And I'm not saying he does or doesn't. I'm raising the question.
Here's a quote from the wiki , just to stir the pot:
"A San Jose, California, Superior Court jury recommended the death sentence for Davis on August 5, 1996. After the verdict was read, Davis stood and gestured obscenely at the courtroom with both hands. Later, at his formal sentencing, Davis read a statement claiming that Klaas had said to Davis, "Just don’t do me like my dad," just before Davis killed her, implying that Klaas' father was a child molester. "
What does he deserve? Again, I'm raising the question, not providing my conclusions. My mind is open.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Dude, you just laughed about how maybe the Muslim Brotherhood would school Zimmerman in prison about race relations.
Tell us again about how your mind isn't made up, you're just raising the question. See if you can keep a straight face.
But even if you were 'just raising the question', it's an easy one: we don't torture people, or countenance others doing it for us, or at least we shouldn't. We become worse human beings when we do it or permit it to be done. Open and shut. I don't really care if someone thinks an awful, despicable child molester being raped and beaten on a daily or weekly basis for decades is a good thing. I don't care that if it had happened to me or particularly a child of mine, I might very well relish that happening. It's wrong.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: It is an easy question: prison violence is bad, and we should care more about preventing it. Not just because they do or don't deserve it (which is so often a dangerous question-what do you deserve, or I? What does, for example, a child born addicted to crack deserve, so maybe let's cut the crap about 'deserve'), but preventing peope from being beaten and raped really SHOULD be something we try to prevent wherever it happens, especially when incarcerate someone...but it's also bad because it harms society. Tell me, Drummer, do you think someone who has been shanked or raped while in prison is more likely, as likely, or less likely to exit prison a nonviolent citizen?
There. Easy question.
It's also odd to revel in the idea of someone getting him, given how it's not unlikely he'd y'know shoot first and ask questions later!
------
People get shanked in prison every day, though. And raped, and beaten, etc.. You're acting like it doesn't happen. The reality is, though, that people in protective custody are LESS likely to get attacked, which INCLUDES child molesters, and EXCLUDES people in for marijuana possession, or other petty non-violent crimes.
Again, just raising points, not offering conclusions.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
It's so funny that you think there are easy answers. You really do, too, you're being sincere.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
How on Earth am I acting as though it doesn't happen, Drummer? Where did I say or even hint at that?
And yes, there are easy answers. To some questions. This is one of them. I've explained why, whereas you chuckle at the idea of Zimmerman getting some racially charged prison violence. So don't get smug with me.
And just to demonstrate both how absurd and how dishonest your posts on this subject are: I note without surprise you didn't answer my question about what sort of ex-con a victim of prison violence is likely to be, I note that while you claim to just be raising questions and have an open mind, you already laughed at the idea of Zimmerman being targeted in prison, and finally that your mention of non-violent offenders is an obvious red herring. They shouldn't be in prison with violent offenders in the first place.
Hell, if we're gonna incarcerate for pot possession and dealing, I'm sure we could use something like inexpensive land maintenance or litter pickup or something, rather than confinement with violent felons.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Aris: no. That's a 'no' to answering your question, btw, not an answer itself. You know the answer. Your trap is incredibly feeble and silly.
Rakeesh, what is this "trap" you are talking about?
And, no, I don't know the answer. It's quite clear that there are exist a number of people who don't give a damn about whether Zimmerman was acting in self-defense or not -- "I Used To Be a Drummer" is clearly one of them, for example. So why should I have automatically assumed you are one of the people who do give a damn?
One of the things that "I Used to Be a Drummer" explained to you quite clearly though, is that because of anti-white racism in black gangs, Zimmerman will now effectively need to be in hiding for the rest of his life.
Regardless of whether he did anything illegal or not. Even if he was in perfectly legitimate self-defense.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: How on Earth am I acting as though it doesn't happen, Drummer? Where did I say or even hint at that?
And yes, there are easy answers. To some questions. This is one of them. I've explained why, whereas you chuckle at the idea of Zimmerman getting some racially charged prison violence. So don't get smug with me.
I'm not smug, brother. Unless he is in hiding outside of prison, or in protective custody inside, he will get killed by an angry brother. If the first angry brother failed, the next one wouldn't.
And like I said, I'd rather it happen IN prison than outside of prison. That's not because I'd rather him be in prison, although I would. It's because we're all safer out here if violence is confined to prison.
Are you planning to address my point about child molesters getting better protection than non-violent drug offenders? Again, on that matter, I'm just testing you, I'm not offering a final conclusion, my friend.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: And just to demonstrate both how absurd and how dishonest your posts on this subject are: I note without surprise you didn't answer my question about what sort of ex-con a victim of prison violence is likely to be, I note that while you claim to just be raising questions and have an open mind, you already laughed at the idea of Zimmerman being targeted in prison, and finally that your mention of non-violent offenders is an obvious red herring. They shouldn't be in prison with violent offenders in the first place.
Hell, if we're gonna incarcerate for pot possession and dealing, I'm sure we could use something like inexpensive land maintenance or litter pickup or something, rather than confinement with violent felons.
I'm fine with incarcerating violent and non-violent offenders separately.
Do you have the money or political power to make it happen? For that matter, I don't think anybody does. Most of the wealthy/elderly/powerful people in this country don't care enough about non-violent offenders to protect them. It's also those same wealthy/elderly/powerful people who could actually change our prison system.
Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :
quote:Originally posted by I Used to Be a Drummer: I'm not smug, brother. Unless he is in hiding outside of prison, or in protective custody inside, he will get killed by an angry brother. If the first angry brother failed, the next one wouldn't.
Uhm... wow...
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Aris, the fact is that Trayvon Martin wouldn't be dead if George Zimmerman hadn't decided to play amateur cop and follow him. "Legitimate self defense" is a little problematic when the guy claiming it is the person who initiated the confrontation.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
quote:Originally posted by Corwin:
quote:Originally posted by I Used to Be a Drummer: I'm not smug, brother. Unless he is in hiding outside of prison, or in protective custody inside, he will get killed by an angry brother. If the first angry brother failed, the next one wouldn't.
Uhm... wow...
I don't think you know just how angry many young black men are at Zimmerman. I don't think you have any idea at all, unless I've misunderstood your post.
I remember how older people used to act afraid of me on the street, when I was a young man. I dressed fairly well (I didn't look dirty/unkempt, anyway, just like a typical teenager/young adult dressed casually), and I acted completely innocuously, but I could see the fear in their eyes. They'd cross the street to avoid me, etc..
It saddened me. I wanted to allay their fears, tell them I wasn't a criminal. However, because I was a young male, and not in a suit/tie, I was automatically suspect. It really made me sad, and bewildered me.
Now that I'm older, I totally get it. I avoid young men too, out on the street. And I'm sure some of them feel sad and bewildered too, just like I did, back when I was a younger man.
How much worse must it be for young black men?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Are you planning to address my point about child molesters getting better protection than non-violent drug offenders? Again, on that matter, I'm just testing you, I'm not offering a final conclusion, my friend.
I did address it: it's a BS question, you're in no position to test me, and I'm not your friend. I already said violent offenders shouldn't be incarcerated with violent ones-are you even reading? But, hey, since you're going on about unanswered questions, I'm still waiting to hear about the impact of prison violence on cons when they get out.
As for why prison violence happens, as much a reason as wealthy and influential apathy is the fact that most people are apathetic to prison violence period, or take pleasure in the idea like you (yes, you did). All that money and influence is used to buy advertising to persuade voters, but guess what? If those voters started out caring whether or not a convict is being beaten, stabbed, raped, killed, or all four on our dime, it might actually be an issue instead of something glossed over when it's noticed at all.
Next time you go on about how it'll never happen because fat cats don't want it, remember: you help make it happen when you hope for prison violence to exist for child molesters and Zimmermans.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Now that I'm older, I totally get it. I avoid young men too, out on the street. And I'm sure some of them feel sad and bewildered too, just like I did, back when I was a younger man.
You shouldn't. That's not enough to merit a fearful response. If your only criteria is 'young man' to physically avoid them, you're not paying attention to other things that might matter more in terms of danger. Are they watching you, for example? Do they seem to be doing anything remarkable, aside from having been born male and lived for 15-25 years all in a row? Do they appear to just be loitering, or on their way somewhere? So on and so forth. By all means, keep your eyes on the young men just because they're young men (you as a man) with no other qualifier, and maybe you won't see the middle aged junkie looking to rob you, or you won't see that car weaving across lanes up the street, or you'll miss that big lump in the sidewalk.
Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :
quote:Originally posted by I Used to Be a Drummer:
quote:Originally posted by Corwin:
quote:Originally posted by I Used to Be a Drummer: I'm not smug, brother. Unless he is in hiding outside of prison, or in protective custody inside, he will get killed by an angry brother. If the first angry brother failed, the next one wouldn't.
Uhm... wow...
I don't think you know just how angry many young black men are at Zimmerman.
From that to thinking that there will be repeated attempts on Zimmerman's life is a huge step.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:Are you planning to address my point about child molesters getting better protection than non-violent drug offenders? Again, on that matter, I'm just testing you, I'm not offering a final conclusion, my friend.
I did address it: it's a BS question, you're in no position to test me, and I'm not your friend. I already said violent offenders shouldn't be incarcerated with violent ones-are you even reading? But, hey, since you're going on about unanswered questions, I'm still waiting to hear about the impact of prison violence on cons when they get out.
As for why prison violence happens, as much a reason as wealthy and influential apathy is the fact that most people are apathetic to prison violence period, or take pleasure in the idea like you (yes, you did). All that money and influence is used to buy advertising to persuade voters, but guess what? If those voters started out caring whether or not a convict is being beaten, stabbed, raped, killed, or all four on our dime, it might actually be an issue instead of something glossed over when it's noticed at all.
Next time you go on about how it'll never happen because fat cats don't want it, remember: you help make it happen when you hope for prison violence to exist for child molesters and Zimmermans.
Let me ask a different question, then, since you did address the one I originally asked.
Let's say the impossible happens and non-violent and violent offenders are separated in prisons. Does Richard Allen Davis, killer of Polly Klaas, deserve the more expensive protection that he gets since he murdered a little girl?
I apologize if you think you already answered that.
And it's not my job to change the world. I'm one person, with very little money, and zero power to convince people of anything.
I also didn't SAY fat cats, exactly. "Fat cats" might mean people in their early 40s. I'm think more of elderly senators and congresspeople (and their elderly friends and donors) from rural/conservative states and districts.
The elderly automatically fear the young, anyway, and assume every man ages 16-23 is going to mug them. Their attitude is "well, they're ALL violent."
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:Now that I'm older, I totally get it. I avoid young men too, out on the street. And I'm sure some of them feel sad and bewildered too, just like I did, back when I was a younger man.
You shouldn't. That's not enough to merit a fearful response. If your only criteria is 'young man' to physically avoid them, you're not paying attention to other things that might matter more in terms of danger. Are they watching you, for example? Do they seem to be doing anything remarkable, aside from having been born male and lived for 15-25 years all in a row? Do they appear to just be loitering, or on their way somewhere? So on and so forth. By all means, keep your eyes on the young men just because they're young men (you as a man) with no other qualifier, and maybe you won't see the middle aged junkie looking to rob you, or you won't see that car weaving across lanes up the street, or you'll miss that big lump in the sidewalk.
Good point, but I cross the street so I don't HAVE to focus on them.
I worry about hurting their feelings, even when I do it. I often do my best to make it look like I'm NOT avoiding them, using body language and direction of gaze.
But just to be clear, the middle-aged junkie can't CATCH me, if I decide to run. I'm quite a good sprinter, for a white guy in his late 30s. ROFL
It's not young men like the kind I used to be that I am concerned about. It's more young men like the kind a few of my schoolmates used to be.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
It's not impossible. It happens because people-such as yourself-abandon their responsibility as citizens of a representative government by saying 'I have no power, nothing I do matters, and it's not my job anyway'. Thirty years ago it would've been impossible to seriously consider equal rights for homosexuals. Eighty years ago equal rights for women was not much of a political mover. One hundred and fifty years ago, the idea that blacks might be peaceful, intelligent, productive members of society in America was an absurd dream. Four hundred years ago, the idea of not owing allegiance to a king or local noble from birth was bizarre.
And so on and so forth. These changes didn't happen because the wealthy and powerful wanted them to happen-quite the opposite. So I don't want to hear about how it's not you job or how you've no power. That's a cop-out. You just don't care very much, that's all.
Now as to your question about the killer: if he is in greater danger, he deserves more protection. Or more accurately, we are obligated to provide that protection, because he's under our charge. He's our prisoner, and that necessitates responsibilities. If we're not going to take serious steps towards making sure our prisoners can't do violence to one another, we ought either just kill them or release them.
And before you jump on that, no, we ought not kill or release them.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
You draw more attention to yourself by crossing the street than just by walking. Also, that middle aged junkie, he's not gonna challenge you to a 40 yd dash, loser gets mugged. He's gonna look for passersby who aren't paying attention and who stand out and who don't see them because that teen across the street is scary because teens are scary.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Under Florida law, you can be charged with assault if you threaten someone with bodily harm by word or action. It's aggravated assault if a deadly weapon is involved.
While we don't know exactly how the fight started between the two, we do know that Zimmerman was following Martin in order to apprehend him. He got out of his car to approach Martin and he was carrying a gun. I think a reasonable person could easily have believed those actions constituted a threat of bodily harm. I have been taught, in numerous self defense workshops, to interpret those exact actions as a threat.
The issue at hand is not whether or not Zimmerman should have been convicted, its whether or not he should have been arrested and charged. The appropriate standard for an arrest is not "beyond reasonable doubt" its "probable cause". We know more than enough about what happened to conclude that the fight between these two men most probably started because Zimmerman threatened (i.e assaulted) Martin.
I simply can't imagine that "stand your ground" laws mean its OK to assault someone and then kill them when they fight back. If they do, the laws are hideously unjust.
If the fight started because Zimmerman committed aggravated assault (which is the most probable case), it shouldn't matter whether or not Zimmerman was injured in the fight or whether he was screaming for help. Once you've assaulted someone, you are no longer innocently defending yourself. The most probable scenario is that Zimmerman assaulted Martin which lead to a fight which resulted in Martin's death. There was unquestionably probable cause for arresting Zimmerman.
I agree that we don't know all the facts. The most probable explanation is not always the correct one, that's why we have trials. But when it's known that someone has killed a 17 year boy in a fight they most likely started, they should be charged with a crime. The decision of whether or not they are guilty of said crime should be made in a proper trial where all sides of the story.
[ April 02, 2012, 12:31 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
I can't be the only guy here who
1. was avoided by older people out on the street
2. Has gotten older, and does the same thing to young men now.
I don't care if the middle-aged junkie accosts me. If he has a gun, he can have all my money/credit cards/iPhone. If he has a knife, and looks away for a second or two, or just looks fat and out-of-shape, I might make a break for it. Otherwise, I'll willingly give him all my stuff then, too.
It's the young man who worries me, precisely because younger people are much more excitable. The older man probably just wants the stuff. The younger man might get irrationally angry and still try to hurt me. That's my concern, anyway.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: You draw more attention to yourself by crossing the street than just by walking. Also, that middle aged junkie, he's not gonna challenge you to a 40 yd dash, loser gets mugged. He's gonna look for passersby who aren't paying attention and who stand out and who don't see them because that teen across the street is scary because teens are scary.
Like I said, I cross the street so I don't HAVE to worry about the young man. Once we're on different sides of the street, I feel safe. I know I can outrun him if I see him coming from that distance. Well, I FEEL I probably can, anyway.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Aris, the fact is that Trayvon Martin wouldn't be dead if George Zimmerman hadn't decided to play amateur cop and follow him. "Legitimate self defense" is a little problematic when the guy claiming it is the person who initiated the confrontation.
I'm not really interested in commenting on the case itself, as I don't think enough facts are available.
But I sort of object to this sentiment. (Be aware, what follows is my opinion of what is moral, not what is legal.)
Behavior like following someone in a public space or otherwise making them uncomfortable is not justification for violence, whereas I think violence is a justification for violence in return.
That was a broad statement, so what I mean is: If I follow someone down a public sidewalk, or even follow them and call them names and otherwise act like a jerk, that doesn't give them the right to physically assault me. No matter how hurtful my words are, physical assault in response is unjustified and immoral in my opinion.
And if someone is physically assaulting you, I think you have the right to defend yourself by whatever means available, and I don't think that using a gun to stop someone from beating you up with their fists is immoral or unjustified.
So I don't think the idea that Zimmerman followed him, therefore he is responsible, is sensible. In a causal sense, yes, his doing so may have been the action that led to the following events, but my walking down a dark alley in a bad part of town might lead to me being mugged, and yet I don't think it's logical to say I bear the responsible for my being mugged. (Hey this reminds me of our other conversation!)
Just to reiterate, though: At the end of the day, my objection to this idea is broad and philosophical. I have no particular reason to think Trayvon was or was not the one who initiated physical violence. I don't know, and don't have an opinion on that.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
This whole incident is a perfect example of why I'm so against
1. handguns (for cops or anyone else)
2. concealed carry laws.
Both those things had to be legal for this to happen.
Anybody who thinks Zimmerman got out of his car without violent intent is crazy or a fool. Technically yes it's theoretically possible he didn't...but only a fool or a crazy person would seriously entertain the possibility without a mountain of new evidence. A mountain.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
The answer to the question as to what "anti white racism" from the people whose views have been similar/exactly the same as Aris on this issue tend to say it's "affirmative action denying more qualified white people from going to college". Of course I don't recall Aris saying this, so obviously we can't attribute this view to him.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
With that in mind, Dan, you really could kill someone and get away with it very easily in FL. You could kill dozens of people a day, really.
1) Get a gun. 2) Approach random young man on the street. Call him whatever insult you think is likely to provoke a fight. If he's black, use the N-word. 3) The young man will almost certainly attack you. 4) Shoot him dead. 5) Walk down the street a bit and repeat on the next young man you find.
It sounds like the above is all perfectly legal.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Anybody who thinks Zimmerman got out of his car without violent intent is crazy or a fool. Technically yes it's theoretically possible he didn't...but only a fool or a crazy person would seriously entertain the possibility without a mountain of new evidence. A mountain.
Dude. It is very possible he didn't get out of that car intending violence. Would you quit it with the frankly ridiculous hyperbole?
(Still waiting for an answer to my question, btw. Though perhaps having insisted repeatedly that I didn't respond to yours when I did, I should expect no response?)
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: If Trey *was* bashing Zimmerman's head on the ground, would you consider Zimmerman's shooting a justifiable act of self-defense, and therefore Zimmerman would be innocent of any criminal wrongdoing?
It just depends on how you get from point "A" to point "B". Where point "A" a kid with skittles is walking home from the store, and point "B" is a physical confrontation. And considering Zimmerman's actions (paroling the streets with a gun) I'd say that 99% of the time, the answer to your question is "No.". Even if Trey was beating Zimmerman's head on the ground, Zimmerman put himself into the situation by pursuing, confronting and in all likelihood assaulting an unarmed teenager who was minding his own business.
It's like if you were to strap on a meat suit and go wondering in bear infested hills, and then when you saw a bear, you threw rocks at it with a readied hunting rifle. "I was only defending myself from that dangerous charging bear." Self defense should not include scenarios where you do something (stupid and illegal) to put yourself -into- harm's way.
quote:Originally posted by rivka:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: when he was advised by police not to do so
You keep saying this, but 911 is not the police.
In most cases they are in fact associated with a particular law enforcement group. I applied to be a 911 operator and would have been a member of the CHP had I gotten the position, with all the same background, physiological and many other tests that actual officers go through. Lots of people trying to become officers go for 911 operator spots as current employees with all the background checks are given priority over new hires.
quote:Originally posted by I Used to Be a Drummer: Would he DESERVE protective custody?
What about child molesters in prison? They get protective custody in prison. Do they deserve it?
All prisoners deserve to not be raped, stabbed, beaten or otherwise assaulted. Rakeesh was very clear in his answer from the get go, and it is the right answer. Forget the aged bazillionares who you seem to think run the world, when society (for whatever reason) locks people away and denies them the right to defend themselves, it takes on the responsibility to keep them safe regardless of their crimes. That we fail in that is tragic and wrong and undeniable that it happens. But that does not mean that the moral onus has been paused for a single second.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by I Used to Be a Drummer: This whole incident is a perfect example of why I'm so against
1. handguns (for cops or anyone else)
2. concealed carry laws.
Both those things had to be legal for this to happen.
Anybody who thinks Zimmerman got out of his car without violent intent is crazy or a fool. Technically yes it's theoretically possible he didn't...but only a fool or a crazy person would seriously entertain the possibility without a mountain of new evidence. A mountain.
Using any sole incident as a reason to be for or against a broad policy seems like a bad idea. I assure you, the other side can play the anecdote game just as easily.
It's a lot more sensible to make these kinds of decisions based on aggregate data, statistics, and moral beliefs. I mean, in each of those cases there is still a debate to be had!
Lots of countries have very strict gun laws and gun violence is relatively low. Sometimes, gun violence isn't as low in one country as another despite virtually identical laws, because of a host of other factors. And at least one country has very lax gun laws and still has incredibly low rates of gun violence.
Some people think that killing people even in self defense is morally wrong, so they object to weapons that make that easier regardless of the aggregate effect on gun violence. Similarly, some people think that people should be free to own what they want so even if gun violence goes up they think gun ownership should be legal.
These are all contentious positions, but none of them is informed by a single random event extrapolated into public policy. Whenever we do that, I think we end up with crappy policy.
Sadly, it's really easy to drum up support for policies that way, because high profile tragedies are, well, tragic, so people are hungry for a way to prevent them.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Xavier: With that in mind, Dan, you really could kill someone and get away with it very easily in FL. You could kill dozens of people a day, really.
1) Get a gun. 2) Approach random young man on the street. Call him whatever insult you think is likely to provoke a fight. If he's black, use the N-word. 3) The young man will almost certainly attack you. 4) Shoot him dead. 5) Walk down the street a bit and repeat on the next young man you find.
It sounds like the above is all perfectly legal.
Well, sure. And I suppose if you go out with the express purpose of doing that, you're a terrible person and "there oughtta be a law" to stop you. (Presumably in this case it's the odious "Fightin' Words" 1st amendment exception.)
On the other hand, I'm curious, Xavier. Setting aside the idea that the guy with the gun is a psycho who's figured out a foolproof way to murder lots of people... those people that escalate and physically attack him because of his words. Are they actually justified? They could have chosen not to escalate like that, right? No matter how many epithets someone hurls at me, it's still my choice if I'm going to punch him or walk away (or hurl epithets back).
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
Under the Florida statute, intentionally provoking the attack generally disqualifies you from claiming Stand Your Ground.
quote:776.012 Use of force in defense of person.--A person is justified in using force, except deadly force, against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other's imminent use of unlawful force. However, a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if:
(1) He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony; or
(2) Under those circumstances permitted pursuant to s. 776.013.
776.041 Use of force by aggressor.--The justification described in the preceding sections of this chapter is not available to a person who:
(1) Is attempting to commit, committing, or escaping after the commission of, a forcible felony; or
(2) Initially provokes the use of force against himself or herself, unless:
(a) Such force is so great that the person reasonably believes that he or she is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and that he or she has exhausted every reasonable means to escape such danger other than the use of force which is likely to cause death or great bodily harm to the assailant; or
(b) In good faith, the person withdraws from physical contact with the assailant and indicates clearly to the assailant that he or she desires to withdraw and terminate the use of force, but the assailant continues or resumes the use of force.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:Anybody who thinks Zimmerman got out of his car without violent intent is crazy or a fool. Technically yes it's theoretically possible he didn't...but only a fool or a crazy person would seriously entertain the possibility without a mountain of new evidence. A mountain.
Dude. It is very possible he didn't get out of that car intending violence. Would you quit it with the frankly ridiculous hyperbole?
(Still waiting for an answer to my question, btw. Though perhaps having insisted repeatedly that I didn't respond to yours when I did, I should expect no response?)
You mean the question about prison violence? Stop trolling me. I'm not in prison, have never been there, and hope to never go there. I'm also not a corrections officer or warden, or anyone else involved, even tangentially, in prison work or policy re: prisons. Things are the way they are, when it comes to prisons in this country. It's a HIGHLY politicized issue, people have VERY strong opinions, and changing the minds of those who actually make policy is not easily done. You are vastly understating the difficulty of it.
I understand why you probably don't realize how difficult it is to change prison policy. I did a long research paper in high school about prison conditions, mainly based on the book "A Prison and a Prisoner", and the mountains of research on the subject are staggering in size. This issue is heavily studied, and policy makers have already made up their minds, mostly, either because of anti-youth/anti-minority bias, or because they were convinced by the first study/studies they heard about.It's not like it's a fresh area to be studied and work out policy for. Feel free to read that book and the mountains of research that go along with it (and the mountains of research that have been done SINCE it came out).
And if you think Zimmerman didn't get out of that car with violent intent, I've got a bridge to sell you. Also, you might be interested in some oceanfront property in Arizona I'm also in possession of.
"From my front porch you can see the sea..."
ROFL
I'm just being realistic here. Zimmerman was playing cop, got a little too caught up in it, started thinking he WAS a cop, and the rest, sadly, is history. He's not a cop. Even the bad cops out there rarely screw up THIS bad.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I dunno. Real cops shoot unarmed black men more often than then should as well.
quote:Originally posted by twinky: Under the Florida statute, intentionally provoking the attack generally disqualifies you from claiming Stand Your Ground.
quote:776.012 Use of force in defense of person.--A person is justified in using force, except deadly force, against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other's imminent use of unlawful force. However, a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if:
(1) He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony; or
(2) Under those circumstances permitted pursuant to s. 776.013.
776.041 Use of force by aggressor.--The justification described in the preceding sections of this chapter is not available to a person who:
(1) Is attempting to commit, committing, or escaping after the commission of, a forcible felony; or
(2) Initially provokes the use of force against himself or herself, unless:
(a) Such force is so great that the person reasonably believes that he or she is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and that he or she has exhausted every reasonable means to escape such danger other than the use of force which is likely to cause death or great bodily harm to the assailant; or
(b) In good faith, the person withdraws from physical contact with the assailant and indicates clearly to the assailant that he or she desires to withdraw and terminate the use of force, but the assailant continues or resumes the use of force.
Twinky you may have missed it above because Xavier didn't quote it, but I prefaced that line of thought by commenting that I wasn't making a statement on the legality but what I saw as the morality. I'm aware that, in general, our legal right to freedom of speech withers when compared to other people's right not to be driven into a murderous rage when they hear certain words.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:The answer to the question as to what "anti white racism" from the people whose views have been similar/exactly the same as Aris on this issue tend to say it's "affirmative action denying more qualified white people from going to college". Of course I don't recall Aris saying this, so obviously we can't attribute this view to him.
Blayne Bradley, what the **** are you doing? Are you intentionally trying to kill your own mind? You know *one* position from me, and you *intentionally* try to destroy as many of your braincells as you can by assuming whatever you want about the rest of my political positions?
Perhaps some Americans are stupid enough that they can only process politics by assigning everyone to the mental categories of either "us" or "the enemy", but that's no reason for you to intentionally flaunt such stupidity. And as for me I'm not an American. As such I'm under no obligation to obey the American haphazard political alliances. I'm anti-corporate-monopoly, pro-gay rights, pro-social welfare, anti-death penalty -- and I also happen to be in favor of immigration restrictions, in favor of referendums rather than court decisions, and in favor of shooting dead those thugs who assault other people, even if said thugs are 17-year young black kids.
quote:Where point "A" a kid with skittles is walking home from the store, and point "B" is a physical confrontation. And considering Zimmerman's actions (paroling the streets with a gun) I'd say that 99% of the time, the answer to your question is "No.". Even if Trey was beating Zimmerman's head on the ground, Zimmerman put himself into the situation by pursuing, confronting and in all likelihood assaulting an unarmed teenager who was minding his own business.
It's like if you were to strap on a meat suit and go wondering in bear infested hills, and then when you saw a bear, you threw rocks at it with a readied hunting rifle. "I was only defending myself from that dangerous charging bear." Self defense should not include scenarios where you do something (stupid and illegal) to put yourself -into- harm's way.
To use that argument you've had to hold two contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time. The first thought is that Trayvon was a harmless, non-dangerous kid, and the second is that to even approach him was a highly dangerous act, akin to approaching a wild bear.
This is pretty much the definition of doublethink. Either approaching Trayvon was dangerous, because *Trayvon* was dangerous, either on drugs or in a criminal mood, or he was an innocent and harmless kid, and merely approaching him would not have been dangerous.
You can't have it both ways.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: And at least one country has very lax gun laws and still has incredibly low rates of gun violence.
What's the rate of gun ownership in that country? Which country would you be referring to?
I have no problem with people owning hunting rifles and shotguns. Handguns are the problem.
I live about 1/2 mile from Virginia Tech, where Cho Seung Hui, William Morva, and Ross Truett Ashley all killed people within the last 5 years. All of those crimes would have been much less likely if handguns were not available.
My girlfriend grew up with William Morva. He is just a good kid who developed a serious mental problem and ended up killing some cops. She says he was the kindest, gentlest person she knew in school, always giving people hugs, with not a harsh word for anyone, ever. Now, because he was able to get a handgun off a cop, several people are dead, and he's on death row.
I don't know what's more tragic, someone with mental health issues getting a gun and killing people, and being executed, or some kid from the projects with no help, no education, and no good role models doing the same.
It's preventable.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
That's an interesting question Dan...and I think the answer for me is this: The target of the gun wielding psycho who escalates from words to physical violence -is wrong- and deserves a fine and/or up to three months in jail time for assault (on the assumption that knuckles on chin was the extent of the attempted physical assault). When GWP (gun wielding psycho) shoots and kills his target he -is wrong- and deserves years and years of incarceration, not only did he initiate contact, but escalated from (assumed) no permanent harm to kill you deader then dog crap.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I dunno. Real cops shoot unarmed black men more often than then should as well.
quote:Originally posted by I Used to Be a Drummer:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: And at least one country has very lax gun laws and still has incredibly low rates of gun violence.
What's the rate of gun ownership in that country? Which country would you be referring to?
I have no problem with people owning hunting rifles and shotguns. Handguns are the problem.
I was thinking of Switzerland, where virtually every adult male owns a semiautomatic rifle (an automatic rifle with the auto-function deactivated, actually) and/or a semiautomatic handgun. Men in Switzerland undergo basic military training at the age of 20 (the backbone of the Swiss army is essentially militia) and they keep their guns when they go home.
Obviously, this means that in addition to a very high rifle and handgun ownership rate, there's also a very high level of firearm education.
Anyway, I'm not really interested in getting in a gun control debate with you, Former Drummer. I was just observing that there are lots of data points upon which the debate normally rages, and citing a random tragic event is a terrible justification for any policy.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: That's an interesting question Dan...and I think the answer for me is this: The target of the gun wielding psycho who escalates from words to physical violence -is wrong- and deserves a fine and/or up to three months in jail time for assault (on the assumption that knuckles on chin was the extent of the attempted physical assault). When GWP (gun wielding psycho) shoots and kills his target he -is wrong- and deserves years and years of incarceration, not only did he initiate contact, but escalated from (assumed) no permanent harm to kill you deader then dog crap.
Stone Wolf: Is nobody ever killed in hand-to-hand combat?
Is punching someone in the head a nonlethal attack?
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: To use that argument you've had to hold two contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time. The first thought is that Trayvon was a harmless, non-dangerous kid, and the second is that to even approach him was a highly dangerous act, akin to approaching a wild bear.
This is pretty much the definition of doublethink. Either approaching Trayvon was dangerous, because *Trayvon* was dangerous, either on drugs or in a criminal mood, or he was an innocent and harmless kid, and merely approaching him would not have been dangerous.
You can't have it both ways.
I didn't say that Trayvon wasn't dangerous, I said he was minding his own business. I myself am very dangerous, but only to people who deserve it, so if I'm walking down the street minding my own business I am not a danger to people who do likewise. But have some riled up cop wanna be with a history of violence and a gun roll up on me and act like I'm doing something wrong and -anyone- could be considered "dangerous".
The example with the bear wasn't to say Trayvon was a bear, it was to point out that Zimmerman put himself into a dangerous situation and then said his violence was justified because of the danger he purposely and willfully put himself in.
And because of it a kid is dead.
If you don't like the bears, how about this: It's like he tried to respond to a 911 call for fire fighters, without the proper gear and training and when someone didn't want to be rescued he felt justified in knocking them unconscious.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: That's an interesting question Dan...and I think the answer for me is this: The target of the gun wielding psycho who escalates from words to physical violence -is wrong- and deserves a fine and/or up to three months in jail time for assault (on the assumption that knuckles on chin was the extent of the attempted physical assault). When GWP (gun wielding psycho) shoots and kills his target he -is wrong- and deserves years and years of incarceration, not only did he initiate contact, but escalated from (assumed) no permanent harm to kill you deader then dog crap.
Stone Wolf: Is nobody ever killed in hand-to-hand combat?
Is punching someone in the head a nonlethal attack?
Fistfights are not usually deadly and seldom is a punch - even in the head - lethal. Gunshots quite frequently are deadly and often to bystanders. Just so far this year in Chicago.
[ April 02, 2012, 03:46 PM: Message edited by: kmbboots ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Behavior like following someone in a public space or otherwise making them uncomfortable is not justification for violence, whereas I think violence is a justification for violence in return.
That was a broad statement, so what I mean is: If I follow someone down a public sidewalk, or even follow them and call them names and otherwise act like a jerk, that doesn't give them the right to physically assault me. No matter how hurtful my words are, physical assault in response is unjustified and immoral in my opinion.
And if someone is physically assaulting you, I think you have the right to defend yourself by whatever means available, and I don't think that using a gun to stop someone from beating you up with their fists is immoral or unjustified.
I'm not sure if you recognize it or not, but the result of this broad philosophical argument is that if I can provoke someone into to hitting me first, I can legally kill them in self defense. That's wrong.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
I don't know why I bother arguing for handgun bans. This country is about as likely to ban handguns as China is to ban kung fu. Sure, Chicago had a handgun ban for a little while, until the Supreme Court struck it down. There's no way you could get the rural states on board, though.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: I was thinking of Switzerland, where virtually every adult male owns a semiautomatic rifle (an automatic rifle with the auto-function deactivated, actually) and/or a semiautomatic handgun.
Every sane, stable adult male. I don't know, but I'd imagine the crazier, less stable ones aren't allowed guns.
Also, Switzerland doesn't have the income inequalities and urban ghettoes that the US does. They also don't have the drug problems that the US does.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:So I don't think the idea that Zimmerman followed him, therefore he is responsible, is sensible. In a causal sense, yes, his doing so may have been the action that led to the following events, but my walking down a dark alley in a bad part of town might lead to me being mugged, and yet I don't think it's logical to say I bear the responsible for my being mugged. (Hey this reminds me of our other conversation!)
It's actually not much like that when you consider that to walk alone through the dark alley at night in a high crime neighborhood is indeed foolish, it's...hmmm, entitrely personal? In other words, you don't have to go and do something to anyone in that situation for something bad to happen. Whereas following someone who is merely alive and walking at the same time, that does involve someone else-people generally react with negativity to being stalked and viewed with suspicion..even if they ARE doing something wrong.
Now, if you meant the comparison in the sense of 'both involve doing things which may result in violence, but both people haven't earned a violent response', then I agree.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by I Used to Be a Drummer:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: I was thinking of Switzerland, where virtually every adult male owns a semiautomatic rifle (an automatic rifle with the auto-function deactivated, actually) and/or a semiautomatic handgun.
Every sane, stable adult male. I don't know, but I'd imagine the crazier, less stable ones aren't allowed guns.
Uh, weren't you just telling us how William Morva seemed totally sweet and stable and normal before he snapped?
quote:Originally posted by I Used to Be a Drummer: Also, Switzerland doesn't have the income inequalities and urban ghettoes that the US does. They also don't have the drug problems that the US does.
All true. Everywhere is different, so what works in one nation won't necessarily work in another!
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Drummer,
I'm not trolling you, and as for talking about it, you were the one who brought prison conditions into the conversation when you made an awful, evil in fact, insofar as you actually meant it (and you haven't backed off from it, either) statement supporting racially themed prison violence against Zimmerman. So, not trolling! It also wasn't trolling to insist on an answer to the question, particularly after you incorrectly suggested I hadn't answered yours.
As for...wow, your high school research paper!...well, here's the thing: you're speaking as though I am saying it would be easy for one individual, without much in the way of resources or influence, to change our prison policies nationwide. I'm sorry, but it's incredibly obvious that's NOT what I was saying-in fact, I specifically explained that when I rejected your apathetic claims that we have no power and there's nothing we can do.
What do those zillionaires you speak of DO with their money to enact their will in the world? The spend it largely doing two things: persuading us to either not care about a given issue or think about it 'correctly' or contributions to the campaigns of politicians who use that money to persuade us to give them the power to make those decisions.
So, yeah. Anytime you like, you can begin replying to what's actually been said.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: That's an interesting question Dan...and I think the answer for me is this: The target of the gun wielding psycho who escalates from words to physical violence -is wrong- and deserves a fine and/or up to three months in jail time for assault (on the assumption that knuckles on chin was the extent of the attempted physical assault). When GWP (gun wielding psycho) shoots and kills his target he -is wrong- and deserves years and years of incarceration, not only did he initiate contact, but escalated from (assumed) no permanent harm to kill you deader then dog crap.
Stone Wolf: Is nobody ever killed in hand-to-hand combat?
Is punching someone in the head a nonlethal attack?
Fistfights are not usually deadly and seldom is a punch - even in the head - lethal. Gunshots quite frequently are deadly and often to bystanders. Just so far this year in Chicago.
Kate, I have no argument with what you're saying, but you also didn't really answer me.
Of course, the answer is yes, people can die in hand-to-hand fights (whether solely with fists or by escalating to bashing heads against other surfaces).
And there are lots of other scenarios where an aggressor is by no means necessarily going to use lethal force. In addition to physical assault with fists (or a baseball bat), there's stuff like mugging, destruction of property, and rape. Any of those could end with the aggressor using lethal force, but it's by no means certain.
Why is there a moral obligation of restraint on the part of the victim? If someone is attacking me, why shouldn't I stop them the most effective way I can?
If someone tries to force me to give them my wallet, or tries to burn my house down, or tries to rape me, or, yes, tries to beat me up, I think I have the right to defend myself using whatever means available. Including shooting them.
Just a reminder, I'm discussing this broadly as a philosophical/moral issue, and not trying to specifically liken it to the case at hand. Further, in this post, I'm setting aside the issue of provocation to the initial violence (I've been discussing that in parallel).
So if you think the above stuff I said is true, but ceases to be true if you said mean words to the person before they tried to beat you up/burn down your house/rape you, then let me know and I can focus all of my attention on that issue instead. I think my view on the provocation issue is more controversial than my view re: self-defense in general, but maybe I'm mistaken.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:If someone is attacking me, why shouldn't I stop them the most effective way I can?
Because not every crime should be punished with the death sentence? Because we should try not to take people lives if we don't absolutely have to?
Sure. Defending yourself against a deadly assault, rape, burning down your house could justify a lethal response. But throwing a punch in a fight you started? It doesn't have to escalate to someone being dead.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
America did manage to ban alcohol at one point despite drinking four times the amount the current USA drinks.
Fist fights however can be deceptively dangerous, the rates of accident are lower with unprotected boxing because the rules of where its okay to punch are stricter.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:The answer to the question as to what "anti white racism" from the people whose views have been similar/exactly the same as Aris on this issue tend to say it's "affirmative action denying more qualified white people from going to college". Of course I don't recall Aris saying this, so obviously we can't attribute this view to him.
Blayne Bradley, what the **** are you doing? Are you intentionally trying to kill your own mind? You know *one* position from me, and you *intentionally* try to destroy as many of your braincells as you can by assuming whatever you want about the rest of my political positions?
Perhaps some Americans are stupid enough that they can only process politics by assigning everyone to the mental categories of either "us" or "the enemy", but that's no reason for you to intentionally flaunt such stupidity. And as for me I'm not an American. As such I'm under no obligation to obey the American haphazard political alliances. I'm anti-corporate-monopoly, pro-gay rights, pro-social welfare, anti-death penalty -- and I also happen to be in favor of immigration restrictions, in favor of referendums rather than court decisions, and in favor of shooting dead those thugs who assault other people, even if said thugs are 17-year young black kids.
quote:Where point "A" a kid with skittles is walking home from the store, and point "B" is a physical confrontation. And considering Zimmerman's actions (paroling the streets with a gun) I'd say that 99% of the time, the answer to your question is "No.". Even if Trey was beating Zimmerman's head on the ground, Zimmerman put himself into the situation by pursuing, confronting and in all likelihood assaulting an unarmed teenager who was minding his own business.
It's like if you were to strap on a meat suit and go wondering in bear infested hills, and then when you saw a bear, you threw rocks at it with a readied hunting rifle. "I was only defending myself from that dangerous charging bear." Self defense should not include scenarios where you do something (stupid and illegal) to put yourself -into- harm's way.
To use that argument you've had to hold two contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time. The first thought is that Trayvon was a harmless, non-dangerous kid, and the second is that to even approach him was a highly dangerous act, akin to approaching a wild bear.
This is pretty much the definition of doublethink. Either approaching Trayvon was dangerous, because *Trayvon* was dangerous, either on drugs or in a criminal mood, or he was an innocent and harmless kid, and merely approaching him would not have been dangerous.
You can't have it both ways.
Slow down there taiga', I said no such thing. Only noting the dogwhistles as being similar, in fact I specifically said you hadn't said it so we couldn't attribute it to you.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:Behavior like following someone in a public space or otherwise making them uncomfortable is not justification for violence, whereas I think violence is a justification for violence in return.
That was a broad statement, so what I mean is: If I follow someone down a public sidewalk, or even follow them and call them names and otherwise act like a jerk, that doesn't give them the right to physically assault me. No matter how hurtful my words are, physical assault in response is unjustified and immoral in my opinion.
And if someone is physically assaulting you, I think you have the right to defend yourself by whatever means available, and I don't think that using a gun to stop someone from beating you up with their fists is immoral or unjustified.
I'm not sure if you recognize it or not, but the result of this broad philosophical argument is that if I can provoke someone into to hitting me first, I can legally kill them in self defense. That's wrong.
Yes, that's what I'm saying. I don't really think it's particularly wrong.
The whole concept of "provocation" in this context is a mess.
No matter how much someone hurts my feelings with words, it is not grounds for me to physically assault them or their property. I think that is a solid guiding principle. I think it is consistently true. People fail to live up to it all the time, but even then many of them agree it is true. What do you think? True?
Let's try another:
No matter how much someone physically assaults me, it's not grounds for me to defend myself. Is that similarly true? Well, no. Of course you can defend yourself. Maybe here's the principle:
No matter how much someone physically assaults me, it's not grounds for me to use lethal force to defend myself. How does that one hold up? Hmm, still not the best. If they're using lethal force, most people think I can use it too.
What's happening is people are applying this principle inconsistently. Sometimes when someone physically assaults you, you can shoot them. Sometimes you can't. It's a judgment call. You said mean words before they assaulted you so they aren't responsible for their actions, etc.
I guess some people think you should defend yourself only using the exact same level of force as your attacker. So then if they assault me with bullets, virtually everyone here will agree it's grounds to shoot back. If they assault me with fists, I can punch them back. If they try to burn my house down, I can do the same to theirs. If they try to rape me, I can rape them back.
Wait, no, that guiding principle also fell apart. It's not consistent either. It just boiled down to some sort of creepy eye-for-an-eye type of thing.
Not many people think the best response to an attempted kidnapping is to grab the kidnappers and keep them locked in your basement. The best response is to stop them from kidnapping.
The guiding principle that I think makes sense is this: No matter how much (or little) someone physically assaults me, I have the right to stop them the most expedient way possible.
I don't think I have a problem with applying that principle consistently.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:If someone is attacking me, why shouldn't I stop them the most effective way I can?
Because not every crime should be punished with the death sentence? Because we should try not to take people lives if we don't absolutely have to?
Sure. Defending yourself against a deadly assault, rape, burning down your house could justify a lethal response. But throwing a punch in a fight you started? It doesn't have to escalate to someone being dead.
As I said earlier, I have a strong objection to the "fight you started" part.
If I call you names, and you hit me, that's a fight you started. No matter how many times I call you smelly, it's not going to hurt you. And yet how much I am hurt is directly correlated with how many times you punch me!
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Aris, you realize that the boys who did that are being pursued, the case is being investigated, and will be prosecuted as a hate crime. Once those kids are caught, they will be punished. It was a terrible act committed by individuals, not systemic, institutionalized racism. Do you get the difference?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Yes, that's what I'm saying. I don't really think it's particularly wrong.
So you are really saying that if I can stalk you, slander you and harass you until you loose your temper, I should have the right to kill you?
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Why would you want to do that, Rabbit?
That seems needlessly cruel, and not a very good use of your time.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Do you get the difference?
I get the difference. Do you get the part's that the same: namely that innocent people suffer because of this racism? Or do you think that racism is somehow more bad if you call it "systemic" and "institutionalized", instead of "individual"?
Besides, there's an institutionalized, systemic *dismissal*/ignoring of anti-white racism, in a sense that you don't see people dismissing anti-black racism anymore. e.g. If two white teenagers had burned alive a black 13-year old, you would see some massive rallies. The whole American nation would turn itself upside down in consternation. You would see the President address the nation. It would not be largely *ignored*. And I'm fine with that, it *shouldn't* be ignored,
But why is the white burned kid ignored now in comparison? Because Americans somehow have come to believe in their stupid thick skulls that every population is divided into the oppressed and the oppressors, the underprivileged and the privileged. Since whites are politically/economically/etc on top, they therefore can't be sufferers of racism, they can only be its perpetrators.
Americans should learn from the Balkan experience, which shows that all the various groups of peoples can victimize each other simultaneously, and with great gusto, and without regard of who's on top as a *group*.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Aris, white people have always been on top in this country. Way, way, on top.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:Yes, that's what I'm saying. I don't really think it's particularly wrong.
So you are really saying that if I can stalk you, slander you and harass you until you loose your temper, I should have the right to kill you?
Seriously though, to the same extent that someone earlier in the thread commented that they thought the person who physically assaulted should get X legal fines/penalties, and the person who killed them should get life in prison or whatever...
If you slander me and stalk me and so on, then there are ramifications for those. You can suffer the appropriate fines and penalties for those acts. If I assault you, it isn't justified by your behavior. So yeah, you can defend yourself. I'm the aggressor at that point.
I think part of the disconnect here is that I see elevating an altercation from verbal to physical is a huge problem and by far the biggest jump in terms of responsibility for outcome. Once that's done, the degree of the physical altercation may vary but I think the responsibility of it all still falls on the head of the aggressor who elevated the situation to a physical one.
If I was the aggressor in a verbal altercation, that's bad and I am responsible for any verbal repercussions. But once the situation is elevated to physical, the aggressor is the one who did that.
I think you either disagree about my distinction in significance between physical/verbal, or you believe there is another similar gulf between physical/lethal.
But, if the latter, I think I explained in previous posts why I think there is not such a clear gulf between physical/lethal.
If the former, then you think that hitting someone in response to mean words is justified and moral, right?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
I know that, kmbboots. Indeed that's my exact point. That the fact they're on top *as a group* blinds you to the other fact, that individually whites can suffer also from anti-white racism.
What does it matter to the 13-year old kid, if as a *group* he's on top, when individually he suffers third-degree burns?
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
Dan, do you think these rules about the aggressor bearing responsibility apply equally to children, people with mood disorders, or mentally disabled people?
I ask because I don't think the line between such judgmentally impaired people and unimpaired ones is very sharp, especially when someone involved is tired, under stress, etc.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Aris, is that a serious question? Yes, absolutely, institutionalized racism is worse than individual racism. Which would you rather be a victim of, the former or the latter? Because the latter *includes* the former, whereas you can have invdividual without institutionalized racism.
As for the kid who was attacked with gasoline and fire, a few things to remember: he's alive, he suffered first degree burns according to your article, lost some skin, and the crime is being investigated along racial lines. Of course it was horrible, but it's being investigated and nobody goes to a funeral home.
C'mon! Or, and I don't believe you think this once it's pointed out, or is a burned white kid about as bad as a dead black kid? What did kmbboots say or suggest that whites cannot also be the victims of racism?
Are you even listening? You have continually demanded people reply to rebuttals to statements they haven't made and then getting more and more frustrated when they don't. And it wasn't third degree burns, according to the article-which also lists only the boy's mother as the source for the racial theme to the crime.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: I know that, kmbboots. Indeed that's my exact point. That the fact they're on top *as a group* blinds you to the other fact, that individually whites can suffer also from anti-white racism.
What does it matter to the 13-year old kid, if as a *group* he's on top, when individually he suffers third-degree burns?
To the individual? Well he isn't dead. He suffered first degree burns and, I am sure, some horrifying emotional trauma. He and his parents will also more than likely see the people who injured him punished. In a larger scale, most white 13 year old kids aren't as likely to live in the same kind of fear of violence that black 13 year olds do because they aren't as likely to be victims of it. Most 13 year old white kids have the luxury of having police assume they are innocent victims.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Stone Wolf: Is nobody ever killed in hand-to-hand combat?
Of course they are, but it is not a usual occurrence, either a highly trained person intentionally takes it that far or a freak accident happens, either way, very rare.
quote:Is punching someone in the head a nonlethal attack?
Yes. It really is. Just look at the different charges brought against people. You try and swing on someone, that's assault. You succeed, that's assault and battery. You beat the crap out of them that's aggravated assault. You have to go several more steps before it's legally considered a "lethal" attack.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Besides, there's an institutionalized, systemic *dismissal*/ignoring of anti-white racism, in a sense that you don't see people dismissing anti-black racism anymore. e.g. If two white teenagers had burned alive a black 13-year old, you would see some massive rallies. The whole American nation would turn itself upside down in consternation. You would see the President address the nation. It would not be largely *ignored*. And I'm fine with that, it *shouldn't* be ignored...
Just thought I'd mention, hey, that whole burning black people alive thing? Not exactly a hypothetical, and it's not something from the distant past either. So let's just calm the hell down with how much equivalence there is between racism from whites to blacks as vice versa, hmm? If you're the victim of any sort of crime, would you rather be calling 911 from a phone in a white neighborhood, or a black one? If you encounter the police, are you likely to feel safer as a white person or a black person? If a lone white person encounters a group of blacks, versus a lone black encountering a group of whites, which do you think is more likely (though for this, more info is needed, really) to be safer? If you are charged with a crime, would you rather be white of one income level or black of the same? If your kid gets kidnapped, would you rather she be white or black, for the sake of media attention? If your kid is wandering through a neighborhood patrolled by a paranoid self-appointed armed watchman who's white Hispanic, would you rather your kid be black or white?
Get a grip on yourself, Aris.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Dan, do you think these rules about the aggressor bearing responsibility apply equally to children, people with mood disorders, or mentally disabled people?
I ask because I don't think the line between such judgmentally impaired people and unimpaired ones is very sharp, especially when someone involved is tired, under stress, etc.
Well, I said that my guiding principle involved expedience (and actually, I didn't say this earlier but: Kate's comment about "We shouldn't kill people unless absolutely necessary" is a sentiment I generally think has great value, but it's still pretty fuzzy as far as what constitutes "absolutely necessary")
So with that in mind, regarding children (actual children, not physically adult 14 year olds or what-have-you) I can't imagine too many situations where the most expedient way of stopping aggression involves all that much force. When my 6 year old nephew gets angry and punches me, it's pretty easy to defend myself.
If I myself was a child, and I pulled an Ender v. Bonzo, I think that would essentially be justifiable.
But in general, I'm not sure how many allowances I think you should have to make for people who are "judgmentally impaired."
You said: "I don't think the line between such judgmentally impaired people and unimpaired ones is very sharp, especially when someone involved is tired, under stress, etc."
I actually agree with this statement, but I don't think it means the same thing to me that it does to you.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
quote:Is punching someone in the head a nonlethal attack?
Yes. It really is. Just look at the different charges brought against people. You try and swing on someone, that's assault. You succeed, that's assault and battery. You beat the crap out of them that's aggravated assault. You have to go several more steps before it's legally considered a "lethal" attack.
Once again, not addressing the legalities here, SW.
As a philosophical point, for this to be true, then nobody has ever died from being punched repeatedly in the head. Right?
Because if someone has died from it, then it can be a lethal attack.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: When my 6 year old nephew gets angry and punches me, it's pretty easy to defend myself.
Better not punch me because, according you you, it would be moral for me to shoot him.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Yeah Kate, that's constructive! Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
What about if he punches me in the head?
Dan, I am trying to point out that your absolute ideals are ludicrous.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Yes, absolutely, institutionalized racism is worse than individual racism. Which would you rather be a victim of, the former or the latter?
That's a moronic question. "institutionalized" and "individual" don't indicate degree. The "systemicness" of the racism doesn't indicate the severity thereof. E.g. I'd rather get mildly prejudiced against on a systemic level, than brutally murdered on an individual level.
Btw, here we see two (I assume) Americans, Rakeesh and kmbboots seek to downplay the harm done to a white kid by anti-white racism -- and as an excuse THEY KEEP BRINGING ANTI-BLACK RACISM to the topic.
And by this, they again prove my point, that Americans somehow believe in their STUPID THICK HEADS that to find out if someone suffers from racism, you need to compare the privileges/suffering of their *group* with the privileges/suffering of some *other* group.
The kid's suffering from being burned alive because of racism IS HIS OWN. It's not the "white race's" suffering. That individual white kid suffered the consequences of anti-white racism. Not the white race as a whoole.
The extent to which he or other white kids can suffer from racism has nothing to do with whether black kids ON AVERAGE suffer from more racism.
This isn't a *scale* where on one side you have "white" and on the other side you have "black", and whoever's worse off is the victim, and whoever's better off is the victimizer.
If you get victimized by racism, it doesn't matter diddly-squat if your group as a whole doesn't.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:So with that in mind, regarding children (actual children, not physically adult 14 year olds or what-have-you) I can't imagine too many situations where the most expedient way of stopping aggression involves all that much force. When my 6 year old nephew gets angry and punches me, it's pretty easy to defend myself.
So if the six-year-old were as strong as an adult, you would be within your rights to "stand your ground" and shoot him?
quote:You said: "I don't think the line between such judgmentally impaired people and unimpaired ones is very sharp, especially when someone involved is tired, under stress, etc."
I actually agree with this statement, but I don't think it means the same thing to me that it does to you.
Probably right, since I tend to think impaired people obviously shouldn't be treated as morally responsible for their actions in most cases.
quote:Because if someone has died from it, then it can be a lethal attack.
So a bee sting is a lethal attack? Come on, man.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Aris some of your comments make sense to me but insulting Americans and calling people stupid seems counterproductive.
If the conversation's making you angry, take a step back.
And if not, then why insult people? It's not going to persuade them you're right.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote:So with that in mind, regarding children (actual children, not physically adult 14 year olds or what-have-you) I can't imagine too many situations where the most expedient way of stopping aggression involves all that much force. When my 6 year old nephew gets angry and punches me, it's pretty easy to defend myself.
So if the six-year-old were as strong as an adult, you would be within your rights to "stand your ground" and shoot him?
You mean if an adult with the mind of a child attacked me? Yeah, I think so.
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote:You said: "I don't think the line between such judgmentally impaired people and unimpaired ones is very sharp, especially when someone involved is tired, under stress, etc."
I actually agree with this statement, but I don't think it means the same thing to me that it does to you.
Probably right, since I tend to think impaired people obviously shouldn't be treated as morally responsible for their actions in most cases.
Right.
But you yourself established that this sort of responsibility shifting can be interpreted numerous ways, even to the extent that someone who is overly sleepy isn't culpable for their actions.
I definitely reject that attitude. Most "impairments" are essentially just bad ideas, and we all have bad ideas to some extent or another. That doesn't change our level of responsibility for the actions we choose to take based on those ideas.
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote:Because if someone has died from it, then it can be a lethal attack.
So a bee sting is a lethal attack? Come on, man.
To people allergic to bees, yes. Even though they don't all die, it's a good rule of thumb to assume that possibility if you're allergic!
It's not analogous to someone not allergic to bee stings being stung. We're all allergic to sufficient amounts of head trauma, believe me.
People of my approximate height and build have been beaten to death with bare fists.
So if someone starts beating me with their bare fists, why would it be unreasonable to fear for my life?
PS: Destineer, I don't see your email in your profile. Mine is public. If you don't mind, could you sling me an email?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Just thought I'd mention, hey, that whole burning black people alive thing? Not exactly a hypothetical, and it's not something from the distant past either. So let's just calm the hell down with how much equivalence there is between racism from whites to blacks as vice versa, hmm? If you're the victim of any sort of crime, would you rather be calling 911 from a phone in a white neighborhood, or a black one? If you encounter the police, are you likely to feel safer as a white person or a black person? If a lone white person encounters a group of blacks, versus a lone black encountering a group of whites, which do you think is more likely (though for this, more info is needed, really) to be safer? If you are charged with a crime, would you rather be white of one income level or black of the same? If your kid gets kidnapped, would you rather she be white or black, for the sake of media attention? If your kid is wandering through a neighborhood patrolled by a paranoid self-appointed armed watchman who's white Hispanic, would you rather your kid be black or white?
Yes, Rakeesh, keep making my point, that Americans are too stupid too condemn racism in its entirety, because they must always compare two groups with each other, and their tiny minds can't comprehend the idea that two groups can brutalize each other SIMULTANEOUSLY.
Every single post of yours keeps making my point. Whenever you say "blacks have it worse", and I keep saying "did I ever say the opposite"? And you keep saying "Why are you talking about anti-white racism, then?" And I keep responding "BECAUSE YOU PEOPLE DON'T, AND IT SEEMS SOMEONE HAS TO, AND ENCOURAGING ANTI-WHITE RACISM, LIKE YOU'RE EFFECTIVELY DOING DOESN'T ACTUALLY HELP YOU COMBAT ANTI-BLACK RACISM!"
Yes, white people are on top in America.
*I'm* the one who mentioned it first here, so stop repeating it to me as if it's news, and start READING WHAT I'M ACTUALLY SAYING.
That whites are on top *as a group* doesn't prevent individual whites from being brutalized.
That black people are at the bottom, doesn't stop anti-white racism from flourishing. The very opposite.
And you don't combat anti-black racism, by downplaying anti-white racism. The very opposite. The more anti-white racism, the more young black people join black gangs, the more crime-rate in black neighbourhoods, the more poverty and underprivilege for black people.
So if you want to fight anti-black racism -- you must at the same time fight anti-white racism. Otherwise the ghetto remains the ghetto. A door locked from the inside is just as much a barrier as a door locked from the outside.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Aris some of your comments make sense to me but insulting Americans and calling people stupid seems counterproductive.
If the conversation's making you angry, take a step back.
And if not, then why insult people? It's not going to persuade them you're right.
Aris, I think this guy had some useful advice for you.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Yeah, I'm off the thread. Apologies for losing my temper.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:That's a moronic question. "institutionalized" and "individual" don't indicate degree. The "systemicness" of the racism doesn't indicate the severity thereof. E.g. I'd rather get mildly prejudiced against on a systemic level, than brutally murdered on an individual level.
Well, freakin' duh, Aris. If you're comparing really awful individual racism to mild systemic, that's a nice movement of the goalposts.
quote:Btw, here we see two (I assume) Americans, Rakeesh and kmbboots seek to downplay the harm done to a white kid by anti-white racism -- and as an excuse THEY KEEP BRINGING ANTI-BLACK RACISM to the topic.
This is a lie. You're lying, loudly, about what she and I said. I don't care if you THINK we are downplaying it, read what we actually said-you made the initial comparison in coverage, and it was explained to you why the firs degree burned boy wasn't as bad as the DEAD one. Try and follow along.
quote:And by this, they again prove my point, that Americans somehow believe in their STUPID THICK HEADS that to find out if someone suffers from racism, you need to compare the privileges/suffering of their *group* with the privileges/suffering of some *other* group.
By all means, shout that people are stupid when you're clearly missing the point and then lying about what was said. Get. A. Grip.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Uh, weren't you just telling us how William Morva seemed totally sweet and stable and normal before he snapped?
He lived alone in the woods for several years before it happened. He became afraid of civilization, and authority, and "civilized" foods. Something had clearly gone very wrong with him long before he committed the robbery that got him arrested, which then led to his escape from the hospital, which led to the shootings of several officers.
So no, he was not sane or stable at that time, nor for quite a while beforehand.
But you make a good point about different things working in different countries. I can't argue with that. I think the problem comes when people are stuck on "this is the way we've always done it", instead of tailoring the current policies to the current moment. Perhaps.
Handguns were all well and good in the Wild West, but do we really need them in heavily populated cities? I would prefer not to be hit by a stray bullet from a "gunfight at the OK Corral", you know?
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Drummer,
I'm not trolling you, and as for talking about it, you were the one who brought prison conditions into the conversation when you made an awful, evil in fact, insofar as you actually meant it (and you haven't backed off from it, either) statement supporting racially themed prison violence against Zimmerman. So, not trolling! It also wasn't trolling to insist on an answer to the question, particularly after you incorrectly suggested I hadn't answered yours.
As for...wow, your high school research paper!...well, here's the thing: you're speaking as though I am saying it would be easy for one individual, without much in the way of resources or influence, to change our prison policies nationwide. I'm sorry, but it's incredibly obvious that's NOT what I was saying-in fact, I specifically explained that when I rejected your apathetic claims that we have no power and there's nothing we can do.
What do those zillionaires you speak of DO with their money to enact their will in the world? The spend it largely doing two things: persuading us to either not care about a given issue or think about it 'correctly' or contributions to the campaigns of politicians who use that money to persuade us to give them the power to make those decisions.
So, yeah. Anytime you like, you can begin replying to what's actually been said.
Number 1, I'm not evil. Don't call me that. That's a discussion-ender, right there, and you're trolling if you act like it's not.
Number 2, bring some content to the discussion. Calling me evil is not only ad hominem, it's contentless filler.
Number 3, what on earth was that last paragraph? There are two groups of people who change public policy. Groups of concerned citizens, like the mothers of MADD, and corporations with lots of high-paid lobbyists. That's mostly it. I'm one person with little money. VERY little. I owe more than I'm worth, that's for sure.
FWIW, though, I don't think prison reform should be the primary thrust of intervention in poor/minority populations. Education is far more important. It's much easier to turn a child into a productive citizen than to reform someone who's already had a few assault and robbery convictions, for example. Nutrition is important, as well. Kids need nutritious food at school, especially if they're not getting it at home.
Look dude, blacks and Hispanics get awful, AWFUL treatment in the criminal justice system.
In fact, one of the worst (IMO) problems is that killers of whites are MUCH more likely to get the death penalty, versus killers of blacks. That's ugly.
And Zimmerman hasn't even been charged. Do you think maybe the brothers aren't just mad about THIS incident, but also all the other times when a white person killed a black one, and did no time, or did little time?
They pay taxes too. It's even worse than taxation without representation.
And for the record, I think the whole situation is sad. I really hate the idea that Zimmerman has so many supporters. That says bad things about my fellow Americans, and I find it reprehensible that ANYONE would see the facts of the case and assume that Zimmerman is somehow in the right. Lots of people do, though, even people in this thread.
If there weren't so much support for the guy I'd be less likely to quietly support the possibility of some rough justice. But if he gets away with this, and nobody DOES anything about it, even to reform the police in Sanford, what message does THAT send, to other Zimmermans, to the black community, to our children?
If the LAW won't fix it, who will? I'm not the law, don't hold ME responsible. I'm pretty disgusted with politicians, cops, and ESPECIALLY District Attorneys. The D.A. here is most of the problem. He's like Mike Nifong, but with LESS integrity and common sense. That's about par for the course, though, when it comes to D.A.s, you know?
So I ask you again, if the law won't fix it, who will? I don't live in Florida. I have no control over local or state government there. Do you have control over it?
The fact is, vigilante justice mainly happens when the legal system fails the public. I'd have to say this would be a perfect example of a situation where the vigilante justice would be a DIRECT RESULT of the failure of the legal system, specifically the D.A..
Young black men are often doomed by circumstance, and it's disgusting to see how this society treats them as disposable. At least give them a chance, you know? And if you don't, then don't expect them to be all happy and smiley when people who kill them get off scot-free.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Rakeesh: Infuriating people on both sides of the issues since [insert Rakeesh's birth date here].
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
(Yeah, it was a very controversial birth, apparently)
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: So if someone starts beating me with their bare fists, why would it be unreasonable to fear for my life?
Let's be clear here, the hugely vast majority of the time that someone takes a swing at someone else it won't result in -any- permanent harm.
There is a world of difference between a fist fight and a being beaten to death. It is just incredibly rare.
Realize that legally most attempts to punch someone are the same as touching them at all. Assault. So since you seem to be so comfortable killing someone for trying to punch you, how far does that go? A shove? An unwanted push? An unwanted touch? All of these things carry the potential for lethality, with about the same chance as a random punch does.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Drummer,
I said you made an evil statement after explaining why it was awful (as well as several other people), and asking you more than once if you wanted to back off of it. Expressing satisfaction that Zimmerman might be the victim of prison violence is an awful, evil thing to say. It amounts to torture, when you bear in mind that they're OUR prisons. No, you don't think you're evil, or even that your idea is, perhaps-who does? Not persuasive. You're welcome to let that be a conversation ender, if you like: if you meant what you said, I stand by it.
quote:Number 2, bring some content to the discussion. Calling me evil is not only ad hominem, it's contentless filler.
One, no it isn't given what I said and two, I already explained why and given that I had to ask, what, three times? More? For an answer to a straightforward question, you're in no position to demand others 'bring content'.
quote:Number 3, what on earth was that last paragraph? There are two groups of people who change public policy. Groups of concerned citizens, like the mothers of MADD, and corporations with lots of high-paid lobbyists. That's mostly it. I'm one person with little money. VERY little. I owe more than I'm worth, that's for sure.
Here, I'll mimic your laughably smug tone from before, except here it will actually be warranted: it's funny that you can really assert your own powerlessness as an individual citizen and then also mention MADD in the same breath.
quote:FWIW, though, I don't think prison reform should be the primary thrust of intervention in poor/minority populations. Education is far more important. It's much easier to turn a child into a productive citizen than to reform someone who's already had a few assault and robbery convictions, for example. Nutrition is important, as well. Kids need nutritious food at school, especially if they're not getting it at home.
Nor do I, and I'd love to see where I or anyone else suggested it should be a primary thrust. Man, no crows getting' into YOUR cornfield, dude! Reducing prison violence isn't a 'minority issue' even though it would benefit minorities more, it's a human decency issue.
quote:If the LAW won't fix it, who will? I'm not the law, don't hold ME responsible. I'm pretty disgusted with politicians, cops, and ESPECIALLY District Attorneys. The D.A. here is most of the problem. He's like Mike Nifong, but with LESS integrity and common sense. That's about par for the course, though, when it comes to D.A.s, you know?
Well when you so loudly proclaim your own powerlessness, it's easy to say there's nothing you can do-that doesn't make it true, though. For example, you could learn whether your state representatives support stand your ground style laws.
-----
Aris, your repeated personal insults call for more than a 'lost my temper'. You lied about what I and others said. I don't expect one, but you did more than 'lose your temper', and it was noticed.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: So if someone starts beating me with their bare fists, why would it be unreasonable to fear for my life?
Let's be clear here, the hugely vast majority of the time that someone takes a swing at someone else it won't result in -any- permanent harm.
There is a world of difference between a fist fight and a being beaten to death. It is just incredibly rare.
Realize that legally most attempts to punch someone are the same as touching them at all. Assault. So since you seem to be so comfortable killing someone for trying to punch you, how far does that go? A shove? An unwanted push? An unwanted touch? All of these things carry the potential for lethality, with about the same chance as a random punch does.
Do you think shooting someone who touches you without permission is the easiest way to resolve that? Because that sounds only slightly less insane than shooting a toddler who punches you.
I have no problem with people using "try not to kill people if you can resolve an issue another way" as another guiding principle. Seems solid to me.
And, once again, I'm talking about this issue on philosophical and moral grounds, so the fact that hitting & touching are legally similar is irrelevant to me.
Anyway, I'm not saying the likelihood of being beaten to death is high, simply that it's there, and even worse, if the beating gets to that point, by the time it does you'll likely be so incapacitated that you will no loner have the option of shooting your assailant.
So, if it's not okay to shoot someone who is beating you up, what is okay? Stabbing them? Still pretty lethal. Pepper spray? Sometimes that's effective, but not always.
Punching them back? And if they are vastly stronger than you, what then? Just take it, and hope they stop before they cause permanent damage or kill you?
And if you think that's the right approach, then do you think it's okay to shoot someone who is trying to rape you? Or is that another situation where doing so is unreasonable and wrong? If you can fight them off with your fists, good on ya, but otherwise just take it and hope they don't kill you?
I think the idea that when it comes to guns for self-defense we suddenly take the burden of responsibility off the assailant and put it on whoever has a gun is ludicrous.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:If you slander me and stalk me and so on, then there are ramifications for those. You can suffer the appropriate fines and penalties for those acts. If I assault you, it isn't justified by your behavior. So yeah, you can defend yourself. I'm the aggressor at that point.
I think you are either misunderstanding the issue or misusing the word assault. Any threat of imminent violence, either through word or act, is legally assault. Assault does not involve any physical contact. If my actions or words cause you to believe that I am about to do you physical harm, intentionally, I have committed assault. If I threaten you using a deadly weapon, I have committed aggravated assault.
If I actually make physical contact with you, that would be considered battery, not assault.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:If you slander me and stalk me and so on, then there are ramifications for those. You can suffer the appropriate fines and penalties for those acts. If I assault you, it isn't justified by your behavior. So yeah, you can defend yourself. I'm the aggressor at that point.
I think you are either misunderstanding the issue or misusing the word assault. Any threat of imminent violence, either through word or act, is legally assault. Assault does not involve any physical contact. If my actions or words cause you to believe that I am about to do you physical harm, intentionally, I have committed assault. If I threaten you using a deadly weapon, I have committed aggravated assault.
If I actually make physical contact with you, that would be considered battery, not assault.
Sigh.
Rabbit, you did read my posts, right? The three or four so far where I explicitly say I'm discussing the issue from a moral standpoint and not a legal one?
So, in context, when I say "physical assault," do you think I mean that I threatened you, or do you think, you know, that I hit you? Physically.
The word assault, while a legal term, is still a word, with a quite commonly used, readily understood, and well known definition.
Come on. If you want to argue with what I've said, go ahead, I'm happy to discuss it. But this is just pointless quibbling over an issue I've repeatedly explained is irrelevant to my actual comments.
Edit: And now this post kicks off a new page, while my post on the topic I'm actually interested in languishes at the bottom of the old page. Double sigh.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Dude, don't even get me started on pepper spray...I'll suffice to say:
Yay yay pepper spray! Works great in many ways! Buy some for yourself today! Don't have to fork over a lot of your pay! Save your life it may!
How about just pulling out your gun and ordering the person to lay flat on the ground as they are now under citizen's arrest for assault? Why ya gotta plug em?
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
By the way the key phrase that the legal system (I know that's not the point of your posts) looks for with justifiable shootings is "I feared for my life or the life of others." You have to have some justification for that fear, you can't just be ascaredy cat, but if you believe that a life was in danger, you may act.
So, if you are worried that someone punching you will end your life, then legally you can shoot.
Morally I'd say it is right to use the minimum needed force to remove the threat.
Is it wrong to shoot someone who is merely trying to punch you? Not entirely as you are defending yourself, but it sure is a bit wrong if you could stop them any other way.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
Rakeesh, I think it's like Arthur C. Clarke said about scientific theories. You can't convince the older generation of much. They pretty much just die off, still believing the old theories, and it's the new generation believing the new ones. I have little faith that anything will change in these areas very much, until a new generation is running things.
Also, again, like I've said before in another thread, I also think the rural/conservative skew of our Congress via the Senate prevents real change from happening.
The fact of the matter is, the most represented people on the planet are white people that live in Wyoming. They have the smallest population, but they still have 2 senators. Most of the bottom 15 states by population are very rural and white. Only Rhode Island and Delaware buck that trend.
You'd literally have to change the structure of the Congress to create real change and allow more equal representation. That's the only way you'd get real education improvements for poor/minority citizens, separated prisons, and handgun bans. That's not going to happen for a good long while. Probably not for at least 30 years or more...which will be pretty much when the old guard dies out completely.
It's like the song goes, "we're waiting on the world to change..."
which is a semi-polite way of saying "please die of old age already, so poor black kids don't have to grow up in Third World war zone conditions."
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
If you wish to further discuss handgun bans, I would join you, but please start a new tread so we don't derail this one.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: I have no problem with people using "try not to kill people if you can resolve an issue another way" as another guiding principle. Seems solid to me.
The issue is that guiding principle no. 1, whether not also advised through this caveat, is overly morally simplistic. Some easy ethical quandary work shoots grapesail through the sails. We do not automatically get to claim justified self-defense if we play the game of goading them into an altercation, especially one initially motivated by fear.
If we take your statement at face value, you're creating a guiding principle which allows for entrapment. And with gusto, too.
In addition, "how easy it is to defend yourself" doesn't apply to how you wrote the first guiding principle. It's irrelevant when the guiding principle you 'think makes sense' is: "No matter how much (or little) someone physically assaults me, I have the right to stop them the most expedient way possible." It doesn't matter if the assault is in the 'extremely little' category (i.e., you're being attacked by a 12 year old) and your most expedient method is to shoot them.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Also, a handgun ban ain't gonna happen and would be far more trouble than its worth at this juncture. You'd have an easier time putting the toothpaste back in the tube with roe v wade.
Posted by I Used to Be a Drummer (Member # 12787) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Also, a handgun ban ain't gonna happen and would be far more trouble than its worth at this juncture. You'd have an easier time putting the toothpaste back in the tube with roe v wade.
Since Roe v Wade was just a Supreme Court decision, whereas the 2nd amendment is an actual part of the Bill of Rights, I'd agree. It would literally take a Constitutional Amendment to ban handguns and make it stick. I'll probably be dead before that ever happens.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: I have no problem with people using "try not to kill people if you can resolve an issue another way" as another guiding principle. Seems solid to me.
The issue is that guiding principle no. 1, whether not also advised through this caveat, is overly morally simplistic. Some easy ethical quandary work shoots grapesail through the sails. We do not automatically get to claim justified self-defense if we play the game of goading them into an altercation, especially one initially motivated by fear.
If we take your statement at face value, you're creating a guiding principle which allows for entrapment. And with gusto, too.
Entrapment of the "I made him hit me with my mean words" variety? Because I've expounded on that many times already.
Though I suppose it's worth mentioning that I also think that entrapping people is also bad! And nothing in what I said somehow inevitably leads to entrapment. You're simply observing that, by itself, it doesn't rule it out. That's fine. It's an idea about when it's okay to use force to defend yourself, it doesn't need to contain knowledge about entrapment. I have other ideas for that!
A separate principle: "Don't insult people in the hopes that they will choose to attack you because they dislike your words," is in no way inconsistent with anything I've said.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:It's an idea about when it's okay to use force to defend yourself, it doesn't need to contain knowledge about entrapment.
No, it doesn't need to. It wants to, if it wants to be a useful moral system. As written, when you apply it to the nuance of real-world positions, it turns out to be as impractical as a stand-your-ground law.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Ok, so at this point I'm just going to assume you stand by your pleased anticipation of Zimmerman being the victim of prison violence, then. I asked you multiple times if you meant that, and while you have responded to (some) other things, you have continually neglected that. So: being satisfied with prison violence, which so often will include beatings, rapes, mutilations, and murders is a terrible thing to believe. Aside from being profoundly wicked in and of itself, it's also foolish since it serves neatly to heighten the violence and criminality of both its victims and its perpetrators, and this continues when they're out of prison.
As for other things you didn't address, you didn't address how you were wrong when you said I called you evil-I was very specific. You didn't address the morality of looking forward to prison violence for Zimmerman. You didn't address the contradiction between your supposed impotence as a private system in our government, and organizations such as MADD. you didn't address the fact that nobody said or suggested that prison reform be the most important thrust in addressing our racial problems. Color me the opposite shade from 'surprised'.
Oh, and on a different note, am I correct in remembering you said you aren't in fact a black person? If so, 'the brothers' sounds awfully...off...moving past your fingers.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Rabbit, you did read my posts, right? The three or four so far where I explicitly say I'm discussing the issue from a moral standpoint and not a legal one?
So, in context, when I say "physical assault," do you think I mean that I threatened you, or do you think, you know, that I hit you? Physically.
The word assault, while a legal term, is still a word, with a quite commonly used, readily understood, and well known definition.
So what you are saying is that unless a person makes physical contact with my body, I haven't been physically assault and do not have a right to defend myself with potentially lethal force. Is that correct?
Let me give an example. Suppose I am walking down a street and I am being followed by a person in a car who is yelling obscenities at me. He has not made any physical contact so if I hit him, I'm in the wrong. Correct?
Next, he swerves his car up on the side walk attempting to hit me. I dodge so he still hasn't made contact. According to your "principle", if I hit him it isn't self defense because he has not physically assaulted me. Then he gets out of his car and swings a fist at me. I duck the blow and take off running. He chases me for half a mile at which point I find myself with my back against a wall in a dead end with no where left to run. He's still running towards me, cursing and threatening to kill me but he hasn't actually ever touched me. By your definition, if I a take a gun from my bag and shoot him, I've committed murder. He never touched me so I was the aggressor. There was no self defense.
Now put the gun in the other hand. He's running toward me cursing and waving a gun. He fires a shot that hits the wall over my head. He still hasn't landed a blow so he hasn't met your "common sense" definition of "physical assault". In desperation, I lunge at him. I put a foot in his groin and break his nose with the flat of my hand. He fires the gun and kills me. By your definition, I am the aggressor and he has killed me in self defense.
Is that what you are saying?
If not, at what point in this scenario would you say I'd been assaulted (common usage). At what point would could my choosing to fight be justifiably called self defense?
I know that I've painted an extreme case. There is an opposite end of that extreme where I might shoot someone because I felt threatened by a dirty look. Somewhere between those extremes there is a point where the threat of violence becomes serious enough that most people would consider it to be "assault" and most people would consider fighting to be self defense.
Your idea that a person has to wait until an assailant actually lands a blow is not something I think many people would call a "common sense" definition of self defense.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Also, a handgun ban ain't gonna happen and would be far more trouble than its worth at this juncture. You'd have an easier time putting the toothpaste back in the tube with roe v wade.
This man speaks the truth. Though I would jig in the streets if every single handgun disappeared, and the means to make them were lost.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Rabbit, what's the point of your examples? You're still doing a very weird hyper-literal interpretation that, as far as I can tell, doesn't really address any of the numerous times I've given my opinion of what justifies force.
While there are legal distinctions between attempted murder and murder, for example, when someone is obviously trying to kill me I don't treat that person as an "attempted murderer" and use less force than I would against someone who I knew had already killed someone. For my purposes, both people are murderers.
If someone tries to punch you and misses, that's morally the same as if they punch you. Neither is the same as if they shoot you a dirty look.
I'm really not that interested in playing this game with you, but if you want to actually go back and read something I wrote and then discuss it with me, feel free.
Sam: My moral system is made up of thousands of ideas (what I was calling "principles"). So, no, I disagree, no single one of them taken in isolation needs to have an answer for everything. However, I do prefer that each of them, taken in isolation or as a whole, is consistent.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:So, no, I disagree, no single one of them taken in isolation needs to have an answer for everything. However, I do prefer that each of them, taken in isolation or as a whole, is consistent.
Then that one in particular direly needs to be rewritten. You don't have the right to stop a tantrum-throwing child with a shotgun just due to the expedience of the method. The caveats don't solve the issue of inconsistency, they create inconsistency. You might as well be writing "X, except Y, so ... not X at all, really."
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Rabbit: I would say that in all likelihood D_F meant the attempt to physically cause harm, not merely the successful attempt.
As to the whole handgun issue, if we are making wishes on falling stars, why aim so low? Heck, I mean at least shoot for heaven on earth right? I mean it would take a magical wish to get the handguns, so might as well pick something better.
Guns are dangerous. So are many, many useful tools which can be used for good or harm. To blame the tool for its evil use is as silly as blaming the food for making one obese. It is the human mind at the end of the trigger finger (fork finger?) which makes the choices. Guns are neither good nor evil in and of themselves, simply powerful. Like all things powerful, those who wield them without discipline or good sense often invite tragedy into their lives and the lives of those around them.
We were founded as a country of free people (except for the obvious glaring contradictions) and let's face it, freedom is for the grown ups. You wouldn't allow a child the freedom to do whatever they wanted as within mere minutes they would have harmed themselves. You do not promote a free, self reliant and responsible people by taking away all the scissors because someone might hurt themselves.
Guns are the reigns of power, and unless good and moral people pick them up and hold them they will fall into lesser hands. It is good that the police have guns. It is good that a citizen in good standing (with the added implementation of paying for and taking a psych and safety eval) should be able to acquire a license to carry their weapon.
Zimmerman had a record of violence, and would likely not have passed a psych eval. In that way our system failed us. He should not have been given a lawful concealed weapons permit. That he ultimately caused discord, tragedy and the needless death of one of our young people is without question a problem of systemic proportions. That he has not been charged with any crime is a problem which is much larger on an order of magnitude.
Guns are dangerous. And while I fully support that Americans should have access to them to own and carry, it must be tempered with careful training and screening, and harsh penalties for those who abuse our freedoms and cast doubt into the minds of reasonable people about if we as a country are really able to shoulder such heavy responsibilities.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:So, no, I disagree, no single one of them taken in isolation needs to have an answer for everything. However, I do prefer that each of them, taken in isolation or as a whole, is consistent.
Then that one in particular direly needs to be rewritten. You don't have the right to stop a tantrum-throwing child with a shotgun just due to the expedience of the method. The caveats don't solve the issue of inconsistency, they create inconsistency. You might as well be writing "X, except Y, so ... not X at all, really."
I think you're grossly misunderstanding me.
For example, I think what you're referring to as "caveats" are actually parallel moral ideas that inform decisions, each of which should be internally consistent.
The only caveat I can see that I've expressed was "in the most expedient way possible" and on reflection, you're right, I don't need that!
If someone attacks me, I have the right to defend myself. Full stop.
If someone can be reliably and effectively stopped by nonviolent means, that's great! This child assailant angle seems like an intentional misreading of what I'm saying. There's no reason shooting a kid in that situation would remotely be the best way to stop the situation, and at no point did I indicate that it would.
If the kid is in the LRA and is pointing an assault rifle at me, then maybe shooting him is the best way to defend myself.
And once we get into the realm of physical altercations between adults, if you take guns out of the picture then the power is in the hands of the biggest, strongest person in the fight. That seems horrible to me. Often times the biggest strongest person will be the one that picked the fight in the first place, after all.
If you have the power to easily overcome your assailant without a gun, sure, do that. But if you're afraid you will not be able to, better that you use a gun and protect yourself than chance your wellbeing on your physical superiority.
This ties back to when I objected to the idea that once you use a gun to defend yourself, the burden of responsibility for the situation is shifted from the assailant to you. That's false.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
As a general principle I agree that the use of a weapon in self defense does not shift the burden of responsibility on to you, the attacked, but do find issue with the idea that any and all force is acceptable because the other guy started it.
I would go so far as to say that if a non lethal solution was present that was reliable and effective at stopping an assailant that it is evil to not choose it and instead choose lethal force.
Not the most evil thing in the whole wide world, because remember, this the victim of violence using lethal force in this scenario.
I still say that the threat of lethal violence is usually enough to control a situation. "I have a gun, I will use it, you are under citizen's arrest for assault, lay down on the ground and don't move, the police are on their way."
If the threat of violence isn't enough, you can always carry out that threat. But just skipping to the bang bang is no good in most cases.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
I don't have any specific objections to anything you just said there, SW.
(Do you call me DF because I call you SW, or is it just coincidence? I can call you Stone if you prefer!)
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:If someone is attacking me, why shouldn't I stop them the most effective way I can?
Because not every crime should be punished with the death sentence? Because we should try not to take people lives if we don't absolutely have to?
Sure. Defending yourself against a deadly assault, rape, burning down your house could justify a lethal response. But throwing a punch in a fight you started? It doesn't have to escalate to someone being dead.
I've personally seen 3 deaths in fistfights, with no weapons drawn. Plus a number of disfigurements and permanent injuries.... So I don't care if it is a knife, a gun or a fist....I do believe that I have a right to defend myself from any of them, by any means necessary.
That is of course balanced by my desire to never put myself in that position again. Killing someone, justified or not, is not easy, nor should it be. I had nightmares for years, and I I did was walk alone thought a park at night, then try to run away when confronted, and I used my bare hands not a gun.
Regardless of if charges are filed, I am sure Zimmerman will pay a price, and will never be the same. And that isn't even considering the $10,000 bounty the Black Panthers put on his head.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
Not to get meta-- well, actually, to get completely meta-- but I've been interested in seeing the evolution of how the media is handling this. Specifically in terms of the pictures they're choosing to run of Martin and of Zimmerman. When the story broke, the picture of Trayvon with his white hoodie-- a young, handsome, vulnerable kid contrasted with Zimmerman-- scruffy, thuggish, mug shot.
As time has gone on, other comparative pictures have come out-- Trayvon, looking at the camera with hostility, and a smiling, nicely dressed Zimmerman. (See that one here.
What I take from this thinking is this: I cannot trust the images the media chooses to run. To me, the use of the images seems timed to coincide with the shifts of opinion in the general population. When it was felt certain that there was a completely innocent child that had been murdered by a state-supported-thug, the media posted pictures that boosted that narrative. Now that better footage of Zimmerman's wounds has been released-- it appears that the guy had been in a tussle after all-- pictures showing Zimmerman in a positive light and Martin in a not-so-positive light are making the rounds.
I think I'm decided that I'll stick to text. Although how much I can trust the media's reporting is up for debate as well.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
While you should never trust images, it's worth noting that those subsequent images were specifically released to "rebut" the impressions left by the first set. And there's actually a third set, including shots from Zimmerman's first arrest and the party Martin was at just nine days before his death, which are intended to rebut the second set, but they haven't really "broken" yet.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Kwea:
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:If someone is attacking me, why shouldn't I stop them the most effective way I can?
Because not every crime should be punished with the death sentence? Because we should try not to take people lives if we don't absolutely have to?
Sure. Defending yourself against a deadly assault, rape, burning down your house could justify a lethal response. But throwing a punch in a fight you started? It doesn't have to escalate to someone being dead.
I've personally seen 3 deaths in fistfights, with no weapons drawn. Plus a number of disfigurements and permanent injuries.... So I don't care if it is a knife, a gun or a fist....I do believe that I have a right to defend myself from any of them, by any means necessary.
That is of course balanced by my desire to never put myself in that position again. Killing someone, justified or not, is not easy, nor should it be. I had nightmares for years, and I I did was walk alone thought a park at night, then try to run away when confronted, and I used my bare hands not a gun.
Regardless of if charges are filed, I am sure Zimmerman will pay a price, and will never be the same. And that isn't even considering the $10,000 bounty the Black Panthers put on his head.
Trayvon Martin will never be the same either.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Rakeesh, first you said "Yes, absolutely, institutionalized racism is worse than individual racism."
Then you say "Well, freakin' duh, Aris." when I note that that's a moronic position to take without taking into consideration the severity of each.
You're a horrible debater, incapable of expressing a single clear thought, and bashing me for actually being clear in what I say, and precise in my questions and answers.
quote:Trayvon Martin will never be the same either.
Yes, but if Martin was the one who first attacked Zimmerman, then Martin is the one to blame for Martin's death, not Zimmerman.
Posted by Jake (Member # 206) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: . Though I would jig in the streets if every single handgun disappeared, and the means to make them were lost.
Oh, man--the Monkey's Paw/Ebil Genie in me just came up with 4 or 5 horrible ways of fulfilling that (implied) wish.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Then you say "Well, freakin' duh, Aris." when I note that that's a moronic position to take without taking into consideration the severity of each.
It goes without saying that mild institutionalized racism isn't as bad for a given individual than *murderous individual* racism. It was a cheap trick, and I don't believe for a moment you actually thought anyone meant that ANY degree of institutionalized racism is worse than any degree of individual racism, no matter how extreme. Instead of focusing on what was actually being discussed, namely which was worse generally, individual or instutionalized racism, you employed a cheap, transparent rhetorical gimmick.
You also haven't had anything to say about how you've lied about what kmbboots and I (and possibly others) were saying about the burned white boy, that we were downplaying it. You got hysterical, continued calling people stupid (while hiding it behind 'Americans are so stupid', while transparently saying 'Americans who think what you do are stupid'), and ignored the fact that both of us acknowledged that the burning was awful, but that because the kid there didn't die, suffered first degree burns, and an investigation was begun at once, it's not as bad. So you lied about that.
quote:You're a horrible debater, incapable of expressing a single clear thought, and bashing me for actually being clear in what I say, and precise in my questions and answers.
Yes, well that's fine of you to think. Over here where we're *not* shouting and ranting and calling people stupid and lying about what they've said and playing the victim, I actually know that I've expressed many clear thoughts in this discussion, and your labeling someone else a 'horrible debater' (as though this were an actual debate) is good for the funny bone.
You know, you *could* just say, "Man, I was angry. My bad for shouting, calling people stupid, and misstating what other people said." I'd still think you were badly misguided on this issue, but that happens, no problem. I wouldn't think you were a big chump, though.
quote:Yes, but if Martin was the one who first attacked Zimmerman, then Martin is the one to blame for Martin's death, not Zimmerman.
If in the surprising event that Martin went from no known history of violence to suddenly and with great aggression and brutality attacked a man he didn't know who hadn't done or said anything to him beyond following him, then yes indeed, he shouldn't have done that, and he is the one most responsible for his own death.
That doesn't change the fact that even if all of that above is true, though, there would be one less dead kid in the world, and one less man who's killed a kid, if Zimmerman hadn't had a concealed weapons permit (as he clearly shouldn't have), hadn't carried it with him on *neighborhood watch*, hadn't followed someone when told not to by 911 (they have, y'know reasons for saying that sort of thing), and/or hadn't gotten out of his car.
How's that for a clear thought, Aris? You're welcome to point out which of those was wrong at your leisure, or you can shout some more about how stupid people are. If you do, be sure to follow up with labeling others horrible debaters:)
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: While you should never trust images, it's worth noting that those subsequent images were specifically released to "rebut" the impressions left by the first set. And there's actually a third set, including shots from Zimmerman's first arrest and the party Martin was at just nine days before his death, which are intended to rebut the second set, but they haven't really "broken" yet.
I know, Tom-- that's part of my point. The pictures are trying to sell a certain story. What the public needs is not a story, but facts.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
Dan, it seems you're allowing for an obligation or duty to avoid killing if possible, even in self-defense.
Do you agree that such an obligation also implies a moral duty to try to escape a fistfight, rather than "stand your ground," if that's clearly possible? (Assume the fight doesn't take place on your property, or anything like that.)
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:It was a cheap trick
It's not a trick.
Stop saying that my arguments are "tricks". We need to form a basis for communication, so I need to be making simple statements.
When I say something simple, and e.g. ask you to confirm it, and you refuse to respond to even something as simple as that, then I'm forced to use even simpler arguments to you, which you then again refuse to respond to.
How do you expect us to form a basis for complicated thoughts, when you refuse to deal with simple ones?
I've not played a single "trick" on anyone in this thread, or in any thread of this forum, EVER. Stop saying that I'm playing tricks. I'm quite likely among the most honest and direct debaters you will *ever* find.
quote:You also haven't had anything to say about how you've lied about what kmbboots and I (and possibly others) were saying about the burned white boy, that we were downplaying it.
I honestly believe you were downplaying it. It was not a lie. You may claim it *false*, if you disagree that this is what you were doing, but it still remains my honest impression that you were downplaying it.
And I'll state it again: You were downplaying it.
"lost some skin," "Of course it was horrible, but it's being investigated and nobody goes to a funeral home." "Well he isn't dead. " That's what someone downplaying something looks like from the outside. What did it look like to you?
quote:That doesn't change the fact that even if all of that above is true, though, there would be one less dead kid in the world, and one less man who's killed a kid, if Zimmerman hadn't had a concealed weapons permit (as he clearly shouldn't have), hadn't carried it with him on *neighborhood watch*, hadn't followed someone when told not to by 911 (they have, y'know reasons for saying that sort of thing), and/or hadn't gotten out of his car.
How's that for a clear thought, Aris?
It's a very muddled thought actually. You seem to confuse the concept of physical causality, with the concept of moral responsibility, and you seem to confuse both with legal responsibility.
For example you list lots of *legal* things that Zimmerman did, which nonetheless *causally* led to Martin's death; and you therefore assign *moral* blame to Zimmerman.
Even if the moral blame was Zimmerman's, you can't assign legal blame by listing things he did that were in themselves legal.
quote:You're welcome to point out which of those was wrong at your leisure, or you can shout some more about how stupid people are.
If you don't want me to think you stupid, don't treat simple sentences as if they're "tricks" meant to entrap you.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: Yes, but if Martin was the one who first attacked Zimmerman, then Martin is the one to blame for Martin's death, not Zimmerman.
And we don't get to hear his side of the story because he is dead.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: I honestly believe you were downplaying it. It was not a lie. You may claim it *false*, if you disagree that this is what you were doing, but it still remains my honest impression that you were downplaying it.
And I'll state it again: You were downplaying it.
"lost some skin," "Of course it was horrible, but it's being investigated and nobody goes to a funeral home." "Well he isn't dead. " That's what someone downplaying something looks like from the outside. What did it look like to you?
I think it looks like stating the truth of a situation to counteract your hyperbolic claims that the white boy had been "burned alive". "Burned alive" usually means that one is dead after having been burned rather than having first degree burns which can be painful but not quite to a Jean d'Arc level. You also claim that he had third degree burns which is not the truth.
So, yeah, "downplaying" to actual facts, I suppose.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: (Do you call me DF because I call you SW, or is it just coincidence? I can call you Stone if you prefer!)
I have no preference, do you?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Thank you for correcting the "third-degree burns" mistake that I made. That was an honest mistake.
quote:And we don't get to hear his side of the story because he is dead.
True. But that happens in all killings, that someone ends up dead and we don't get to hear their side of the story.
So what's your exact point? Please be specific about how someone being dead should affect the methodology we use on determining whether the person who killed them is guilty or innocent of wrongdoing.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
I am frankly surprised that nobody has mentioned the eye witness that saw Treyvon Martin on top of Zimmerman punching him and slamming his head into the pavement.
Medical reports also read that Zimmerman did have a gash on the back of his head that may have required stiches, but due to the amount of time after the injury they weren't able to stich it up. (I'm not a doctor so I don't know if there is a time limit to stich a wound)
The witness also says Zimmerman was moaning "Help."
I'm not making a judgement on the case, just pointing out additional information. The witness backs up Zimmerman's claims, what witness has come forward on Treyvon's case? The only accounting of what happened in support of Treyvon has been by people that were not present when the shooting took place.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I can understand the first/third mistake. Do you also see the problem with "burned alive" and why it is important? Do you also see how the police are working to get justice for Allan Coon?
Self defense is usually an affirmative defense. (I don't know if Florida law is different.) That means that the burden of proof would normally be on George Zimmerman to prove that he was attacked. The only evidence that Martin attacked Zimmerman is George Zimmerman's story. Witnesses say otherwise, the audio recording seems to say otherwise, and the fact that Martin's hands showed no evidence of such an attack seem to say otherwise.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Do you also see the problem with "burned alive" and why it is important?
Since it's mere luck the kid survived, I see less of a problem with that, but I'll keep it in mind that English-language connotations of the word is that someone gets burned to death, and will thus avoid such miscommunications in the future.
quote:Do you also see how the police are working to get justice for Allan Coon?
No, I don't have any inside scoop on the police to know if they're working to get justice for him, or if they're sitting on their asses. Nobody has been arrested yet, after all, have they?
quote:The only evidence that Martin attacked Zimmerman is George Zimmerman's story. Witnesses say otherwise, the audio recording seems to say otherwise, and the fact that Martin's hands showed no evidence of such an attack seem to say otherwise.
Actually: The witness confirmed Zimmerman's story. The expert on the audio recording says there 48% chance it was Zimmerman shouting, so this is effectively a 50/50 chance, not "say otherwise"
And as far as I know bruises take a while to form. The guy who made this argument about Trayvon's hands (http://www.hlntv.com/article/2012/03/28/funeral-director-saw-no-signs-fight-trayvons-hands) isn't a forensics expert.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:The expert on the audio recording says there 48% chance it was Zimmerman shouting, so this is effectively a 50/50 chance, not "say otherwise"
From the CNN article I linked to earlier:
quote:Owen, a forensic audio analyst and chairman emeritus of the American Board of Recorded Evidence, also said he does not believe the screams came from Zimmerman.
He cited software that is widely used in Europe and has become recently accepted in the United States that examines characteristics like pitch and the space between spoken words to analyze voices.
Using it, he found a 48% likelihood the voice is Zimmerman's. At least 60% is necessary to feel confident two samples are from the same source, he told CNN on Monday -- meaning it's unlikely it was Zimmerman who can be heard yelling.
The experts, both of whom said they have testified in cases involving audio analysis, stressed they cannot say who was screaming.
Facts, per favore.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:Do you also see how the police are working to get justice for Allan Coon?
No, I don't have any inside scoop on the police to know if they're working to get justice for him, or if they're sitting on their asses. Nobody has been arrested yet, after all, have they?
Not yet, but in this case, that is because they don't know who the suspect are. They have said that they are investigating and that they intend to prosecute - most likely as a hate crime.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Scott, you do realize that's exactly what I said, right?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Not yet, but in this case, that is because they don't know who the suspect are.
And if you believe that and give the police such benefit of the doubt in Allan Coon's case, why don't you do the same for Martin's case, and assume they let Zimmerman go because the evidence told them he was acting within his legal rights?
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Geraine: (I'm not a doctor so I don't know if there is a time limit to stitch a wound)
quote:The expert on the audio recording says there 48% chance it was Zimmerman shouting, so this is effectively a 50/50 chance, not "say otherwise"
From the CNN article I linked to earlier:
quote:Owen, a forensic audio analyst and chairman emeritus of the American Board of Recorded Evidence, also said he does not believe the screams came from Zimmerman.
He cited software that is widely used in Europe and has become recently accepted in the United States that examines characteristics like pitch and the space between spoken words to analyze voices.
Using it, he found a 48% likelihood the voice is Zimmerman's. At least 60% is necessary to feel confident two samples are from the same source, he told CNN on Monday -- meaning it's unlikely it was Zimmerman who can be heard yelling.
The experts, both of whom said they have testified in cases involving audio analysis, stressed they cannot say who was screaming.
quote: and ed, what is your level of satisfaction with your finding? are you 99% certain, 70% certain?
>> i'm in the 90s lawrence . i would love to have an exact kpamp lar of mr. zimmerman 's voice to compare to those screams and i could come up with some stein tisk evidence to prove whether it is or is not his voice at that point.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: Scott, you do realize that's exactly what I said, right?
I encourage you to read the portion from the CNN.com article again. There's a difference between what you said, and what the expert is saying.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Here is an interview with Ed Primeau, the other audio expert.
quote: "There's a huge chance that this is not Zimmerman's voice," said Primeau, a longtime audio engineer who is listed as an expert in recorded evidence by the American College of Forensic Examiners International. "After 28 years of doing this, I would put my reputation on the line and say this is not George Zimmerman screaming."
This is all stuff that the police should have been investigating rather than the media and before media pressure made them do it.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Okay, if there's some sort of consistency between "48% likelihood the voice is Zimmerman" and ">90% likelihood the voice isn't Zimmerman's", I fail to see it.
Can someone explain this math to me?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
He explains it in this interview:
quote: Using sophisticated voice match software, Tom Owen, forensic consultant for Owen Forensic Services LLC and chair emeritus for the American Board of Recorded Evidence, told the Sentinel that there was only a 48% chance that it was Zimmerman crying for help on the tape.
Usually, a positive match rates higher than 90%.
"As a result of that, you can say with reasonable scientific certainty that it's not Zimmerman," Owen said.
No, I'm sorry, but this isn't a valid explanation to anyone remotely familiar with math.
If there's a 48% chance it was Zimmerman, you can't then use the fact that it wassn't a 90% chance, to reduce it down to less than 10% chance. If it's a 48% chance, it's a 48% chance. If it's less than 10% chance, it's less than 10% chance. You can't say "it's 48% chance, therefore it's less than 10% chance".
Either Owen is a buffoon, or he's being grossly misquoted in one claim or the other, or both.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Either Owen is a buffoon, or he's being grossly misquoted in one claim or the other, or both.
It's pretty clear to me that none of these are the case. You may want to try to understand how the percent chance of a match is being used there. It's a statistical measurement somewhat similar to determining if a given result is statistically significant or the product of random chance.
What the experts are saying makes prefect sense, you just don't know enough to understand why.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Something meaningful to say would have been something like "48% of voice-element criteria match, but that corresponds to less than 10% probability that this is Zimmerman's voice".
But the article says instead "told the Sentinel that there was only a 48% chance that it was Zimmerman crying for help on the tape."
So, no, MrSquicky, either he's been grossly misquoted or what he's saying doesn't make sense.
You can't at the same time have P(X) = 48% and P(X) < 10%, no matter the X.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
edit: I've been trying not to do that.
Look, what he said made sense to me. I think if you look into what was said and learn a bit about vocal matching, you'll see that it does actual make sense as quoted.
You're trying to compare statements about chance from very different contexts. I can get that if you don't understand that these are different contexts, the statements can look contradictory, but I can assure you that they are not.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Perhaps you could explain further MrSquicky?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Aris,
quote:Stop saying that my arguments are "tricks". We need to form a basis for communication, so I need to be making simple statements.
When I say something simple, and e.g. ask you to confirm it, and you refuse to respond to even something as simple as that, then I'm forced to use even simpler arguments to you, which you then again refuse to respond to.
No, it was a trick. I explained why. I don't believe for a second you thought anyone else actually meant 'any degree of institutionalized racism is worse than any sort of individual racism, no matter how mild.' Nobody meant that. You were attacking arguments nobody made, and it neatly helped you avoid the actual issue we were discussing. Hence, trick.
quote:How do you expect us to form a basis for complicated thoughts, when you refuse to deal with simple ones?
I formed the basis for complicated thought in the same way most others did: by recognizing that general statements rarely apply to extreme outlier situations, and rejecting such comparisons accordingly.
But since you're touting your honesty, let me ask you this: when you read 'institutionalized racism is worse than individual racism, obviously' did you really think that meant 'in all cases, even extreme on one end and minor on the other'?
quote:I honestly believe you were downplaying it. It was not a lie. You may claim it *false*, if you disagree that this is what you were doing, but it still remains my honest impression that you were downplaying it.
And I'll state it again: You were downplaying it.
"lost some skin," "Of course it was horrible, but it's being investigated and nobody goes to a funeral home." "Well he isn't dead. " That's what someone downplaying something looks like from the outside. What did it look like to you?
Pointing out that one thing, while horrible, isn't as bad as another isn't downplaying. How about this: why are you downplaying Martin's death?!?!?!?!
quote:It's a very muddled thought actually. You seem to confuse the concept of physical causality, with the concept of moral responsibility, and you seem to confuse both with legal responsibility.
For example you list lots of *legal* things that Zimmerman did, which nonetheless *causally* led to Martin's death; and you therefore assign *moral* blame to Zimmerman.
Even if the moral blame was Zimmerman's, you can't assign legal blame by listing things he did that were in themselves legal.
Seriously, after all of your whining about not being listened to, this is your response. I didn't say that those things amounted to legal culpability, nor that to be illegal is to be immoral and vice versa.
quote:If you don't want me to think you stupid, don't treat simple sentences as if they're "tricks" meant to entrap you.
No, I expect you will regardless. It's not a problem either way-people who shout about how those who disagree are stupid...well, the foolish one in that conversation is generally the one ranting. General rule, mind, not universal:)
quote:The witness confirmed Zimmerman's story. The expert on the audio recording says there 48% chance it was Zimmerman shouting, so this is effectively a 50/50 chance, not "say otherwise"
I hope you're aware a single eye witness doesn't confirm the story-corroborates, sure. Simple thoughts now, Aris!
As for the audio, that's not what it means. They have said the footage is good enough that they ought to be able to determine his voice, and they cant. Not the same.
Now is this another 'honest mistake', bringing up the tally to what, three in this last stretch? Care to shout about how stupid others are some more?
quote:Scott, you do realize that's exactly what I said, right?
Hey, here's another...'honest' mistake. That's not what you said. You said experts say it's 50/50. They don't.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Hey, maybe Aris is better at math than internationally respected voice forensics experts, and can tell us what their findings REALLY mean better than they can! Just dig in, Aris. The important thing here is that even though you're obviously wrong, there's enough ambiguity between the 'maybe they were misquoted' and 'this math doesn't add up' to ensure you never have to acknowledge, 'Man, I was just flat-out wrong, and I shouldn't have been.'
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:don't believe for a second you thought anyone else actually meant 'any degree of institutionalized racism is worse than any sort of individual racism, no matter how mild.' Nobody meant that.
Some people, you parochial sheltered idiot, have the above quoted sentence as their entire political philosophy, which is why often you see some people launch murderous attacks against such things as "drawing a cartoon that disrespected the prophet Mohammed" or "disrespecting the Koran".
Some people, yeah, consider every and any amount of individual racism as merely a defense against institutional racism. If some anti-white black teens attempt to burn a white kid alive, that's a legitimate defense against white institutional racism in their own minds.
Some people don't even think that individual racism should even be called "racism". It has too bad connotations you see, and they approve of it too much.
As for what I thought *you* meant, I just believe you muddled in the head.
quote:why are you downplaying Martin's death?!?!?!?!
Because I'm putting significant weight on the probability that he attacked Zimmerman with potentially lethal force, in which case his death should NOT be the cause of outrage it currently is.
There, that's why I'm downplaying Martin's death.
This is one more time I've answered your questions, while you keep refusing to answer mine.
As for the audio, it doesn't surprise me that having displayed such great intelligence earlier in this thread, you don't see any discrepancy between P(X)=48% and P(X)<10%
The ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time is a necessity for some people.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Hey, maybe Aris is better at math than internationally respected voice forensics experts
I just need to be better enough at math than whoever misquoted the "internationally respected voice forensic expert" in the article.
But it doesn't take much math to realize that you can't have P(X)=48% AND P(X)<10% at the same time.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Wolf, Sure. What you're looking at with forensic voice matching generally falls into what's known as an A-B discrimination. In this case, that means that you are comparing known exemplars (i.e. a recording you know came from the person) against an unknown exemplar (the recording you are trying to match). There are many different ways of doing this, but they all result in chances that that person made the unknown recording.
The part that I think may be tripping Aris up is that this is a measure of the individual exemplar comparison, not of absolute probability. If you took say three subjects and matched them against this recording, you could get a 48% match, a 35% match, and a 96% match. In that case, we'd conclude that the 3rd person was the by far the most likely person to have made the recording, with the other two almost definitely not.
This remains the case even if we only have one match. A 48% exemplar match chance is extremely low and the experts are right in saying that they are near certain that Zimmerman was not the one calling for help on the tape.
Does that make sense?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:If you took say three subjects and matched them against this recording, you could get a 48% match, a 35% match, and a 96% match.
Then that would NOT correspond to the respective probabilities each of them had of being the match, because these three probabilities would have had to add to 100%.
Therefore the "48% exemplar match" WOULD NOT be "a 48% chance that it was Zimmerman crying for help on the tape", and the expert MUST have been misquoted.
Which is my exact point.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
To Aris and Rakeesh:
You guys might want to consider taking some time away from direct contact with each other in this thread as your back and forth comments seem to be rapidly degradating away from useful discussion and moving into the realm of a personal argument.
Aris, it just isn't okay to call Rakeesh a "parochial sheltered idiot". It is against the TOS and beyond that, nothing good can come from it.
MrSquicky: Yes, that makes a lot of sense, thank you for the explanation.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Aris, if I understand MrSquicky properly the three subjects in this hypothetical are not slices of the same pie. They are puzzle pieces being compared to the missing piece of the puzzle.
So piece A fits the hole 48/100 ways, or 48%, piece B 35% and C 96%.
The likelihood that each piece is the correct piece is therefore calculated from those results.
For instance, if a suit fit you 48%, it wouldn't fit you very well, and would be a very low probability that you would purchase it.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Some people, you parochial sheltered idiot, have the above quoted sentence as their entire political philosophy, which is why often you see some people launch murderous attacks against such things as "drawing a cartoon that disrespected the prophet Mohammed" or "disrespecting the Koran".
Wait, so racism is why some Muslims allow themselves to be whipped up into a mob at 'offensive' cartoons? Who knew? Jeepers, I guess I am a parochial, sheltered idiot! (Man, Aris, you are such a good debater!)
quote:Some people, yeah, consider every and any amount of individual racism as merely a defense against institutional racism. If some anti-white black teens attempt to burn a white kid alive, that's a legitimate defense against white institutional racism in their own minds.
This is an excellent example of something which is very irrelevant to the original question. Nice job!
quote:As for the audio, it doesn't surprise me that having displayed such great intelligence earlier in this thread, you don't see any discrepancy between P(X)=48% and P(X)<10%
Here's what I did: I saw the blurb, and I was confused. Like you, my initial ignorant thought was 'wait, if they're 48% certain, why are they saying it's very likely it's not Zimmerman?' So I read the entire story where the actual voice forensics experts, not random schmucks on the Internet, explained what their findings indicate. And then, since I'm completely uneducated in the field whereas they're highly regarded, I believed what they said about their own work was likely true.
But don't worry! You can still keep refusing to acknowledge that you're full of crap. Still plenty of room to maneuver. The trick here will be to continue obfuscating the issue with sidebars into statistics you're not applying accurately, until nobody cares anymore. Your angry 'you're stupid!' rants really drove up the apathy already, so you're halfway there.
--------
SW, I appreciate that, but shouted name-calling and dishonest evasions and putting words into people's mouths has been what Aris has been about for at least a couple of pages now. This is entertaining, now.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Stone_Wolf, it would still mean that Owen was either misquoted or a buffoon. Look, there's no two ways about it. If the 48% represents a criteria match, and NOT a probability it was Zimmerman, then they misquoted him.
Rakeesh, you've refused to answer whether it would matter to you if Martin attacked Zimmerman first, or if Martin was bashing Zimmerman's head on the ground.
Given this amount of evidence, here's a few more question I bet you'll refuse to answer: - Whether it would matter to you if it was proven to be Zimmerman's voice. - Whether it would matter to you if Zimmerman was perfectly respectful to Martin during their confrontation, no racial slurs or anything like that. - Whether it would matter to you if the entire thing went *exactly* as Zimmerman said, to the exact letter.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Wait, so racism is why some Muslims allow themselves to be whipped up into a mob at 'offensive' cartoons? Who knew?
Any type of "being oppressed" is good enough for those who want to murder some oppressors, whether it's whites oppressing blacks or infidels oppressing muslims.
quote:Who knew?
Anyone who is paying attention. Not you.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Aris, if I understand MrSquicky properly the three subjects in this hypothetical are not slices of the same pie. They are puzzle pieces being compared to the missing piece of the puzzle.
So piece A fits the hole 48/100 ways, or 48%, piece B 35% and C 96%.
The likelihood that each piece is the correct piece is therefore calculated from those results.
For instance, if a suit fit you 48%, it wouldn't fit you very well, and would be a very low probability that you would purchase it.
The first part is pretty good, but the second not really. In this case, you have to realize that you're dealing with a lot of variability and random factors. So comparing it to the fit of a concrete object isn't really a good match.
The question we're looking at is what are the chances (taking into account the variability, noise, and random factors) that the source that produced sample A also produced sample B.
Like I said, this is somewhat similar to how we determine how likely a seeming pattern in a set of data is actually a pattern and not due to chance.
Thinking about it, I think you could sort of make the suit thing work, assuming you had only fuzzy data on the qualities of the suit. You could try to determine how likely that a person wore that suit and compare how you think it might fit him. A 48% chance in vocal matching is similar to a 48% in fit of this hypothetical suit.
In A-B discrimination tasks, it's important to have measure of probability of matching that is independent of the number of sources measured. I think the absurdity of doing anything else is pretty self-evident. Because of this, you'll get seems that seem counter-intuitive, like a 48% chance meaning that a match is actually extremely unlikely.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I already did answer that, actually. All the way back on the first page, in fact it was one of my first posts in this thread. Go check it out, if you like.
As for #2, yes, that would be some trustworthy forensic evidence that would lend weight to his story. I'd be less disbelieving of him if that happened.
#3 would also matter to me, if it could be shown, as it would still make Zimmerman dangerously (with a gun, that is) paranoid, but not especially problematic in this scenario.
#4 well yes, obviously it would matter. It's just so very unlikely, and I see little reason to treat the man with a history of poor judgment as though he was speaking with total honesty, given how unlikely his story is.
Man, those were such devastating questions! I was sweating. They were probably so tough since I'm such a parochial, sheltered idiot.
Here's a couple from you. Perhaps you could condescend to descend from your ivory 'you are all stupid!' tower to humor me? 1, what will it take to persuade you the experts we've heard from so far actually are clear it's very unlikely it's Zimmerman's voice? 2, could you explain how racism is the motivating factor in the outrage in the Muslim world over defaced Korans and blasphemous cartoons? 3, in what way us a child who was viciously attacked but who survived with, thankfully, minor inuries as bad as a teenager who was gunned down by a self-appointed armed patrolman, if Martin didn't actually attack him? 4, are you aware that eyewitness testimony is less reliable than forensic testimony?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
*snort* So you're gonna stick to your racism is the motivator behind mobs angry at blasphemy, huh? Good grief.
Hey, yknow, I'm just SURE the sky is blue the grass is green, and clouds are white. I mean, I'm sure deep down. At this rate you'll tell me it's green, blue, and black.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
"1 What will it take to persuade you the experts we've heard from so far actually are clear it's very unlikely it's Zimmerman's voice?"
I'm now already convinced that they've stated they're clear on this. And that the article misquoted them.
"2. could you explain how racism is the motivating factor in the outrage in the Muslim world over defaced Korans and blasphemous cartoons?"
I was generalizing from "systemic racism" to "systemic oppression". And it's quite clear how ideas of being oppressed by Westerners or Jews play at creating enraged mobs in the Arab world. Whether you call anti-Semetism "racism" or not, is a mere linguistic triviality.
"3. In what way is a child who was viciously attacked but who survived with, thankfully, minor inuries as bad as a teenager who was gunned down by a self-appointed armed patrolman, if Martin didn't actually attack him?"
From a moral perspective, shooting an innocent 17-year old because you're a trigger-happy asshole who thinks *everyone* is dangerous, is less bad than sadistically trying to burn alive a 13-year old.
The former would be criminal irresponsibility -- and Zimmerman would be guilty of homicide or manslaughter or whatever you call it, but it would still not be sadistic evil of the sort you see in the latter case.
"4. are you aware that eyewitness testimony is less reliable than forensic testimony?"
That again depends on the quality and quantity of the eyewitness testimony, vs the quality and quantity of the forensic testimony.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Stone_Wolf, it would still mean that Owen was either misquoted or a buffoon. Look, there's no two ways about it. If the 48% represents a criteria match, and NOT a probability it was Zimmerman, then they misquoted him.
Aris, there obviously is more than one way about it, as I've explained here.
Yes, this can be a somewhat confusing topic. It's also one that I and the forensic experts are trained in and it seems pretty clear that you are not. Could you do me a solid and consider that in this area that you know little about, things that seem to you to be obvious and thus easy to dismiss might actually be more complicated and are actually valid?
I'm not saying this to be derogatory, but rather to illustrate the sort of mistake I think you are making - this conversation reminds me of trying to explain evolution to someone who insists that it can't happen because monkeys aren't out there today turning into humans.
Look, I think I've established I know what I'm talking about here and I'm telling you, what was quoted in the article makes perfect sense. The contradiction that you are seeing is because you don't understand the differing contexts inherent in those statements.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote: Look, I think I've established I know what I'm talking about here and I'm telling you, what was quoted in the article makes perfect sense.
The direct quote from Owen does, but when the article says that "there was only a 48% chance that it was Zimmerman crying for help," that has to be a mistake. 'Chance' is synonymous with 'probability,' and probabilities do need to sum to one, whereas (as you've pointed out) the 48% number doesn't need to meet that criterion.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
What Destineer said.
Aris is likely right that the article misrepresents what Owen said. It's not that surprising, journalists aren't typically experts at anything, and routinely confuse details when trying to explain specialist data to laymen.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Dan, it seems you're allowing for an obligation or duty to avoid killing if possible, even in self-defense.
Do you agree that such an obligation also implies a moral duty to try to escape a fistfight, rather than "stand your ground," if that's clearly possible? (Assume the fight doesn't take place on your property, or anything like that.)
That's a great question!
First of all, I want to stress that I think the "anything like that" in your parenthesis should cover a lot more than just the fight taking place on your property. I don't think you should allow an immoral assailant to keep you from doing whatever it is you want to do, whether they're attacking you in a park or your front yard or a bar.
In the same way, I strenuously object to the typical police advice re: robberies. If you'd rather capitulate to the robber because you don't feel confident you can defend yourself, that's fine (heck, I probably would!) but you have zero moral obligation to do so in my opinion.
So, essentially, if you have to give something up in order to escape the fight, and you don't want to, then I think you're morally justified in "standing your ground."
But what if you don't? What if you're, say, walking down the street to a target destination? If you can escape and continue on your way, are you morally required to do so?
Hmm. There are still unmentioned factors to consider, I think. How confident are you that you can reliably and completely escape? If it's a situation short of you having a vehicle and them being on foot, it seems like trying to escape could put you in a more vulnerable situation. Probably not worth it, in those cases.
I don't think you're ever obligated to put yourself in more danger to protect your assailant.
The only other factor that immediately springs to mind is the fact that if you escape, it leaves a hostile, dangerous bastard still at large to terrorize someone else. At that point I don't think you're required to try and stop him or anything, but I'm a little reluctant to say that you're required to flee and let him hurt someone else.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
Does any of this change if the assailant is a child (or an adult with the mind of a child, or someone with otherwise impaired faculties)? If a severely retarded guy starts beating on you for some confused reason, and you can get away from him but would rather continue on your way to your favorite bar, is it OK to just blow him away?
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
But if you do get away, who's to say the next person that this mentally impaired person tries to attack won't die from it?
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
I'm honestly not sure what the best solution would be in that situation, Destineer. There's a few ideas there I think I need to consider.
One, it occurs to me that if you shoot your assailant, whatever plans they were interrupting are shot too. You can't enjoy the park or bar or whatever, because now you've killed someone, need to make a statement to the police, and probably need to spend some time wondering if you made the right choice.
So, there's that. If your top priority is continuing on with your life with minimal interruption, escape is actually going to be a better way to achieve that most of the time.
Or perhaps some sort of nonviolent neutralization. Stone Wolf likes pepper spray, but it's got some pretty big problems. When we have phasers we can set to stun this issue will be substantially easier! I don't have any specific affinity for lethal force, it's just that our nonlethal options today are dramatically sub-par compared to firearms.
Anyway, some of this applies to mentally handicapped people, too. I'm going to set aside milder forms of "impairment" that are largely explained by the impaired person having bad ideas (angry, tired, impulse control, etc.), because I think that my views on a pretty significant subset of supposed impairments is controversial, and not really something I want to get into right now. So for now, only focusing on severe impairments, as you indicated.
Okay, so, severely mentally handicapped person begins attacking me for some unexplained reason. I can foresee a couple issues now. Do I know he's handicapped? He's just some crazed angry assailant at this point. If I can't tell he's handicapped, I don't think anything changes.
You know, I'm going to backpedal a bit here, because I've just unpacked some implicit ideas I have about this, that go beyond mental handicaps.
If I have reason to believe that the assailant is attacking me for easily solved, confused, or misunderstood issues, I think my responsibility to avoid lethal force as much as possible goes up dramatically. If he's shouting that I killed his mom, and I did no such thing and in fact have never met him before, I should make a significant effort to delay lethal force and try to get that data across to him.
Ultimately, he's still the aggressor, so I shouldn't put my life in serious jeopardy to do so, but I think it would be reasonable to accept a lot more risk in that scenario than in one where the guy is shouting that he's going to kill me because I'm a filthy Jew.
I think some handicapped assailants would likely fall into this category, and not others. "Mentally impaired" is such a catchall that it's sort of going to end up being a judgment call based on the behavior of the assailant.
I think most child assailants would obviously fall into this category though. (Maybe not indoctrinated African child soldiers, I don't know.)
Whew, that was interesting! I hope that sort of answers your question.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
Yeah, I see the differences you're drawing between the cases. I'm just having a hard time thinking of an ethical principle that would support this approach to self-defense. Clearly you don't think the most important thing in a situation is to act in such a way as to bring about the most beneficial overall outcome for all people involved, or else you'd support a duty to retreat under more kinds of circumstance. But you also grant that there is a responsibility, at least under some conditions, to avoid harming your attacker--even though the attacker has violated your rights.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I'll take a stab at it:
It is morally preferable to avoid causing any permanent harm to your attacker when defending yourself as long as it is not at the expense of receiving any permanent harm.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
[ April 04, 2012, 02:44 AM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Yup. That was always a possibility. Corroborates a small portion of his story. I still see no reason why anyone should think him very trustworthy, though. He had a history of terrible judgment and has the best possible reasons to be less than truthful here if necessary.
Here's an idea related to the topic at hand: mandatory drug screens for BOTH parties, alive or dead, whenever a firearm is used to kill or maim someone, period. We permit that kind of thing with automobiles already-anytime you come to the police's attention in your car, you can expect to be required to blow or walk if they want. So we're already comfortable as a society with this sort of thing
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
I've generally been trying to stay out of the actual topic at hand, but I'm curious Rakeesh: What history of terrible judgment are you referring to?
I'd heard it reported that he'd called the police 40something times in the last year, but then I read that was later determined to be incorrect (it was actually 40something times in the last 10 years or so, which, if he was regularly involved in neighborhood watchy sorts of activities, doesn't seem outrageous to me).
Was there some other example I missed? (I admit I haven't been following the details too closely.)
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
This is actually enough for me to demonstrate awful judgment, Dan. There's also the carrying a concealed weapon for neighborhood watch because you fear break-ins (hell, a frequent horn and shouting would be enough if he actually SAW one), and his rejection of 911's remarks that be doesn't need to follow. Just a quick gander a page or two down, would someone calling 911 over an open garage door be someone who's judgment as to what was an emergency you'd trust?
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
That's fair. Thanks for letting me know! Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: edit: I've been trying not to do that.
Look, what he said made sense to me. I think if you look into what was said and learn a bit about vocal matching, you'll see that it does actual make sense as quoted.
You're trying to compare statements about chance from very different contexts. I can get that if you don't understand that these are different contexts, the statements can look contradictory, but I can assure you that they are not.
I'm just popping in to say I concur with MrSquicky. There are a lot of things about statistical testing that are far from intuitively obvious and this one of them.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
Y'all are obviously just racist against Latinos.
(obvioustroll.jpg)
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
I miss your posts, Pix. Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Yeah, I see the differences you're drawing between the cases. I'm just having a hard time thinking of an ethical principle that would support this approach to self-defense. Clearly you don't think the most important thing in a situation is to act in such a way as to bring about the most beneficial overall outcome for all people involved, or else you'd support a duty to retreat under more kinds of circumstance. But you also grant that there is a responsibility, at least under some conditions, to avoid harming your attacker--even though the attacker has violated your rights.
First, I'll comment on your overall post:
I think SW did a passably decent job of trying to distill it, though I'm not sure the best overall moral approach to self defense really needs to be distilled to a single principle like that. I probably gave the wrong impression earlier, because I was specifically trying to identify a consistent general principle for whether or not self-defense was justifiable as a counter-argument to what I perceived as very inconsistent judgments.
Put another way, and as I've said before, what I was mainly doing was objecting to the idea that the moral burden is put on the person being attacked simply because they attempt to defend themselves with a lethal weapon.
Now, I want to comment on the bolded part:
I do put a higher weight towards desiring a beneficial outcome for the innocent party whose rights are being violated, no question. More than that, though, I think that I put substantially higher value to parties with moral/rational wants.
So, for the victim, I think getting them precisely what they want (which should be along the lines of "Not getting hurt or killed or chased or raped or robbed") is extremely desirable, unless they themselves have an irrational/immoral want (like "Killing this uppity black kid").
If it seems the best way for them to get what they want (the good wants, mind you) is for them to shoot their attacker, I think that's what they should do. I don't think they generally have a moral obligation to protect their aggressor.
On the side of the aggressor, in most situations they will have de facto immoral/irrational wants (to rape this person, to take this person's wallet, to beat this guy up because he called me gay, etc.) They'll presumably have implicit wants too, like "not experiencing any negative feedback for my behavior."
In general, I don't see any value in creating an "overall beneficial outcome" if that is defined as both parties getting as much that they want as possible. Some desires are rational and moral, some aren't, and that lends itself to a pretty direct hierarchy to my mind.
It's true that the aggressor also has the implicit want of "Not dying." And that one is rational! That's why, all else being equal, nonlethal neutralization seems better to me. If they live, it might be possible to help them change all their irrational desires to rational ones, and then everybody wins. But I don't think that servicing this one basically rational inexplicit desire of the aggressor is worth jeopardizing the many rational desires of the victimized party.
Now, a place where all this starts breaking down is when both parties are acting more rationally based on incomplete or incorrect information. A man who shoots his wife, believing her to be an intruder, is a great example of the type of scenario I am thinking of.
An understanding of fallibility and the possibility of incomplete information should always inform our decisions, so if there is considerable uncertainty (again, e.g. the man attacking you is shouting about how you killed his mother) then identifying more facts in the situation prior to taking action is the best solution, assuming that's possible.
It won't always be possible, of course. If the guy who mistakenly thinks you killed his mother is about to shoot you, you may need to shoot him first, and you're still in the right because he was the aggressor, but it's more tragic, because it's a result of an irrational idea that would have probably been a lot easier to refute.
That is, it's likely easier to convince him that you didn't murder his mom than it would be to convince someone not to rape you, since the bad ideas the rapist is likely suffering from are much more deeply entrenched.
As a brief aside, I think these explanations also account for why I don't think killing a kid who hits you is reasonable. The kid most likely has lots of rational wants (to stay up later, or play a video game, or get some candy) that are already being stymied, and the irrational idea that hitting you will facilitate him getting what he wants is just the tip of the iceberg. You can easily get your one desire (not getting punched by a 5 year old) fulfilled without impairing his ability to get any of his rational desires, simply by holding him at bay.
So... there's my attempt to explain it for you, Destineer. Enjoy! Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
The outrage is not because a white guy shot a black guy, or even because a Hispanic guy shot a black kid. Yes, both are terrible, but if Zimmerman had been arrested that night it would not have made the national news. It likely wouldn't have been reported outside the area.
What sparked the outrage was that Zimmerman was not charged. Or drug-tested. Or tested for alcohol. Or disarmed. Or interviewed by a homicide detective on the scene. What sparked the outrage was the sense that he could shoot a black kid and the Sanford cops didn't care.
(Edited to add: I know the lead investigator wanted to arrest Zimmerman that night but the State Attorney's office told him there wasn't a case, I'm talking about the perception, and the Sanford PD already had a rep for bias.)
That's why the other cases people keep bringing up, horrific as they are, don't engender the same level of outrage, because so far in every case the people who committed the crimes were caught, arrested, tried and sentenced. As it happens I do think the systematic torture of one person is worse, relatively speaking, than the unfortunate, stupid and possibly accidental killing of another. But the people who did it faced justice.
The people marching for justice for Martin are also marching because they're tired of spending their lives assumed to be guilty.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
That was very well put, Chris.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Oh, man, the list of things people are tired of. Well that presumption of guilt is a big one, of course, possibly the biggest.
Probably followed closely by 'Well...' when someone presumes guilt and then is called on it, there will invariably be shades of 'hey, I understand what he means' which is likely quite tiresome too. And then there's the invariable 'it's a race thing!' being proclaimed in the very rare instances when someone shooting a young black man actually achieves national prominence-as though the distinctly noisy silence when so many OTHER young black men are killed wasn't also a race thing.
Or that when people call for the guy to be punished severely, there will be complaints that it's a race thing, and yet quite a lot of apathy when blacks are more likely to be incarcerated longer, represented less effectively, and treated less humanely by the police than a white person on the same offense. It's just the way things are for the latter, just a sad aspect of our society that will, someday, change we hope. But when it's the former, then it's a race thing.'
I would probably say that at heart, what most people are tired of is the veiled, and sometimes not veiled at all, assumption that the 'race problem' in this country has been licked. It's not really a thing anymore, and can we stop having to hear Al Sharpton because he's just SO obnoxious! ...without examining the fact that, hey, while he is obnoxious he didn't spring up out of nowhere, either.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I'd bet money that had the young man out at night been white in a hoody instead of black that it would have gone down the same way. Not saying that racism is non existent, just saying Zimmerman's vigilanteisum seems to have been the problem not the victim's skin tone.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
That's money you might very well lose. Expressed racism is less often the cause of, shall we say "race related" violence or confrontations than passive, subconscious motivations based on racial perception. For instance, scientific studies of various methodologies, some of which I have cited here in the past, show that most people (and this is regardless of their race), make subconscious connections between the color of a person's skin, and the nature of that person. A black face primes the average person with a larger number of negative associations than a white face, so that when you see a black face, yes, even you, you subconsciously connect it to images common to our shared culture: gang violence, petty criminality, joblessness, drug use, lack of education, and every other image you have been exposed to on TV.
The associations are fairly strong, and effect us in ways we are not aware of. The average person, black or white, has more difficulty in laboratory conditions, making an association between a "good" button, and a black face, than a "good" button and a white face. We also find it easier to associate "bad," and other related terms, with black faces. However, we are also able to train ourselves to resists these negative associations. Studies have also shown that practicing positive associations with blacks, such as by studying famous black people, artists, historical figures, athletes or politicians, we can neutralize our bias in laboratory conditions.
The connection between these subconscious biases and our actions is complex, and difficult to parse, particularly in an individual case. The question has to be asked over and over again: would Zimmerman have been suspicious of a white person in the first place? If so, would he have followed a white person? Would he have felt justified in approaching a white person? Would he have felt endangered to the same degree by that white person? Would he have been willing to shoot a white person in the same situation? And on Martin's side, another set of biases: would he have been truculent (if he was truculent) to a black man? Would he have attacked (if he attacked) a black man? Would he have run from one? Would he have run were he a white boy instead of a black one? That question alone is significant: when is it acceptable, culturally, for a black youth to run away from someone, as opposed to a white youth? Or does our culture accept the concept of black youths running away from danger, and denigrate it among white youths? Are these images racially specific in films and television? Are they the same values, and if not, how different are they? You don't know any of these things, but they could have profound effects on the outcome of any particular encounter.
My point here is only to say that, really, race has a huge effect on how most people see most other people, most of the time. And though enlightened people do not engage in active stereotyping and do not express racist attitudes, and do not believe, intellectually, that other races are inferior or bad, or dangerous, the truth is that racial tension, simply as a product of our subconscious minds, is very prevalent. And its effects are very difficult to gauge.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:I'd bet money that had the young man out at night been white in a hoody instead of black that it would have gone down the same way.
I'd take that bet.
Posted by Dobbie (Member # 3881) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: My point here is only to say that, really, race has a huge effect on how most people see most other people, most of the time.
That depends on the race. Members of some races, like African and Asian, tend to see people primarily in terms of race. Members of my race, on the other hand, don't even really notice race; we judge people solely as individuals.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Yes it does depend on the race.
But, you're quite wrong in thinking that members of certain races are not subject to the same effects. Experiments show that they are.
It is not likely, whatever your race is, that you "do not notice," race. And if you are culturally an American, then your own race has rather less to do with it than one can comfortably imagine.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: I'd bet money that had the young man out at night been white in a hoody instead of black that it would have gone down the same way. Not saying that racism is non existent, just saying Zimmerman's vigilanteisum seems to have been the problem not the victim's skin tone.
You might be right. Zimmerman might have called in and followed a white kid. But I do think that race likely complicated their responses to each other and to the situation.
quote:Taaffe continues, “All of the perpetrators of the burglaries, the prior burglaries, were young black males.”
When O’Brien presses on how this comment relates to Trayvon Martin, Taaffe responds, “There's an old saying if you plant corn, you get corn.”
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dobbie:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: My point here is only to say that, really, race has a huge effect on how most people see most other people, most of the time.
That depends on the race. Members of some races, like African and Asian, tend to see people primarily in terms of race. Members of my race, on the other hand, don't even really notice race; we judge people solely as individuals.
Please tread lightly Dobbie. Generalizations about race is an extremely risky topic.
Posted by Dobbie (Member # 3881) on :
I guess so is irony.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: And though enlightened people do not engage in active stereotyping and do not express racist attitudes, and do not believe, intellectually, that other races are inferior or bad, or dangerous, the truth is that racial tension, simply as a product of our subconscious minds, is very prevalent. And its effects are very difficult to gauge.
That sounds fair. It is possible that "race" played a part, or was even big part. However I can say this with certenty: It is a problem when someone with violence in their history gets a carry permit and then takes their gun out to patrol the streets.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
That was clearly too subtle even for me. My response was more "???"
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: And though enlightened people do not engage in active stereotyping and do not express racist attitudes, and do not believe, intellectually, that other races are inferior or bad, or dangerous, the truth is that racial tension, simply as a product of our subconscious minds, is very prevalent. And its effects are very difficult to gauge.
That sounds fair. It is possible that "race" played a part, or was even big part. However I can say this with certenty: It is a problem when someone with violence in their history gets a carry permit and then takes their gun out to patrol the streets.
Clearly, you can't break down the racial component to a binary value in this situation. You can ask a series of binary questions to probe the value of considering race as a component, and that yields only interesting questions. As to the overall, "did race play a role in the outcome of this situation," I think we can safely answer that it probably did. Certainly, as we delve into the police response, the DA response, the media response, and the public reactions to all of these ensuing events, we can say with certainty that race plays a strong role in how these events are later perceived. However, identifying the fact that race plays a strong post-hoc role in the public digestion of such an event, does not obviate the question of whether race played a role in the event itself.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dobbie: I guess so is irony.
Yes, irony is a good deal more difficult to detect online than in person.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
Just didn't want this post to get lost-- it refutes and clarifies a couple things stated on this thread. (For example, Zimmerman's gun was confiscated)
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
Just didn't want this post to get lost-- it refutes and clarifies a couple things stated on this thread. (For example, Zimmerman's gun was confiscated)
That's a very insightful link and brings forward important elements which have either been overlooked or intentionally ignored by many news outlets and various talking heads.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:I'd bet money that had the young man out at night been white in a hoody instead of black that it would have gone down the same way.
I'd take that bet.
easy money
Posted by BBegley (Member # 12638) on :
Bottom line to me, either Zimmerman is guilty of a crime or the law needs to be changed.
I get that the race issue is important to a lot of people. For some it means the difference between whether the event occurs at all, or whether Zimmerman is arrested and charged. For others, they think the media has blown it out of proportion and it wouldn't be a story without the race angle.
While I'm in the first camp, race is not the big issue here to me.
If the following happened to one of my kids: 1) They're walking down the street and notice someone following them in a car. 2) They run away and the guy gets out of the car and runs after them.
I think they would be perfectly within their rights to hide and, if they thought it was a good idea, attack their follower.
In fact, although Martin was too young to be legally carrying a gun, I would not blink at a self-defense plea if he had shot Zimmerman for following and chasing him.
Zimmerman, on the other hand, is the real instigator here. He created the situation. The idea of chasing and cornering someone and then killing them in self defense when they fight back is ridiculous.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote: So, for the victim, I think getting them precisely what they want (which should be along the lines of "Not getting hurt or killed or chased or raped or robbed") is extremely desirable, unless they themselves have an irrational/immoral want (like "Killing this uppity black kid").
If it seems the best way for them to get what they want (the good wants, mind you) is for them to shoot their attacker, I think that's what they should do. I don't think they generally have a moral obligation to protect their aggressor.
On the side of the aggressor, in most situations they will have de facto immoral/irrational wants (to rape this person, to take this person's wallet, to beat this guy up because he called me gay, etc.) They'll presumably have implicit wants too, like "not experiencing any negative feedback for my behavior."
In general, I don't see any value in creating an "overall beneficial outcome" if that is defined as both parties getting as much that they want as possible. Some desires are rational and moral, some aren't, and that lends itself to a pretty direct hierarchy to my mind.
This framework for thinking about things seems kind of weird to me, Dan. If what creates the asymmetry between the defender and aggressor is the superior morality/rationality of the defender's goals, does that mean the defender loses his right to self-defense if the goals the attacker is frustrating are irrational or immoral?
What if the defender is going somewhere for the purpose of cheating on his faithful wife? What if he's going to a Scientologist get-together to bequeath his fortune to the Church?
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Not exactly.
I think that the defender's implicit desire to not be coerced by others is extremely rational, even if his explicit desire of giving his money to Scientology is foolish.
And, conversely, even if they have good intentions, someone who wants to coerce someone into being more rational is, themselves, being very irrational.
This is probably where I get borderline libertarian and kind of Non-Aggression-Principle-y on you, but there it is. Because I'm a fallibilist, I don't think you can justify forcing someone else to do something for their own good. Because you could be mistaken, and they could be right, and they should be the final arbiter of what they do with their life.
You should only use force when someone is impeding your ability to do things for your own good (i.e. taking your money and giving it to Scientology).
That being said, however, I'm not a real Libertarian, and this also gets to why. I think you're actually sort of on the right track in a way, I just think the immoral behavior of the defender would need to itself involve coercive force of the type I explained above.
This is why I am not inherently opposed to preemptive action (which would get my Libertarian card revoked in a heartbeat). If you are reasonably convinced that someone is going to use force against you, then taking steps to prevent that is rational. So if, instead of going to donate his money to Scientology, he is going to pick up a gun with which to murder you, it might be moral to take action.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by BBegley: The idea of chasing and cornering someone and then killing them in self defense when they fight back is ridiculous.
I don't recall any reports saying Martin was cornered.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
I agree with you that pre-emption can be warranted (which is why I find the moral message of Minority Report so bizarre).
To sound you out further, how do you feel about the kind of case where someone is carrying a really bad communicable disease? Is force potentially justified there, even when the person hasn't committed any aggression and has no plans to do so?
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
My immediate reaction is "Yeah, probably, use the minimum amount of force necessary to contain the person." Hopefully none, since a reasonable person wouldn't want to spread their disease!
It's not something I've given a great deal of thought to offhand, though, so as I reflect I may change my mind (or at least clarify it).
(As an aside, I find the epistemological message of Minority Report bizarre and wrong. It fundamentally relies on determinism. But that's sort of a problem with most things that play with knowing the future/being unable to change the future.)
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti:
quote:Originally posted by BBegley: The idea of chasing and cornering someone and then killing them in self defense when they fight back is ridiculous.
I don't recall any reports saying Martin was cornered.
He wasn't. Zimmerman went back to his car, and Martin followed him back and confronted him. No one is even bother to argue that, even with all the other blatant lies and prejudices going on.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: I agree with you that pre-emption can be warranted (which is why I find the moral message of Minority Report so bizarre).
:spoilers:
It was, in Dick style, somewhat ambiguous. But I think the moral "message," if it could be so called, was that a person may have the power to change his destiny. That though Anderton searches through the whole film for a reason why his destiny is not, in fact, real, all it takes in the end is an act of will not to follow it through. Because even though Crowe dies in the end, he kills himself- an act that would not have triggered a yellow ball with Anderton's name on it.
They reach the moment of the killing, and Anderton doesn't do it, and so the intervention of any outside force on his destiny is, possibly, invalidated. The Dick twist is that since Anderton himself caught the yellow ball, and since that act led him to the scene of the murder, we can never rely be sure whether there is ever a force outside of the prime timeline that can effect his destiny, and yet he doesn't go through with the murder.
So really, I've always thought MR was more about the concept of destiny and choice, and the implications about human knowledge and destiny. If we know where we're going, does that effect us getting there? Dick might ask: if you know the face of God, is he still God?
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
As far as I can see the moral of Minority Report was basically "The future is unwritten, we have freewill to choose."
Posted by BBegley (Member # 12638) on :
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti:
quote: quote:Originally posted by BBegley: The idea of chasing and cornering someone and then killing them in self defense when they fight back is ridiculous.
I don't recall any reports saying Martin was cornered.
He wasn't. Zimmerman went back to his car, and Martin followed him back and confronted him. No one is even bother to argue that, even with all the other blatant lies and prejudices going on.
Are you sure the dead kid hasn't refuted that? Oh, that's right, he's dead.
No one has said that's what happened except Zimmerman. No one else witnessed the incident prior to the altercation. Zimmerman also said that he got his head banged on the pavement, but the witness I heard said they were on the grass.
If you don't recall any reports to the contrary, it's probably related to you getting all your news from Fox, Drudge and NRO.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Because I'm a fallibilist, I don't think you can justify forcing someone else to do something for their own good.
1. Can you take a schizophrenic into medical custody during a psychotic break?
2. Can you impose medication onto them based on the severity of their condition?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Which other 'blatant lies', the one on NBC, which honestly probably benefitted Zimmerman now that the dishonesty is outed? The bit about his gun confiscation?
Here's what I didn't then and don't now understand: *why* is Zimmerman afforded so much credibility, that is that his story is believed largely on its own merit? And I say that because for every piece of evidence we've seen that seems to exonerate him, there is at least one that calls his innocence into question. After that, we're left with the facts as known prior to that night, and to sum up broadly: a kid with no known history of violence, though perhaps that has changed since I checked the news on this guy, and a man with I think we would universally describe as awful judgment about emergencies and when and how police need to be involved?
What about those basic facts prior to the events is wrong, and what about them leads anyone-you, for example, Kwea-to think, "I'm gonna give this guy a shot re: honesty," if that is in fact what you're doing? Why did Zimmerman get out of his car, exactly? Why on Earth did Martin suddenly just blow past like half a dozen warning signs in his life that would indicate a propensity towards sudden, aggressive violence?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Here's what I didn't then and don't now understand: *why* is Zimmerman afforded so much credibility, that is that his story is believed largely on its own merit?
His story appeals to vigilante culture and people who see in him an avatar of the frustration they themselves have with lawless and minority elements. They trust in vigilantist narratives, so they automatically infer that this must be another attempt to impose a counter-narrative against Zimmerman for the purpose of further fomenting unwarranted outrage and pressure against Zimmerman and the vigilante/gun culture he represents.
Posted by BBegley (Member # 12638) on :
There is also the phone call with the girlfriend that phone records confirm was taking place while Zimmerman was pursuing Martin. For some reason the police did not follow up on that during the investigation.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Because I'm a fallibilist, I don't think you can justify forcing someone else to do something for their own good.
1. Can you take a schizophrenic into medical custody during a psychotic break?
2. Can you impose medication onto them based on the severity of their condition?
I'm going to try and answer your questions while simultaneously avoiding too much engagement in discussion of psychiatry with you, because I don't think I have the energy for the arguments that would ensue.
Let's see how well I do!
1: If you have compelling reasons to believe they'll harm other people, yeah, of course. Otherwise, no.
2: No.
Huh, I guess I managed it okay. Brevity saves the day!
Posted by Anthonie (Member # 884) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Because I'm a fallibilist, I don't think you can justify forcing someone else to do something for their own good. Because you could be mistaken, and they could be right, and they should be the final arbiter of what they do with their life.
You should only use force when someone is impeding your ability to do things for your own good
Dan_Frank, another clarifying hypothetical question:
1. Does that include if someone wants to end their own life? Say your adult brother walks out in front of a bus in heavy traffic intending suicide. You know him very well (as he is your brother after all). Do you stop him with force and push him out of the way? It appears to you (and us) he's being irrational. But wouldn't pushing him out of the way for his own good be outside your purview, as his jumping in front of the bus does not impede your ability to do things for your own good? Is there any point where we can justify force for what we believe is good for another person?
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Yeah, suicide is a tough one emotionally for me.
Philosophically, I'm inclined to say this: If I know someone who is suicidal I should do everything I can to convince them not to do it, and do anything I can to help them but I don't think that physically restraining them against their will or otherwise forcing them not to commit suicide is morally right.
Sometimes people are in sufficient physical or emotional pain that they don't know how to solve it and would rather die. I'm not them, and I don't know what they're going through. It would be unreasonable to act as though I know they are wrong and force them not to commit suicide, when I can't possibly know that.
As I have said before, I think that failure to persuade someone to do something is a terrible justification for forcing them to do it.
Now, that's what I think philosophically.
On the other hand, I've had loved ones who have been suicidal. Thankfully I've always been able to help them via persuasion as outlined above. But if I failed, and I found them in the middle of trying to kill themselves, I don't know that I have sufficient control of my emotions to keep myself from acting in the moment to try and save them.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: As far as I can see the moral of Minority Report was basically "The future is unwritten, we have freewill to choose."
:face palm:
Yeah, I guess.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: As far as I can see the moral of Minority Report was basically "The future is unwritten, we have freewill to choose."
As long as no one confuses the moral of the movie with the moral of the actual story, I'm fine with that.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Interesting distinction. Are we talking about the moral of the story, including the story in the movie, or the story by Dick? Because it wouldn't be the first time a movie forgot that the story it tells has a moral somewhat different from what the movie thinks it is.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Because I'm a fallibilist, I don't think you can justify forcing someone else to do something for their own good.
1. Can you take a schizophrenic into medical custody during a psychotic break?
2. Can you impose medication onto them based on the severity of their condition?
I'm going to try and answer your questions while simultaneously avoiding too much engagement in discussion of psychiatry with you, because I don't think I have the energy for the arguments that would ensue.
Let's see how well I do!
1: If you have compelling reasons to believe they'll harm other people, yeah, of course. Otherwise, no.
2: No.
Huh, I guess I managed it okay. Brevity saves the day!
I guess the equally brevity-inspired response is to just simply note "and this is an introduction into why the fallibilism position is impractical and won't end up anywhere."
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
Yeah, you'd have a lot of bipolar people who'd just die off, to say nothing of the schizophrenics, if we held scrupulously to those rules.
A good friend of mine from grad school would absolutely be dead, no question.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: (As an aside, I find the epistemological message of Minority Report bizarre and wrong. It fundamentally relies on determinism. But that's sort of a problem with most things that play with knowing the future/being unable to change the future.)
Determinism is still a thornier issue than you might think. Your buddy David Deutsch, for example, believes that even quantum physics is deterministic. It's just that we're constantly splitting into multiple copies of ourselves, which leads to the illusion that the outcome of the events where we split is due to chance.
Even denying that kind of view, though, if the human brain works basically like a neural network (as it's generally thought to), then in principle you could predict things pretty far in advance with a high degree of accuracy. Which is basically what the precogs do in Minority Report.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote: As far as I can see the moral of Minority Report was basically "The future is unwritten, we have freewill to choose."
As long as no one confuses the moral of the movie with the moral of the actual story, I'm fine with that.
I'm not following the distinction. Please elaborate.
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: I think that failure to persuade someone to do something is a terrible justification for forcing them to do it.
One of my father's best friends has announced his plan to take his life if he suffers another stroke and his quality of life goes down and he must reenter the hospital (with a plastic bag and a bottle of helium). He has given it a lot of thought and discussed it with his family.
In his case, I acknowledge that he is making a difficult choice, and doing it carefully and deliberately. And for him, I agree with your statement above.
Where the plot thickens is when people are not in their right mind, either with mental illness, under the influence of drugs or under extreme emotional pressure and make a snap decision.
What do you say about these cases? Can you convince someone who is out of their mind with reasonable arguments? Or is it morally imperative to step in and protect them until such time as they are regained their stability?
I am a Libertarian, but I tend to say that when it comes to life or death, if someone is temporarily not capable of making choices at the capacity they would normally that society should protect them from themselves.
That leads to an even harder question: Who decides if you are at a limited capacity?
Posted by Anthonie (Member # 884) on :
Along the lines of Stone Wolf, we can consider limited capacity using children again.
For example, say you observe a small child standing on the edge of the deep end of the swimming pool ready to jump. You have reason to believe the child cannot swim. Do you step in and stop the child? Does their limited capacity warrant force of action on your part? How is an adult of limited/diminished capacity different? Of course a difference in this situation is the apparent lack of suicidal intent on the part of the child, replaced with curiosity or lack of understanding.
But suicidal intent is not necessarily absent even in children. About a decade ago, my boss's young son (I believe he was 8) killed himself. He was suffering from a stomach condition that I understand is treatable, but painful. His son told his parents good night and that he loved them and then went to his room and shot himself. They were never certain exactly what their son was thinking, but based on statements and behavior before his death it was likely a combination of him being tired of constant pain and feeling guilty that he caused his parents so much trouble with his required care. I am nigh unto certain had his father been in his room he would have taken the gun and gone with his son to counseling.
Posted by Tuukka (Member # 12124) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Because I'm a fallibilist, I don't think you can justify forcing someone else to do something for their own good. Because you could be mistaken, and they could be right, and they should be the final arbiter of what they do with their life.
I'm sorry if I'm completely misunderstanding what you are trying to say, but...
I know several people who are living content and even happy lives now, and who would all be dead if they wouldn't have been forced to stay in a mental hospital.
I think you would find that people who are *forced* to not commit suicide tend to be very grateful that they were forced, once they are not in psychosis or in deep depression anymore. Of course, some people have very valid reasons to commit suicide, for example because of terminal illness, but it's quite a different thing.
Another criteria are people who are under the influence of alcohol or drugs. It's quite common for people to act stupid and get killed under the influence. Often their good friends - or even strangers - save their lives by "forcing" them to stay away from doing lethal things. You would find that just about all people who were forced are very grateful that they were forced. - I don't really have any actual statistics for this, but this seems like common sense? Most people prefer to stay alive, instead of getting dead in a drunken accident.
Then there are children. Children constantly try do very stupid and extremely dangerous things. Their parents consistently use force to save the lives of the kids, because much of the time kids are not listening to common sense. Every parent does this. Do you think the parents are wrong because they essentially save the lives of their children?
I'm just curious. It feels to me that your principles are very unpractical and not applicable to the real world.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: (As an aside, I find the epistemological message of Minority Report bizarre and wrong. It fundamentally relies on determinism. But that's sort of a problem with most things that play with knowing the future/being unable to change the future.)
Determinism is still a thornier issue than you might think. Your buddy David Deutsch, for example, believes that even quantum physics is deterministic. It's just that we're constantly splitting into multiple copies of ourselves, which leads to the illusion that the outcome of the events where we split is due to chance.
Heh, David and I aren't buddies. Not sure if you meant that sincerely or if it was a bit of a dig, but I thought I'd correct it for the record regardless.
Despite that, I can say with confidence that he'd disagree with your characterization of MWI as deterministic. Or at least, that his idea of MWI is deterministic. (For what it's worth I have no particular opinion of MWI itself, as I'm not even an armchair physicist.)
He argues, on epistemological grounds, in favor of free will (and consequently against determinism) in his books.
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Even denying that kind of view, though, if the human brain works basically like a neural network (as it's generally thought to), then in principle you could predict things pretty far in advance with a high degree of accuracy. Which is basically what the precogs do in Minority Report.
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't "neural network" and "brain" sort of synonymous? Not just that we think one works like the other... Maybe I don't know what a "neural network" is.
Anyway, I don't doubt that you could predict things in advance with relatively high accuracy. People often take the path of least resistance.
But that's completely different from saying that reality is deterministic (in which case it would be possible to predict behavior with 100% accuracy, which I don't think is true.)
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Because I'm a fallibilist, I don't think you can justify forcing someone else to do something for their own good.
1. Can you take a schizophrenic into medical custody during a psychotic break?
2. Can you impose medication onto them based on the severity of their condition?
I'm going to try and answer your questions while simultaneously avoiding too much engagement in discussion of psychiatry with you, because I don't think I have the energy for the arguments that would ensue.
Let's see how well I do!
1: If you have compelling reasons to believe they'll harm other people, yeah, of course. Otherwise, no.
2: No.
Huh, I guess I managed it okay. Brevity saves the day!
I guess the equally brevity-inspired response is to just simply note "and this is an introduction into why the fallibilism position is impractical and won't end up anywhere."
My opinion of psychiatry is only tentatively related to fallibilism. Also there have been a lot of fallibilists who I don't agree with, and really only one who I do, so lumping them all together isn't very practical.
Popperian fallibilism can be largely consistent with objectivism, for example, whereas many other fallibilists would see the two ideas as completely incompatible.
Anyway, it has more to do with the fact that I think a deep and fundamental failure to understand epistemology leads modern psychiatry into defining people with bad ideas as being "out of their mind" as SW put it.
To the extent that I think someone can really be "out of their mind" and incapable of thinking, I of course no longer see persuasion as the only viable option.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tuukka:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Because I'm a fallibilist, I don't think you can justify forcing someone else to do something for their own good. Because you could be mistaken, and they could be right, and they should be the final arbiter of what they do with their life.
I'm sorry if I'm completely misunderstanding what you are trying to say, but...
I know several people who are living content and even happy lives now, and who would all be dead if they wouldn't have been forced to stay in a mental hospital.
I think you would find that people who are *forced* to not commit suicide tend to be very grateful that they were forced, once they are not in psychosis or in deep depression anymore. Of course, some people have very valid reasons to commit suicide, for example because of terminal illness, but it's quite a different thing.
And some people continue to attempt suicide over and over again.
People commit suicide because they believe it's the best option based on their level of physical and/or emotional pain.
I disagree with them! I don't think any level of physical or emotional pain is cause for suicide, because of the immense potential value of being alive. The opportunity cost of suicide is just too high.
But people fail to understand opportunity costs consistently, in countless areas, and their lives suffer for it. I don't think that's cause to force them to rearrange their lives.
quote:Originally posted by Tuukka: Another criteria are people who are under the influence of alcohol or drugs. It's quite common for people to act stupid and get killed under the influence. Often their good friends - or even strangers - save their lives by "forcing" them to stay away from doing lethal things. You would find that just about all people who were forced are very grateful that they were forced. - I don't really have any actual statistics for this, but this seems like common sense? Most people prefer to stay alive, instead of getting dead in a drunken accident.
Then there are children. Children constantly try do very stupid and extremely dangerous things. Their parents consistently use force to save the lives of the kids, because much of the time kids are not listening to common sense. Every parent does this. Do you think the parents are wrong because they essentially save the lives of their children?
I'm just curious. It feels to me that your principles are very unpractical and not applicable to the real world.
I think that most people have wrong ideas about being drunk, and wildly wrong ideas about how to interact with children. But these are more areas I think I'll refrain from elaborating on any further for the moment.
You're certainly free to not adopt my worldview if you don't find it persuasive, though. Posted by Tuukka (Member # 12124) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
People commit suicide because they believe it's the best option based on their level of physical and/or emotional pain.
I disagree with them! I don't think any level of physical or emotional pain is cause for suicide, because of the immense potential value of being alive. The opportunity cost of suicide is just too high.
But people fail to understand opportunity costs consistently, in countless areas, and their lives suffer for it. I don't think that's cause to force them to rearrange their lives.
I already referred to psychosis in my post. You know what psychosis is, right? A person in psychosis is not even capable of evaluating the things you so nicely try to evaluate in your post. He is *literally* incapable of it, because he has lost contact with reality.
Deep chronic depression is often characterized as having symptoms of psychosis - It's basically a milder form of full-blown psychosis.
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: I think that most people have wrong ideas about being drunk, and wildly wrong ideas about how to interact with children. But these are more areas I think I'll refrain from elaborating on any further for the moment.
If you refrain from answering on the most obvious criticisms of why your philosophy isn't applicable in the real world, it's hard to take that philosophy seriously.
You are of course free to believe in it. But - It's basically useless, if it can't be applied in the real world.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Despite that, I can say with confidence that he'd disagree with your characterization of MWI as deterministic. Or at least, that his idea of MWI is deterministic. (For what it's worth I have no particular opinion of MWI itself, as I'm not even an armchair physicist.)
He argues, on epistemological grounds, in favor of free will (and consequently against determinism) in his books.
Bizarre. It's possible he's using the word 'determinism' in a non-standard way. I suspect that's it. But regardless, it's true, just as a matter of math, that in the bare theory of quantum mechanics (which is all the MWI is) the state at one time uniquely determines the state at all future times.
quote:Forgive my ignorance, but isn't "neural network" and "brain" sort of synonymous? Not just that we think one works like the other... Maybe I don't know what a "neural network" is.
quote: I think that most people have wrong ideas about being drunk, and wildly wrong ideas about how to interact with children. But these are more areas I think I'll refrain from elaborating on any further for the moment.
But regardless of the details of how you think parents should treat kids, you can't possibly think it's wrong for a parent to (in effect) use force to prevent a largely pre-verbal two-year-old from doing something dangerous that he really wants to do.
Unless you disagree with that, Tuukka's point would seem to be well taken.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
I think you and Tuukka are forgetting the existence of implicit wants. Which is important when talking about infants, because their minds are mostly made up of purely implicit ideas.
Most infants strongly desire to not die, they simply do so implicitly. If they are unable to communicate, then yeah, fulfilling their implicit desire to not die by picking them up before they crawl off a cliff (even though it could be said you've stymied their slightly more explicit desire to explore the other side of the cliff) is a good idea.
I'm not sure it even really makes a great deal of sense to characterize picking up an infant in those circumstances as "force," since infants are unable to communicate and need you to use "force" on them even to get them things they explicitly want. Because they can't wipe their own butts, feed themselves, etc.
I don't think that most "impaired" people are comparable to pre-verbal infants. Do you?
Those that truly are, sure, I suppose treating them like what they are (a perpetual infant) seems fine to me.
quote:Originally posted by Tuukka: I already referred to psychosis in my post. You know what psychosis is, right? A person in psychosis is not even capable of evaluating the things you so nicely try to evaluate in your post. He is *literally* incapable of it, because he has lost contact with reality.
Deep chronic depression is often characterized as having symptoms of psychosis - It's basically a milder form of full-blown psychosis.
I disagree with your underlying assumption: that anyone who has been diagnosed by a psychiatrist as psychotic is literally incapable of evaluating things or making decisions about their life.
Where do we go from here, Tuukka? I think psychology fundamentally fails at epistemology, which means it fundamentally misunderstands how ideas are actually created by human minds, which means it fundamentally misinterprets most of the data it gathers.
I don't think you agree. What's more, I don't think this is the right vector of approach for this discussion. To properly discuss this with you, I think we'd need to back up and discuss things like epistemology first, to a level of precision I don't care to do on Hatrack.
If you're really interested, I and many other folk frequently discuss epistemology (and, yes, psychology as well) on several email lists, and I can point you to one of them if you like. But there's a reason I tend to choose specific topics to engage in on Hatrack, and there's a reason psychology isn't usually one of them.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote:Despite that, I can say with confidence that he'd disagree with your characterization of MWI as deterministic. Or at least, that his idea of MWI is deterministic. (For what it's worth I have no particular opinion of MWI itself, as I'm not even an armchair physicist.)
He argues, on epistemological grounds, in favor of free will (and consequently against determinism) in his books.
Bizarre. It's possible he's using the word 'determinism' in a non-standard way. I suspect that's it. But regardless, it's true, just as a matter of math, that in the bare theory of quantum mechanics (which is all the MWI is) the state at one time uniquely determines the state at all future times.
Yeah, for one thing, that sort of determinism doesn't seem to be contradicted by the notion of free will.
You obviously know more about the physics than I do. So,to use a layman's analogy, it seems like you're saying MWI is deterministic in the sense that whether or not I choose to buy apples today will determine whether or not I can eat an apple without leaving the house when I get up tomorrow.
Does that make sense, or did I get it wrong?
Yes, decisions have consequences, but we're still free to make more decisions along the way that create new consequences and change old ones.
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
Dismissing psychology by saying it fundamentally fails at epistemology requires a pretty solid case outlining why. I think its much more likely you are just eager to dismiss what we know about our biological minds when they create situations inconvenient to your unpractically naive worldview.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
That's an understandable hypothesis, especially in light of my lack of interest in discussing the issue. Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Yeah, for one thing, that sort of determinism doesn't seem to be contradicted by the notion of free will.
You obviously know more about the physics than I do. So,to use a layman's analogy, it seems like you're saying MWI is deterministic in the sense that whether or not I choose to buy apples today will determine whether or not I can eat an apple without leaving the house when I get up tomorrow.
Does that make sense, or did I get it wrong?
Well, as a compatibilist, I don't think any notion of determinism, by itself, is in tension with our having free will.
But I'm afraid you might have misunderstood. In bare quantum mechanics, given a complete description of how the physical universe is at 1:00, there is only one possible way for the universe to end up at 1:01, and at 1:02, and at every future time. It's no different in that respect from classical physics.
The appearance of indeterminism (which is probably all that Deutsch meant by indeterminism) arises because we (deterministically) split into multiple copies of ourselves at various points in time. When that happens, we become uncertain about which of the new copies we are. But of course there's no fact of the matter about which copy is really you. Each one is equally connected with the original person.
quote: I don't think that most "impaired" people are comparable to pre-verbal infants. Do you?
Well, let's look at the example of my bipolar friend from grad school. Like the infant, I don't think he had decided against his desire to live. He still wanted to. But for some reason he was drinking about a fifth of scotch every day.
The reason, partly, was that he was so manic (and drunk) that he couldn't even remember from one minute to the next how much he was drinking. Or anything else that was happening. Many times I had the exact same conversation with the guy twice in half an hour, without him even realizing. He was literally acting like Guy Pearce in Memento.
There were certainly some powers of reasoning he possessed even then that a baby lacks. But the ability to act in pursuit of his most important life goals--let alone figure out what the hell was happening to him most of the time--was quite beyond him.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by BBegley: quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti:
quote: quote:Originally posted by BBegley: The idea of chasing and cornering someone and then killing them in self defense when they fight back is ridiculous.
I don't recall any reports saying Martin was cornered.
He wasn't. Zimmerman went back to his car, and Martin followed him back and confronted him. No one is even bother to argue that, even with all the other blatant lies and prejudices going on.
Are you sure the dead kid hasn't refuted that? Oh, that's right, he's dead.
No one has said that's what happened except Zimmerman. No one else witnessed the incident prior to the altercation. Zimmerman also said that he got his head banged on the pavement, but the witness I heard said they were on the grass.
If you don't recall any reports to the contrary, it's probably related to you getting all your news from Fox, Drudge and NRO.
And if you would get off you high horse, and knew anything about me, you'd know how ignorant you sound accusing me of that. I am far more likely to get it from MSNBC and CNN, and anyone considering me to be a conservative would HAVE to be a pure Marxist, because I am hardly that.
I was pointing out the fact that as more and more events are uncovered, so far EVERYTHING Zimmerman has said has at least some basis in fact. He didn't call anyone a coon, didn't chase and corner Martin (because the altercation happened near his freaking car), he was assaulted and did have wounds to prove it. His 911 tape was edited specifically to make him sound racist, the video that everyone claimed showed no injuries actually DID show injuries, the medical report and the police report showed he had injuries, and he had grass stains on his freaking BACK.
Martin was not the 14 year old angel his parents claimed he was, and he was over 6 foot tall and weighed between 160 and 170. He was creeping around in the rain, with his hood pulled over his head, looking suspicious.
Did he deserve to die? No. Is Zimmerman an idiot? Probably. But we don't know what happened, which is why we need a freaking investigation, not a witch hunt.
How many people still remember the trench coat mafia at Columbine? And that the murders were all about bullying? Never mind that NONE OF THAT IS TRUE. It has all been refuted over and over again, by people who knew them, people at the school, family members and school officials. But all people remember is the dumb ass media coverage, and 15 years later... the majority of American's still have the wrong idea about what happened there, and why. I fear the same thing is happening here, and it will affect the investigation.
So take a step back, and listen to what I am actually saying, not what you assumed Fox News told me. They are actually not the same thing at all.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Really? Zimmerman was assaulted? I may have missed where that was proven. I also have missed where it was demonstrated that he stopped his car and got out (for some reason) far from Martin, who then approached, or something. I missed the part where his injuries, such as they are, demonstrate Martin attacked him and nothing else.
I especially missed how someone with their hoodie up in the rain (and seriously, Kwea, if it was raining, and he had a hoodie, *why wouldn't it be up?*) just...is suspicious. And I ESPECIALLY missed why on Earth anyone anywhere ought to trust Zimmerman's word on what looks suspicious. The man called 911 for potholes! How is his judgment worth a tin turd? I don't even have to go into the likelihood that several elements in his past point to a history of violence (wife's restraining order, charges dropped on resisting arrest), and please note I say 'likelihood'. I don't have to go there to utterly destroy Zimmerman's judgment as worthwhile because the 911 history is well documented and cannot be disputed.
Without saying anything further, let me add: 'creeping'? Did he decide he needed to load up on a beverage and skittles before, what, casing those houses in the rain? The fact that you would characterize what we know of what Martin was doing as Zimmerman began following him (as instructed not to) points to two possibilities I can think of: one, you regard Zimmerman's judgment of what is suspicious as trustworthy. I think that's a pretty unsustainable belief IMO, but perhaps there's something you could share that would persuade me. The other possibility is that Martin walking through that neighborhood in that weather and clothing was suspicious in itself, not needing Zimmerman's judgment to validate. That is a disturbing thing to have hinted at, Kwea.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Except it isn't....I would be suspicious of someone in a high crime neighborhood I didn't recognize, and who looked suspicious to me. I don't care what race he was. Also, don't forget Zimmerman had actually caught several burglaries in progress, and was fairly effective in the neighborhood watch capacity, at least at times.
I doubt he called the potholes suspicious when he called.
I am not one of his "supporters", but the fact that a number of spurious claims about Zimmerman have already been brought to light just proves my point. I never said he wasn't guilty, that he wasn't out of line. I never said he should have been wearing a gun, although I can understand it. But being on a neighborhood watch precludes wearing a gun, IIRC.
But if he had not been wearing one, he might (I say might) have been the one who was dead, and then what?
More than half the things said ABOUT him have been proven to be complete crap.
And you know....the dispatcher can tell someone not to follow, but there is NO legal requirement to listen, as long as he is not trespassing while doing so. He had every bit as much right to be on that street as Martin did.
To me, what this case comes down to is who assaulted who first. If the evidence suggests that Zimmerman returned to his car, then Martin approached him and grabbed for his gun, then he walks. If the evidence points to inconsistencies in his story, and that isn't what happened, then he needs to go to jail.
And if you can't prove BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT that he wasn't assaulted, then he walks. It's that simple. It doesn't matter if he is a douche (he probably is), or what you think of firearms (he had a licence), or even what you think about his 911 call record (which is a mixed bag at best).
All the rest of this is a dog and pony show, and kinda makes me sick.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Except it isn't....I would be suspicious of someone in a high crime neighborhood I didn't recognize, and who looked suspicious to me. I don't care what race he was. Also, don't forget Zimmerman had actually caught several burglaries in progress, and was fairly effective in the neighborhood watch capacity, at least at times.
Well yes, a paranoid person who overreacts and calls emergency lines on obvious non-emergencies is probably going to interrupt more burglaries than someone of, y'know, level headed rational judgment who isn't out looking for scary trouble in the form of burglaries, suspicious teenagers, potholes, and open garage doors.
So sure, effective 'at times' indeed. I do wonder, though, was there ever a delay in dispatch response to real, live, sane emergencies while dealing with one of his nutbag calls? When police became involved in one of his dozens of unnecessary calls, might their time have been better spent elsewhere? I really don't know, but it's certainly possible. Even likely. What I DO know, or am feeling pretty good about, is that if had this case ever happened and you knew I made a habit of calling 911 like that and patrolling my neighborhood armed and I asked, "Hey Kwea, you'd say my judgment is good, right?" you'd look at me cross eyed. And rightly so.
quote:I am not one of his "supporters", but the fact that a number of spurious claims about Zimmerman have already been brought to light just proves my point. I never said he wasn't guilty, that he wasn't out of line. I never said he should have been wearing a gun, although I can understand it. But being on a neighborhood watch precludes wearing a gun, IIRC.
Well you'll have to pardon people for reacting as though you were, because you've gone quite a bit further than just rejecting false claims, and held up his statements as valid on their own merits-a clear expression of support if there ever was one. You said Martin was 'looking suspicious', that he assaulted Zimmerman, and that he went to where Zimmerman was to do it. Now perhaps you aren't intending to support Zimmerman, but in fact you are, by your own words.
Another example: Martin as 'no angel'. I'm eager to hear where he's been linked to the sort of violence that would even hint at this.
quote:And you know....the dispatcher can tell someone not to follow, but there is NO legal requirement to listen, as long as he is not trespassing while doing so. He had every bit as much right to be on that street as Martin did.
My point wasn't to suggest he was bound to obey dispatch, but to call his judgment which as far as the actual event goes you support fully into question. There's a reason they tell you to do things like that, just like there's a reason this Stand Your Ground law was opposed by police organizations. It's because avoiding or fleeing a confrontation is usually far safer than pursuing one, and because most don't need to happen at all.
quote:And if you can't prove BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT that he wasn't assaulted, then he walks. It's that simple. It doesn't matter if he is a douche (he probably is), or what you think of firearms (he had a licence), or even what you think about his 911 call record (which is a mixed bag at best).
Sure. Who has said otherwise? But I'd love to hear why his 911 record is a 'mixed bag'. I remain totally baffled how anyone can simply gloss over that the way you are now. I was always taught that you call 911 for emergencies, and that to use if frivolously was irresponsible, dangerous, and stupid.
As for the rest being a dog and pony show, well. Nonsense. It raises important questions such as who should be allowed to carry a gun? When should they be allowed to use one? When is a black male teenager suspicious or not? As to that last question, well apparently it's when he's walking in the rain with his hoodie up (!!!!!!!!!!) and Zimmerman says he is. That's another point you sort of glossed over, Kwea. You actually suggested that walking in the rain with a hoodie up is suspicious. Well, holy hell, thank god us didn't have galoshes or something, he might have looked like a terrorist or something!
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: And if you can't prove BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT that he wasn't assaulted, then he walks.
I would really like to see what would happen if we could make onus in cases like this work like how you're describing it. Say, for instance, I walk into someone's house and shoot them dead, then tell the police that if they can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I wasn't invited in and assaulted, I walk ...
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: My opinion of psychiatry is only tentatively related to fallibilism. Also there have been a lot of fallibilists who I don't agree with, and really only one who I do, so lumping them all together isn't very practical.
Whatever we would care to label the subset of fallibilism you use and denoted as a fallibilist perspective, we still have an introduction into how your ideals are going to end up incompatible with the realities of the way people are.
quote:Anyway, it has more to do with the fact that I think a deep and fundamental failure to understand epistemology leads modern psychiatry into defining people with bad ideas as being "out of their mind" as SW put it.
You're going to decline to discuss epistemology. You're going to decline discussing your opinion on modern psychiatry. You're going to decline providing any substance whatsoever to this rather specific conclusion you have about psychology and epistemology. The way in which you do so often leaves what surface-level pronouncements you make so easily dismissable as to make one wonder why you assert them in the first place at all, since they are bound to fail to be persuasive. But if you want to provide anything at all to give any semblance of an indication about the substance of your views, I would choose to hear on what substantive basis and from what sources you have come to use to demonstrate that modern psychiatry 'defines people with bad ideas as being out of their mind.' Where does this come from. What trend is it following. What is an example of a bad idea that leads modern psychiatry/psychology into defining someone as out of their mind. What do you understand a "out of their mind" diagnosis to be.
Posted by Tuukka (Member # 12124) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: I think you and Tuukka are forgetting the existence of implicit wants. Which is important when talking about infants, because their minds are mostly made up of purely implicit ideas.
Most infants strongly desire to not die, they simply do so implicitly.
Most people strongly desire not to die, also on an implicit level. This is obvious, yes? It's how all living creatures in general are genetically hardwired - It's crucial for the survival of the species. So according to this logic, we should also help adults to not kill themselves.
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: If they are unable to communicate, then yeah, fulfilling their implicit desire to not die by picking them up before they crawl off a cliff (even though it could be said you've stymied their slightly more explicit desire to explore the other side of the cliff) is a good idea.
I'm not sure it even really makes a great deal of sense to characterize picking up an infant in those circumstances as "force," since infants are unable to communicate and need you to use "force" on them even to get them things they explicitly want. Because they can't wipe their own butts, feed themselves, etc.
Children are very able to communicate their needs from the moment they are born. Their needs are very simple at first, and become increasingly complex very fast. Parents, especially mothers, tend to be very good at reading this communication. We are genetically hardwired to do that - It's been very useful for the survival of the species.
Communication is not just words. If you assume that being able to speak the words is the criteria here, it would allow us to forcefully help mute people against their will, while non-mutes shouldn't be helped. Also it would allow us to forcefully help people who don't speak the same language as we speak, because they couldn't communicate with us properly.
Moreover, children learn to speak before they are 2 years old. They still do reckless, potentially lethal behavior for several years after that. 2-year olds are in constant danger of death and permanent injury if they are not forcefully guided by their parents.
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
I don't think that most "impaired" people are comparable to pre-verbal infants. Do you?[
Those that truly are, sure, I suppose treating them like what they are (a perpetual infant) seems fine to me.
Like I said, "pre-verbal" is a non-sensical argument, as a very big part of human communication is non-verbal. Also, there are many crazy people who are very verbal, yet can't use words to establish a proper communication with other people - People in psychosis are typically a good example of this.
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
I disagree with your underlying assumption: that anyone who has been diagnosed by a psychiatrist as psychotic is literally incapable of evaluating things or making decisions about their life.
Where do we go from here, Tuukka? I think psychology fundamentally fails at epistemology, which means it fundamentally misunderstands how ideas are actually created by human minds, which means it fundamentally misinterprets most of the data it gathers.
It seems to me that you still don't know what a psychosis is? You don't need to be diagnosed by a doctor to be psychotic. Being psychotic means that you have lost contact with reality. This loss of contact has happened regardless of whether someone has diagnosed you or not.
For example, some time ago I met a woman who genuinely believed that she was the daughter of Obama Barrack, and she had been kidnapped here to Finland as a baby. Then she had been raised by her kidnapper for 20 years. Nobody believed her story, and she thought all her "friends" and "family" were fakes in a conspiracy against her, wanting to kill her.
Of course, none of it was true. But she genuinely believed it was all true. She had also tried to kill herself due to the desperation and emotional pain of the situation. Thankfully she was forcefully saved by other people and was in a mental institution. She was diagnosed with psychosis - AFTER all those bad things had already happened (and were still going on).
I also met a man who thought he was a serial killer who had committed multiple rape-murders. He genuinely believed so, and wanted to kill himself so he couldn't hurt anyone anymore.
He had in fact never killed or raped anyone. He just thought so, because he was psychotic. I talked with him before he was diagnosed, and before he entered the mental hospital... The point is - He was psychotic BEFORE he even met a psychiatrist. Psychosis is a real state of being, not just some fancy word to describe people. Even he would have never met a doctor, and he would have not been diagnosed, he would still have been psychotic.
Thankfully psychosis is usually a temporary state. The man is in really good shape now. I've heard the woman is getting better.
This is all anecdotal evidence of course, but gives a good impression of how psychotic people in general are.
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
I don't think you agree. What's more, I don't think this is the right vector of approach for this discussion. To properly discuss this with you, I think we'd need to back up and discuss things like epistemology first, to a level of precision I don't care to do on Hatrack.
If you're really interested, I and many other folk frequently discuss epistemology (and, yes, psychology as well) on several email lists, and I can point you to one of them if you like. But there's a reason I tend to choose specific topics to engage in on Hatrack, and there's a reason psychology isn't usually one of them.
I don't think anyone in here has refused to talk epistemology with you. People are probably perfectly willing to discuss it.
The problem is that your arguments seem to have really big logical flaws, and they are not applicable to real world. I think it's fine to have ideological ideas that one admits are never gonna work in practice.
But you seem to imply that your philosophy could actually be used in the real world, when it cant be. It's just too illogical and filled with too many holes to be taken seriously.
[ April 08, 2012, 07:27 AM: Message edited by: Tuukka ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Well, a straightforward question seems to almost ask itself. Someone may have already. What is your basis for claiming not just that you are uncertain whether psychiatry 'gets it wrong' (to speak very generally, for time's sake)? I mean, what is the source for this knowledge of yours?
I don't claim you or anyone should just believe experts only because they're educated and trained in a given field, though frankly that IS generally a pretty darned good reason not to simply dismiss them outright. But you go quite a bit further than skepticism into outright claims that they're wrong, which necessarily means you believe you have better, more accurate ideas than they do.
Where do those ideas come from? Why did you decide then and continue to decide now to believe them? I don't say you claim others should believe them-which is frankly sensible, you seem to realize that's a non-starter-but if we're going to discuss these ideas, why do YOU believe them?
ETA: Just thought I'd check, Kwea, capax, have you read the timeline of events posted up at the top by Scott? It refutes several of the assertions being made here, especially those of eye witnesses and just when the encounter actually started: namely, with Zimmerman following Martin for the suspicious behavior of wearing a hoodie in the rain with 'something' in his hand, and Martin fleeing.
It also points another finger at Zimmerman's judgment that I'd forgotten about: he went armed to the *grocery store*. Lord knows how often I get hassled at the cash register and hafta light some fools up when they won't step off.
[ April 08, 2012, 01:52 PM: Message edited by: Rakeesh ]
Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: And if you can't prove BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT that he wasn't assaulted, then he walks.
I would really like to see what would happen if we could make onus in cases like this work like how you're describing it. Say, for instance, I walk into someone's house and shoot them dead, then tell the police that if they can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I wasn't invited in and assaulted, I walk ...
This is the root of my frustration with this case. It's difficult to presume Zimmerman innocent without presuming that Martin was guilty of something that warranted his death. I'm not sure his shooter should be granted the benefit of the doubt.
Whether or not Zimmerman shot Martin isn't in dispute. The police won't have any trouble proving that beyound reasonable doubt. I am definitely not a lawyer, so someone can correct me if I'm wrong - but isn't "self defense" an affirmative defense? Doesn't that place a certain burden of proof on Zimmerman?
[ April 08, 2012, 02:32 PM: Message edited by: James Tiberius Kirk ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
On the simplest level, we just note that there's an 'affirmative' investigation into it, as is the case for most claims of self defense. And what made me go ahead and make this thread and get people talking about it was, specifically, the incredibly suspect revelations about zimmerman and the police department. The resulting indications that the police were paperbagging this entire case are already compelling enough for two independent federal level investigations, not just of zimmerman, but of the entire department that seems to have covered for him. The story is already two levels beyond the issue of whether or not Trayvon is or is not an angel, or whatever.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Believe what you want, Rakeesh. Doesn't matter to me at all.
I want to hear what actual evidence the investigators can come up with, and what they think of his story. What the actual facts say, not what Al Sharpton has to say. If you think that makes me racist, or a Dittohead, so be it.
And about 1 in 9 people in FL have a concealed carry permit. You might be surprised at how many people go grocery shopping armed....and how few problems there are despite that.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I will, thanks. Your stoic disregard for unwanted opinions is noted. (That you nonetheless *mention* you don't care about, strangely, as though you were indirectly bragging or something)
What I believe is that you've thoroughly sidestepped some challenges to irate claims you've made. Such as your claim about what has been proven untrue about things casting Zimmerman in a bad light, your statement that Zimmerman was assaulted, your suggestion that we know who started the altercation, your statement that Martin was 'looking suspicious', suggesting the 911 record is a 'mixed bag'. Frankly you don't seem very interested in the facts if those sorts of questions get lumped into 'what Al Sharpton would say'.
That's just the recent stuff, though. You're probably right, though, I'm just calling yoh a racist dittohead, rather than making specific remarks in respouse to your posts.
As for weapons, I don't care how many people carry guns to the grocery store, and I'm a little baffled you seriously suggested that's some sort of claim on the good judgment of doing so. It's still stupid, unless you know of an ACTUAL THREAT at hand. But hey, yknow we should probably just trust the marksmanship and cool heads of anyone who can pass the RIGOROUS standards for a concealed permit, not to fire rounds through walls or car doors and/or bodies when they see black people 'looking suspicious'.
If you don't want this kind of bluntly skeptical, scornful response, Kwea, rethink labeling the act of being black, rained on, and wearing a hoodie as 'suspicious', or give a reason why Zimmerman's judgment is trustworthy. You've failed thoroughly to do so thus far, or even try really, since pivoting to Sharpton and witchhunts isn't actually a response.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
As for surprise, though: I wonder what you think the statistics are for accidental gun deaths in this country are, Kwea? That's without, by the way, throwing in the thousands that occur because a gun is to hand in, say, a nice ordinary domestic squabble. Versus how many people are saved by their own firearms, that wouldn't have been saved any other way.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
It never even matters WHAT the argument is about, does it?
For you, all that is needed is an argument.
I want to hear what the evidence says. I can understand why seeing someone you know walking about in your neighborhood, in the rain, in an area known for having recent break-ins could look suspicious. I hate the media bullshit and false statements (the original edit of his call, the so called experts saying he called Martin a coon, the video where everyone said "Look, no injuries!!! I told you!", just to start) that have caused this to expand to the point where I doubt the actual truth will ever be known.
I wasn't there, I don't KNEW what happened. The point is neither do you.
The only difference is that I won't speculate based on lies, 3 year old pictures of the victim, and the testimony of his girlfriend. I don't care what the press says, as they have already fueled the fire with completely false and fabricated statements.
I don't know Zimmerman, and I am probably glad I don't. But imagine if he was attacked, and acted in self defense. His life will never be the same. I know Martin's life is over, and regardless of how it happened it sucks, to say the least. There aren't any winners here.
Where did I say carrying a gun was good, or showed good judgement? YOU brought up the grocery store like it was something out of the ordinary, but the parking lots of stores are one of the easiest places to be robbed or carjacked. It is, however, a right...as long as you have a licence. I don't own a gun, although I can shoot well, have been trained well, and have every right to do so. If I do buuy one, I'll keep it at home., except when heading to the range.
But I got mugged in MD when I was in the service, and left for dead. I killed one of the 17-18 year old kids who did it, with my bare hands. Had I had a gun, maybe more of them would have died....but I wouldn't have needed a year of rehab, I wouldn't still have headaches and joint pain from where they kicked me to unconsciousness with steel toed boots. And I wouldn't have collapsed at the gate of my post and gone into cardiac arrest.
You know what my crime was??? I was walking home alone though a residential area park, wearing a hooded sweatshirt. No joke.
My NCOIC was Hispanic, and my First Sergeant was black.....and the first thing both of them said to me, at different times independently of each other was " They were Black, right?". The second thing each of them said was " Oh, then they were Hispanic?".
It was 3 middle class white kids who didn't like my Army sweatshirt, and figured I had money on me because most Soldiers usually carried cash.
Race MAY be an issue here. But it MIGHT, just MAYBE, be because someone followed someone they thought didn't belong, then the situation got out of hand. Not everything is about race, and it isn't always the white guy who is the racists. By focusing solely on race, which is what I fear may happen, we may never hear what actually happened.
So far all we know is that Zimmerman followed Martin, that he was armed, and that an altercation happened, and at the end Martin was dead. All the rest....the coon remark that wasn't, the videos that show wounds, the editing of comments to make it seem like race was a factor, all of that is beside the point, and only makes getting to the truth harder.
I know, for a fact, that there have been gross lies and misrepresentation of many things in this case, and all of it seems to have been done to make Zimmerman look like a racist guy who shot a kid in cold blood, probably in the back while standing over him, after calling him a coon.
None of which actually happened, as far as we can tell.
So go ahead, try to make it seem like I am racist. Like I think Martin should have died. That I think Martin deserved it. Whatever type of crap you want.
God knows you don't know me, and you don't seem interested in EVER arguing things in good faith with others.
It's a shame you aren't half as clever as you seem to think you are, Rakeesh. You could have this whole case solved without ever needing an actual trial. You probably already think you have.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Well now that you're changing several of the things we 'know' about what happened, strangely I have much less of a beef with your post.
As for the rest, well. Kwea, there are more than a few people here in a position to criticize me for my posting style here, and you even make a good point that many times the argument is enough for me. It's a fault of mine. But you? You're certainly not one of them. So next time you decide to get really angry at me for style, remember yours here where you didn't respond or just stopped mentioning or simply started changing points.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:If you don't want this kind of bluntly skeptical, scornful response, Kwea, rethink labeling the act of being black, rained on, and wearing a hoodie as 'suspicious', or give a reason why Zimmerman's judgment is trustworthy.
According to Zimmerman, Martin was hanging out beside houses, scanning the streets and yards. He even reported this to the 911 dispatcher, I believe.
There may be an element of race to this; there has been, in my understanding, an element of racism to the way that the Sanford police handle things. But there may not be; as near as I can tell, in terms of Zimmerman's actions, the evidence is inconclusive.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
There also may be an element of race involved in how Trayvon Martin responded to being followed.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I don't doubt Zimmerman believed Martin was suspicious. But he also thought potholes and open garage doors were emergencies. A schizophrenic thinks they hear voices when none are speaking, serious gambler may believe they're on a lucky streak, a baseball player may believe they need to wear the same socks to win, and plenty of people believe in horoscopes.
Was it right that Zimmerman regard Martin as suspicious? What's the difference, really, between 'scanning yards and houses' and 'looking around while talking on the phone'? I submit to a passerby, there IS very often no difference at all. One of the many reasons why dispatch said his following wasn't needed, why one of the first step in almost any sort of criminal activity is always 'notify police/flee' and NOT 'take matters into your own hands'.
It's entirely possible Zimmerman is one of the rare people of his generation (and this goes for any generation, it's true, though it certainly trends upwards as age increases) that can look at a black teen doing one thing and feel a level of suspicion and then feel the exact same level of suspicion of white or asian or latino teen doing the same activity. It's possible, but holy hell is it unlikely. And no, before Kwea puts some more words in my mouth, that is not a reason to convict him, obviously. Thankfully we're not in a court of law.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I didn't change crap. What I originally said is that at least some of the actual evidence that was eventually uncovered supported some of what Zimmerman said, that there was a physical altercation, he was wounded, and that he admitted following Martin but then turned back around and had the altercation near his car.
I also said he was a putz, and that his 911 log was a mixed bag AT BEST. I never said I believed all he said. I never said he should walk. I never said race wasn't a factor, just that he wasn't overtly racist as originally reported.
I'm sorry I responded to you the way I did last night though. I worked 19 hours last night, on about 5 hours sleep, and this had been a very stressful weekend for me due to family reasons (can't go into them here, but I may have just inherited a 13 year old niece) so I was tired and irritated, and I kinda lashed out at you.
Sorry about that.
Part of the disconnect may be my own posting style as well. I was posting links to things that were refuted, with no real context. I was doing it because that was what was specifically bothered me about all the uproar and media coverage, not because I thought any of it cleared Zimmerman. But a lot of people, in the media and around here where I live, near Sanford itself, had already convicted him based on false reports, minimal evidence, and edited phone calls, and I am getting tired of hearing it. I also stated he was assaulted, when what I meant to say was there was an altercation.....I don't know who assaulted who, but it is a fact that Zimmerman was injured, probably by Martin, and that means there is at least a possibility that Martin assaulted him and reached for his gun, as Zimmerman reported that night. Keep in mind, at one point a lot of people were reporting there was no physical altercation, and they pointed to a lack of wounds on Zimmerman as proof.....until the tapes were magnified, and they showed wounds, and the police looking at his wounds multiple times.
So I started posting links to evidence as it came up, and specifically all the things I found wrong with the case, because that was what was coming up at the time....a lot of the original "proof" that Zimmerman was guilty turned out to be manufactured, and not true.
It didn't mean he was innocent, but the actual proof left the door open for innocence, which is more that anyone was saying originally.
I know that if I saw a person between houses looking around at night, in the rain, I wouldn't have to be close to him to find it suspicious. I probably wouldn't even know his age, just that he was 6' tall, and I doubt I could tell his race from the corner.
Notice I said IF. I don't know if Zimmerman is telling the truth, but so far I haven't seen or heard a lot that says he isn't...so I assume he is telling at least the truth as he remembers it, until it's proven he lied.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Kwea,
I appreciate the apology and take it kindly. Thank you.
Now that said, you did change some things or at least initially say they were one way and then just...leave off mentioning them. Perhaps this was a result of posting after a long day-it's certainly happened to me.
Examples:
quote:He wasn't. Zimmerman went back to his car, and Martin followed him back and confronted him. No one is even bother to argue that, even with all the other blatant lies and prejudices going on. (This is not clear, it's not a given, it's in dispute.)
I was pointing out the fact that as more and more events are uncovered, so far EVERYTHING Zimmerman has said has at least some basis in fact. He didn't call anyone a coon, didn't chase and corner Martin (because the altercation happened near his freaking car), he was assaulted and did have wounds to prove it. His 911 tape was edited specifically to make him sound racist, the video that everyone claimed showed no injuries actually DID show injuries, the medical report and the police report showed he had injuries, and he had grass stains on his freaking BACK. (In fact, not everything Zimmerman has said has had 'at least some basis in fact'. Everything he has said COULD, so far, have happened, but that's as far as any of it goes. We don't know if he was assaulted, and the fact that the body wasn't near his car doesn't point definitively one way or another towards who chased whom.)
Martin was not the 14 year old angel his parents claimed he was, and he was over 6 foot tall and weighed between 160 and 170. He was creeping around in the rain, with his hood pulled over his head, looking suspicious. (This is, in fact, enormously subjective, that he was 'creeping around' and 'looking suspicious', and furthermore for all that he wasn't an angel, so far nobody has pointed to a history of violence on his part.)
Did he deserve to die? No. Is Zimmerman an idiot? Probably. But we don't know what happened, which is why we need a freaking investigation, not a witch hunt. (This contradicts several things you said above. You say we don't know what happened, and yet repeatedly you have made statements as though the truth is known. Perhaps you sounded more emphatic than you were, though, I can't say.)
More than half the things said ABOUT him have been proven to be complete crap. (How do you come by this figure, 'more than half'?)
Now I post these things not to bludgeon you with them, though I can understand how it might seem that way and I apologize for it, but to point out why I responded to you the way I did. You're sending some VERY mixed signals in your posts on this subject, and I was responding to that. I see for example that you revise what you said about 'assault', but it came up in several of those quotes now, and this window is tiny, so please don't take those the wrong ways.
quote:I know that if I saw a person between houses looking around at night, in the rain, I wouldn't have to be close to him to find it suspicious. I probably wouldn't even know his age, just that he was 6' tall, and I doubt I could tell his race from the corner.
Notice I said IF. [Big Grin] I don't know if Zimmerman is telling the truth, but so far I haven't seen or heard a lot that says he isn't...so I assume he is telling at least the truth as he remembers it, until it's proven he lied.
It would depend entirely on just how 'between' houses he was. Was he, for example, walking along a commonly used but not technically legal path alongside the backs of houses? For example, in my neighborhood here are deep drainage ditches running throughout the area, and many of the homes are built on the usual lots, with quite a bit of land behind where their property ends before the sharp dip into the deep (15-20', I'd say) ditch begins at roughly a...45* angle or so. Sometimes people have fences marking their property, but other times for aesthetic's sake they mow the grass all the way back. Now technically nobody is supposed to walk back there, but it can be quite a short cut too. I've done it, and many people I know have as well.
I don't mention this to say Martin was doing this, but to offer an example of how 'between houses' may in fact be very much in question as far as 'suspicious' goes. As for the rain...well, unless it had been raining for hours and hours, like say there was a hurricane or a troopical storm on, I wouldn't think it was remarkable at all to find someone walking in the rain. Sometimes people get, y'know, caught out of the weather. Seriously, dude, the WEATHER makes Martin more likely to be suspicious? Rain in Florida in February? Really? As for his race, well, Zimmerman surely could.
But all of it comes back to this, for me, and I think it's so relevant that I'll keep bringing it up: a lot of Zimmerman's story depends on his judgment. Was it reasonable for him to have regarded Martin as suspicious, or not? Given that his judgment is so key to things, it's necessary to examine it. I didn't then and don't now see how anyone can look at the decidedly NOT mixed bag of his 911 calls and trust in his judgment over what was a serious, important situation or not! And then after calling 911, one of the times he may actually have been supposed to, he...well, he doesn't have to listen to him. Martin is just SO suspicious all looking around and creeping and stuff.
I think that if you look back on this thread, you won't find much of anyone saying he's flat-out lying, but quite a lot of heavy skepticism that things were as he actually saw them that night. That's a very different thing.
He's not trustworthy as far as judgment is concerned, and what's the worst about this law is that it defaults not to 'we need to find out what happened here', but 'we need to find out what this person THINKS happened here, and the dead guy, well, he's dead, he doesn't get a slice of this action'. It's a crappy law. Zimmerman should not have been where he was, doing what he did. And Kwea, I'll match you the edited 911 call which was promptly noticed and withdrawn (though the apology on NBC's part left a lot to be desired) with a 'well of course he was suspicious' and 'empty pot bag means dangerous' and so on and so forth. To say nothing of 'that's my son's voice' and then, hey, NOT his son's voice. Throw in a region where y'know it's just sometimes really not good to be black and dealing with the law or courts, and hey, Zimmerman ain't getting such a bad friggin' rap. There's a reason he gets a bad rap, and it's not because people are just eager to seize on cries of racism and throw fuel on the fire. Man, if that were true, crime news would look SO different in this country.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: There also may be an element of race involved in how Trayvon Martin responded to being followed.
I don't know about that-- his reaction (to run) isn't necessarily racial so much as it is the reaction of a kid who thinks he's being pursued. (And completely justified, if not necessarily the smartest thing to do.)
Is that the reaction you were talking about, kmboots?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Scott R:
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: There also may be an element of race involved in how Trayvon Martin responded to being followed.
I don't know about that-- his reaction (to run) isn't necessarily racial so much as it is the reaction of a kid who thinks he's being pursued. (And completely justified, if not necessarily the smartest thing to do.)
Is that the reaction you were talking about, kmboots?
Yes. If there was an altercation (and it is looking more and more like there was although we have no way to know who started it) different cultural norms/miscommunication/aggression towards the "other" of both sides could have escalated it. A white kid might have been more likely to call the cops himself if he was being followed.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
One thing to bear in mind when we are judging the fuss and overreaction of the media and how that gets in the way of the investigation is that there was no reaction from the media at all until a month after the incident. And nothing much happening by way of investigation. This kid slid beneath the waves almost unnoticed until people started to make a fuss. That, I think, is the real racial issue here. If not for his parents this would be yet another dead black kid.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I'd hardly call a week later promptly, you know.
And I disagree with your assessment of his 911 calls. Sure, some of them were unwarranted, but he has actually protected some people and stopped a few robberies in progress. Mind you, I am NOT saying l respect his judgement, but it's not all been bad, which to me is pretty much the definition of "mixed bag"....YMMV, of course.
As far as half....I have heard, from multiple national new sources, 1. No evidence or a physical altercation...false 2. He called Martin a coon and this tape PROVE it....false 3. This video shows he was lying about a fight ....false 4. He chased and cornered him ....false, in that he stated he was heading back to his car, and moments later the fight happened EXACTLY where he said he was heading to, his car. 5. His left with his gun, the police didn't even take it ....FALSE, they took it.
These statements don't even take into consideration the misleading photo's on Martin his parents released, leading people to believe this was some kid..... the pics were from 3 years PRIOR to this night. It doesn't involve the initial statements that Zimmerman was white, not Hispanic. It doesn't even touch how his family tried to make Martin seem like a normal kid with no behavior problems, rather than a kid who was suspended 3 times, once from drugs.
The fact is that Zimmerman saw a 6' tall person doing what he believed was casing house, in a high crime area, at night, with a hood up in the rain. I'd be suspicious too, and might even follow them in my car while calling 911. Most people walking in the rain want to get from point A to point B as fast as possible.
Suspicious doesn't mean Martin was actually doing anything wrong. But it does mean it might need investigated.
The problem starts here. While Zimmerman made bad choices, nothing I have heard from this point shows he violated the law. He followed on foot....not smart, but legal. Once he was told to return to his car, he did, as far as we can tell so far. Once again, legal. Then he was approached by Martin at nor near the car.
If anything Zimmerman says from this point on is true, then he had every right to shoot Martin. He had as much right to be there as Martin did. He had a legal permit for his gun. If he was assaulted, and felt in danger, he has a right to defend himself.
They both seem like idiots. Unfortunately being a moron isn't illegal.
Neither one were angels, they both seem to have made some really bad choices. But if Martin (notice I said if) came back to Zimmerman, he made the dumbest choice of all. By everything we have now, had Martin just kept going rather than turn back to Zimmerman, he would be alive.
If I had a dude following me, and I wasn't doing anything wrong, I'd call my parents, then the police if he wouldn't leave me alone. Hell, I would go knock on a door, or head to a public place. I find the fact that Martin didn't to be a little suspicious myself....even though I admit he was under no obligation to do so.
If I send mixed signals about this....good! I have very mixed feelings about it. I am sad a kid died. I am sad that a man's life is at risk for possibly only making a bad choice and then defending himself (bounty anyone?). I understand why his parents feel like they are getting screwed, but I also see people jumping to judge based on false and misleading info, and it seems like all of the misinformation either comes from Martin's camp or is slanted against Zimmerman to inflame popular opinion.
I support gun ownership, at least in part because of my own personal history of being mugged, yet I don't own one myself despite being very well trained in their use, specifically because I am afraid of using it and then regretting it for the rest of my life.
I had nightmares for a decade, no joke, after being mugged. Most of them were about the kid who died. Yet all I had done was defend myself, AFTER trying to run away. I can only imagine what Zimmerman feels right now, even if only half his story is true. No one doubted me, except my sergent, who literally said " Funny how every soldier who gets jumped says " I got one of them real good", when usually they didn't"...but I had used my hands, not a gun. I was walking alone at night, in my Army PT top....a grey hoodie. EVERYONE is doubting Zimmerman (myself included), so imagine how alone he feels right now.
But I don't see many people thinking about that at all, either.
Mixed signals? Yeah, I guess so.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: They both seem like idiots. Fortunately being a moron isn't illegal.
Fixed for you.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Was it a week later? The edited tape being released and then noticed, that is. I didn't follow that news story, since I was a bit deeper in the ongoing information than that coverage went, so I didn't pay much attention. If it was, then sure, not promptly...though certainly quite a bit faster than the story become prominent as a whole, though:)
quote: And I disagree with your assessment of his 911 calls. Sure, some of them were unwarranted, but he has actually protected some people and stopped a few robberies in progress. Mind you, I am NOT saying l respect his judgement, but it's not all been bad, which to me is pretty much the definition of "mixed bag"....YMMV, of course. [Big Grin]
Here's the thing. You know what's necessary to stop most robberies in progress, or just before they begin? Well, a lot of things actually, but one almost guaranteed stake through the heart is if you're about to slip the crowbar in the bottom of the window, and then you hear a car pull up and see a guy talking on a cell phone while looking straight at you. He doesn't have to say anything at all to you in fact, or even approach you. So, yes, I have no doubt he did some good in his community. That was a given side-effect of his poor judgment and paranoia. It would be as if a doctor treated every head cold with strong antibiotics as soon as the sniffles set in. Absolutely, colds would go down! Pretty poor judgment, though.
quote:As far as half....I have heard, from multiple national new sources, 1. No evidence or a physical altercation...false 2. He called Martin a coon and this tape PROVE it....false 3. This video shows he was lying about a fight ....false 4. He chased and cornered him ....false, in that he stated he was heading back to his car, and moments later the fight happened EXACTLY where he said he was heading to, his car. 5. His left with his gun, the police didn't even take it ....FALSE, they took it.
I don't deny there is quite a bit of stuff out there that has turned out not to be true-not unlike any other breaking, developing crime news story. But you went further than saying 'a lot'.
quote: These statements don't even take into consideration the misleading photo's on Martin his parents released, leading people to believe this was some kid..... the pics were from 3 years PRIOR to this night. It doesn't involve the initial statements that Zimmerman was white, not Hispanic. It doesn't even touch how his family tried to make Martin seem like a normal kid with no behavior problems, rather than a kid who was suspended 3 times, once from drugs.
He was 'some kid'. 17 ain't old enough to buy booze or vote, and it's barely enough to drive. Zimmerman is what is often called 'white Hispanic', and in fact to many people he would look white. There's even a tag on the census that says 'non-Hispanic white' or somesuch, if I'm not mistaken. As far as his history, we've been over this. He was suspended three times? That means he's likely to just attack someone with sudden, aggressive, brutal violence? Please. And are you *seriously* going to put the screws to his parents for trying to make their son who was on his way home from a convenience store like he was a 'normal' kid? It's statements like these, Kwea, that prompt some of the reactions you're getting.
quote:The fact is that Zimmerman saw a 6' tall person doing what he believed was casing house, in a high crime area, at night, with a hood up in the rain. I'd be suspicious too, and might even follow them in my car while calling 911. Most people walking in the rain want to get from point A to point B as fast as possible.
Again. This is ANOTHER example of you buying Zimmerman's line straightaway. When Zimmerman saw Martin, was he in fact just skulking in the rainy shadows, leering at property? Well, sure, Zimmerman says he was. What else CAN he say? A body's laid out on the ground.
quote:Suspicious doesn't mean Martin was actually doing anything wrong. But it does mean it might need investigated.
The problem starts here. While Zimmerman made bad choices, nothing I have heard from this point shows he violated the law. He followed on foot....not smart, but legal. Once he was told to return to his car, he did, as far as we can tell so far. Once again, legal. Then he was approached by Martin at nor near the car.
How do you know these things? How do you know when and under what circumstances he went to go back into his car? How do you know at what point Martin approached him, if he did at all? What is your evidence? This is about the third time you've referenced these things as though they were to be taken for granted, and you've been asked more than once to point to what substantiates that belief in Zimmerman's account. You've not done so.
quote:If anything Zimmerman says from this point on is true, then he had every right to shoot Martin. He had as much right to be there as Martin did. He had a legal permit for his gun. If he was assaulted, and felt in danger, he has a right to defend himself.
No. In fact, several things from that point on, Zimmerman must be telling the truth for him to be legally clean here. Or at least one big thing: who threw the first punch, and why.
quote:Neither one were angels, they both seem to have made some really bad choices. But if Martin (notice I said if) came back to Zimmerman, he made the dumbest choice of all. By everything we have now, had Martin just kept going rather than turn back to Zimmerman, he would be alive.
'Both made bad choices'? What was Martin's bad choice, exactly? To walk home from a convenience store? To have eyes that could see things that didn't belong to him? Or to just be wandering through when Dudley Doright happened to be strapped while coming home from Target? These are the only things we know Martin actually did to be factually accurate. The rest is very much in question. So...no. Before accounts start to diverge, Zimmerman made quite a few bad choices unmatched by Martin. Getting a gun as a private citizen to go to Target? Stupid. Legal, but stupid, just as we would say that someone who blows their kid's college money at Vegas is stupid. Following after he'd been instructed not to, even if he wasn't legally bound to obey? Also stupid. Exiting his car for any reason, deeply stupid, because if Martin actually IS so suspicious and does something, Martin has only one way to handle things, and that's with his gun. And he's not a freaking cop. That's not his job.
The very fact that you'll look at Martin's ONE (uncertain, that is we don't know whether this actually happened or not) choice and say 'he'd be alive if...' and say that was the dumbest, when Zimmerman made a series of bad choices that led straight to a dead kid...well. Again. You'll really have to pardon me for pointing out that you're sending mixed signals-and not mixed as in you don't know what happened, but mixed as in on the one hand you say we don't know, but then go on speaking as though we DO know, and it's Martin's bad.
quote:I support gun ownership, at least in part because of my own personal history of being mugged, yet I don't own one myself despite being very well trained in their use, specifically because I am afraid of using it and then regretting it for the rest of my life.
Being mugged, as emotionally traumatic-and I don't downplay it, I'm just trying to be precise-is a great reason to support gun ownership. From a personal, emotional standpoint. By itself, though, it's a pretty crappy one, frankly, when you begin to look at how many people are killed or injured in this country by gun violence who wouldn't otherwise be. Hell, just by accident or intoxication.
quote:I had nightmares for a decade, no joke, after being mugged. Most of them were about the kid who died. Yet all I had done was defend myself, AFTER trying to run away. I can only imagine what Zimmerman feels right now, even if only half his story is true. No one doubted me, except my sergent, who literally said " Funny how every soldier who gets jumped says " I got one of them real good", when usually they didn't"...but I had used my hands, not a gun. I was walking alone at night, in my Army PT top....a grey hoodie. EVERYONE is doubting Zimmerman (myself included), so imagine how alone he feels right now.
But you're not doubting Zimmerman, at least not on several of the most important but still contested facts. That's what I've been trying to point out. You even said it yourself above-Martin made the choice that got him killed, Martin made the dumbest choice, Martin's empty bag of pot points to 'not an angel', Martin was suspicious just by being there, so on and so forth.
How alone does Zimmerman feel? Well for starters he's feeling something at all. As for me, I tend to wonder more how the parents feel after their kid turns up dead going to the store for a drink and some skittles, rather than wondering how the paranoid neighborhood watchmen police wannabe feels after his overreactions resulted in a dead body rather than a wasted 911 call.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: As for surprise, though: I wonder what you think the statistics are for accidental gun deaths in this country are, Kwea? That's without, by the way, throwing in the thousands that occur because a gun is to hand in, say, a nice ordinary domestic squabble. Versus how many people are saved by their own firearms, that wouldn't have been saved any other way.
Is this (the bold part) something that can actually be easily determined, Rakeesh?
Off the top of my head, it sort of seems statistical comparisons like that will be grossly skewed, considering every gun death (accidental or otherwise) is likely to get reported. Whereas if a gun is used to, say, scare off muggers and nobody actually gets shot, how does that get tracked? Only if the potential mugging victim makes the effort to then go down to the police station and file a report, right? Otherwise it just slips through the cracks.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
And consider how many times guns are used for other purposes each day in this country alone. Leave out the legal rights, leave out the ability to resist not just criminals but governments if they turn on the people. Millions of shots a week are fired with no bad injuries, no deaths, and with a good amount of food placed on the table. Or targets blown to bits.
YOU don't think one justifies the other. I disagree.
More people die every year in avoidable traffic accidents than die of GSW's, by far.
You keep talking about MY assumptions, but look at the ones YOU are making. YOU assume he was a normal kid, YOU assume he didn't approach Zimmerman....you call him a wannabe, a loser,
And I said IF he came back at Zimmerman he made the dumbest mistake of all. Not that he did. IF he did, then he took something that was effectively done with and escalated it, and payed for it with his life.
And I don't agree taking a gun with you to shop is stupid. What is the point of a carry permit if you never carry? It's not a choice I would make, but it is not dumb, or even dangerous in and of itself.
I have said IF a thousand times. I have stated multiple times about how I feel, and what I think. And the only "response like this" I have been getting, once again, is from you.
As far as the truth goes....>I'd say Zimmerman was telling the truth when he said he was following him on foot several blocks from his car, wouldn't you? Then he stated he was going back to his car. There were no sounds of a scuffle on his 911 call at that point, right? Then there WAS some sort of physical fight, near his car, WHERE HE SAID HE WAS RETURNING. What do you THINK happened?
IF (IF IF IF IF IF IF IF IF IF ) the evidence supports this fact, then I'd say he did exactly what he said he was going to do. Break off pursuit and return to his car. I haven't heard a single thing that refutes that...so far.
If you accept that Martin was running away (which is why Zimmerman said he was on foot himself, IIRC)....then how else would he end up back at the car with Zimmerman? Magic? Did someone open a "Lost Gate" and send him back there against his will?
I do plan on discussing psychiatry here in more depth when I have the time/energy to do so, just so you know.
I'll try to delve into the discussion of psychiatry without having to explain too much Popperian epistemology... I hope, anyway, since summing up Popper to a hostile audience doesn't sound terribly fun. If you're interested in Popperian epistemology, I suggest you read Conjectures & Refutations by Karl Popper.
For a case not explicitly drawn on Popperian epistemology, I'll probably be drawing on the works of Thomas Szasz, particularly his book The Myth of Mental Illness. That's another book I'd recommend. You can also find some of his thoughts available for free online in interviews and the like.
I'll be back later, but remember, in both cases I, of course, think these guys are much more knowledgeable and persuasive than I will be. So if you have the time, I highly recommend you get the ideas from their sources!
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: For a case not explicitly drawn on Popperian epistemology, I'll probably be drawing on the works of Thomas Szasz, particularly his book The Myth of Mental Illness. That's another book I'd recommend. You can also find some of his thoughts available for free online in interviews and the like.
I've read it. Szasz is wrong about mental illness to a way which hasn't really been scientifically controversial for quite some time. To trust in Szasz's antipsychology standpoint, you have to argue that something like psychosis is quite literally just a medical myth. That schizophrenia is a medical myth. That the state of bipolar I mania is a medical myth. Szasz is stuck back in the psychological world of the 60's, when he cofounded a group with the Church of Scientology to 'combat psychiatry' based on a similarly defunct notion about the realities of mental illness and our own biology.
As for engaging psychology based on Popperian epistemology, is it a consistent and widespread interpretation of it that it demonstrates the fundamental failure of psychology, as you are claiming? Or will this end up more a realm of distinct antipsychology that draws circumstantially upon Popperian arguments?
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: For a case not explicitly drawn on Popperian epistemology, I'll probably be drawing on the works of Thomas Szasz, particularly his book The Myth of Mental Illness. That's another book I'd recommend. You can also find some of his thoughts available for free online in interviews and the like.
I've read it. Szasz is wrong about mental illness to a way which hasn't really been scientifically controversial for quite some time. To trust in Szasz's antipsychology standpoint, you have to argue that something like psychosis is quite literally just a medical myth. That schizophrenia is a medical myth. That the state of bipolar I mania is a medical myth. Szasz is stuck back in the psychological world of the 60's, when he cofounded a group with the Church of Scientology to 'combat psychiatry' based on a similarly defunct notion about the realities of mental illness and our own biology.
I appreciate you letting me know, so I don't waste my time.
I'm a little curious why you read it in the first place, considering the stock you put in what is or is not considered to be "scientifically controversial."
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: As for engaging psychology based on Popperian epistemology, is it a consistent and widespread interpretation of it that it demonstrates the fundamental failure of psychology, as you are claiming? Or will this end up more a realm of distinct antipsychology that draws circumstantially upon Popperian arguments?
I'm not sure I understand your question, Sam. Are you asking if my position is shared by lots of Popperians? I'm not sure. I don't know all that many Popperians.
Proponents of Popperian epistemology seem few and far between, as far as I know. The largest, most coherent and intelligent group I know of is probably on the Beginning of Infinity discussion list on google groups. The group gets its name from the most recent book by Deutsch, but its topics range across many aspects of Popper, psychiatry, etc.
The group has a whopping 142 members, and quite a few of those are simply fans of the book who have no particular knowledge of Popper. So, I'm not sure what your definition of "widespread" would be, but that doesn't sound to me like it would fit.
To take the Popperian angle, before discussing psychiatry we'd probably need to discuss things like "What are ideas and how are they formed?" which is a question I think Popper answered (though Deutsch expanded on his answer, especially with Dawkins' meme theory).
But honestly, I have no idea what questions like this mean: "Or will this end up more a realm of distinct antipsychology that draws circumstantially upon Popperian arguments?"
So I don't know how to answer them.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Kwea,
A few things: if you look at the date on that story, you'll see why it's of little relevance to what we were discussing. But if it was, I would point out that forensics experts who AREN'T friends of either party have weighed in on whose voice it is on the tape. Furthermore, the article you use in support of your argument has its own front-loaded example of racism: this friend's credibility is greater, it seems, because he's black? Or what, exactly?
Now as for your saying 'if', I just quotes at some length several examples of you NOT saying if. If you meant your ifs to be a coverall for everything, well, it seems to me that's on you.
quote:As far as the truth goes....>I'd say Zimmerman was telling the truth when he said he was following him on foot several blocks from his car, wouldn't you? Then he stated he was going back to his car. There were no sounds of a scuffle on his 911 call at that point, right? Then there WAS some sort of physical fight, near his car, WHERE HE SAID HE WAS RETURNING. What do you THINK happened?
Here's what I'd like to know: why is it apparently more likely to you that Martin, a 'no angel' but who nonetheless has not been shown to have a history of violence like this (for the record, though, if this were to change, my perspective would as well), would just rush up and attack Zimmerman...why is that apparently MORE likely than the 'mixed bag' (and frankly, it's still absurd you claim his 911 record is a 'mixed bag'; I have basically zero doubt that if I were to ask you to trust my random friend's judgment on emergencies who calls 911 for potholes, you'd rightly laugh in my face) Zimmerman might have instigated the physical confrontation himself. I don't understand it. All your weight is on his 'not being an angel' against Zimmerman's 911 record, his disregarding dispatch, a restraining order, dropped resisting arrest charges, him NOT being the voice heard on the tape...with all of this, it's supposed to be Martin who more than likely started things.
quote:If you accept that Martin was running away (which is why Zimmerman said he was on foot himself, IIRC)....then how else would he end up back at the car with Zimmerman? Magic? Did someone open a "Lost Gate" and send him back there against his will?
A question I've asked more than once: how, exactly, do we know where things started and what exactly Zimmerman of Martin were doing in the instant before the altercation? Well, I know how YOU know-eyewitness accounts that are contradicted by forensic evidence, the truthfulness and accuracy of Zimmerman's statements, but I fail to see why anyone without a prior sympathy with Zimmerman ought to take that view.
Look, I can easily get my head around why, given your own personal experience, you're inclined to stand more on Zimmerman's side of the fence than the other. I really do, it makes sense and isn't shameful or embarrassing or any sort of mark against you, in my books, not that that is important at all. It's just, that is plainly where you ARE standing, and I fail to see how pointing that out is calling you a racist dittohead or anything. If that's not where you're standing, then you've done an...imprecise job of communicating it.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Scott R:
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: There also may be an element of race involved in how Trayvon Martin responded to being followed.
I don't know about that-- his reaction (to run) isn't necessarily racial so much as it is the reaction of a kid who thinks he's being pursued. (And completely justified, if not necessarily the smartest thing to do.)
I'm curious why you think running is not the smartest thing to do if your are being followed by a stranger?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Well, he did say 'not necessarily', not 'generally'. If for example the stranger is going to shoot you whether you're facing him or fleeing, and he's a good shot, running away is probably not the best of a series of crummy options, just as an example.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Actually, it's not. I think it is a good thing, and about time, that someone other than the Sanford police investigate this. I am not on either side.
But my original point was that most of the hoopla and pony show about this case have been misstating facts, and slamming Zimmmerman on the racial angle, when in fact he has a number of black family members, has mentored a number of back kids, and has no record of racism himself.
I also feel that the media has been a significant factor, both in non-coverage of this at first, then in falsely reporting a number of things, in order to cause ratings.
I don't see a lack of people on Martin's side, but I see a HUGE rush to judgement against Zimmerman for a number of reasons, none of which should be considered actual facts.
I don't even know for a fact that race was an issue, but every other word mentioned at this point is racist or profiled.
I believe that there is a lack of evidence either way, and while I wouldn't want Zimmerman for a neighbor (or as Captain of my neighborhood watch) I don't assume he is guilty, because that is't how we are suppose to do it here.
I wonder what the coverage would be in Zimmerman was black. And I don't think that makes me a racist, either. I think it says more about the media coverage than anything else.
As far as the actual instant before the altercation....no, we don't know. And we may never know. But if it turns out that Zimmerman did return to the car, then who is probably more likely to have started a confrontation....the guy who went back to the car to wait for police, or the guy who came back, and never called the police, even when chased? They guy on the bottom of the pile, with injuries, or the one on top doing the beating, who had no physical injuries?
I am not sure, but it will be interesting to see what else comes to light.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
The coverage if Zimmerman was black? Well that's usually very mediocre for media ratings, but who can say for sure? There are elements that make this sensational even without the race angle.
Now see, Kwea, there you go again: 'the guy who did the beating', and 'never called the police'. Can you imagine many scenarios in which the latter would not be conclusive for a black kid in Sanford? As for the former...yes, no physical injuries (aside of course from the fatal shooting). In fact, the man who handled his remains has said his body bore no signs of the apparently serious beating he administered to Zimmerman. Obviously that's not conclusive, but if we're going to talk about the condition of Martin's body, we have to actually talk about it. If we're going to talk about what witnesses claim to hear on tape, then by god we're going to talk about what forensics tells us is actually ON that tape, if we can bring forensics to bear, and we can.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: I appreciate you letting me know, so I don't waste my time.
I'm a little curious why you read it in the first place, considering the stock you put in what is or is not considered to be "scientifically controversial."
This isn't a waste of time unless you intend to make it that way from the beginning due to hard limits on the willingness to substantiate your position. The issue is that Szasz has a frightfully incorrect position on the nature of mental illness, so the question is whether or not you put stock in his argument about mental illness or not. Do you believe that mental illness is a myth?
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: But honestly, I have no idea what questions like this mean: "Or will this end up more a realm of distinct antipsychology that draws circumstantially upon Popperian arguments?"
So I don't know how to answer them.
Let's try this: If a professor of philosophy sat down with accurate running knowledge of the methodology of modern psychology, as well as with an accurate knowledge of Popperian epistemology, would they conclude that Popperian epistemology, if you take it as valid, demonstrates the invalidity of modern psychology? In short, would they agree straightforwardly with the proposal that, according to Popperian epistemology, psychology 'fundamentally fails at epistemology?'
[ April 10, 2012, 01:54 AM: Message edited by: Samprimary ]
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: I appreciate you letting me know, so I don't waste my time.
I'm a little curious why you read it in the first place, considering the stock you put in what is or is not considered to be "scientifically controversial."[/qb
This isn't a waste of time unless you intend to make it that way from the beginning due to hard limits on the willingness to substantiate your position. The issue is that Szasz has a frightfully incorrect position on the nature of mental illness, so the question is whether or not you put stock in his argument about mental illness or not. Do you believe that mental illness is a myth?
I agree with Szasz, yes.
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Let's try this: If a professor of philosophy sat down with accurate running knowledge of the methodology of modern psychology, as well as with an accurate knowledge of Popperian epistemology, would they conclude that Popperian epistemology, if you take it as valid, demonstrates the invalidity of modern psychology? In short, would they agree straightforwardly with the proposal that, according to Popperian epistemology, psychology 'fundamentally fails at epistemology?'
I have no idea what a professor of philosophy would say about it, Sam. Actually, off the top of my head most general philosophy experts deeply misunderstand Popper and consequently dismiss him for what I and other Popperians would call illegitimate reasons.
But you know, I really have no interest in playing a game of appealing to authority with you. You won't be persuaded by anything I say, categorically, because you're more concerned with things like status and authority (an attitude Popper strongly criticizes).
The people who I'd say understand Popper's theories best have zero academic credentials in the field of philosophy (they're mostly physicists and programmers, as far as I can tell), which to you means their opinions are, I guess, worthless. Or at least, worth less.
So what's the point of continuing this? As I said in an earlier post, there's a reason I try to keep my posts here focused on particular topics (like self-defense), and not stray into broader underpinning issues like epistemology.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I...I've got to admit, the idea that the human mind is better understood by Popperian programmers and physicists, or that it could be invalidated by such thinking, rather than psychiatry in general is just deeply baffling to me. *shrug* Clearly you're not willing to discuss it much, but man, it is just *weird*, dude!
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Yeah, despite most of Western civilization's explicit recognition of appeals to authority as fallacious, assigning theories merit based on status is still a really pervasive static meme in society. So it's unsurprising that not doing that seems weird and baffling.
... Although I guess it's worth mentioning that of course Szasz himself is a professor of psychiatry, so he should still count as an authority, right? If that was what actually mattered...
Edit: I guess it depends on why one dismisses Szasz. If you dismiss him because lots of other psychiatrists say he's wrong, then the status/authority meme is still in play. If you dismiss him because he makes no sense to you, then clearly you're opting for your own reason and ability to criticize ideas over an external authority. Either way I'd disagree, but the latter certainly shows a more Popperian way of thinking!
Edit #2: Rakeesh, if you're curious how on earth anyone could make some of the claims Sam and I have alluded to, here is a great summary of Szasz's views that you can read for free, on a Popperian philosophy site. Actually, poking around that site (or the linked Fallible Ideas site) is probably a good way to find out a lot about my general philosophy, if you care.
I don't agree 100% with the guys who put those sites together, but I agree with them more any anyone else I know.
[ April 10, 2012, 02:38 AM: Message edited by: Dan_Frank ]
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: ...Getting a gun as a private citizen to go to Target? Stupid. Legal, but stupid, just as we would say that someone who blows their kid's college money at Vegas is stupid...
While I tend to agree with most of what you have said, although not the tone it was said in, the above quote I disagree with vehemently. I'm not sure how it works in Florida, but when my dad got his carry permit in Minnesota he had to have a valid reason to want to carry. Some examples were, "Dangerous line of work, carries lots of cash, death threats, etc."
Now I don't think given Zimmerman's history he should have been issued a carry permit. But if you have reason to need a gun, and you have a legal carry permit, you don't leave it at home because you are going to the market.
Markets get robbed, and if you have a valid reason to need a gun, it is still as valid in a market as anywhere else.
To say that carrying a gun to go shopping is as stupid as blowing your child's college money in Vegas is one of the silliest things I've ever heard you say.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: The coverage if Zimmerman was black? Well that's usually very mediocre for media ratings, but who can say for sure? There are elements that make this sensational even without the race angle.
Now see, Kwea, there you go again: 'the guy who did the beating', and 'never called the police'. Can you imagine many scenarios in which the latter would not be conclusive for a black kid in Sanford? As for the former...yes, no physical injuries (aside of course from the fatal shooting). In fact, the man who handled his remains has said his body bore no signs of the apparently serious beating he administered to Zimmerman. Obviously that's not conclusive, but if we're going to talk about the condition of Martin's body, we have to actually talk about it. If we're going to talk about what witnesses claim to hear on tape, then by god we're going to talk about what forensics tells us is actually ON that tape, if we can bring forensics to bear, and we can.
Actually, the coroner stated that Martin had no injuries to his head and face. He also said he had no evidence of a beating as far as damage to his hands, though.
I would love to hear what the actual evidence, including the state of Martin's body was as well. Forensics will tell part of the story, and it will be interesting to see what unfolds. Unfortunately, even if the evidence were to clear Zimmerman completely, it's already too late.
Mind you, I don't think that the evidence will. I think it will clarify things, to a point, but after that point we will never know beyond what is THINK happened. Unless a new witness comes out of the woodwork, it's going to come down to a simple burden of proof.
I'd LOVE to be proven wrong on this though.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:I'm curious why you think running is not the smartest thing to do if your are being followed by a stranger?
The smartest thing to do is get other people involved. He had a cellphone-- call the police. He was walking through a neighborhood-- knock on a door, and ask for help. Both are smart options for anyone who believes himself to be in danger.
KMBoots has pointed out that as a black male, Martin might not have believed that calling the police would have yielded assistance. Given the alleged record of the Sanford cops, I think there may be some truth to that. He may not have trusted either the police or the people in the neighborhood to help him.
That doesn't mean that running away was his best or only option in this situation. Just that he believed it to be (possibly). Certainly, he's justified.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Markets get robbed, and if you have a valid reason to need a gun, it is still as valid in a market as anywhere else.
*snort* You want to talk about silly things, SW? Alright. Suppose the market IS robbed while the concealed carry guy is there. Is it supposed to be a GOOD thing that random concealed weapons permit citizen is on the scene, armed? Or would it be better if that same person were replaced by someone who was keenly observant, level-headed, and good at keeping other people calm?
I know for a fact what most cops would say. I know what the store owner would say. I know what the other shoppers would say. They would say that it ain't the set of Die Hard, but by all means, point out how what I said was silly. You haven't yet but perhaps there's more to your case?
------
Kwea, that's what I said. 'No signs of the beating he supposedly administered.' As for what the evidence shows, it already shows us-according to respected forensics experts experienced in courtroom testimony-that in spite of what witnesses and friends of Zimmerman say, it's almost certainly not his voice shouting on the tapes. Witnesses are wrong much more often than forensics.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
Rakeesh:
Note that there are often opposing and valid interpretations of forensic evidence.
(In this specific case, I'm not sure if there are or not-- but it's a bit facile to suppose that all evidence leads to the same interpretation.)
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Certainly, and in this case that very well may turn out to be what is accurate-that there are valid and contradictory interpretations. But until then, I don't think we ought to assume that it's less weighty (not that I think you are) because it might be contradicted later. And perhaps we'll find out that the experts were inept in this case, or fudged their work, or something. Could happen.
But if we're going to be hearing about what a few witnesses report is being said or shouted on the tape (in this case, an actual friend of Zimmerman!), then I think it's more than reasonable to bring up what we know of the forensics so far.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: *snort* You want to talk about silly things, SW? Alright. Suppose the market IS robbed while the concealed carry guy is there. Is it supposed to be a GOOD thing that random concealed weapons permit citizen is on the scene, armed? Or would it be better if that same person were replaced by someone who was keenly observant, level-headed, and good at keeping other people calm?
The huge assumptions you are making just show how little you know about gun culture and how very little you automatically think of armed people. You assume that the person with a gun ISN'T keenly observant, level-headed and good at keeping other people clam...because they have a gun. Right from the start you tip your hand in what you think.
Let's say there is someone with a gun in a store being robbed, and they comply and never draw down...until the robber announce they plan on murdering everyone in the store, then this person calmly draws their gun and kills the robbers before they can complete their plans. It happened in Texas (it was a bank).
How about that crazy jobbie in NY on the subway who started killing, and got rushed by multiple brave souls and only got subdued when he had to stop to reload. Had even one of those brave people willing to put their lives on the line had a gun, there would not have been bodies in piles on the "C" train or whichever.
This is exactly why I am so upset with Zimmerman, because you assume that calm level-headedness and carrying a gun are mutually exclusive from the starting gate.
So yea, your statement is silly.
Had you ever taken a class on carrying you would know they -teach- you to not act like the law, to only draw your gun in case a life is in direct threat, to comply with robbers, etc.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: This is exactly why I am so upset with Zimmerman...
And, of course, the fact that his misuse of a carry permit and a gun was pivotal in the death of one of our young people.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
Since it looks like we are getting into the mental illness issue here, I have a couple of things to say.
First, I've read a bit about Szasz before (sndrake is, or at least was, into him as well), although nothing that's convinced me to devote the needed time to reading one of his books.
From what I can tell, the weak point in his position is obviously this (well summarized at the link Dan offered):
quote:Many of Szasz’s critics object that we may yet find that schizophrenia, say, is caused by some currently unknown change in the structural or chemical properties of the body. And indeed, they must discover such changes: how else can we explain very odd behaviour of a person diagnosed with a mental illness? There are two other explanations. The first explanation is that a person can lie about his own beliefs and actions to get committed, or he can lie about the beliefs and actions of other people to get them committed. The second explanation is that a person might actually hold odd beliefs. Most people throughout most of history have held beliefs that are now considered odd, e.g. - the idea that Jews or witches poison wells, or drink blood, or murder children en masse.
Now, the first possible explanation is obviously terrible. Perhaps it helps in this regard to have had trusted friends who were mental patients; I know these people wouldn't lie about such a thing.
The second explanation is vastly insufficient to the task of explaining the observed data. Maybe it works for schizophrenia, but it provides no explanation whatsoever for the kind of dramatic memory loss that comes with bad mania (for example). The fact that someone holds "odd beliefs" can't explain why they forget every conversation they have.
Add to this the fact that we can already tell whether or not someone is depressed from an fMRI, and the position appears quite untenable. Indeed, falsified, as Karl Popper would put it. Szasz's hypothesis that mental illnesses are not brain diseases is in contradiction with the data, at least in the case of clinical depression. The effectiveness of drugs like lithium and antidepressants offer corroborating data for this point.
quote: To take the Popperian angle, before discussing psychiatry we'd probably need to discuss things like "What are ideas and how are they formed?" which is a question I think Popper answered (though Deutsch expanded on his answer, especially with Dawkins' meme theory).
Dan, I'm surprised that you go in for meme theory (in the sense of believing it's true; no denying that it's cool) while implying the science of psychopathology is on a weak footing. Memetics really is entirely untested experimentally. Indeed, a lot of critics have gone after it for being unfalsifiable, which has always made it seem a little weird to me that Deutsch brings it in to buttress Popper.
ETA: It's interesting, too, that the question of "what are ideas and how are they formed?" is supposed to be a question for a philosopher to answer, rather than a scientist. As a philosopher, this seems a little surprising! Especially since "ideas," the way we usually use the word, seem to be neuro-physiological aspects of certain animal species (our species included). I fully believe that it's part of the philosopher's job to propose speculative theories about how animals' brains function, but to determine which of these theories is right seems like a job for scientists.
None of this is to say that the actual scientists working on this question have answered it fully or correctly. But the idea that a philosopher has done so is pretty hard to believe.
[ April 10, 2012, 01:48 PM: Message edited by: Destineer ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Stone_Wolf,
Let's just clear a few things up quickly. First, I don't assume anyone with a concealed premit automatically has bad judgment. I assume-with some very solid reasons-that about Zimmerman.
I base my anxiety on concealed weapons permits not because I mistrust gun owners as a class of people, but because I know how very easy it can be to get or retain a concealed permit when one shouldn't have one. For example, Zimmerman. I don't particularly care that making a habit of calling 911 for trivialities isn't illegal, it is still a sign of just plain bad judgment, and the judgment of a person who will or has the right to carry deadly force out into the world ought to be relevant.
Finally, as for your hypotheticals. Well, goodness! We ought certainly to set our laws based on the most unlikely, most extreme situations. After all, one never knows when a bank robbery-itself an uncommon event-will turn into a murder spree, especially since with cameras a murder spree gains no criminal anything, in most cases. Such things are *certainly* as likely as someone with a concealed permit and a gun in their car, say, discovering their spouse is cheating and in a fit of rage killing them. It's certainly just as likely as that same person going to a bar and getting in a fight and then popping the trunk.
In fact, I'll bet your examples are even MORE likely. The important thing is on this issue, we need to set the laws to deal with the most shocking, most horrifying, most uncommon events-rather than taking into account that which is so much more common and likely.
That is why your statement was silly. It is a *terrible* idea to say, "We need concealed weapons permits because what happens if a grocery store robbery goes wrong?!" Someone who carries lots of cash, receives death threats, walks through a high crime neighborhood, I've no beef with them. But this just-in-case vigilantism is dangerous, it's nonsense, and it helps cause much more trouble than it solves.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: *snort* You want to talk about silly things, SW? Alright. Suppose the market IS robbed while the concealed carry guy is there. Is it supposed to be a GOOD thing that random concealed weapons permit citizen is on the scene, armed? Or would it be better if that same person were replaced by someone who was keenly observant, level-headed, and good at keeping other people calm?
The huge assumptions you are making just show how little you know about gun culture and how very little you automatically think of armed people. You assume that the person with a gun ISN'T keenly observant, level-headed and good at keeping other people clam...because they have a gun. Right from the start you tip your hand in what you think.
Let's say there is someone with a gun in a store being robbed, and they comply and never draw down...until the robber announce they plan on murdering everyone in the store, then this person calmly draws their gun and kills the robbers before they can complete their plans. It happened in Texas (it was a bank).
How about that crazy jobbie in NY on the subway who started killing, and got rushed by multiple brave souls and only got subdued when he had to stop to reload. Had even one of those brave people willing to put their lives on the line had a gun, there would not have been bodies in piles on the "C" train or whichever.
This is exactly why I am so upset with Zimmerman, because you assume that calm level-headedness and carrying a gun are mutually exclusive from the starting gate.
So yea, your statement is silly.
Had you ever taken a class on carrying you would know they -teach- you to not act like the law, to only draw your gun in case a life is in direct threat, to comply with robbers, etc.
Even in your scenarios there are as many people who should not have a gun as there are people who should.
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
I actually do sort of envy the idea of having the opportunity to have lived a life free of the personal experiences that would make it impossible to continue to believe szasz.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: I have no idea what a professor of philosophy would say about it, Sam. Actually, off the top of my head most general philosophy experts deeply misunderstand Popper and consequently dismiss him for what I and other Popperians would call illegitimate reasons.
But you know, I really have no interest in playing a game of appealing to authority with you. You won't be persuaded by anything I say, categorically, because you're more concerned with things like status and authority (an attitude Popper strongly criticizes).
The people who I'd say understand Popper's theories best have zero academic credentials in the field of philosophy (they're mostly physicists and programmers, as far as I can tell), which to you means their opinions are, I guess, worthless. Or at least, worth less.
Obviously you have a palpable personal distaste against the notion of authority in the world of philosophy, and missed that nothing about my argument hinges on an argument to authority. Which you drew even further towards determining on my behalf that I apparently need academic credentials from a philosopher to consider their views worthwhile.
To avoid this particular minefield of yours, how would you have responded to my question if you replace "a professor of philosophy" with "A person who is well-versed and intimitely knowledgable, if not partial, towards Popper's ideas" — what changes?
quote:So what's the point of continuing this? As I said in an earlier post, there's a reason I try to keep my posts here focused on particular topics (like self-defense), and not stray into broader underpinning issues like epistemology.
This is a question to ask yourself, before repeatedly committing only superficially to a series of extremely controversial and weird positions that you will later not want to substantiate well enough to make them credible. If you commit only to the superficial level, then it turns from a dialogue into just a summary as to why the statements you make aren't credible. I'm fine with either.
[ April 10, 2012, 08:16 PM: Message edited by: Samprimary ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:According to a senior law enforcement official, Corey is expected to announce that Zimmerman will face state charges. The number or nature of the charges was not immediately known.
...
On Tuesday, Zimmerman's attorneys announced they were no longer representing him and that they had not heard from him since Sunday, although he had contacted talk show host Sean Hannity and the special prosecutor.
Earlier Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder said that the Justice Department will take appropriate action in the killing of Trayvon Martin if it finds evidence that a federal criminal civil rights crime has been committed.
Given what we know or at least heard, murder doesn't make sense either.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
This case is well too sodden to say that it doesn't make sense. Second degree murder could easily be said to make sense, but that depends on what evidence the special prosecutor is looking at that made them feel confident with going ahead on murder 2.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I can imagine several very plausible playouts of the unknown moments that may well have some evidence sticking to them that would substantiate that level of charge. For instance, it wouldn't surprise me at all (nor should it anyone) that Zimmerman, beyond following, actually started a fight as the aggressor with Martin-under the law if that fight started going south on Zimmerman and he then shot Martin, that might make murder 2 stick. Of course, I also wouldn't be surprised (though I would be MORE surprised) to find that Martin was the aggressor, too.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Manslaughter certainly would be an easier charge to make stick.
Either the prosecution has a smoking gun witness, or the audio they have is stellar, or the autopsy is absolutely damning to Zimmerman's story.
Some combination of those forces almost certainly must be true, otherwise I can't imagine they would go for Murder 2.
Or if you're a conspiracy theorist...they chose murder 2 KNOWING they couldn't make it stick, but wanted to charge him to mollify critics of the case. In other words, it could all be theater.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Yeah, it could be a political thing. Don't think it's likely, because I think the fallout from a failed prosecution on a tougher charge wouldn't be that different from a reluctant admission that there wasn't enough evidence to try. My personal, totally layman position is that, like you mentioned, the conditions of Martin's body will be pretty compelling.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Or if you're a conspiracy theorist...they chose murder 2 KNOWING they couldn't make it stick, but wanted to charge him to mollify critics of the case. In other words, it could all be theater.
Or they figure they charge murder 2, and then settle for a deal of manslaughter, and save the cost of a trial.
Less conspiracy; more cynic. Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Given what we know or at least heard, murder doesn't make sense either.
That was my response as well but after looking at the legal definitions of second degree murder and voluntary manslaughter, I think second degree murder is the appropriate charge. A killing resulting from an assault in which death of the victim was a distinct possibility is second degree murder. Voluntary manslaughter would only be the charge if the killing took place "in the heat of passion." For example, second degree murder is the most common charge when someone is killed in a bar fight. If you kill someone in a fight, a charge of voluntary manslaughter would imply you entered the fight in a heat of passion.
An assault is an action that creates an apprehension in another of an imminent physical attack. If the fight between Martin and Zimmerman started because Martin thought that being followed and then chased indicated an intent to physically attack him -- then Zimmerman is guilty of 2nd degree murder not manslaughter.
If I had been walking near my home and a stranger in a car first followed me, for no apparent reason, and then got out of their car to chase me, I would apprehend that as a threat of imminent physical attack. I think most people would.
In my mind, it matters a great deal that Zimmerman was carrying a gun. Any weapon increases the chances that a fight will lead to a killing. When someone chooses to carry a deadly weapon, they have a greater moral responsibility to avoid fights than an unarmed person. I have no idea what the law says on the subject, but a moral law would demand a higher standard from an armed person.
When Zimmerman got out of his car with a loaded gun and started chasing Martin, Martin's death was a distinct possibility.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Ugh, yes, rivka, that's a much more straightforward and likely possibility, I think. Shoulda thought of that!
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka:
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Or if you're a conspiracy theorist...they chose murder 2 KNOWING they couldn't make it stick, but wanted to charge him to mollify critics of the case. In other words, it could all be theater.
Or they figure they charge murder 2, and then settle for a deal of manslaughter, and save the cost of a trial.
Less conspiracy; more cynic.
That was my first response as well but given all the controversy, I think it would be extremely difficult for the prosecutor to avoid a trial at this point.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Still a question of betting on cost/benefit estimates.
If murder 2 goes to trial and he gets off, wouldn't you bet post-O.J.-type riots would be likely? I would. But if after a few weeks the prosecutor's office announced that after re-evaluation, the evidence might not be enough support a murder 2 conviction, plus the cost to the taxpayers, yada yada, but we have a deal for a manslaughter conviction . . . well, I expect there would be rumbling and grumbling, but probably no riots.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I think a lot would depend on how much more evidence and what sort comes forward, and how it's released. This just feels a lot murkier, in terms of...hmmm, certainty of public outrage?...than the Rodney King beatings, since there was of course video of that, as well as a major city well known for police mistreatment of minorities.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I agree. we are just starting to find out the meat and potatoes of the case, and if they think they can make Man1 stick, I'd like to see them try it.
I can foresee reasonable doubt though, unless Rakeesh is right and they have a bombshell waiting.
I hope they are doing it because they think it can stick though. If they are doing it because of political pressure, they may overcharge him and then if he gets acquitted.......it will be Rodney King all over again.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I really don't see King style riots in the cards, unless some pretty damning evidence of Sanford law enforcement or malevolence turns up. While of course a dead kid is worse than a beaten adult, it's nearly a full generation later. The race kettle isn't simmering as hot as it did then to start with. It's in Sanford, so there's a lot less built-in giving a damn. Also, however dangerously stupid Zimmerman was (and boy, was he), the law may actually be on his side in ways it wasn't back in King. Finally and perhaps most important, there isn't video footage that can be played over and over again, that presents as clear-cut evil in as short a time.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
???
I didn't say -- or mean -- King. Those were huge. There were little ones after O.J., IIRC. (I can't find anything about them online, but I think I remembered them.)
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Rivka: I feel like I remember those too, but I also can't find anything to support my recollection.
I'm not even sure who I imagine was rioting. I definitely remember there was a big fear that there would be riots if the jury came back with a guilty verdict, but obviously they didn't, so...
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Huh! You know, I just thought you meant King and it was an infamous-LA-trial typo. I don't remember any rioting after OJ either, but then I very well might not.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
There was definitely huge LAPD (and BHPD, which I was a ham volunteer with at the time) prepping in anticipation of riots pre-O.J. verdict. Maybe that's what I'm remembering, but I really don't think so.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I remember alerts in case he was found guilty, and parties when he wasn't.....but no real riots.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Note to everyone who doesn't care about my philosophy (A.K.A. everyone but Destineer and possibly Sam), if you'd prefer we take our crazy tangential thread drift to a new topic, let us know, okay?
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: I have no idea what a professor of philosophy would say about it, Sam. Actually, off the top of my head most general philosophy experts deeply misunderstand Popper and consequently dismiss him for what I and other Popperians would call illegitimate reasons.
But you know, I really have no interest in playing a game of appealing to authority with you. You won't be persuaded by anything I say, categorically, because you're more concerned with things like status and authority (an attitude Popper strongly criticizes).
The people who I'd say understand Popper's theories best have zero academic credentials in the field of philosophy (they're mostly physicists and programmers, as far as I can tell), which to you means their opinions are, I guess, worthless. Or at least, worth less.
Obviously you have a palpable personal distaste against the notion of authority in the world of philosophy, and missed that nothing about my argument hinges on an argument to authority. Which you drew even further towards determining on my behalf that I apparently need academic credentials from a philosopher to consider their views worthwhile.
To avoid this particular minefield of yours, how would you have responded to my question if you replace "a professor of philosophy" with "A person who is well-versed and intimitely knowledgable, if not partial, towards Popper's ideas" — what changes?
Heh, I don't have any "palpable personal distaste" of arguing from authority (re: philosophy or any other topic), I just think it's generally the wrong approach and very perniciously omnipresent in our society. Sorry that I came off as hostile!
To answer your question: I'm not sure. See my previous post where I mentioned the vanishingly small pool of people I know of who actually seem to be well-versed in Popper's ideas. There are some pretty big misconceptions about him (see elsewhere in this post where I address one of those with Destineer), and those misconceptions seem to catch most philosophers who study Popper.
So, I'm still not really sure how to answer your question, sadly.
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:So what's the point of continuing this? As I said in an earlier post, there's a reason I try to keep my posts here focused on particular topics (like self-defense), and not stray into broader underpinning issues like epistemology.
This is a question to ask yourself, before repeatedly committing only superficially to a series of extremely controversial and weird positions that you will later not want to substantiate well enough to make them credible. If you commit only to the superficial level, then it turns from a dialogue into just a summary as to why the statements you make aren't credible. I'm fine with either.
That's fair! I do try to pick my conversations carefully and avoid these topics because in most casual settings like this I expect the responses to mostly just be "that's weird" and not particularly substantive.
So I try stick to more generally accesible topics... bear in mind we got here from discussing a moral perspective on self-defense, and generally speaking I really don't think you need to share my outlook on epistemology or psychiatry to have a good view of self-defense. I think Objectivists generally get self-defense right, for example. They simply define certain nuanced parameters differently (like what kind of exceptions are made for crazy people).
But anyway, you're right insofar as I was probably wrong to shy away from this discussion. Destineer has asked some really excellent questions, at the very least, so it would be silly to drop it now.
quote:Originally posted by Parkour: I actually do sort of envy the idea of having the opportunity to have lived a life free of the personal experiences that would make it impossible to continue to believe szasz.
Not sure what to do with this, man. An appeal to personal experience, I guess? Sort of like authority, only even less credible and even more common.
For what it's worth, you're dead wrong. From a psychiatric perspective several mental illnesses run in my family, particularly alcoholism (and other substance abuses) and bipolar. Three of my five immediate family members have been diagnosed with one or both of those, and one of them used to get diagnosed as schizophrenic before she spontaneously got less crazy or the criteria changed or something and she got downgraded (upgraded? I don't know) to bipolar.
I'm a little flippant but this topic actually strays into stuff that was pretty hard to deal with growing up. Ultimately I'm just not very sure your accusation was relevant, and I'm thinking I probably should've just let it lie, but I've already typed this up so it'll stay.
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Since it looks like we are getting into the mental illness issue here, I have a couple of things to say.
First, I've read a bit about Szasz before (sndrake is, or at least was, into him as well), although nothing that's convinced me to devote the needed time to reading one of his books.
From what I can tell, the weak point in his position is obviously this (well summarized at the link Dan offered):
quote:Many of Szasz’s critics object that we may yet find that schizophrenia, say, is caused by some currently unknown change in the structural or chemical properties of the body. And indeed, they must discover such changes: how else can we explain very odd behaviour of a person diagnosed with a mental illness? There are two other explanations. The first explanation is that a person can lie about his own beliefs and actions to get committed, or he can lie about the beliefs and actions of other people to get them committed. The second explanation is that a person might actually hold odd beliefs. Most people throughout most of history have held beliefs that are now considered odd, e.g. - the idea that Jews or witches poison wells, or drink blood, or murder children en masse.
Now, the first possible explanation is obviously terrible. Perhaps it helps in this regard to have had trusted friends who were mental patients; I know these people wouldn't lie about such a thing.
The second explanation is vastly insufficient to the task of explaining the observed data. Maybe it works for schizophrenia, but it provides no explanation whatsoever for the kind of dramatic memory loss that comes with bad mania (for example). The fact that someone holds "odd beliefs" can't explain why they forget every conversation they have.
I agree with you that focusing on the first explanation is the wrong idea; it certainly happens, but it's not even remotely satisfactory as a primary explanation, not the least reason being that it'd essentially be predicated on a conspiracy carried out by every crazy person & every psychiatrist on the planet.
However, I think your dismissal of the second explanation is hasty. To addres your specific example: Does sexual molestation cause a brain disease? Some people who were molested as children forget/suppress the experience, right?
So either molestation causes an infection in our brain (and I think a substantial burden of proof would call on anyone claiming that) or our minds are sufficiently powerful to actively do things like suppress memories, all by themselves, without clear, explicit, active effort on our part.
Right?
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Add to this the fact that we can already tell whether or not someone is depressed from an fMRI, and the position appears quite untenable. Indeed, falsified, as Karl Popper would put it. Szasz's hypothesis that mental illnesses are not brain diseases is in contradiction with the data, at least in the case of clinical depression. The effectiveness of drugs like lithium and antidepressants offer corroborating data for this point.
Szasz's hypothesis isn't quite that mental illnesses are not brain diseases. He actually fully allows for the potential existence of other specific brain diseases like neurosyphilis, but observes that when we discover diseases like that, they are not treated by psychiatrists, but rather by infectious disease specialists, neurologists, or other specialist MDs.
To the extent that people's mood and feelings can be manipulated by drugs, which is certainly a real phenomenon and just as certainly not a universal phenomenon, specific drugs can produce relatively consistent reactions in people. The fact that MDMA generally causes feelings of euphoria, coupled with the idea that euphoria is generally a "good" feeling, is not prima facie evidence that people are suffering from an MDMA deficiency. Right?
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote: To take the Popperian angle, before discussing psychiatry we'd probably need to discuss things like "What are ideas and how are they formed?" which is a question I think Popper answered (though Deutsch expanded on his answer, especially with Dawkins' meme theory).
Dan, I'm surprised that you go in for meme theory (in the sense of believing it's true; no denying that it's cool) while implying the science of psychopathology is on a weak footing. Memetics really is entirely untested experimentally. Indeed, a lot of critics have gone after it for being unfalsifiable, which has always made it seem a little weird to me that Deutsch brings it in to buttress Popper.
ETA: It's interesting, too, that the question of "what are ideas and how are they formed?" is supposed to be a question for a philosopher to answer, rather than a scientist. As a philosopher, this seems a little surprising! Especially since "ideas," the way we usually use the word, seem to be neuro-physiological aspects of certain animal species (our species included). I fully believe that it's part of the philosopher's job to propose speculative theories about how animals' brains function, but to determine which of these theories is right seems like a job for scientists. None of this is to say that the actual scientists working on this question have answered it fully or correctly. But the idea that a philosopher has done so is pretty hard to believe.
Characterizations of Popperian epistemology as Falsificationism are, to put it bluntly, gross misunderstandings. Popper's criteria of demarcation does stress that the strength of any idea comes from its vulnerability to criticism, true. And in the realm of empirically testable scientific theories, that vulnerability comes from the theories straightforward and obvious falsifiability (i.e. the theory of gravity is extremely strong because it is so falsifiable: if it fails in a single instance then that is a criticism of extraordinary significance).
However, Popper also recognized the value of non-empirical (nonscientific) theories, such as, well philosophy! Ah, you know what, I hope you don't mind, but I'm gonna cop out and link you to a piece by Elliot Temple, because I think he says it better than I am. Read the whole thing (it's not long!) but particularly this quote:
quote: Popper never had a problem with empirically unfalsifiable theories. Popper proposed many theories of this type, such as his solution to the problem of induction, his theories about the "Who should rule?" question, or his arguments against focussing debates on definitions of terms.
They are not science but they may be good theories. Then, within science, Popper praised theories with a high degree of empirical falsifiability -- theories exposed to refutation. That's because hiding theories from criticism sabotages progress and exposing them to criticism helps us know things better.
Popper also liked theories outside of science which were more open to non-empirical falsification. This can be achieved with, for example, clarity and boldness.
Now, meme theory, at least insofar as Deutsch uses it (full disclosure: Deutsch and other Popperians are my only exposure to meme theory, as I actually haven't read Selfish Gene yet. *ashamedface*), is about the implicit transmission of ideas. It's not really an empirically testable scientific theory. At least, not without doing some epistemology first. Why do I say that?
Because in order to understand any results you gathered scientifically, you first need a good grounding in epistemology and other nonscientific theories by which you can explain your results. When you present interpretions of data (that include things like moral and epistemological judgments) as if they were empirical fact, you're practicing what Popper called Scientism (link is another good, short essay by Elliot Temple).
For good measure, Elliot actually happens to have a related criticism of psychiatry in his Scientism article, so that's handy.
So, when we talk about things like "how are ideas formed" we don't mean "what happens in the brain when we have an idea," we mean things like "Does induction exist? If not, by what process do we learn things?" which is a philosophical question, not a neurological one. Make sense?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Manslaughter certainly would be an easier charge to make stick.
Either the prosecution has a smoking gun witness, or the audio they have is stellar, or the autopsy is absolutely damning to Zimmerman's story.
Some combination of those forces almost certainly must be true, otherwise I can't imagine they would go for Murder 2.
Or if you're a conspiracy theorist...they chose murder 2 KNOWING they couldn't make it stick, but wanted to charge him to mollify critics of the case. In other words, it could all be theater.
This - all of the above - is exactly what I was thinking, but Rivka makes a good point, too. I don't know that there has to be a trial. Pleading down to manslaughter or even reckless homicide would, I think, have been enough had they done it in the first place. Maybe it still would be.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Surprised that no one posted this yet, as I waited a bit but meh.
How to execute a 68 year old former marine who happens to be black.
quote: On November 19, 2011, a 68-year-old ex-marine named Kenneth Chamberlain rolled over and accidentally activated his medical alert bracelet. A signal was sent out to dispatchers.
An hour later, Kenneth Chamberlain had been shot twice by a police officer responding. Tragically, all police recordings of the event were either turned off before the shooting or mysteriously lost. What are the odds, right?
quote:
MAYO BARTLETT: Well, the police arrived. They immediately—first, they properly asked him, Mr. Chamberlain, whether he was all right. He said, "I’m fine." And at that point, he seemed to be very rational and calm. And they asked him to open the door. He said, "I don’t want to open the door. I didn’t call you. But I’m fine. Everything’s OK." And the police refused to leave at that point. They began banging on the door. And it’s a steel door, so you can hear a very loud sound. The first time we heard the banging, it startles you. It almost makes you wonder whether shots are being fired at that point. And this is at 5:00 in the morning, and it’s a 68-year-old man, who didn’t call them and wasn’t expecting them to be there, because this—
AMY GOODMAN: But who has a heart condition.
MAYO BARTLETT: And who has a heart condition. And at that point, the taser video actually shows them outside. They use a device to actually pry that door off of its hinges. First they break a lock, and the doors open what appears to be five or six inches, so it’s cracked open. And by the time they finally are able to take that door off its hinges, after about an hour of continuous effort to do so, the door is taken off.
You see, through the—basically, the vantage point of the taser, Mr. Chamberlain with no shirt on, with boxer shorts on, with both arms at his side, standing straight up. He doesn’t say anything. He is not advancing toward the officers. And the officers don’t say anything to him. They don’t give him an opportunity to do anything. They don’t tell him or ask him to put his hands up on the wall or to put his hands behind his head. They don’t ask him to do anything. They immediately charge that taser, and you can see it light up, and then they discharge it in his direction. And that has to be outside of the use of protocol or the protocol for the use of force, which generally is a use of force escalation.
AMY GOODMAN: But then you hear something in—
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, but not only that, but there’s the issue of why—if you know that you’re going to see someone who has a heart condition, why would you fire a taser at them?
MAYO BARTLETT: I would definitely wonder why you would do that. I would think that there’s certainly less deadly uses of force. But I think, at that point, when he’s standing there with his arms at his side and the boxer shorts and no shirt on, 68-year-old man, there’s no need for use of force at all.
AMY GOODMAN: Then talk about what you hear on the taser video.
MAYO BARTLETT: Well, on that taser—well, you can see on the video, you see them, and you see Mr. Chamberlain standing what appears to be possibly eight, maybe even 10, feet away from them. And you can hear them—someone says, "Cut it. Cut it off." And at that point, we believe that that means that they’re aware that they are recording their actions. And at that point, the video and audio feed from the taser end.
One of the things you hear is he’s telling the officers, repeatedly, "I’m OK. I didn’t call you. Why are you doing this to me? Please leave me alone." The officers are telling him pretty much no, that they want to get inside. He’s saying, "I’m a 68-year-old man with a heart condition. I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to come in here, and you’re going to kill me." You hear at one point one of the officers say, "Why would you think that? We’re not going to do that." But he said, "Yes, you are. You have your guns out. Why do you have your guns out? Oh, you have a shield." Now, I’m thinking to myself—
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, the shield?
KENNETH CHAMBERLAIN, JR.: A ballistic shield.
AMY GOODMAN: A full-body ballistic shield.
KENNETH CHAMBERLAIN, JR.: A full-body shield, yes. So, you hear that. And I’ll even go so far as to say that you even hear on there my father is referring to a black police officer that’s there, too, and he says, "Black officer, why are you letting them do this to me?" So these are some of the things that you hear in the audio. And again, you hear him give his sworn testimony on the audio.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?
KENNETH CHAMBERLAIN, JR.: He says, "My name is Kenneth Chamberlain, and this is my sworn testimony. White Plains police officers are going to come in here and kill me."
JUAN GONZALEZ: Now—and, of course, we discussed, as well, that the use of a racial epithet at the time also is caught on tape.
KENNETH CHAMBERLAIN, JR.: Yes, yes. When he asked them why are they doing this, "Please don’t do this to me. Why are you doing this?" one of the officers say, "I don’t give a F," and then use the N-word and says, "Open the door." So, I was very clear in the beginning, when all of this happened, that I wasn’t trying to turn this into any type of racially motivated killing, until we heard the audio. Then, and only then, did I bring that up and say, OK, because, I mean, any logical mind, if you hear that, and then you say, well, what was the outcome? He was shot twice.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka:
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Or if you're a conspiracy theorist...they chose murder 2 KNOWING they couldn't make it stick, but wanted to charge him to mollify critics of the case. In other words, it could all be theater.
Or they figure they charge murder 2, and then settle for a deal of manslaughter, and save the cost of a trial.
Less conspiracy; more cynic.
I hadn't thought of that, but as others have said, it's a spot-on observation.
Good point.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
Thanks for the interesting replies, Dan. Here's a book in response (I wish I could write papers as quickly as I write posts).
quote:However, I think your dismissal of the second explanation is hasty. To addres your specific example: Does sexual molestation cause a brain disease? Some people who were molested as children forget/suppress the experience, right?
If 'disease' were synonymous with 'infection,' you would be quite correct. But heart disease is not normally an infection of the heart, for example.
A better analogy is probably with diseases that come about through stress on the body. In college I developed bursitis in my left hip, from over-stressing it through competitive fencing. There was no infection in my hip, nor would it be right to say that I developed a chronic condition. Yet what I had was a disorder, developed as a result of mistreatment of my body, and requiring treatment from a doctor and physical therapist.
The analogy with mental illness should be obvious. Like the joints, the brain can be "injured" by mistreatment or misuse. The illnesses that result from mistreatment or misuse are quite different in their source and effect from the type that occur through infection or genetic predilection. Which explains why the methods of the psychiatrist differ from those of the neurologist, at the present stage of medical science.
quote:So either molestation causes an infection in our brain (and I think a substantial burden of proof would call on anyone claiming that) or our minds are sufficiently powerful to actively do things like suppress memories, all by themselves, without clear, explicit, active effort on our part.
I'm trying to parse out why you focus on "clear, explicit, active effort" here. I gather it's because, as you've mentioned previously, you think mentally ill people should be held responsible for the behavior we typically count as symptoms of their illness. So what I would call their "symptoms," as you would have it, must result from decisions on their part, albeit decisions that are unconscious, in the sense that they don't feel like they're making these decisions. The symptoms may feel involuntary, but are in fact voluntary.
I dispute this. I think that, at least in many cases, the symptoms of mental illness can be involuntary.
Think about the manic person's memory loss. The question of whether this is voluntary is really very much the same as the question of whether he should be held responsible for the resultant behavior. I tell the manic guy, "Remember to turn off the nuclear power plant tonight, or else it'll melt down." With manic confidence, he says, "Of course I will!" Of course he forgets, and hundreds die. Do we hold the manic guy morally responsible for those deaths?
Well, from his conscious perspective, it didn't feel like he made a decision to forget to turn off the plant. The best explanation for why he forgot has to do with the fact that he was manic, and the best explanation for *that* is probably that bipolar disorder runs in his family, and maybe there was some event that triggered this particular episode. The reasons why he did what he did were things he had no control over: the genetic predilection, and maybe the triggering event. So it seems ludicrous to hold him responsible.
Tourette's is an even better example for this purpose. Should we hold people with Tourette's responsible for the stuff they say? Do they *decide* to say those things? To them, it feels like a compulsion. Like a reflex, if you will. Analogy: someone makes a loud noise, startling me, and I drop the vase I was carrying. Did I decide to drop it? No. Dropping it was my behavior, it was something I did, but it was a reflex, not a decision.
quote:To the extent that people's mood and feelings can be manipulated by drugs, which is certainly a real phenomenon and just as certainly not a universal phenomenon, specific drugs can produce relatively consistent reactions in people. The fact that MDMA generally causes feelings of euphoria, coupled with the idea that euphoria is generally a "good" feeling, is not prima facie evidence that people are suffering from an MDMA deficiency. Right?
Of course not. But as Szasz's opponent in this debate has pointed out, drugs like antidepressants and lithium have vastly different effects on mentally ill people. A depressed patient who takes Prozac will likely notice a dramatic improvement in symptoms. A mentally healthy person who takes Prozac will likely notice nothing, except maybe the drug's side effects.
quote:Characterizations of Popperian epistemology as Falsificationism are, to put it bluntly, gross misunderstandings.
Of course I'm aware that not every sort of knowledge falls under the rubric of 'science' for Popper. How else would he know that the falsifiability criterion is the right one to demarcate science from non-science, since that "hypothesis" isn't falsifiable. I guess I was assuming you thought memetics was a science. That's certainly Dawkins's position, and I thought it was Deutsch's as well.
In any case, this gets to one of my major objections against Popper: he thinks that Science is a very different sort of inquiry, different in kind, from other ways we have of learning about the world (Science requires falsifiability, other ways of learning do not). I disagree. It's obvious to me that the scientific method is simply an organized way for many people to go about learning things the same way we individually learn things throughout our lives, by forming explanations for empirical evidence.
quote:Now, meme theory, at least insofar as Deutsch uses it (full disclosure: Deutsch and other Popperians are my only exposure to meme theory, as I actually haven't read Selfish Gene yet. *ashamedface*), is about the implicit transmission of ideas. It's not really an empirically testable scientific theory. At least, not without doing some epistemology first. Why do I say that?
Because in order to understand any results you gathered scientifically, you first need a good grounding in epistemology and other nonscientific theories by which you can explain your results. When you present interpretions of data (that include things like moral and epistemological judgments) as if they were empirical fact, you're practicing what Popper called Scientism (link is another good, short essay by Elliot Temple).
Of course, it's absolutely true that epistemology is prior to science. You need to know how to learn things from experiments and theories before you can say what you've learned. I will even grant that psychologists (esp evo psych types) can be very bad about smuggling in hidden assumptions!
That said, every scientist makes epistemological assumptions (and I think that even in physics, they go far beyond anything Sir Karl, or Deutsch, would be comfortable with). The notion that the data supported Einstein's relativity over its competitors (which also predicted the same experimental outcomes!) was an interpretation of the data that went beyond the empirical facts. It just happened to be the correct interpretation of the data. I think the same goes for many explanations in psychology.
Now, there is a flipside to this coin: when doing epistemology, or any form of a priori philosophy, one needs to be very careful about not smuggling in assumptions that are actually empirically testable matters best left to scientists. Philosophers have been very bad at this throughout much of history! I'm not sure what you mean by the "implicit" transmission of ideas, but can you see why an assumption about how ideas are transmitted looks like something for scientists to study? Say your epistemological theory rested on the assumption that ideas are transmitted through telepathy. I think science would have something to say about that!
Similarly, I actually think the question about whether memetics is the correct theory of how ideas are transmitted is a question for science. (Although memetics isn't falsifiable; I reject the falsifiability criterion. Theories in cosmology are also not falsifiable, but they are good scientific theories.) And there has been scientific criticism of the meme idea. For example, from the great Wikipedia:
quote:Luis Benitez-Bribiesca, a critic of memetics, calls it "a pseudoscientific dogma" and "a dangerous idea that poses a threat to the serious study of consciousness and cultural evolution" among other things. As factual criticism, he refers to the lack of a code script for memes, as the DNA is for genes, and to the fact that the meme mutation mechanism (i.e., an idea going from one brain to another) is too unstable (low replication accuracy and high mutation rate), which would render the evolutionary process chaotic.
If this guy is right, then the empirical evidence we have shows that ideas don't undergo natural selection in the same way that genes do. Of course it only makes sense that empirical evidence should matter to this question. Obviously it matters in the case of genes! And I think we can both imagine, without much effort, how beings might be very much like us mentally but still not transmit ideas via "memes" (they could use telepathy!).
Point being: I think the notion that memetics is part of epistemology, or something to be learned through a priori philosophy (pure reason alone) is pretty hard to accept.
I should perhaps say: I'm not a huge fan of this Elliot Temple guy. His articles seem to come at things from a very superficial level, ignoring loads of potential criticisms and hidden assumptions. A common habit of scholars who spend more of their time preaching to the choir than engaging with qualified critics. And sometimes it's just sloganeering! Like that Scientism article; it doesn't contain any valid arguments from premises to their logical conclusions, not that I can discern.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Blayne: I suspect it hadn't been brought up yet because it doesn't seem nearly as controversial as the Zimmerman case.
To be clear, I mean "controversial" literally. In the Zimmerman case, there are two blurry and disputed "sides" people tend to take, plus a lot of media distortion that even undecided parties have taken exception to.
In this case, it pretty much seems like an open-and-shut case of a heinously racist and murderous cop bloated on his own sense of power. It's horrific, and tragic, but I don't think many people are clamoring to defend him either. Are they?
Let's see... trying as hard as I can to apply a positive interpretation to the actions of the cops, I'm just about coming up empty. I mean, I could point out that even rich white folks are generally forced to let the cops in when they show up responding to a call, but even that
1) Ignores the fact that the "call" was a medical alert bracelet, not someone calling in who'd heard a scream or some such thing, where there could be a more serious risk of someone dangerous inside.
and
2) Ignores the fact that once they got in and saw an unarmed man in his underwear they proceeded to shoot him.
So, it basically requires that you gloss over the two most salient details of the case.
Yeah, I'm not seeing a whole lot of potential for controversy here. Just a really tragic event that had better result in at least one cop going to prison, but very well may not.
(You know, if that cop walks and Zimmerman goes to prison, that would be a pretty stark illustration that government employee privilege/elitism can be at least as big of a problem as racism in our society, in its own way)
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:Note to everyone who doesn't care about my philosophy...
I'm interested, but just lurking for now. This thread or another doesn't matter to me but it probably makes sense to split it off.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Blayne, I did actually link to the Kenneth Chamberlain shooting on page 2 (along with a couple other shootings of unarmed black men). The link is broken now, though.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Let's just clear a few things up quickly. First, I don't assume anyone with a concealed premit automatically has bad judgment. I assume-with some very solid reasons-that about Zimmerman.
We agree about Zimmerman, but that isn't what you said, you said:
quote:Is it supposed to be a GOOD thing that random concealed weapons permit citizen is on the scene, armed? Or would it be better if that same person were replaced by someone who was keenly observant, level-headed, and good at keeping other people calm?
Replace person with gun with person who is calm and level headed. The assumption is that the person with the gun isn't calm or level headed, right?
quote:I base my anxiety on concealed weapons permits not because I mistrust gun owners as a class of people, but because I know how very easy it can be to get or retain a concealed permit when one shouldn't have one. For example, Zimmerman.
There we agree again. I personally think that to get a concealed weapons permit you should have to pass (and pay for) a psych eval.
quote:Finally, as for your hypotheticals. Well, goodness! We ought certainly to set our laws based on the most unlikely, most extreme situations. After all, one never knows when a bank robbery-itself an uncommon event-will turn into a murder spree, especially since with cameras a murder spree gains no criminal anything, in most cases.
Those weren't hypothetical...ripped from the headlines, true events.
quote:That is why your statement was silly. It is a *terrible* idea to say, "We need concealed weapons permits because what happens if a grocery store robbery goes wrong?!"
I'm afraid you won't find that I've said that. What I said is that -if- someone has a valid reason to carry a gun, the validity does not dissolve upon entering a store, and the statement that carrying a gun while shopping is -as stupid- as loosing your child's college fund in Vegas is worthy of ridicule.
quote: But this just-in-case vigilantism is dangerous, it's nonsense, and it helps cause much more trouble than it solves.
I agree with you now, as I did then and doubt highly you can find any post which contains a sentiment that could reasonably be considered disagreement.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: ]Even in your scenarios there are as many people who should not have a gun as there are people who should.
IIRC that in both those cases the criminals were not using legal guns nor had permits for them.
Guns are just a reality of this country so unless we are talking about magic wishes, making all of them go away is not going to happen. By definition, if you make a law banning guns, only law abiding people will turn their's in. Thusly only criminals will be armed.
Zimmerman is a great example of someone who should -not- have a carry permit, possibly not even be allowed to own a gun (a much harder question). But he is a poster child for reforming the laws of who we allow to carry, not that "guns are bad".
If we were to have a magic wish and disappear all the firearms, then crossbows would be the new hot topic of debate, then bows, then swords, spears and other melee weapons, then large sticks and pointy rocks until it was illegal to make a fist.
Weapons are not good or bad, people's choices are.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Guns are a reality in this country because we decide that they are a reality. We make them, sell them trade them, discard them. If we didn't do that, they would eventually cease to become a reality.
Earlier in this thread it was noted that one can kill people without a gun. This is true. Here is one of the big differences.
In one city. In one day. None of them were the "intended targets". Difficult to accidentally kill or wound bystanders or babies in their cribs with your fists. Now, the argument is that if we are armed too, we can defend ourselves from people with guns. Do they make a gun for seven year-olds? Babies? That mothers can use while asleep against stray bullets?
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
What's your plan to disarm America boots? I'd love to hear it.
I just don't understand why you feel -guns- are to blame, as it illegal and immoral to open fire on someone's house like that. Guess if they had been using pipe bombs you would want to make those illegal too...oh wait, both randomly shooting and throwing pipes ARE ILLEGAL. Huh.
Know what else is illegal? Driving a car into someone's house. Maybe we should ban cars too?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
SW,
quote:Replace person with gun with person who is calm and level headed. The assumption is that the person with the gun isn't calm or level headed, right?
No, that isn't the assumption. The assumption is that 'random person with a concealed weapons permit' is really not at all enough to say that that person is cool-headed with good judgment, reaction time, and is an excellent shot. It's just not. Here's what it's a good basis for saying: that the person in question almost certainly doesn't have a history that includes felony convictions or some other kinds of criminal activity, or mental illness. That's about it, really.
Now maybe you're willing to just trust in the good decision-making capability and marksmanship skills of anyone who can pass the rigorous muster of a concealed weapons permit process, but I think that's foolhardy. And it doesn't just need the Zimmerman shooting to point out why.
quote:Those weren't hypothetical...ripped from the headlines, true events.
Before we go toe to toe on a headline contest for gun violence in this country, I'd just like to ask if your response when it inevitably turns against you will be the unfalsifiable assertion that we can't know how many people were saved every hour by the presence of concealed weapons, with it's unspoken addition of 'and therefore I disregard your figures'.
quote:I'm afraid you won't find that I've said that. What I said is that -if- someone has a valid reason to carry a gun, the validity does not dissolve upon entering a store, and the statement that carrying a gun while shopping is -as stupid- as loosing your child's college fund in Vegas is worthy of ridicule.
That's kind of what you actually said-I just checked. See, I was talking about people such as Zimmerman who apparently took his gun with him to Target...just to take his gun with him to Target. If he actually DOES have a reason why a reasonable person would need a firearm, then *probably* that reason wouldn't evaporate if he went to the store, though there are several possibilities where it might. Example: commutes through a dangerous neighborhood to work or visit family. Target is in abother direction. There, that was easy.
quote:I agree with you now, as I did then and doubt highly you can find any post which contains a sentiment that could reasonably be considered disagreement.
What, specifically? Sure. Few would come out word for word in favor of it. But what Zimmerman was doing by all accounts WAS just-in-case armed vigilantism, and there's been more than a little criticism of the criticism of it, in fact. Not hard to find at all.
quote:Guns are just a reality of this country so unless we are talking about magic wishes, making all of them go away is not going to happen. By definition, if you make a law banning guns, only law abiding people will turn their's in. Thusly only criminals will be armed.
I just...wow.
quote:Weapons are not good or bad, people's choices are.
Wow again. From the pages of fortune cookies. First of all, yeah, weapons are bad. Sometimes they are necessary, which isn't the same thing as 'good'. It would always, in every single case that's ever existed, be better if weapons weren't necessary.
Second, as to the other aspect of this fatuous statement: even if weapons were neither good nor bad, know how to make a bad decision much, much, much, much worse? Toss a gun in the mix! Or a knife bat brick or smashed bottle, if you'll next pivot to the argument that people will kill people if they REALLY want to, foolishness that that is. Because of course none of those things are as dangerous.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Wow. I didn't actually think you'd go that way. I am surprised.
quote:What's your plan to disarm America boots? I'd love to hear it.
I just don't understand why you feel -guns- are to blame, as it illegal and immoral to open fire on someone's house like that. Guess if they had been using pipe bombs you would want to make those illegal too...oh wait, both randomly shooting and throwing pipes ARE ILLEGAL. Huh.
Because of course it's just as easy to make or obtain, and then use, a pipe bomb as is a firearm? Because of course pipe bombs are so common that I could have one for a little money and some asking and a lack of scruples within just a few hours of this very minute if I really wanted one?
Here's why guns are worse than PIPE BOMBS, and I can't believe that argument was actually made by a supposedly serious-minded adult: guns are vastly more common, easier to use, cheaper, more likely to be used by accident by children or drunks or fools, more...ugh. Pipe bombs.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Pipe bombs can be made for less then ten dollars from components found at any hardware store in the country!
The point is that using a gun in a bad way is already illegal! Not locking your guns so that kids can find them is illegal! Using a gun while drunk is illegal!
Making more laws (since apparently our current laws aren't helping, according to you guys) is the answer, laws that remove the ability to defend yourself from criminals, criminals who will likely not be effected by the laws against guns, but who will be much more confident that their law abiding victims will be unable to defend themselves.
(Edited for clarity.)
[ April 13, 2012, 05:45 PM: Message edited by: Stone_Wolf_ ]
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: First of all, yeah, weapons are bad. Sometimes they are necessary, which isn't the same thing as 'good'. It would always, in every single case that's ever existed, be better if weapons weren't necessary.
I'm not really here today, but I wanted to make a quick comment on the above.
Let me distill your criteria here into a broader principle, if I can.
quote:Rakeesh's Law: If it would always (in every single case that's ever existed) be better if X item were not necessary, then X is fundamentally bad.
That looks to me like a really straightforward translation of what you said into a rule, right? Tell me if I warped it, of course, because that's not my intent.
If I got it right...
Take a few moments to think about what other things we encounter or utilize in daily life that this could easily be said for.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Stone Wolf, perhaps because pipe bombs are illegal and difficult to obtain* there have only been a handful of deaths by pipe bomb in the US - and most of those have been suicides. Maybe a dozen? Ever?
How many thousands by gun? Every year?
* Imagine if we had legal pipe bomb shows and shops and mail order pipe bomb outlets. Or if you could get them at Walmart!
[ April 13, 2012, 05:26 PM: Message edited by: kmbboots ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:The point is that using a gun in a bad way is already illegal! Not locking your guns so that kids can find them is illegal! Using a gun while drunk is illegal!
A quick, easy-to-understand reason why this sidebar is just absurd: whether it's the laws or some other factor, violence with pipe bombs is almost totally unheard of.
I mean for pity's sake, or are we going to continue down this ridiculous NRA talking point road?
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Rakeesh...I'll accept that you were not intentionally implying a lack of calm level headedness, but you are still assuming that just because someone is armed that they will start shooting the robbers. And -again-, that goes against the training and the law. They specifically train you to give up possessions, especially other people's possessions, and only shoot someone if you believe harm is eminent.
quote:Before we go toe to toe on a headline contest for gun violence in this country, I'd just like to ask if your response when it inevitably turns against you will be the unfalsifiable assertion that we can't know how many people were saved every hour by the presence of concealed weapons, with it's unspoken addition of 'and therefore I disregard your figures'
Way to discredit me before we even get into it. I was simply pointing out that those two circumstances were not hypothetical and in no way starting a "headline contest".
quote:That's kind of what you actually said-I just checked.
Let's see the quote, because I bet you can't find one.
quote:...though there are several possibilities where it might. Example: commutes through a dangerous neighborhood to work or visit family. Target is in abother direction. There, that was easy.
Because you can think of one -possible- reason why someone wouldn't -need- to bring a gun to Target, your previous statement that bringing a gun to Target is as stupid as blowing your child's college fund in Vegas must be true. You are being ridiculous and argumentative for no other reason that I can see that you don't like to admit when you are wrong.
quote:What, specifically? Sure. Few would come out word for word in favor of it. But what Zimmerman was doing by all accounts WAS just-in-case armed vigilantism, and there's been more than a little criticism of the criticism of it, in fact. Not hard to find at all.
I have no idea what you are talking about, but I double dog dare you to quote me as saying something that refutes your statement,
quote:But this just-in-case vigilantism is dangerous, it's nonsense, and it helps cause much more trouble than it solves.
and would appreciate an apology when you fail.
quote:I just...wow.
[sarcasm]Brilliant rebuttal.[/sarcasm]
quote:Wow again. From the pages of fortune cookies. First of all, yeah, weapons are bad. Sometimes they are necessary, which isn't the same thing as 'good'. It would always, in every single case that's ever existed, be better if weapons weren't necessary.
See Dan's post above.
quote:Second, as to the other aspect of this fatuous statement: even if weapons were neither good nor bad, know how to make a bad decision much, much, much, much worse? Toss a gun in the mix! Or a knife bat brick or smashed bottle, if you'll next pivot to the argument that people will kill people if they REALLY want to, foolishness that that is. Because of course none of those things are as dangerous.
Unless of course one person is making bad choices, and the other person has the gun and stops them before those bad choices become permanent to others.
quote: Because of course it's just as easy to make or obtain, and then use, a pipe bomb as is a firearm?
Only a million times more easy in every single category. I'm not going to post the step by step process of making a pipe bomb on the net, for obvious reasons, but let's just say, a trip to the hardware store, $10, 10 minutes and some basic tools and you are good to go.
But you guys are missing the point. The point isn't that pipe bombs are such a big threat, the point is that the problems with guns you are describing are illegal, just like pipe bombs. Why in the world do you think more laws are going to solve a problem that current laws are already not dealing with?
quote:A quick, easy-to-understand reason why this sidebar is just absurd: whether it's the laws or some other factor, violence with pipe bombs is almost totally unheard of.
I mean for pity's sake, or are we going to continue down this ridiculous NRA talking point road?
It seems you are being dishonest, doing everything you can to dismiss what I have to say without ever addressing the real point. Is my real point that pipe bombs are a huge national threat? Why would it be? Please stay on topic and keep the theatrics to a minimum.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
quote: Because of course it's just as easy to make or obtain, and then use, a pipe bomb as is a firearm?
Only a million times more easy in every single category. I'm not going to post the step by step process of making a pipe bomb on the net, for obvious reasons, but let's just say, a trip to the hardware store, $10, 10 minutes and some basic tools and you are good to go.
But you guys are missing the point. The point isn't that pipe bombs are such a big threat, the point is that the problems with guns you are describing are illegal, just like pipe bombs. Why in the world do you think more laws are going to solve a problem that current laws are already not dealing with?
quote:A quick, easy-to-understand reason why this sidebar is just absurd: whether it's the laws or some other factor, violence with pipe bombs is almost totally unheard of.
I mean for pity's sake, or are we going to continue down this ridiculous NRA talking point road?
It seems you are being dishonest, doing everything you can to dismiss what I have to say without ever addressing the real point. Is my real point that pipe bombs are a huge national threat? Why would it be? Please stay on topic and keep the theatrics to a minimum.
Yes. But making and distributing pipe bombs is illegal. Making and distributing guns is a billion dollar business. Which is why guns are a problem and pipe bombs are not. How on earth is it easier to obtain a pipe bomb than I gun? Is there a pipe bomb aisle at Walmart? You are only "good to go" if you don't get arrested or blow yourself up.
Posted by Parsimony (Member # 8140) on :
The problem with your arguments, Stone Wolf, is that you keep referencing a supposed "need" for a firearm among those with concealed carry licenses. In most cases, there is no such thing, and no such requirement. Many states have "shall issue" laws.
Bringing up pipe bombs was a tactical error in your argument, just like bringing a pipe bomb to a home invasion robbery or drug deal would be a tactical error for a criminal, which is why they use firearms instead.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Boots, but firearms are highly regulated, and guns are used by military, police, hunters, sport shooters and in self defense.
quote:How on earth is it easier to obtain a pipe bomb than I gun?
Guns are hundreds of dollars, require background checks, waiting periods, etc, where as pipe bombs can be made in ten minutes for ten dollars by anyone who can google search "how to make a pipe bomb".
quote:You are only "good to go" if you don't get arrested or blow yourself up.
The same can be said of using firearms illegally, except replace "blow yourself up" with "shot".
Parsimony, I don't remember saying anything about a "need for concealed carry licenses" other then people should have to prove they have a "need" before getting them...and then calling for stricter testing and training.
Pipe bombs are simply a comparison of illegal activities...here is a better one: Using a car dangerously or homicidaly is also illegal, but you don't see anyone calling for the banning of cars.
Posted by Parsimony (Member # 8140) on :
SW - That is the part I was addressing. People do not have to demonstrate a "need" for a concealed weapons permit in order to obtain one. Many states are "shall issue" states, and further, many states that aren't share reciprocity with "shall issue" states who have no residency requirement.
In answer to your next post, I don't foresee instituting a "need" based permitting system as feasible. How would people demonstrate their need? If I say that I am receiving verbal death threats, who could validate such a claim? If I say I need a concealed carry permit for general protection, is that demonstrating a specific need?
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Ah, now I get you.
You make a fair point about proving the need...
ETA: I had just remembered that my dad had to provide a reason in Minnesota when he got his.
[ April 13, 2012, 07:50 PM: Message edited by: Stone_Wolf_ ]
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Stand your ground apparantly doesn't apply if your black.
quote: As the shooting death of Trayvon Martin and the failure of authorities to arrest his killer, George Zimmerman, continues to grab headlines, many conservatives and gun rights advocates insist that race has nothing to do with it. Some have also rallied to the defense of Florida’s “stand your ground” law, the self-defense legislation under which Zimmerman was able to avoid arrest. Yet not all stand your ground claims are so successful. Not too far from Sanford, Fla., a black man named John McNeil is serving a life sentence for shooting Brian Epp, a white man who trespassed and attacked him at his home in Georgia, another stand your ground state.
It all began in early 2005, when McNeil and his wife, Anita, hired Brian Epp’s construction company to build a new house in Cobb County, Ga. The McNeils testified that Epp was difficult to work with, which led to heated confrontations. They eventually decided to close on the house early to rid their lives of Epp, whom they found increasingly threatening. At the closing, both parties agreed that Epp would have 10 days to complete the work, after which he would stay away from the property, but he failed to keep up his end of the bargain.
On Dec. 6, 2005, John McNeil’s 15-year-old son, La’Ron, notified his dad over the phone that a man he didn’t recognize was lurking in the backyard. When La’Ron told the man to leave, an argument broke out. McNeil was still on the phone and immediately recognized Epp’s voice. According to La’Ron’s testimony, Epp pointed a folding utility knife at La’Ron’s face and said, “[w]hy don’t you make me leave?” at which point McNeil told his son to go inside and wait while he called 911 and headed home.
According to McNeil’s testimony, when he pulled up to his house, Epp was next door grabbing something from his truck and stuffing it in his pocket. McNeil quickly grabbed his gun from the glove compartment in plain view of Epp who was coming at him “fast.” McNeil jumped out of the car and fired a warning shot at the ground insisting that Epp back off. Instead of retreating, Epp charged at McNeil while reaching for his pocket, so McNeil fired again, this time fatally striking Epp in the head. (Epp was found to have a folding knife in his pocket, although it was shut.)
The McNeils weren’t the only ones who felt threatened by Epp. David Samson and Libby Jones, a white couple who hired Epp to build their home in 2004, testified that they carried a gun as a “precaution” around Epp because of his threatening behavior. According to Jones, Epp nearly hit her when she expressed dissatisfaction with his work at a weekly meeting. The couple even had a lawyer write a letter warning Epp to stay away from their property. Samson testified that after they fired him, Epp would park his car across the street and watch their house, saying “it got to the point where my wife and I were in total fear of this man.”
After a neighbor across the street who witnessed the encounter corroborated McNeil’s account, police determined that it was a case of self-defense and did not charge him in the death. Nevertheless, almost a year later Cobb County District Attorney Patrick Head decided to prosecute McNeil for murder. In 2006, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
McNeil’s attorney Mark Yurachek told Salon that “DAs throughout the country enjoy that kind of flexibility of deciding who to prosecute, but it’s curious that he took a year to do it.” While he said there’s no way to know what swayed the DA to prosecute, Yurachek revealed that letters, which he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, were written to the DA’s office demanding that McNeil be charged. “They were mostly emails from people cajoling prosecutors to investigate,” says Yurachek. “One was from Epp’s widow. Others were written anonymously.”
In 2008, McNeil appealed his case to the Georgia Supreme Court with all but one of the seven justices upholding his conviction. The sole dissent came from Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears who argued, “the State failed to disprove John McNeil’s claim of self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt.” She went on to write:
Even viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence was overwhelming in showing that a reasonable person in McNeil’s shoes would have believed that he was subject to an imminent physical attack by an aggressor possessing a knife and that it was necessary to use deadly force to protect himself from serious bodily injury or a forcible felony. Under the facts of this case, it would be unreasonable to require McNeil to wait until Epp succeeded in attacking him, thereby potentially disarming him, getting control of the gun, or stabbing him before he could legally employ deadly force to defend himself. This is not what Georgia law requires.
As a leading gun rights state, Georgia has both a stand your ground law that permits citizens to use deadly force “only if he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent death or great bodily injury,” as well as a Castle Doctrine law, which justifies the use of deadly force in defense of one’s home.
Thus far, gun rights advocates such as the NRA and former Cobb County congressional Rep. Newt Gingrich have been silent on McNeil’s conviction, though it’s unclear whether they are aware of the case. The NRA did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Still, Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP State Conference, argues, “The NRA would be screaming about the injustice of his conviction if John had been white and shot a black assailant that came at him on his property armed with a knife.” (McNeil grew up in North Carolina, where the local NAACP chapter, led by Barber, was the first to pick up on his case in Georgia.)
Barber was clear that the NAACP remains firmly against stand your ground laws because “they give cover to those who may engage in racial profiling and racialized violence,” adding that “There is a history and legacy of discriminatory application of the law” that continues to this day. “African-Americans are caught in curious position. On one hand, we fight against stand your ground laws, but once the laws are on the books they aren’t applied to us.”
Civil rights activist Markel Hutchins agrees and has filed a federal lawsuit challenging Georgia’s stand your ground law because the law is not applied equally to African-Americans. He accuses the courts of accepting “the race of a victim as evidence to establish the reasonableness of an individual’s fear in cases of justifiable homicide.”
Meanwhile, Barber argues that McNeil’s treatment stands in stark contrast to that of George Zimmerman, who has been afforded the benefit of the doubt despite his victim being unarmed. “America’s always had a difficult issue dealing with race, so rather than face it when it’s exposed, the tendency by some is to try and dismiss it. But the reality is you do not see this kind of miscarriage of justice when it comes to whites.” He adds, “John’s whole life has been taken away from him. His wife is very ill with cancer and she has lost a husband, his sons have lost a father and society has lost a man that was contributing to his community.”
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Dan,
quote:If it would always (in every single case that's ever existed) be better if X item were not necessary, then X is fundamentally bad.
No. For one thing, I didn't intend it to apply to just any item. For another, I didn't intend it to apply only to necessity. Let me put it another way: can you think of a single situation in which a gun, when used on another human being, was ever a 'good' thing in and of itself? By that I mean can you think of a time or an example in which a gun could be used or threatened on another human being that nobody would think was 'good' except that it averted a worse likely outcome if the gun hadn't been involved?
That is all I mean. I'm not intending to make some broad philosophical statement about the virtue or wickedness of all 'items' everywhere in all cases, and to be honest it seems a little strange to distill my remarks to that extent.
I do believe that guns can often be used to avert very bad things. That doesn't mean I think guns are 'good'. When used to deal with people, they're intended only to threaten, injure, or kill. So, yeah, bad. Sometimes necessary but still bad.
---------
Stone_Wolf,
quote:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pipe bombs can be made for less then ten dollars from components found at any hardware store in the country!
Alright, clearly you're intent on sticking to this pipe bomb argument. So a direct question: how many cases have you heard, or even heard of, a case in which someone said, "I need to defend/attack someone. Hmmm. Easiest way? I know! I'll build a pipe bomb!" Can you even tell me the last time you heard of a pipe bomb being used anywhere without resorting to Google?
Guns are not like pipe bombs in the USA. It is a fundamentally silly comparison to make. Cars aren't like guns either, for that matter, or at least they're not treated that way. If you buy a gun, as long as you keep to yourself and don't cause trouble, nobody will come and inspect it. You don't have to pay insurance on it to drive it. You can't be pulled over almost on a whim and compelled to prove your sobriety for your gun. As a rule, for everyone, you don't have to go to a government office and prove-to whatever low a standard-that you ought to be trusted with a car, but rather you only have to submit to the government's checks that you're not a dangerous criminal or lunatic. And, of course, cars have a whole helluva lot more necessary-to-living applications for the overwhelming majority of their users than do guns for theirs.
Will you insist on making these two comparisons as we continue?
quote:Making more laws (since apparently our current laws aren't helping, according to you guys) is the answer, laws that remove the ability to defend yourself from criminals, criminals who will likely not be effected by the laws against guns, but who will be much more confident that their law abiding victims will be unable to defend themselves.
Actually, quite a lot of our laws are helping. A big part of the problem, though, is that anytime anywhere someone says, "Hey, isn't it at least a little bit too easy for damn near anyone to obtain lethal force and then not be accountable for it?" You know what's never far behind? Groups and people talking about pipe bombs and cars or something.
Here's a question for you: which major American city, with one of the highest rates of gun violence on the planet, recently tried to take a decisive step towards limiting the future availability of firearms within its limits? How exactly were they stopped, and by whom?
quote:Rakeesh...I'll accept that you were not intentionally implying a lack of calm level headedness, but you are still assuming that just because someone is armed that they will start shooting the robbers. And -again-, that goes against the training and the law. They specifically train you to give up possessions, especially other people's possessions, and only shoot someone if you believe harm is eminent.
No, I'm not. To parrot you, you're welcome to quote me where I said that. What I said was that the chance someone armed will shoot the robbers (go ahead, ask a cop if they think someone with a concealed weapons permit ought to shoot the robbers, I dare you, outside of the highly-EXTREMELY-unusual case of robbers-turning-proclaimed-mass-murderers-by-announcing-it-in-advance, that is)...the chance that someone who is armed will shoot the robbers is a lot greater than someone who isn't armed will shoot the robbers.
As for this training...yes. I'm sure the government's training in these matters is rigorous, ongoing, and appropriately skeptical. For instance, once I pass the withering testing process to obtain a concealed weapons permit, I'm sure that pretty much everywhere, I need to go and renew my license and submit to the same testing, yes? And I'm sure the training includes rigorous programs on how and when to use deadly force, right?
Of course right. I mean, to do otherwise would just be crazy!
quote:Way to discredit me before we even get into it. I was simply pointing out that those two circumstances were not hypothetical and in no way starting a "headline contest".
Well I didn't think you were, because it would be such a poor proposition. But anyway, if you don't want that sort of challenge, think twice before you start bringing up things that have actually happened, because for every one of your statistically rare vigilante stories...http://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/gun-violence/ (this also applies neatly to your talk about pipe bombs and other weapons. It's illegal to attack people with knives, too, but look at how much less common deaths are from knife attack? I wonder why on Earth that is?)
quote:Let's see the quote, because I bet you can't find one.
Alright: "While I tend to agree with most of what you have said, although not the tone it was said in, the above quote I disagree with vehemently. I'm not sure how it works in Florida, but when my dad got his carry permit in Minnesota he had to have a valid reason to want to carry. Some examples were, "Dangerous line of work, carries lots of cash, death threats, etc."
Now I don't think given Zimmerman's history he should have been issued a carry permit. But if you have reason to need a gun, and you have a legal carry permit, you don't leave it at home because you are going to the market.
Markets get robbed, and if you have a valid reason to need a gun, it is still as valid in a market as anywhere else."
You started off acknowledging some of the reasons someone might wish to have a concealed permit. Dangerous line of work, for example. Carries lots of cash. Well, SW, unless that dangerous line of work is driving to Target with sacks of diamonds, I suspect that right there there are two reasons why just because you have a concealed permit, doesn't mean your reason to have it applies everywhere. You have the RIGHT to carry it everywhere, heaven help us, which isn't the same thing at all.
There, that was super hard.
quote:Because you can think of one -possible- reason why someone wouldn't -need- to bring a gun to Target, your previous statement that bringing a gun to Target is as stupid as blowing your child's college fund in Vegas must be true. You are being ridiculous and argumentative for no other reason that I can see that you don't like to admit when you are wrong.
Yes, it certainly has nothing to do with you bringing in first-stage gun ownership arguments that illustrate a serious lack of thought and research on the issue, and might have been taken word for word from an NRA lobbyist.
They were reasons you brought up, by the way, not me. And my point was never-obviously, by the way-that nobody who has ever had a concealed weapons permit would have a reason to carry with them to Target. Rather that Zimmerman didn't.
quote:I have no idea what you are talking about, but I double dog dare you to quote me as saying something that refutes your statement,
Hey, the criticism of the criticism is rampant. It's in nearly every post of yours to me on this thread. So...whew! Dodged that double-dog-dare there. That was close.
quote:and would appreciate an apology when you fail.
Still a fan of insisting on apologies, I see.
quote:Unless of course one person is making bad choices, and the other person has the gun and stops them before those bad choices become permanent to others.
Which is an argument first against the other person not having a gun, not of both people!
quote: Only a million times more easy in every single category. I'm not going to post the step by step process of making a pipe bomb on the net, for obvious reasons, but let's just say, a trip to the hardware store, $10, 10 minutes and some basic tools and you are good to go.
Yes, I know that, because I'm a nerd who likes reading and knows how to use Google to research action movies when I want to. I suspect most Hatrackers around here do, too. And yet, in spite of this penetrating analysis on your part...pipe bomb violence in the USA is at an all-time low!
quote:But you guys are missing the point. The point isn't that pipe bombs are such a big threat, the point is that the problems with guns you are describing are illegal, just like pipe bombs. Why in the world do you think more laws are going to solve a problem that current laws are already not dealing with?
A better question: why in the world is 'it's already illegal' an argument for 'whelp, legislation has utterly failed and is forever doomed to failure, time to just give up!' Another comparison, just for fun, that is a whole helluva lot more relevant than your pipe bomb comparison (not that that would be difficult): it's been illegal for a man to rape and/or beat his wife for quite some time pretty much everywhere in the United States. And yet, for much of that very same length of time, despite there being some very clear laws on the books against such activities...domestic violence continues to be a let's just say non-trivial problem throughout much of that very same country. Ought we just throw up our hands and say, "Man! It's already illegal, and if writing a law doesn't solve this problem, then we just don't know what will," or is that rather an argument in favor of, I don't know, finding out if maybe we can't do a better job writing and enforcing laws?
quote:It seems you are being dishonest, doing everything you can to dismiss what I have to say without ever addressing the real point. Is my real point that pipe bombs are a huge national threat? Why would it be? Please stay on topic and keep the theatrics to a minimum.
Shall I whine for an apology, after having just been called a liar? Or will I merely ask what is dishonest about pointing out how nonsensical your pipe bomb comparison was, and asking just how pointing that out is dishonest? I think I'll go with the latter.
quote:Guns are hundreds of dollars, require background checks, waiting periods, etc, where as pipe bombs can be made in ten minutes for ten dollars by anyone who can google search "how to make a pipe bomb".
As neat an illustration as I've ever seen as to how out of touch you are. Legal firearms are hundreds of dollars, background checks, and waiting periods (those latter two, by the way, you're welcome to guess if they were greeted favorably by gun rights activitist or bitterly opposed).
But even in the case of legal firearms, I get to keep the lethal force pretty much forever unless I draw attention to myself. And yet how often do I have to pass a background check?
quote:Pipe bombs are simply a comparison of illegal activities...here is a better one: Using a car dangerously or homicidaly is also illegal, but you don't see anyone calling for the banning of cars.
I pointed out above why this comparison to cars, aside from being a very standard and thoroughly rebutted gun rights bit of nonsense, is absurd. But I'll reiterate: cars are actually quite a lot more thoroughly regulated than firearms. By an enormous margin, on the local, state, and federal levels.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:
Here's a question for you: which major American city, with one of the highest rates of gun violence on the planet, recently tried to take a decisive step towards limiting the future availability of firearms within its limits? How exactly were they stopped, and by whom?
*raises hand
Ooooooo...was it the one where three kids were shot by random bullets yesterday?
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Stand your ground apparantly doesn't apply if your black.
Stand-your-ground is apparantly(sic) determined on a case-by-case basis.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Yeah, since black and white is a pretty binary basis.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Dan,
quote:If it would always (in every single case that's ever existed) be better if X item were not necessary, then X is fundamentally bad.
No. For one thing, I didn't intend it to apply to just any item. For another, I didn't intend it to apply only to necessity. Let me put it another way: can you think of a single situation in which a gun, when used on another human being, was ever a 'good' thing in and of itself? By that I mean can you think of a time or an example in which a gun could be used or threatened on another human being that nobody would think was 'good' except that it averted a worse likely outcome if the gun hadn't been involved?
That is all I mean. I'm not intending to make some broad philosophical statement about the virtue or wickedness of all 'items' everywhere in all cases, and to be honest it seems a little strange to distill my remarks to that extent.
I do believe that guns can often be used to avert very bad things. That doesn't mean I think guns are 'good'. When used to deal with people, they're intended only to threaten, injure, or kill. So, yeah, bad. Sometimes necessary but still bad.
I know you weren't doing that, because I was!
But seriously, I'm curious why you wouldn't commit to it in principle.
If it would always, in every circumstance, be better if X wasn't necessary, why not call X bad?
(By the way, do you distinguish between "bad" and "immoral" in this context? Here I am thinking of them interchangeably, but I'm not sure if you are so I want to check.)
Because here's the thing, I not only reject that guns are bad, I reject the premises you use to get there. Threatening, injuring, or killing someone is not inherently immoral either. The morality of those acts, like the morality of guns, is contextual.
I distilled your statement because it seems like you're saying "in a perfect world, we wouldn't need guns, right? Therefore they are bad."
But in a "perfect" world we wouldn't need food, sleep, oxygen, cars, etc.
Because we would generate our own nutrients/rest/oxygen inside our bodies using nanites and be able to teleport wherever we wanted. Or whatever.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:If it would always, in every circumstance, be better if X wasn't necessary, why not call X bad?
(By the way, do you distinguish between "bad" and "immoral" in this context? Here I am thinking of them interchangeably, but I'm not sure if you are so I want to check.)
Well with guns, that is what I'm doing. I still don't see how that amounts to 'if you believe that, why doesn't it apply to all things everywhere in every situation'?
As for the latter, I don't use them interchangeably here. For instance, let's say if your husband who has brutally beaten you dozens of times tracks you down on your way back to the battered women's shelter after stalking you relentlessly and demands you return home with him or he'll kill you...then no, threatening him with a firearm would of course not be immoral. The gun is still, ultimately, bad thing though-in this situation, it's a tool that has to be used in the last extremity of, well, wickedness. Why is the idea that something you need to resort to when things are really awful is bad while still being necessary so unusual?
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Oh, it's not unusual at all. It's just wrong!
If something is a vital and necessary tool to accomplishing something good, it makes no sense to me to call the thing itself bad. I know that's a really common thing to do, but I disagree with it.
Perhaps an example of something bad used to accomplish something good would be murdering a child infected with a highly contagious deadly disease. In that sense, you could argue you did something good (prevented X millions from dying) but the argument that you still did something bad (murdered a child innocent of wrongdoing) has a pretty good case too. The bad doesn't wash out the good, because the "bad" here is actually itself an immoral act.
I don't see how a gun, inherently, is bad.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I think part of the disconnect here is that while I would use 'necessary' or 'best possible course of action', shades of meaning like that, I suspect you would skip right over to 'good'. Put another way, sometimes the right thing to do simply isn't, itself, a good thing to do. The person who did it ought still be credited for it, but that's still not the same thing as saying 'it was good'. There's some dissonance there...but only if you insist on asserting your particular take on things as the truth of the world to begin with, I think.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Rakeesh, *sigh* you seriously make me sad for you. Again we are fighting tooth and nail over the 10% we disagree about an issue, ignoring the 90% we agree, and I think it is because you so enjoy arguing and using such emotionally biased phrasing you don't seem to care about truly sharing perspective or entering into a real honest discussion. Here is an example.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Alright, clearly you're intent on sticking to this pipe bomb argument.
I already answered this -twice- before you asked it.
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: But you guys are missing the point. The point isn't that pipe bombs are such a big threat, the point is that the problems with guns you are describing are illegal, just like pipe bombs.
And even with it already explained, you ignore the explanation and fire off sarcastic, superior (unrelated) barbs as if I'm the one with difficulty understanding.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: "I need to defend/attack someone. Hmmm. Easiest way? I know! I'll build a pipe bomb!" Can you even tell me the last time you heard of a pipe bomb being used anywhere without resorting to Google?
And here you dismiss my comparisons without actually addressing my point. Of course when you compare things they aren't gong to be exactly the same, the whole point of comparing them is to point out their similarities to show an underlying concept. I'm sure you could compare two exact same things, but I suspect that it would be ultimately pointless, as with zero contrast you couldn't really show anything. The only similarity I was pointing out about pipe bombs and guns used in crime is that they are both illegal already.
quote:Guns are not like pipe bombs in the USA. It is a fundamentally silly comparison to make. Cars aren't like guns either, for that matter, or at least they're not treated that way.
Continuing on, your arguments that there are differences between cars and guns (obviously there are differences) sufficient to make any comparison useless are easily nullified. (Although I appreciate that you at least made an argument instead of just dismissing out of hand.)
quote:If you buy a gun, as long as you keep to yourself and don't cause trouble, nobody will come and inspect it.
If you get a carry permit, you need to requall, to submit to safety and competency testing multiple times a year to keep your license (at least in my state). So, -just like a car-, if you simply "park" your gun in your garage, then no inspections needed! It's when you want to -use- the object that testing comes into play.
quote:You don't have to pay insurance on it to drive it.
Drive a gun? Anyway, as an idea, this actually has merit worthy of further discussion, the requirement of insurance to get a permit to carry.
quote:You can't be pulled over almost on a whim and compelled to prove your sobriety for your gun.
You get pulled over for using a car not owning one, try -using a gun- without police involvement! Of course you could go to a shooting range, the equivalent of a closed racetrack, but you don't really see any black and whites cruising the racetrack do you? (Just FYI, DOJ officers often frequent shooting ranges looking for illegal weapons, from what I'm told.)
quote:As a rule, for everyone, you don't have to go to a government office and prove-to whatever low a standard-that you ought to be trusted with a car, but rather you only have to submit to the government's checks that you're not a dangerous criminal or lunatic.
Before you can purchase a handgun you have to pass the Handgun Safety Certificate Program test (formerly the Basic Firearms Safety Certificate for both long and hand guns, now only for pistols, not sure why) (again, in my state), -just like you need a license to buy a car-!
quote:And, of course, cars have a whole helluva lot more necessary-to-living applications for the overwhelming majority of their users than do guns for theirs.
Yes, it is true. But guns also have a much more every day use then only being used in crime or crime prevention. Hunting, sports shooting, collecting, male bonding, etc (notice that 3/4 of those are also true for cars).
quote: Will you insist on making these two comparisons as we continue?
I'm not insisting on anything, the points I'm trying to bring up are not being addressed. The truth of the matter is that cars, like guns, are dangerous tools that are heavily regulated and often cause tragedies when not handled properly. You seem to like to lump me in with NRA types who are calling for no regulations when it comes to firearms, and this is blatantly unfair and really needs to stop. Were I in charge we would have more training, testing and regulation of firearms then there is now...all with the shooters flipping the bill, that is to say, people should pay for the services they use directly instead of using general tax money, just like the funds of vehicle registration going to road repair.
quote:Actually, quite a lot of our laws are helping.
Yet another thing we agree on. If you look at my posts more closely I said: "Making more laws (since apparently our current laws aren't helping, according to you guys) is the answer... "
quote:A big part of the problem, though, is that anytime anywhere someone says, "Hey, isn't it at least a little bit too easy for damn near anyone to obtain lethal force and then not be accountable for it?" You know what's never far behind? Groups and people talking about pipe bombs and cars or something.
This is the lowest kind of emotional heart-string tugging...groups of people...are not me, and really do not belong in this discussion. If you are having talks with said groups of people who do not have an actual point, unlike myself, then feel free to lump them together and dismiss what they have to say without addressing it, but please leave me off that list.
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: ...you are still assuming that just because someone is armed that they will start shooting the robbers. And -again-, that goes against the training and the law.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: No, I'm not. To parrot you, you're welcome to quote me where I said that.
quote:The assumption is that 'random person with a concealed weapons permit' is really not at all enough to say that that person is cool-headed with good judgment, reaction time, and is an excellent shot.
Unless you are assuming they are -shooting the robbers- then their reaction time and how good a shot they are is irrelevant. You don't need to argue every single point of contention into the ground dude. I know you like to "mix it up" but I really don't. So please cut the boxing match out, no one is keeping track of points.
quote:What I said was that the chance someone armed will shoot the robbers (go ahead, ask a cop if they think someone with a concealed weapons permit ought to shoot the robbers, I dare you, outside of the highly-EXTREMELY-unusual case of robbers-turning-proclaimed-mass-murderers-by-announcing-it-in-advance, that is)
I think you don't understand what I'm saying since -I'm saying- that you shouldn't shoot robbers unless they say they are going to or actually start killing people.
quote:...the chance that someone who is armed will shoot the robbers is a lot greater than someone who isn't armed will shoot the robbers.
The chance that people with fingers can type 90 wpm is WAY higher then double amputees, but it isn't a safe bet that everyone with fingers can type that fast or at all. Here is my point that you are not getting: For every story of someone (Zimmerman) doing something tragically stupid or wantonly homicidal with a legal carry permit there are thousands upon thousands of stories you -don't hear- about people with guns who didn't pull them because they shouldn't have. How is it possible to take into account all these nonevents? Zimmerman's tragic tale -should- welcome in reform in our laws about who gets a carry permit, and what is tested to get one. I think that is part of the 90% we agree on.
quote:As for this training...yes. I'm sure the government's training in these matters is rigorous, ongoing, and appropriately skeptical. For instance, once I pass the withering testing process to obtain a concealed weapons permit, I'm sure that pretty much everywhere, I need to go and renew my license and submit to the same testing, yes? And I'm sure the training includes rigorous programs on how and when to use deadly force, right?
Of course right. I mean, to do otherwise would just be crazy!
I suspect you are attempting sarcasm, but this is exactly the case (again, in my state).
quote: It's illegal to attack people with knives, too, but look at how much less common deaths are from knife attack? I wonder why on Earth that is?
Never heard the phrase "Like bringing a knife to a gun fight."?
quote:There, that was super hard.
I could get heavy into this one, but I don't really care that much. I don't think that for a single second you really believe that I'm pro vigilantism, and your insistence that I am just comes off as more of the "argument game" which I really have no interest in. Let me clear this up for you once and for all, I am against citizens playing cop. I am for citizens being able to defend themselves. The difference is this: Playing cop involves looking for trouble, while defending yourself just plain doesn't.
quote:Yes, it certainly has nothing to do with you bringing in first-stage gun ownership arguments that illustrate a serious lack of thought and research on the issue, and might have been taken word for word from an NRA lobbyist.
I accept that you are not going to admit that your statement about Vegas was ridiculous, but you can keep throwing icing on that turd, it ain't never gunna be a cake.
quote:Hey, the criticism of the criticism is rampant. It's in nearly every post of yours to me on this thread. So...whew! Dodged that double-dog-dare there. That was close.
I'm no longer even a little surprised when instead of clarifying and attempting to understand people's views, you just argue and get snarky.
quote:Still a fan of insisting on apologies, I see.
Was I insisting? Since when is a polite request insisting? I guess when it serves your needs to paint a picture of other people, regardless of...oh, I don't know...the truth.
quote: And yet, in spite of this penetrating analysis on your part...pipe bomb violence in the USA is at an all-time low!
Condescension aside, this is -again- something that has been addressed, and it is not honest of you to keep flailing your arms about and shouting "But pipe bombs are rare!" instead of actually addressing my point.
quote:A better question: why in the world is 'it's already illegal' an argument for 'whelp, legislation has utterly failed and is forever doomed to failure, time to just give up!'
This wouldn't be a question for me...since I'm calling for stricter laws for carry permits. This wouldn't be a question for any reasonable person, as it isn't an intelligent question.
quote: Another comparison, just for fun, that is a whole helluva lot more relevant than your pipe bomb comparison (not that that would be difficult):
I have no idea how you think you can occupy the moral high ground and act like a first class jerk at the same time.
quote:Shall I whine for an apology, after having just been called a liar? Or will I merely ask what is dishonest about pointing out how nonsensical your pipe bomb comparison was, and asking just how pointing that out is dishonest? I think I'll go with the latter.
I thought you said I was insisting on an apology before...now I'm whining for one, eh? You are a rude person on the internet, I wonder if you are in real life. I doubt it, as being rude in real life actually takes some bravery. Try actually addressing my point instead of ranting about how I am trying to get that point across is not worthy.
quote:As neat an illustration as I've ever seen as to how out of touch you are. Legal firearms are hundreds of dollars, background checks, and waiting periods (those latter two, by the way, you're welcome to guess if they were greeted favorably by gun rights activitist or bitterly opposed).
Who cares what "gun right activists" think, try actually talking to me instead of making up positions for people not in this discussion to oppose. Again...my point is that illegal guns are...illegal already. No need to confuse better enforcement of our current laws with the need for stricter laws.
quote: But even in the case of legal firearms, I get to keep the lethal force pretty much forever unless I draw attention to myself. And yet how often do I have to pass a background check?
If you become a felon, or beat your wife or otherwise disqualify yourself from gun ownership, the cops come and take your guns dude.
quote:...cars are actually quite a lot more thoroughly regulated than firearms. By an enormous margin, on the local, state, and federal levels.
As well they should be, as they are WAY more common then guns in everyday use. It doesn't mean there isn't a valid and useful comparison that can be made for purposes of discussion.
quote: I do believe that guns can often be used to avert very bad things. That doesn't mean I think guns are 'good'. When used to deal with people, they're intended only to threaten, injure, or kill. So, yeah, bad. Sometimes necessary but still bad.
Guns are inanimate objects, they just sit there, hunks steel and plastic doing nothing at all until someone picks them up and makes choices which are morally good, bad and everything in between. Any inanimate object can be used for good or bad, and without choice there is no morality. And preventing something bad from happening -is good-.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka:
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Or if you're a conspiracy theorist...they chose murder 2 KNOWING they couldn't make it stick, but wanted to charge him to mollify critics of the case. In other words, it could all be theater.
Or they figure they charge murder 2, and then settle for a deal of manslaughter, and save the cost of a trial.
Less conspiracy; more cynic.
It would be highly, highly unethical for the DA to ask for an indictment and to charge someone with a crime unless he believes that person to be guilty, and guilty of that specific crime.
While plea deals do happen routinely, charging for a crime more grave than what the law allows would be an ethics violation that could land the DA and ADA in jail for contempt, and it could get them disbarred. Charges are only brought when the DA can reasonably account, to a judge, for the crime being charged at the preliminary hearing.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: It would be highly, highly unethical for the DA to ask for an indictment and to charge someone with a crime unless he believes that person to be guilty, and guilty of that specific crime.
Which is not what I said. They can absolutely believe all of the following:
that Zimmerman committed murder 2;
that they (the DA's office) have enough evidence to bring Zimmerman to trial on that charge, and with a decent chance of conviction;
that a deal for a lesser charge, such as manslaughter, is a better use of the city's resources than a chance, however decent, of a conviction
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Stone_Wolf,
quote:Rakeesh, *sigh* you seriously make me sad for you. Again we are fighting tooth and nail over the 10% we disagree about an issue, ignoring the 90% we agree, and I think it is because you so enjoy arguing and using such emotionally biased phrasing you don't seem to care about truly sharing perspective or entering into a real honest discussion. Here is an example.
I don't want your pity, but in any case I don't think I actually have it. As for emotionally biased phrasing...look, I realize you don't think this about yourself, but you *opened up* this post with an expression of pity that implicitly assumes a posture of moral superiority. That sort of style isn't new from you, either. So don't let's hear any more from you about 'emotionally biased phrasing', shall we?
quote:And here you dismiss my comparisons without actually addressing my point. Of course when you compare things they aren't gong to be exactly the same, the whole point of comparing them is to point out their similarities to show an underlying concept. I'm sure you could compare two exact same things, but I suspect that it would be ultimately pointless, as with zero contrast you couldn't really show anything. The only similarity I was pointing out about pipe bombs and guns used in crime is that they are both illegal already.
Yes, obviously comparisons won't be exactly the same. They need to be CLOSE to be anything other than silly, though. Example: it's illegal to tie someone up with rope and lay them on train tracks, but of course trains are not unusual and neither is rope. So let's talk about making a comparison between guns and ropes/trains.
Also, when you say that the only comparison you drew was on illegality, well, that's simply untrue. You also likened them to ease of illegally obtaining and use.
quote:Continuing on, your arguments that there are differences between cars and guns (obviously there are differences) sufficient to make any comparison useless are easily nullified. (Although I appreciate that you at least made an argument instead of just dismissing out of hand.)
I wonder if you're even aware of the striking hypocrisy in your words? In the very same paragraph that you complain of me making an argument for a change...you just say they're 'easily nullified'. Oh, yes, that good old Stone Wolf double standard!
quote:If you get a carry permit, you need to requall, to submit to safety and competency testing multiple times a year to keep your license (at least in my state). So, -just like a car-, if you simply "park" your gun in your garage, then no inspections needed! It's when you want to -use- the object that testing comes into play.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concealed_carry_in_the_United_States Go take, I don't know, five or ten minutes to review just how rigorous the standards are throughout the nation for concealed carry permits. Oh, fun fact that I knew but didn't connect: the majority of such permits go to males, yet strangely women are more likely to actually need a concealed permit because they're more likely to be the victims of violence than men. So I guess your 'reason' for owning a lethal force firearm of 'male bonding' is certainly true.
quote:Drive a gun? Anyway, as an idea, this actually has merit worthy of further discussion, the requirement of insurance to get a permit to carry.
Yeah, well, good luck with that. The folks on your side of this particular aisle have a lot invested in that sort of thing not happening. The same sorts of people who, for example, helped in my state to make sure it's legal to bring a firearm to work in your car, even if your employer doesn't want one there.
And yeah, they are on your side of the aisle. Not unlike other disagreements you've had with myself and others, you don't seem to realize that not consciously intending to support an idea doesn't mean your arguments don't support it.
You get pulled over for using a car not owning one, try -using a gun- without police involvement! Of course you could go to a shooting range, the equivalent of a closed racetrack, but you don't really see any black and whites cruising the racetrack do you? (Just FYI, DOJ officers often frequent shooting ranges looking for illegal weapons, from what I'm told.)[/quote] Which highlights yet another difference between cars and guns. Outside of target firing and hunting, there isn't a single aspect of using a gun that the people-that is to say the government-ought to be interested in. As for cars, everywhere you go, you have to go forth and demonstrate your ability to safely use that car...and you're much more likely to drive safely than you are to, say, thwart a sudden grocery store robbery turned mass murder safely.
quote:Before you can purchase a handgun you have to pass the Handgun Safety Certificate Program test (formerly the Basic Firearms Safety Certificate for both long and hand guns, now only for pistols, not sure why) (again, in my state), -just like you need a license to buy a car-!
Well I know I feel better knowing that kind of test is what it takes before someone has the option of armed vigilantism!
quote:Yes, it is true. But guns also have a much more every day use then only being used in crime or crime prevention. Hunting, sports shooting, collecting, male bonding, etc (notice that 3/4 of those are also true for cars).
Not one of those uses is actually necessary to living throughout the United States. You never drove your children to school on your 12 gauge, or went in to work on a weekend on your 9. And, of course, children have a harder time, usually, sneaking into your car in your garage and killing one a other by accident than they do with guns. If someone demands your wallet at knife point, you're less likely to drive at them, miss, and go plowing through the wall of a house twenty yards away and kill someone who didn't even know you were there.
quote:I'm not insisting on anything, the points I'm trying to bring up are not being addressed. The truth of the matter is that cars, like guns, are dangerous tools that are heavily regulated and often cause tragedies when not handled properly. You seem to like to lump me in with NRA types who are calling for no regulations when it comes to firearms, and this is blatantly unfair and really needs to stop. Were I in charge we would have more training, testing and regulation of firearms then there is now...all with the shooters flipping the bill, that is to say, people should pay for the services they use directly instead of using general tax money, just like the funds of vehicle registration going to road repair.
If this is what you really do believe, that's great. In that case, try not to use arguments so neatly dovetailing with, say, the NRA, for example-or to criticize the criticism, and there won't be this confusion. Until then, prepare to be misunderstood, since you're communicating badly.
quote:Yet another thing we agree on. If you look at my posts more closely I said: "Making more laws (since apparently our current laws aren't helping, according to you guys) is the answer... "
Which is a classic straw man in this issue, used especially by the people you disavow. Nobody here has said 'no amount of laws can ever work, thus we need to just say they're all illegal now, and that will solve everything'.
quote:Unless you are assuming they are -shooting the robbers- then their reaction time and how good a shot they are is irrelevant. You don't need to argue every single point of contention into the ground dude. I know you like to "mix it up" but I really don't. So please cut the boxing match out, no one is keeping track of points.
Reaction time, hand-eye coordination, and judgment are tested in your car comparison if you'll insist on it. Why on earth not for *concealed lethal weapons*? What possible use of such a permit exists in which it isn't in the public's interest to be concerned about those things?
quote:I think you don't understand what I'm saying since -I'm saying- that you shouldn't shoot robbers unless they say they are going to or actually start killing people.
First, I'm saying it was a stupid hypothetical to raise in the first place. But if we are going to discuss it, unless the would be hero has been tested on judgment, reaction time, hand eye coordination, marksmanship, it's probably safer for everyone to just run all at once than for the one guy to start lighting villains up-and that if we're going to be in this business of concealed permits, we ought to check.
quote:The chance that people with fingers can type 90 wpm is WAY higher then double amputees, but it isn't a safe bet that everyone with fingers can type that fast or at all. Here is my point that you are not getting: For every story of someone (Zimmerman) doing something tragically stupid or wantonly homicidal with a legal carry permit there are thousands upon thousands of stories you -don't hear- about people with guns who didn't pull them because they shouldn't have. How is it possible to take into account all these nonevents? Zimmerman's tragic tale -should- welcome in reform in our laws about who gets a carry permit, and what is tested to get one. I think that is part of the 90% we agree on.
In these cases, what would change if they hadn't been armed? Nothing. If they DID need a gun but didn't have it, things might have gone very bad-but then they might have gone very bad if they used their gun improperly. Sometimes even if they didn't! And in all that time, their gun is at home or in their trunks, there, waiting, available for any number of situations where it isn't called for-vastly more than for when it is.
quote:I accept that you are not going to admit that your statement about Vegas was ridiculous, but you can keep throwing icing on that turd, it ain't never gunna be a cake.
My statement that it is stupid and dangerous to bring a gun to go grocery shopping *just to have a gun while grocery shopping* is one I stand by.
quote:I'm no longer even a little surprised when instead of clarifying and attempting to understand people's views, you just argue and get snarky.
People? Naw. Only some people. Why just the other day, I disagreed strongly with something Senoj said, but he made a good case that more than held its weight. The sarcasm with you is learned, not general.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Thanks for the link, I honestly was not aware of the situation in the whole country, just my state (Cali).
You skipped addressing some good stuff, and I can't say as I agree with most of your post, but in the end it is just not worth it to put any substantial time into trying to argue with you, so I won't.
quote:My statement that it is stupid and dangerous to bring a gun to go grocery shopping *just to have a gun while grocery shopping* is one I stand by.
I still disagree, but at least with rewording it doesn't sound so god awful.
I would appreciate it if you could keep the sarcastic jabs to a minimum, and I'll try and do the same, okay?
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: my state (Cali).
arrrrgggg!
*THWAP*
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Huh?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:I still disagree, but at least with rewording it doesn't sound so god awful.
I didn't reword it. This is what I was saying from the start, specifically in reference to Zimmerman strapping up to go to the grocery store. If he has a reason to feel he needs a concealed weapon, none has been put forward, though that may change. Yknow, since we're talking about 'skipping points'. Please.
As for sarcastic jabs, if you'll stop doing things like compare pipe bombs and firearms, and straightforwardly misstating what I said about the grocery store, I'll be sure to try and keep my sarcasm under better control. Until such time, though, as you stop doing things like that, as well as complaining of emotionally biased phrasing while using it (in the same paragraph, no less), well, I'm not going to speak as though your arguments are solid and well reasoned just because you hold them with no ill intent.
Case in point: your thoughts on what's necessary to obtain a concealed permit in this country, it would've taken under five minutes to *start* the process of being well-informed on the subject. You didn't want to do that, though. Instead you made repeatedly general statements, and then when challenged pivoted back to 'in my state'. I could go on, but I already have. It's just that I'm not asking you to stop being mean.
---------
As for gun control and gun rights overall, I don't say they ought to be banned universally, right now. That wouldn't work. But you know what would start to help? If we could start working on the idea that *perhaps* we ought to reconsider whether or not we ought to be defaulting to the idea that anyone and everyone should be able to use a gun for any or no reason, and it ought only be restricted if we can prove they're dangerous. We don't do that for cars, boats, planes, medication, all kinds of other things. But for some reason, the things designed to kill living things, animals or people, are different. It's somehow *wrong* to insist that a person ought to somehow demonstrate they ought to be trusted with a gun, and it's wrong to ever take steps towards making it a reality. Because we can't do it INSTANTLY, it's wrong to do it gradually.
[ April 15, 2012, 06:37 PM: Message edited by: Rakeesh ]
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: I know you like to "mix it up" but I really don't. So please cut the boxing match out, no one is keeping track of points.
I am!
---
Also, Rivka thwapped you because you abbreviated CA to "Cali" like some ignorant plebe from a flyover state.
Let me guess: you're not a California native?
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Rivka thwapped you because you abbreviated CA to "Cali" like some ignorant plebe from a flyover state.
Oh, well said. That's exactly right.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Bah, fourth generation born and raised (except for 5 years in Minnesota as a teen).
Cali is not thwap worthy. I know plenty of people who call it that who, like me, are born and raised here.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: I didn't reword it.
You know, I forget from time to time how abysmal is to try and talk to you, how you will argue every little detail to death even when clearly in the wrong, how nearly every single second I spend trying to communicate with you I will never get back.
Trust that I won't be making that same mistake any time soon.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I don't trust that, actually, a skepticism founded on experience. Anyway, like I said, I didn't reword it. Only if you took my original statement to mean 'any concealed permit carrier in any circumstances' could I be said to have reworded it.
Since I clearly didn't mean that, since it would take either a malicious or seriously obtuse or both reading to think I meant that, yup, I didn't reword it.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
On one hand I think everyone owning a gun for little to no reason is stupid.
On the other hand I love guns and the idea of owning vintage WWII weaponry and to be able to fire them on my private property.
I cannot at this time think of a way to make them inclusive goals. Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Cali is not thwap worthy.
Slow learner, huh?
*THWAP! THWAP!*
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: I know plenty of people who call it that who, like me, are born and raised here.
Just bring them close enough.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Also, Rivka thwapped you because you abbreviated CA to "Cali" like some ignorant plebe from a flyover state.
Let me guess: you're not a California native?
There are some famous and influential rap/hip-hop artists (especially from the west coast) that say "Cali" and they aren't ignorant plebes from a flyover state.
I've also heard long-time California natives refer to their state as "Cali" while around other long-time natives and no thwapping occurred.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Rap and hip-hop "artists" frequently speak a language only tangentially related to standard American English.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka: Rap and hip-hop "artists" frequently speak a language only tangentially related to standard American English.
That doesn't make them any less "correct" or influential.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
She did say 'standard', and I think when being a curmudgeon about state name abbreviations, tradition is rather a requirement.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: She did say 'standard', and I think when being a curmudgeon about state name abbreviations, tradition is rather a requirement.
Cali isn't a formal state name abbreviation like CA. It's a slang abbreviation, which is therefore, by definition, both non-standard and non-traditional.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
lets all fight over it
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I'm still not sure who's serious and who ain't.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Hey, we can get everyone from Frisco and Shy-Town and the Big Apple and the City of Angels together and they can fight over which city nickname is the least used by the actual inhabitants of that city.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
(Plus other cities I can't think of right now)
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: It would be highly, highly unethical for the DA to ask for an indictment and to charge someone with a crime unless he believes that person to be guilty, and guilty of that specific crime.
Which is not what I said. They can absolutely believe all of the following:
that Zimmerman committed murder 2;
that they (the DA's office) have enough evidence to bring Zimmerman to trial on that charge, and with a decent chance of conviction;
that a deal for a lesser charge, such as manslaughter, is a better use of the city's resources than a chance, however decent, of a conviction
I suppose I was responding more to the implication, taken from Lyr's comment but not dismissed entirely by yours, that the charge would be anything but sincerely brought.
Sadly that does happen in our united states, but it is nevertheless a huge no-no. I'm not entirely clear on the ethics of charging for a crime with foreknowledge of the likelihood of a plea, but I imagine the important distinction is whether or not the charge being brought is legitimate, and not whether the prosecutor sees an actual verdict as likely.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
I think it is less Lyr's implication, and more your inference. You can think you don't have a hope in hell of making a charge stick, and still decide to sincerely bring that charge -- for political reasons, or any others.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Well, you *can* yes. My only concern was pointing out that you are *not* supposed to. But then, I'd be a fool to believe the Rodney King Indictments weren't political either- the state's attorney wouldn't have filed those charges but for enormous pressure following the dismissals from the local courts.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I'd like to hear why people think voluntary manslaughter or negligent homicide would be more appropriate charges than murder 2.
If what I've found on the internet is accurate, if you fire a gun in the commission of a crime in Florida, it automatically raises the charge one degree. If you kill someone with a firearm in Florida (even if it might be considered negligent homicide), there is a minimum sentence of 25 years. This isn't some kind of liberal anti-gun hysteria, Jeb Bush originated this law.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
While on the topic of excessive use of force, the report from the pepper spray incident is in and pretty damning.
quote: You know how every time somebody in law enforcement does something that looks bad, we're told that we should "wait until the facts are in" before passing judgment? Well, after Lieutenant Pike of the UC Davis Police Department became an internet meme by using high-pressure pepper-spray on peaceful resisters, the campus hired an independent consulting firm to interview everybody they could find, review all the videos and other evidence, review the relevant policies and laws, and issue a final fact-finding report to the university. The university just released that report, along with their summary (PDF link), and the final report is even worse than the news accounts made it seem.
You probably weren't aware that the protesters warned the university that they were going to be protesting two weeks in advance, were you? The campus, and campus police, had two weeks' notice to plan for this, and yes, on day one, one question they addressed was, "What if the protesters set up an Occupy encampment?" Two weeks in advance they planned, well, if they do that, then we'll send in police to remove the tents, and to arrest anybody who tries to stop them. Now, under California law, when planning an operation like this, there's a checklist they're supposed to follow when writing the operational plan, specifically to make sure that they don't forget something important. Had they done so? They would have avoided all four of the important steps they screwed up. When asked about it? Nobody involved was even aware that that checklist existed.
The most important thing that the checklist would have warned them about was do not screw up the chain of command. Let me make clear who was in the chain of command. Under normal circumstances, it runs from university Chancellor Katehi, to campus police Chief Spicuzza, to campus police Lieutenant Davis, to his officers, including one I'll call Officer Nameless. (The report refers to him by a code letter.) Once the cops arrive on the scene, there's supposed to be one and only one person in a position to give orders to the other officers on the scene, including any higher-ups who are there (if any). Officer Nameless, who wrote the plan, was put in charge of the scene by Lt. Pike. By law, the officer in charge of the scene is not supposed to get directly involved. He or she (in this case, he) is supposed to stand back where he can see the whole scene, and concentrate on giving orders, and everybody else is supposed to refrain from giving orders. Officer Nameless instead ignored his responsibilities, and waded in, and so did Lt. Pike; Chief Spicuzza sat in her car half a block away, communicating with the radio dispatcher by cell phone, and at one time or another, all three of them, Officer Nameless and Lieutenant Pike and Chief Spicuzza were yelling out contradictory orders.
But before it even came to that point, the student protesters had, with the help of Legal Services, gone over all the relevant state laws, city ordinances, campus ordinances, and campus regulations and concluded that no matter what the Chancellor thought, it was entirely legal for them to set up that camp. When the university's legal department found out that Chancellor Katehi was going to order the camp removed, they thought they made it clear to her that the students were right.
I kept having to stop and slap my forehead over that one repeated phrase in the report: (this person or that) was under the impression she had made it clear that (some order was given), but nobody else present had that impression. Anybody who is "under the impression that they made it clear" that some order was given who who didn't put it in writing and who hasn't had that order paraphrased back to them? Should be slapped. Or at the very least demoted. Unless you actually said it, you didn't "make it clear."
It turns out that it is illegal for anybody to lodge on the campus without permission, but the relevant law only applies to people trying to make it their permanent dwelling. The law prohibits non-students from camping on campus for any reason, but neither student affairs nor the one cop sent to look could find any non-students who were there overnight. A campus regulation says that students can't set up tents without permission, but that regulation is not enforceable by police, only by academic discipline. Campus legal "thought they made it clear" that the law was on the students' side, but according to multiple witnesses, what they actually said was "it is unclear that you have legal authority to order the police to do this" and Chancellor Katehi heard that as "well, they didn't say I don't have that authority, only that it's not clear."
Chancellor Katehi, on her part, "thought she made it clear" that when police ordered the students to leave, they were (a) not to wear riot gear into the camp, (b) not to carry weapons of any kind into the camp, (c) were not to use force of any kind against the students, and (d) were not to make any arrests. But all that anybody else on that conference call heard her say out loud was "I don't want another situation like they just had at Berkeley," and Chief Spicuzza interpreted that as "no swinging of clubs."
Chief Spicuzza "thought she made it clear" more than once that no riot gear was to be worn and no clubs or pepper sprayers were to be carried. What Lieutenant Pike said back to her, each time, was, "Well, I hear you say that you don't want us to, but we're going to." And they did, including that now-infamous Mk-9 military-grade riot-control pepper sprayer that he used. Oh, funny thing about that particular model of pepper-sprayer? It's illegal for California cops to possess or use. It turns out that the relevant law only permits the use of up to Mk-4 pepper sprayers. The consultants were unable to find out who authorized the purchase and carrying, but every cop they asked said, "So what? It's just like the Mk-4 except that it has a higher capacity." Uh, no. It's also much, much higher pressure, and specifically designed not to be sprayed directly at any one person, only at crowds, and only from at least six feet away. The manufacturer says so. The person in charge of training California police in pepper spray says that as far as he knows, no California cop has ever received training, from his office or from the manufacturer, in how to safely use a Mk-9 sprayer, presumably because it's illegal. But Officer Nameless, when he wrote the action plan for these arrests, included all pepper-spray equipment in the equipment list, both the paint-ball rifle pepper balls and the Mk-9 riot-control sprayers.
The students set up their tents on a Thursday night. Chancellor Katehi ordered the cops to (a) only involve campus police, because she didn't trust the local cops not to be excessively brutal, and (b) get them out of here by 3 AM Thursday night. Chief Spicuzza had to tell her that that wasn't physically possible, they couldn't get enough backup officers from other UC campuses on that short notice, it was going to have to be Friday night at 3 AM. Chancellor Katehi said "no can do," that they had to be out of there before sunset Friday night, so that the camp wasn't joined by drunken and stoned Friday night partiers that would endanger the camp and even further endanger cops trying to deal with them -- arguably an entirely reasonable objection. So she ordered Chief Spicuzza to get them out of there by 3 PM Friday afternoon. Chief Spicuzza "was under the impression" (oh, look, there's that phrase again) that she made it clear to the Chancellor that for one thing, it couldn't be safely done, at 3:00 PM the protesters and passers-by would way outnumber her officers, and for another, it couldn't be legally done, because there was no way to legally arrest someone for "overnight camping" in the middle of the afternoon. Nobody else who was in that meeting thinks she made that clear, only that she made it clear that she didn't want to do it but couldn't explain why not. Still, when she gave the order to Lieutenant Pike, he very definitely did raise the same objections, clearly and unambiguously, backed up by multiple witnesses, who all agree that Chief Spicuzza told him, "This was decided above my level, do it anyway."
So, there's Lieutenant Pike. (Who, by the way, for obvious legal reasons since he's still being investigated by internal affairs and, last I heard, still being sued by his victims, refused to be interviewed by the consultants, so everything we know about his side of this comes from what he told other people and what he wrote in his reports.) As far as he's concerned, he's been given an illegal and impossible order: take 40 or so officers - unarmed and unarmored officers - into an angry crowd of 300 to 400 people who aren't doing anything illegal and make that crowd go away without using any force or getting any of your officers injured. For reasons Stanley Milgram could explain, it does not occur to Lieutenant Pike to disobey this order, so instead, he does the best he can, using his own judgement to decide which parts of his orders and which parts of the law to ignore. Unsurprisingly, it goes badly. Backed into a corner by an angry crowd (which has, by the way, demonstrably left him room to retreat, even with his prisoners, contrary to what he says in his report) that is confronting him with evidence that he is the law-breaker here, not them, he snaps. And rather than take it out on the more-powerful people who put him in this situation, he takes it out on the powerless and peaceful people in front of him, using a high-pressure hose to pump five gallons of capsacin spray into the eyes and mouths of the dozen or twenty people in front of him ... and he would have used more if he'd had it, he only stopped when he did, halfway through his third pass down the line, because the sprayer emptied. When he gets back to the station, Chief Spicuzza (who has no idea what's just happened) congratulates him in front of half the department for how well he just did. And now, as far as he's concerned, he's being hung out to dry. We're apparently supposed to ignore the fact that multiple video sources contradict almost everything about his after-incident report because apparently, in his opinion, he was only following orders.
This is not better than the initial media reports. This is worse. This is an epic textbook in official-violence failure.
quote: In the interest of brevity, when I wrote yesterday's journal entry about the UC Davis report (PDF link) on the still-infamous "pepper spraying cop" incident, I left one of the interesting unanswered questions of the report out of it: what were the cops even doing there, when everybody, and I mean everybody, that they interviewed knew in advance that this was not a police matter, and when everybody, and I mean literally everybody, who was involved in the planning of this was present at at least one meeting where that was brought up?
I mean, after all, this is the University of California system that we're talking about, here! This is not the first campus protest they've had to deal with, to put it mildly. The University of California system has been dealing with disruptive campus protests since shortly after World War II. They have been dealing with disruptive protests, including ones that violate campus regulations, including ones that go farther than this one did and explicitly broke the law, ever since the Berkeley Free Speech Movement days. They have procedures for this. Those procedures were not followed. Why not? The report doesn't say. And the report does say that this question was asked in advance.
I didn't know this, but it turns out that under UC rules, no campus protest is a police matter. By long-standing policy, no protest that is defined as a campus protest is a matter for the university to involve state, local, or even campus police in. The consultants who wrote the fact-finding report couldn't find an official definition of the term campus protest, as separated from an outside protest, one for the cops. But the department that is supposed to handle campus protests is the Student Affairs office, and when interviewed, they said that they use the same rule that the university system uses for defining campus clubs: three quarters or more of the attendees must be current students of that campus, alumnae of that campus, or faculty of that campus, and all leadership roles must be filled by students, alumnae, or professors. It seems like a good rule of thumb, and nobody had a contradictory definition. So if a protest happens on campus, and it meets that definition, then the campus police (and, in the university system's opinion, all other police) are supposed to stand back and let Student Affairs handle it.
At the previous protest, the one where this protest was decided upon and scheduled, there was someone from Student Affairs there monitoring it, as part of her job. She reported that during the day, she couldn't get a good count, but it seemed to her like it was more than three quarters students, not even counting alumnae and faculty. When they were occupying the admin building overnight, she did get an approximate count: 20 to 25 students, 10 to 15 alumnae, and one non-campus person, some kind of legal adviser who was there in case there were mass arrests, well within the guidelines. However, one campus police officer went by briefly and he reported to the Chancellor, the next day, that almost none of them were students. In that same meeting, after questioning him, the Chancellor said that she didn't believe him, because he admitted that he had somehow forgotten that UC Davis has a grad school and plenty of older students; he had assumed that anybody who looked older than 20 couldn't possibly be a college student. Nevertheless, she seems to have forgotten this by the time of later meetings, and in every meeting thereafter she stated that her concern was that she had a report from campus police that "most" of the protesters were from off campus, from Occupy Davis, who had come over to campus to make trouble.
But before that meeting even occurred, the head of Student Affairs had gone to the Chancellor and said "we have this under control, let us handle this" and the Chancellor agreed. In that meeting, Student Affairs again contradicted the one cop who said otherwise, and said, "we have this under control, we have a plan, it's worked before, let us handle this." I can't remember the circumstances, but I remember reading that there was one more meeting or voice conference of the "leadership team" set up to deal with the protests where it was said, yet again, that this was Student Affairs' responsibility, why are the campus cops dealing with this? The day of the incident, the Vice Chancellor, when it was her turn to speak, gave an impassioned 20 minute speech about how involving the cops in this and evicting the protesters was a bad idea, that they were on the wrong side of history, that using cops against protesters has never worked well for the University of California, we should not be doing this, we should let Student Affairs deal with this. Everybody who was on that conference call remembers this ... and the awkward silence that followed it ... and then everybody else ignoring the Vice Chancellor and going on with planning the police raid. And in the car on the way to the raid the incident commander (the one I called "Officer Nameless" yesterday) and his superior, the now-famous Lieutenant Pike, say that it occurred to them to ask each other, "Wait, why are we even being asked to do this? Isn't this Student Affairs' job?"
So, was it Student Affairs' responsibility? Well, Lieutenant Pike and his officers arrested 10 randomly-selected people: 8 students, 1 alumnus, 1 outsider. So, yes.
(What was Student Affairs' plan, if they had been allowed to use it? Politely wait them out, basically. Instead of paying overtime to every other campus police agency for one big raid, pay one local campus officer overtime on Friday and Saturday nights at bar-closing time to be on hand to keep rowdies from disturbing the camp. At other times have one Student Affairs staff member or volunteer at the protest to monitor it for safety issues and politely bring those issues up with the protesters. Student Affairs said that their experience was that when handled this way, campus protests always dry up and blow away, usually after the first rain, but if not then, then always by finals week.)
When interviewed after the fact, neither UC Davis Chancellor Katehi, nor US Davis campus PD Chief Spicuzza, could explain why the police were there, what campus policy or state law made it a campus police matter. Nobody said it, but I will: Student Affairs, the Vice Chancellor, the consulting firm who ran the investigation, and all of us who are appalled by this, we all have "a pre-9/11 mentality." Since the Bush administration, "coddling" protesters (and by "coddling protesters" what I mean is "obeying the law" and "following good standard procedures") is just not what "real Americans" (and by "real Americans" I mean "people with authoritarian personality and social dominance orientation") do.
quote:Originally posted by rivka: Rap and hip-hop "artists" frequently speak a language only tangentially related to standard American English.
That doesn't make them any less "correct" or influential.
Influential......maybe. Correct?
WRONG!
Doesn't matter how many morons walk around imitating them, that doesn't mean they are right. Ever. Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Doesn't matter how many morons walk around imitating them, that doesn't mean they are right. Ever. [Wink]
Why aren't you speaking Old English?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Gradual changes to language are wrong, and should be hated, what?
Posted by T:man (Member # 11614) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Hey, we can get everyone from Frisco and Shy-Town and the Big Apple and the City of Angels together and they can fight over which city nickname is the least used by the actual inhabitants of that city.
Shy-Town?
Don't you mean Chi-Town?
*THWAP*
Posted by AchillesHeel (Member # 11736) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka:
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Cali is not thwap worthy.
Slow learner, huh?
*THWAP! THWAP!*
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: I know plenty of people who call it that who, like me, are born and raised here.
Just bring them close enough.
This may be an amusing time to tell you that the original Arizonan capitol Prescott is pronounced "Preskit" by all of its citizens going back farther than anyone on Whiskey Row can remember.
Prescott, it rhymes with biscuit.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
boy it's hella cali in here bros. what-ever
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Why aren't you speaking Old English?
What are you, some kind of anything-goes language hippie? Let's go back to Proto-Indo-European. I think the language founders got it right the first time.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Here's the long and short of it: many of the legal supporters of the stand your ground law understand that if zimmerman gets off free in this case without even so much as a manslaughter charge, SYG is doomed. As a result, prosecution of Zimmerman is even being done by people who are trying to SAVE the SYG law, as part of an attempt to prevent its destruction on account of this vigilantist farce.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Lets hope he gets off scott free then, I can accept Accelerationism here.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:Doesn't matter how many morons walk around imitating them, that doesn't mean they are right. Ever. [Wink]
Why aren't you speaking Old English?
How do you know I am not? Maybe I am just TYPING in "modern English"!!!
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
There's new information out concerning a cell phone picture showing that the back of Zimmerman's head was indeed bloody. If this evidence is held up in court it could add significantly to his defense.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: There's new information out concerning a cell phone picture showing that the back of Zimmerman's head was indeed bloody. If this evidence is held up in court it could add significantly to his defense.
Not if it can be shown that he started the fight. The stand your ground law quite clearly states that the law does not apply if you started the fight.
And even if that can't be shown, a bloody nose and a scrape on the back of the head are not life threatening injuries. For it to be self defense, Zimmerman needs to show that he had reason to believe his life was in imminent danger.
He was fighting an unarmed teenager who he outweighed by at least 80 pounds. How many people are there who could kill some one that much bigger than them with their bare hands?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
A few looks at what our Stand Your Ground law actually means (I see it mis-explained frequently elsewhere) that I found pretty informative. To be clear, I don't put these forward as objective, authoritative sources-I just thought they might provide interesting reading.
Relevant to a discussion earlier, though:
quote:While Florida currently imposes a three-day waiting period on handgun purchases and inflicts liability on individuals who make their firearms accessible to children, the state still has relatively loose gun control regulations. For instance, Florida does not require firearm dealers to obtain state licenses, does not mandate firearm registration, does not limit the number of guns that may be purchased at one point, and does not regulate the sale of assault weapons, 50 caliber rifles or large capacities of ammunition magazines, according to the Legal Community Against Violence.
Even setting aside the problem of someone having a gun to hand anytime they get drunk, or catch their spouses cheating, or see a minority with a hoodie on a dark night, or get rear-ended after hours of gridlock...yeah, the whole 'it's already against the law, so what will more laws do?' argument is just plain nonsense. You can buy as many firearms as you wish, for any or even no reason at all, from someone who apparently isn't even licensed much less monitored by the local government. Local government, there, for fears of big government intrusion.
Hell, when I go into a damn barber shop, I'll see something somewhere bearing a State of Florida seal on it.
------------
quote:There's new information out concerning a cell phone picture showing that the back of Zimmerman's head was indeed bloody. If this evidence is held up in court it could add significantly to his defense.
Much depends on if there is any evidence illuminating what happened shortly before the fight started, including who started it. If it turns out that there is no conclusive evidence illuminating that stretch of time, or if the evidence that might come out could be somehow cast into doubt...under the law as it appears to read to my non-lawyerly eyes, I could certainly see Zimmerman walking, even aside from any questions of what sort of jury he were to receive.
It seems to me that the law really does add a presumption in favor of the one left standing at the end of things, unless there is some compelling evidence directly relevant to how they actually came to be the one left standing.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Hmm. Criminal law punidtry will have to enlighten us whether this might mean anything, I guess.
While it seemed...peculiar to describe being named in a domestic violence injuction as 'run of the mill', I suppose perhaps it really IS run of the mill in terms of bond hearings. And the police thing was dropped.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
It's likely more will be revealed after the large amount of evidence released has been analyzed.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Seems somewhat shoddy reporting in the first link, as the physical evidence does to an extent bolster Zimmerman's recounting-but not actually of the events that would tell whether this was murder, manslaughter, self defense or an accident.
As to the trace amount of THC, that's not a surprise. I'll be interested to see what public and media response to that will be, though. It puts a ding in the notion of totally wholesome bystander Martin, for some at least. Not that I've ever known or heard of anyone becoming hostile or violent under the influence of pot (though I don't actually know, really).
I still am very curious to see whether or not Zimmerman was actually returning to his car when the altercation began, whether he actually did get out of the car to locate himself (possible, but man, seems fishy), and just how exactly Martin came to know Zimmerman had a firearm...for, y'know, the reasonably frightening task of a trip to Target.
I don't know if evidence to shed light on those things will ever come out, though, or rather that it even exists. I hope so, one way or another. At least there seems to be some political fallout for gun rights folks with respect to this damn law, though.
Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Seems somewhat shoddy reporting in the first link, as the physical evidence does to an extent bolster Zimmerman's recounting-but not actually of the events that would tell whether this was murder, manslaughter, self defense or an accident.
As to the trace amount of THC, that's not a surprise. I'll be interested to see what public and media response to that will be, though. It puts a ding in the notion of totally wholesome bystander Martin, for some at least. Not that I've ever known or heard of anyone becoming hostile or violent under the influence of pot (though I don't actually know, really).
I still am very curious to see whether or not Zimmerman was actually returning to his car when the altercation began, whether he actually did get out of the car to locate himself (possible, but man, seems fishy), and just how exactly Martin came to know Zimmerman had a firearm...for, y'know, the reasonably frightening task of a trip to Target.
I don't know if evidence to shed light on those things will ever come out, though, or rather that it even exists. I hope so, one way or another. At least there seems to be some political fallout for gun rights folks with respect to this damn law, though.
It should make everything about as clear as mud. From the above link: THC can apparently persist in the body for days, serum and urine levels can vary greatly after death, and the measured quantity isn't anywhere near what you'd expect in someone who'd just smoked a joint - odds are Martin wasn't intoxicated at the time. And then there's this:
quote: Just over two weeks after the fatal shooting, and less than a month before an arrest was made, police in Sanford, Florida, urged prosecutors to take George Zimmerman into custody after arguing his killing of Trayvon Martin was "ultimately avoidable."
...
"The encounter between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin was ultimately avoidable by Zimmerman, if Zimmerman had remained in his vehicle and awaited the arrival of law enforcement, or conversely if he had identified himself to Martin as a concerned citizen and initiated dialog (sic) in an effort to dispel each party's concern" the request said. "There is no indication that Trayvon Martin was involved in any criminal activity."
But we knew that already.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
I can't imagine why THC is interesting or relevant, here.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:I can't imagine why THC is interesting or relevant, here.
You'll notice, too, that they're using the scary acronym instead of saying "the kid ingested pot at some point over the last week or so."
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
THC...is that like LSD?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I wonder how long it will take (actually, I'd be surprised if it hadn't happened already) if some circle of 'pundits' (thinking especially of Fox and Friends here) were talking about this case in breathless voices, offering up with the appropriate ass-covering we-can't-be-sures, "Look, this young man Martin was high, he was acting suspiciously..."
It'll play really well, unfortunately, and has the virtue of being in the neighborhood of partially true.
Posted by TheHumanTarget (Member # 7129) on :
quote:...ultimately avoidable by Zimmerman, if Zimmerman had remained in his vehicle and awaited the arrival of law enforcement...
The difficulty with a statement like that is that no one knows if it was ultimately avoidable. Likely avoidable? Yes. Ultimately? Sounds speculative to me.
quote:..if he had identified himself to Martin as a concerned citizen and initiated dialog (sic)..."
Do we know that this didn't occur?
I haven't followed the case closely, but from what I have seen it seems like a series of bad decisions were made by everyone involved.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
quote:but from what I have seen it seems like a series of bad decisions were made by everyone involved.
Hence--
quote:ultimately avoidable
It seems that an armed and larger Zimmerman threatened Martin. Martin acted in the spirit of "Stand your ground", but without the help of a gun, and died. Zimmerman acted in the spirit of the Old West as portrayed by Hollywood, played vigilante, and killed someone.
Simple mistakes, made by everyone? except one person died.
Zimmerman wanted to be Batman--but without wasting time on training, detective work, or consideration of the facts. He tried intimidation by walking up to Martin and being rude. When that was not successful, and Martin proved to by way more intimidating with his fists than Zimmerman, he went to his utility belt--which consisted of just one thing--a gun.
Posted by TheHumanTarget (Member # 7129) on :
quote: Zimmerman wanted to be Batman--but without wasting time on training, detective work, or consideration of the facts. He tried intimidation by walking up to Martin and being rude. When that was not successful, and Martin proved to by way more intimidating with his fists than Zimmerman, he went to his utility belt--which consisted of just one thing--a gun.
See, when I read things like this it makes me wonder:
Where exactly were you standing during the altercation, and why didn't you do something to stop it?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by scifibum: I can't imagine why THC is interesting or relevant, here.
Don't you know? THC is well known for its qualities of making a person much more aggressive and likely to fight without provocation..
If the kid would just have chilled out and smoked some weed instead, he wouldn't have been dead.
Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
quote:Originally posted by TheHumanTarget:
quote:...ultimately avoidable by Zimmerman, if Zimmerman had remained in his vehicle and awaited the arrival of law enforcement...
The difficulty with a statement like that is that no one knows if it was ultimately avoidable. Likely avoidable? Yes. Ultimately? Sounds speculative to me.
I can't read the writer's mind, but I also can't think of believable scenario where Martin meets Zimmerman if Zimmerman is still in the car.
quote:
quote:..if he had identified himself to Martin as a concerned citizen and initiated dialog (sic)..."
Do we know that this didn't occur?
That report was written by officers two weeks after the incident, after Zimmerman was interviewed - so, presumably, yes. I admit, that surprises me.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Do we know that Martin wouldn't have approached a car following him and started an altercation through the (I guess open? In spite of rain?) window? Well, no, we don't, anymore than we know I wouldn't have just ignored someone staring at me as I walked in to work after it happened.
Back in the real world, though, we look at Martin's history to determine if he was ever violently aggressive and if so, when and how and why.
In any event, had Zimmerman actually listened to what 911 had told him, this overwhelmingly almost certainty wouldn't have happened. But for some that's still not enough to prohibit bringing guns into it.
(I would say 'police', but then someone would invariably point out 'but 911 isn't police!' which is true while missing the point, that you're supposed to do what they tell you on the phone.)
Posted by lem (Member # 6914) on :
quote:It seems that an armed and larger Zimmerman threatened Martin. Martin acted in the spirit of "Stand your ground", but without the help of a gun, and died. Zimmerman acted in the spirit of the Old West as portrayed by Hollywood, played vigilante, and killed someone.
This is what I think happened.
quote: In any event, had Zimmerman actually listened to what 911 had told him
I think not enough people are looking at the 911 call in the right light. The dispatcher did not tell him not to follow Martin. He said we "don't need you to do that."
I wish the dispatcher would of said, "Please don't follow him anymore. We have trained professionals on the way."
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
quote:Originally posted by scifibum: I can't imagine why THC is interesting or relevant, here.
Well, it's pretty good evidence that the kid was in the throws of reefer madness!
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Who knows how many lives Zimmerman saved!!!!!1!!
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
At least one, it looks like. His own.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Where is the proof that Zimmerman ever threatened anyone? All that I've seen so far is that he shot him at very close contact, which seems, at least on the surface, to support his claim that he didn't even draw until he was assaulted.
Well, it doesn't contradict that statement, at least.
You are speculating just as bad as anyone else.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
You're welcome, of course, to show at your leisure where I am speculating 'as bad as everyone else', Kwea.
How on Earth does Martin's being shot at close range 'prove' Zimmerman didn't draw his gun until Martin was (without provocation, no less) attacking him? The only thing it proves is that he shot Martin at very close range. That's all.
Ugh. 'His own' indeed. If we're actually going to talk about how Zimmerman could have saved his own life, getting out of his car on a rainy night with a gun to confront a total stranger when the police had already been informed? That might have been a step to avoid, if we're so deeply concerned about Zimmerman's life.
But I guess this is like Zimmerman's injuries 'prove' Martin assaulted him, yes? That he attacked Zimmerman without provocation, yes? It still boggles the mind. There very well may be evidence yet to come to light that demonstrates that's what actually happened, but until then I would still like to know why the behavior of Zimmerman 911-open-garage-door is to be treated with so much credulity, and why we should be so quick to believe Martin just charged him and commenced with a beatdown.
I'm not asking what you would say on a jury. That's not the discussion we're having. I'm asking why on Earth anybody should view anyone, much less the guy who deems potholes an emergency, questioning 'suspicious people' while armed unless they're a cop. Imagine, if you can, that you or your son was walking home and someone you never met in your life began demanding answers from you out of nowhere-or perhaps after following you for no reason you can tell. Now imagine they're armed, and tell me you think that you wouldn't experience a surge of anxiety at best for a moment or two, that you wouldn't regard this person like a strange and possibly dangerous animal.
Saved his own life, ugh. Even supposing for some damn reason we believe Zimmerman's story straight down the line, is Martin supposed to have carjacked him or something? Please.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
(Also, boy, if I'm allowed to 'save my own life' from suspicious teenagers who don't take kindly to a stranger demanding they account for their activities at night in the rain, man, it's gonna be like GTA in here. Well, assuming I come to the job armed at least.)
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Lol...if he beats you before you shoot him, yeeah....you probably could. After all, you ARE allowed to go where he is, if he is allowed there in the first place.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I'd call the cops. I'd head to a public place. I'd probably shoot video of it all.
I wouldn't come back to him after he lost sight of me. I wouldn't attack him unless I had to. I wouldn't head back to his car. I wouldn't be walking between houses, looking at them.
You ARE speculating, by claiming Zimmerman attacked him, that Zimmerman shot him in cold blood, that Zimmerman was provoking him or being aggressive, or that he drew his gun to threaten him.
It's not all or nothing, man. It is possible (to say the least) that Zimmerman shouldn't have done what he did but that he broke no law. You are NOT allowed to start beating the crap out of someone simply because they are following you in public.
And if you do....well, you might die. And that sucks, but it doesn't mean that the guy who shoots you is a racist, or a crackpot, or trying to be a vigilante.
So far, I haven't heard anything that supports a guilty verdict. Not unless Zimmerman can be tried for being a moron.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:You ARE speculating, by claiming Zimmerman attacked him, that Zimmerman shot him in cold blood, that Zimmerman was provoking him or being aggressive, or that he drew his gun to threaten him.
By all means, show me where I've done that, but note that saying it is unwise to take Zimmerman's word for events isn't the same as saying he is 180* from the truth.
quote:I wouldn't come back to him after he lost sight of me. I wouldn't attack him unless I had to. I wouldn't head back to his car. I wouldn't be walking between houses, looking at them.
Jesus. See, whereas I say, 'Man, I don't trust Zimmerman because of his history of poor emergency judgment and his willingness to act as neighborhood watch armed and-even if he is absolutely telling the truth-his decision to personally question Martin,' I get bagged on for 'speculating' and such. Whereas when you post what I just quoted...that's not speculation? Or something.
I don't, in fact, disregard everything Zimmerman has said about events, though it seems impossible for many to hear criticism of his actions without hearing that as well. You've seen pictures of where Martin was standing, and you know one way or another whether it was a yard frequently shortcutted through (which of course begs the question how *Zimmerman* knew)? You know he followed Zimmerman back to his car after the latter returned peacefully and without saying anything? You know Martin threw the first punch?
No, you don't actually know any of those things anymore than I do. But when I say, "Zimmerman's judgment is questionable because of his past, and his word is suspect because he might face a murder charge otherwise," that somehow reads, "Martin was a saint and Zimmerman obviously attacked him.
As for crackpot, well hey, to me the decision to call 911 for open garage doors is one which is outlandishly irrational at best. Strapping up for a trip to target is another. Playing junior cop after ACTUAL police have been called to question a 'suspect' would be a good sign too. I've asked several times now, with no satisfactory answer I can recall: what is your first thought when hearing about someone who calls 911 for an open garage door or scalding coffee?
As for vigilantism, by some though not by the most common definitions Zimmerman was absolutely a vigilante, even if he is telling the 100% truth. He was not supposed to do what he did, as part of a neighborhood watch (and if you want to get into just how much of a member he was, we can). Even if we accept all of his statements as true, he strayed into cop territory when he decided to follow and question a 'suspect' while armed. If Zimmerman wants that sort of authority, or if others think it should be afforded him, he ought to be held to similar standards of responsibility.
And yeah, you can be tried for being a moron. Whether he is provably guilty of a crime remains to be seen, but I am sick of this vigilante-worshipful rhetoric that gets bandied about, that he 'saved his own life', because it's misleading. If that was the actual primary concern, there wouldn't be any argument that he ought be criticized for getting out of that car. No. He 'saved his own life' while packing heat and literally going looking for trouble.
Because it's not easy enough to shoot people in this country, apparently. We need to ensure people can be cops with less oversight. For safety. Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: At least one, it looks like. His own.
*blink*
though I want to passively observe the rest of this conversation, this conclusion is mindbogglingly telling.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by lem:
quote: In any event, had Zimmerman actually listened to what 911 had told him
I think not enough people are looking at the 911 call in the right light. The dispatcher did not tell him not to follow Martin. He said we "don't need you to do that."
I wish the dispatcher would of said, "Please don't follow him anymore. We have trained professionals on the way."
+1
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
It would've been nice if the dispatcher had spoken in disclaimer-ese in this case. Perhaps the dispatcher didn't realize they were dealing with the Lone Watchman, armed with a firearm and a determination that no suspicious looking black kids can be left waiting for questioning, not even for fifteen or twenty minutes. How was Zimmerman to have known whether Martin wouldn't eat one too many skittles, begin foaming at the mouth, and just start breaking down the first door he saw to rob the place? Someone had to take action!!! That's what the police are for? No, to hell with that, neighborhood watches are like associate-police!
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I'm sure it's a nice feeling, writing something as emotionally charged as that, but I wonder, other then self gratification, what purpose does it serve? It seems to serve the function of mocking the very wish that the 911 operator (who often times -are- a part of the police btw) had been a little more authoritative, suggesting what exactly? I mean, is it not okay for us to voice that someone along the way might have had a chance to prevent this tragedy if they had acted differently and to wistfully wish it was so? Or are you so cemented into your position that this "crackpot with proof of lack of judgment" is so clearly and solely to blame that anything that deviates from that -must be resoundingly put in it's place through mockery-?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Man. Not listening some more:) I wasn't mocking the dispatcher, or even the wish that he/she had been more clear. The latter is perfectly valid.
I was mocking the notion, "Well, he wasn't technically told not to follow much less question..." which while hasn't come up in these last few posts, has most certainly been expressed by defenders of Zimmerman's actions. I was mocking it because for a responsible citizen with good judgment, you don't have to tell them, "Alright, the police will handle this. You know, the trained and entrusted people who are charged with enforcing the law and service and protection?"
That is what I was mocking. Yes, it would've been best had dispatch said, explicitly, "Let the police handle this." He shouldn't have needed to be told. And yes, this is a common theme when what dispatch said comes up.
(Also, thank goodness you're here to point out the perceived shortcomings of posters you don't like! Man. What a valued service. Hey, along with this stiff dose of hypocrisy on your part, can I get another shot of 'whatevs, I'm over it!' please? That stuff goes down like buttered pancakes.)
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
And, yknow, just for fun, you're welcome to point out where I've said or suggested Zimmerman is solely and clearly to blame. Note: suggesting that if he hadn't exited his car this wouldn't have happened, and pointing out his judgment is suspect at best prior to the shooting, isn't actually an example. Other posters and I have explained why.
Back to your regularly scheduled whining!
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Mmmmm, pancakes.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Wow, hey, look at all that not offering any sort of examples that would be easy to find that illustrate your point! Listen, whatever you do, don't selectively reply to direct challenges to your arguments because they're made in an unfriendly way. That would make it look as though you didn't actually have a serious answer, and man, that would be dreadful!
ETA: Whoops! This post was from a few hours ago. Guess I didn't hit 'post reply' in this tab. Man, this post is awfully prescient!
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I don;t have to illustrate crap. You've done it for me, multiple times.
I don't believe everything Zimmerman says. But since you seem to be taking the "look at the poor innocent black kid who was killed" angle, even though all of the initial claims about Zimmerman were pretty much bullshit (he was hit, he did have injuries, he didn't call anyone a coon, he didn't have a violent history, and the 911 call and the video were edited to inflame the public) you seem to be accepting any and all criticism of him at face value, I thought someone should offer another view.
You know, from someone who thinks that people with a licence to carry aren't crazy to wear a gun to a store, as that is where they fear they might get jumped or robbed.
Your prejudices are on clear display the past 10 pages. I don't see the need to quote them again at this point. Everyone else can seem them clearly already, and you'll never admit to them anyways.
I think that the trial will be interesting, and if he wasn't near his car, if a credible witness saw what happened.....well, then things change.
But so far all I have seen is a kangaroo court held in the public eye, where all sorts of unfounded and unproven claims are being made regardless of any actual proof.
And God help you if you question any of it. Martin's family goes on and on how innocent and angelic their kid was....then we find out he has suspensions for drugs, and had THC in his blood. But if you mention it....you are a RACIST! You MUST mean he DESERVED to be shot! (you couldn't simply be countering the claims of his parents.) If you point out that the picture of their kid was when he was 14, and that when this event happened he was17, and over 6' tall and 165 lbs....well, YOU are EVIL because you doubt his poor parents!!!
It's not just this thread, or the conversation with you, Rakeesh....I am just responding to the whole freaking way it seems to be presented down here in FL.
You can wear a gun and not be trigger happy, even to a Target. You can worry about your neighborhood and not be a vigilante. And I hate to say it, but even if Martin wasn't doing anything wrong.....Zimmerman have EVERY BIT AS MUCH OF A RIGHT TO BE WHEREVER THIS WAS THAT MARTIN DID.
It doesn't matter if you like him, or if you agree with his actions. He had a right to be there....and we have NO evidence that Zimmerman attacked Martin at all before he was shot. No marks, bruises, no credible witnesses. We DO have proof that Martin beat the crap out of Zimmerman before he was shot.
So he gets the benefit of the doubt from me, until the trial. I won't say he is innocent, because I have no clue if he is or isn't at this point. But I will say everything that HAS come to light so far has backed what Zimmerman has said happened, not what Martin's camp said. No, he wasn't standing over him when he fired. He wasn't far away, he was 18 inches or less from him. Yes, there were signs of a struggle, and Zimmerman did have injuries consistent with his story.
I'd say the prosecution has their work cut out from them, as far as I can tell right now.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Also, thank goodness you're here to point out the perceived shortcomings of posters you don't like!
Any chance it would be better received if the shortcomings were pointed out by a poster who does like you?
'Cause I certainly like you! I think you're often wicked smart, even when I disagree with you.
But I also think that (maybe it's when you get annoyed?) you sometimes indulge in very patronizing, sarcastic, contemptuous mockery that doesn't serve you well, in my opinion.
Sometimes it seems to be in response to genuine hostility on someone else's part, sometimes not. But in either case, I wish you would do that less. I think that if you did, your posts would be even more consistently a delight to read. Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Kwea,
quote:I don't believe everything Zimmerman says. But since you seem to be taking the "look at the poor innocent black kid who was killed" angle, even though all of the initial claims about Zimmerman were pretty much bullshit (he was hit, he did have injuries, he didn't call anyone a coon, he didn't have a violent history, and the 911 call and the video were edited to inflame the public) you seem to be accepting any and all criticism of him at face value, I thought someone should offer another view.
I don't think you believe everything he says, but you've said things more than once that suggest it is somehow reasonable to take very important pieces of Zimmerman's account at face value. You'll dispute that of course, and I've provided examples over the course of this thread, but they weren't compelling, to you at least. So we're not going to get anywhere on that.
You claim I'm taking any criticism of Zimmerman at face value. I don't know why you would say that, since by now I must have stated at least a half dozen times, specifically, that it's definitely possible that Martin did attack Zimmerman. I've never, even once, denied that either by suggestion much less outright statement.
So I'd ask-again-that you backed off that claim, but it's not the first time I've asked. I doubt this time will be any different. It would be nice if you would show me where I'm saying the things you claim I'm outright stating, but I'm pretty sure you'd have a very hard time doing that.
quote:You know, from someone who thinks that people with a licence to carry aren't crazy to wear a gun to a store, as that is where they fear they might get jumped or robbed.
Again, any individual is perfectly entitled to be afraid of being 'jumped' just going to the store...however incredibly rare that actually is for a fully grown male human being in anything but a high crime neighborhood. But whatever, forget the actual facts about violent crime in America, forget how much likelier an owned gun is to either not be needed for self defense or to be used improperly or accidentally. There's plenty of wiggle room on this, of course-we can't know how many crimes are prevented by gun ownership (well, we can hazard some pretty good guesses, but we can't KNOW)...therefore, yes, one should absolutely strap up just for a trip to Target. A civilian. Needs a gun to go grocery shopping. Perfectly reasonable, I guess, in some world where violent crime statistics are radically different.
None of that has anything to do with the problem of being an armed neighborhood watch. You're welcome to find me a police association anywhere in the country that recommends that, Kwea. I'll wait.
quote:And God help you if you question any of it. Martin's family goes on and on how innocent and angelic their kid was....then we find out he has suspensions for drugs, and had THC in his blood. But if you mention it....you are a RACIST! You MUST mean he DESERVED to be shot! (you couldn't simply be countering the claims of his parents.) If you point out that the picture of their kid was when he was 14, and that when this event happened he was17, and over 6' tall and 165 lbs....well, YOU are EVIL because you doubt his poor parents!!!
And here I thought this nonsense would be confined to sensationalist media. Are you even aware what Martin was suspended for? THC in his blood? Well yes, that certainly serves to refute the claim that Martin was a good boy! He smoked pot!!!!1!!! It may very well turn out that Martin did have a record of violence, and robberies, and even violent robberies. Until that happens, though, he was a kid who was maybe standing in a suspicious way, drinking tea and eating skittles.
quote:You can wear a gun and not be trigger happy, even to a Target. You can worry about your neighborhood and not be a vigilante. And I hate to say it, but even if Martin wasn't doing anything wrong.....Zimmerman have EVERY BIT AS MUCH OF A RIGHT TO BE WHEREVER THIS WAS THAT MARTIN DID.
We'll see, won't we? Perhaps he did. And no, you don't hate to say it. But how Zimmerman came to be in that place remains to be seen, it's very relevant, and Zimmerman's judgment is questionable at best. Alright, fine, for the sake of argument, going armed to grocery shop isn't something that merits a cautious step back. Have you even looked at what he's called 911 for, Kwea? If I'm not mistaken, you were an EMT at some point, yes? Then you should have a better idea than most of how dangerous and reckless that sort of bad judgment can be. Bad enough to say, "Wait a second, why should we take your word for it this kid was 'suspicious'?
quote:It doesn't matter if you like him, or if you agree with his actions. He had a right to be there....and we have NO evidence that Zimmerman attacked Martin at all before he was shot. No marks, bruises, no credible witnesses. We DO have proof that Martin beat the crap out of Zimmerman before he was shot.
A broken nose and some cuts to the back of the head, sure, injuries. Not really beaten the crap out of by any way I've heard that phrase used, but hey. Subjective. Of course, on the other hand, we do have tox reports on Martin because, hey, he got shot. But for someone who got 'the crap beaten out of them', Zimmerman refused medical care, what, three times? Can't have it both ways, Kwea. Of course we'll probably never know now what was in HIS blood at the time of the shooting, thanks to this lovely law which makes it harder for police to investigate when someone is killed by gunfire. Which is something we need in this country, I guess. It needs to be harder. To investigate death by gunshot.
Well I guess since we get so many it makes a kind of sense: reduce the workload.
quote:So he gets the benefit of the doubt from me, until the trial. I won't say he is innocent, because I have no clue if he is or isn't at this point. But I will say everything that HAS come to light so far has backed what Zimmerman has said happened, not what Martin's camp said. No, he wasn't standing over him when he fired. He wasn't far away, he was 18 inches or less from him. Yes, there were signs of a struggle, and Zimmerman did have injuries consistent with his story.
He's had the benefit of your doubt since you began posting on this topic, which is fine. I wish you'd cop to it, though-and for all of your repetion about 'all the evidence', we've actually gotten very limited evidence about the condition of Martin's body-about the physical injuries, there's only the funeral director to go on, I think. But anyway, as for every bit of evidence turning Zimmerman's way, it's not surprising how conveniently you omitted the voice samples-more reliable that an eyewitness in the dark, by the way, if they compete.
Only in America does a kid buying skittles turning up dead not meet with universal outrage. You know, I wouldn't be questioning Zimmerman's judgment nearly as much if this had happened in, say, England, even if he had gotten out of the car. Because he wouldn't have had a gun on him. The possibility for lethal force would've been incredibly low. Only in America do people claim the need for lethal violence capability just because they might, someday, need it.
Zimmerman should not have been where he was with a gun. It's entirely possible he didn't start it, but he didn't need a gun to ask questione. Cops should have guns when they ask questions. Not wannabe neighborhood watch types!
*sigh* Hooray for our culture of fear.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Only in America does a kid buying skittles turning up dead not meet with universal outrage.
Really? Have you examined the situation in every other nation in the world?
quote:A broken nose and some cuts to the back of the head, sure, injuries.
Can you explain how he got cuts to the back of the head, Rakeesh, if someone else wasn't beating his head on the ground?
And can you envision a scenario in which someone is beating your head on the ground and isn't a clear threat to your life?
Zimmerman's side has been proven right, Martin's side has been proven wrong. It's over.
[ May 22, 2012, 09:56 AM: Message edited by: Aris Katsaris ]
Posted by Jake (Member # 206) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: Zimmerman's side has been proven right, Martin's side has been proven wrong. It's over.
I agree with you that the evidence we're privy to suggests pretty strongly that the two got into a physical fight, and that Martin had the better of Zimmerman. I believe that Zimmerman felt that his life was in danger when he fired.
It also looks like Zimmerman was the instigator of the whole incident, though. Do you feel like that has any bearing on questions of culpability?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
I don't understand how exactly you use the phrase "instigator of the whole incident". If Zimmerman e.g. called Martin a racial epithet, Zimmerman would share some portion moral culpability. I don't know the particulars of the law to determine whether he'd share legal culpability.
But if we're talking just about having a neighborhood watch member watch over the neighborhood, that's not "instigation" that makes him morally culpable in my view; a causal link isn't the same as moral blame.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I can envision a few scenarios where Zimmerman could have received such wounds to the back of his head without Martin pointedly doing so, yes. But in any event, while the injuries do corroborate some details of Zimmerman's account, they do nothing at all to answer the most important question: who started it, and how?
I have no trouble imagining that Zimmerman might have, for example, approached Martin who ignored him, either out of annoyance, anxiety, or even not hearing him. Or even because Martin was just being a jerk. Zimmerman, through (over)zealousness for 'public safety', grabs him by the shoulder and tries to turn him around.
Now, before one of a few people seize on this scenario and attempt to lambast me with it, I don't say that's what happened. I only say that such a scenario fits what we know of Zimmerman's mindset, and that we'll have to see what all of the witnesses say, and how credibly they say it, and the rest of the evidence, to see if we can determine what happened in those couple of minutes before the shot was fired.
But until that time, we've got more reason to believe Zimmerman might have advertently or inadvertently (as in that scenario) started that fight than we do to believe that Martin just snapped or something and decided to administer a brutal beating for rude questioning.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: Zimmerman's side has been proven right, Martin's side has been proven wrong. It's over.
This quote goes up into my "hmm, really?" area too.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:But if we're talking just about having a neighborhood watch member watch over the neighborhood, that's not "instigation" that makes him morally culpable in my view; a causal link isn't the same as moral blame.
You're right that it's not the same. But in this case, I think it's hard to deny that Zimmerman at a minimum shares some of the moral blame, given that:
(1) He took an ill-advised action when he pursued Martin.
(2) If he hadn't done that, Martin would still be alive.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
(3) You are not allowed to be armed on neighborhood watch.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
For good reason, but this neighborhood watch decided to go rogue and ~play by its own rules~, gritty crime drama style.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote:But if we're talking just about having a neighborhood watch member watch over the neighborhood, that's not "instigation" that makes him morally culpable in my view; a causal link isn't the same as moral blame.
You're right that it's not the same. But in this case, I think it's hard to deny that Zimmerman at a minimum shares some of the moral blame, given that:
(1) He took an ill-advised action when he pursued Martin.
(2) If he hadn't done that, Martin would still be alive.
Destineer, do you think one can grok any broader moral principles of culpability/blame from these guidelines?
Because maybe I'm misunderstanding them... but I can think of some arguments in other, very different circumstances that use these two guidelines to assign blame in some really gross and unacceptable ways. Do you see what I mean, or should I elaborate?
That makes me think these guidelines have some serious flaws.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Dan, I appreciate your discipline of applying micro filters to macro problems to test their validity, but I think in this case it isn't a "guideline" more a mater of facts. The thought being along the line of, "If you change even a single one of these facts, no one dies." instead of a universal principal to be used in assigning moral guilt.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Hey, I just realized something! The tragedy of Martin's death is a great example of how pepper spray is such a great alternative to carrying firearms.
If Zimmerman had pepper sprayed Martin, he would have (in all likelihood) succeeded in stopping the physical fight, and thus protecting himself (his stated reason for shooting him).
It is legal (actively recommended I believe) to carry pepper spray on neighborhood watch.
Davron Martin would still be alive.
Our country would not have another racial divide to overcome.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Moral culpability is usually, by the law anyway, regarded as an aggregate of wrongs which, in sum, either add up to guilt or don't.
For instance, the decision to carry a gun was not the wrong that would make Zimmerman guilty, nor is the decision to approach someone, when advised not to. It is not illegal, per se, to carry a gun, to accost a stranger, or even to shoot and kill someone. But taken together, these acts may, in the view of a jury, make him guilty of murder.
ETA: Incidentally, SW, I find your comments to be far from the point. Aside from the question of whether Zimmerman would have approached someone had he not been bearing a gun (a question to ask the wind), it is perfectly possible to assault someone violently and unlawfully with pepper spray. And we had that discussion. And had it. And I would have thought you wouldn't want to revisit that experience.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Destineer, do you think one can grok any broader moral principles of culpability/blame from these guidelines?
The only guidelines I have in mind are: always do the thing that you can reasonably expect will have the best overall outcome, and conversely, never do something that risks a very bad outcome unnecessarily. If you don't do that and someone gets hurt as a result, you're at least partly responsible.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
*shrug* Pepper spray is a pet issue of his, and he's right: in this context, pepper spray is quite a lot better as an option than a firearm. He didn't say everyone should carry it all the time (at least, not here; I don't remember the other discussions well enough to say about them), and he didn't say someone couldn't wrongfully attack and hurt someone with pepper spray.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: SW, I find your comments to be far from the point.
What point? I was just tacking on my pet point of Yay yay pepper spray.
quote: ...it is perfectly possible to assault someone violently and unlawfully with pepper spray.
Sure, but generally the assault victims of pepper spray attack live.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote:Destineer, do you think one can grok any broader moral principles of culpability/blame from these guidelines?
The only guidelines I have in mind are: always do the thing that you can reasonably expect will have the best overall outcome, and conversely, never do something that risks a very bad outcome unnecessarily. If you don't do that and someone gets hurt as a result, you're at least partly responsible.
Right.
Do you see that there are times in which these guidelines are used, in other situations, to assign blame in horrendous, misguided ways?
I'm not quesitoning the guidelines themselves, by the way. I'm questioning your last line, that is, the idea that failing to follow these guidelines makes you morally to blame for what follows.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
Given that I'm only talking about partial blame, I'm not sure I see the problem, but definitely go ahead and trot out an example or two.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
Really I'm asserting that someone is "to blame" whenever we can rightly say to them, "You made the wrong decision and something bad happened as a result."
Probably we'd need the caveat that the particular bad result that occurred needed to be foreseeable as well, to rule out weird cases.
To speak to the example the thread is about: it may be that Martin is largely responsible for his own death, but we know enough at this point to say that Zimmerman is at least partly responsible.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
quote: ...it is perfectly possible to assault someone violently and unlawfully with pepper spray.
Sure, but generally the assault victims of pepper spray attack live.
Oh, good, so you DO want to throw around ridiculous, unanswerable and irrelevant hypotheticals about this situation so you can talk about your pet idea for personal defense, which has nothing to do with it. Great, for a second I thought myself cynical for believing you had such little tact or sense as to bring this up in the middle of this type of discussion. Thanks, now I know better. Glad you got to being up pepper spray again.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Sounds like you are asserting who is responsible, not who is to blame.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Is it tactless or senseless to discuss how to prevent possible future tragic deaths?
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Given that I'm only talking about partial blame, I'm not sure I see the problem, but definitely go ahead and trot out an example or two.
Well, it effectively leads to blaming the victim, doesn't it? Even partially.
I mean, let's say a woman has been raped by a stranger in a dark alley. Now, let's say you see someone say this:
quote:I think it's hard to deny that she at a minimum shares some of the moral blame, given that:
(1) She took an ill-advised action when she went down that dark alley.
(2) If she hadn't done that, she wouldn't have been raped.
That seems unequivocally horrible, to me.
You could complicate it a bit (and make it more analogous to Zimmerman) by saying someone attempted rape and she shot and killed them.
But I think this...
quote:I think it's hard to deny that she at a minimum shares some of the moral blame, given that:
(1) She took an ill-advised action when she went down that dark alley.
(2) If she hadn't done that, her would-be rapist would still be alive.
Is still horrible.
Even assigning "partial blame" to her in these scenarios seems to be the epitome of blaming the victim.
Do you see what I meant now?
PS: To cut off potential responses, I'm only likening this scenario to the Martin/Zimmerman thing insofar as Destineer's guidelines apply to both. I don't actually have a real opinion on whether or not Zimmerman is responsible.
I simply don't think that, if he is responsible, the reason is because he chose to walk somewhere or talk to someone while carrying a gun. If Zimmerman is responsible, it would be because he actively picked a fight with Martin.
The fact that "if he had not approached Martin, Martin would still be alive," is not evidence that he is culpable for Martin's death. That's the point I'm making in the example above.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Dan, once again you are taking a specific situation and pretending that it must be taken to extremes.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Is it tactless or senseless to discuss how to prevent possible future tragic deaths?
It is sometimes tactless to do so, yes.
It is rather moreso to bring up your pet argument, particularly in the way that you did, with the knowledge of how it has been received here in the past, merely to point out, irrelevantly to this discussion, something which *is not true*, the idea that pepper spray could have prevented this situation. Because, golly gee whizz, Zimmerman could have chosen to use pepper spray, but he didnt. He chose to carry a gun. And I bet it wasnt because he hadn't heard about PS and its many good points. And your argument isn't for the banning or heavy restriction of firearms, because if it was, I would agree with you. So you've made a non-point involving a hypothetical where all the conditions are the same, only the gun is replaced with pepper spray, ignoring ALL the points made in your ill-fated other thread about how inane that kind of thinking is, and to what purpose? Hmm? Do tell.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Dan, once again you are taking a specific situation and pretending that it must be taken to extremes.
I'm taking what Destineer proposed as broad moral guidelines (I even asked if he thought they could be taken as such!), and doing so.
If they don't work the way Destineer intended them, then that's an important criticism, isn't it?
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Sorry, had my share of drama for the moment, maybe later dude.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
No, you stopping exactly where you have is perfectly fine with me.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
I was thinking a bit about rape examples like that this morning, then for some reason it slipped my mind.
Anyway, I think there are two things going on in your examples. One is that we don't normally blame people, morally, for the harm done to them as a result of relatively innocent mistakes. We normally blame people for bringing about harm to others. That seems right to me. The second thing is that there's quite a bit of social pressure to deny that a woman is ever morally to blame for something that occurred as a result of sexual violence. That's a good rule to follow in almost all cases, but I don't think it's universally true.
So, I would say that while the woman in your first example is not to blame for the harm done to her, the woman in the second example may be to blame to some small extent for the attacker's death.
BUT
The way we think about your second case should also be influenced by the chances that something equally bad or worse would've happened, whether or not she'd gone down the dark alley. If the guy is hanging out there waiting for any old victim, probably he would have gotten someone eventually (maybe the next night). So it's very likely that his death is the best possible outcome of the situation where he's lying in wait and the gun-packing woman is thinking about whether to go down the dark alley. In that case, she would actually be bringing about a better outcome than what would've happened if she'd made the wiser choice, and so we'd be wrong to blame her.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Really I'm asserting that someone is "to blame" whenever we can rightly say to them, "You made the wrong decision and something bad happened as a result."
I think that, to be able to identify something as "the wrong decision" we need to assess the morality of the decision itself, not its results.
To illustrate, that's why a woman walking down a dark alley did not invite rape and is not to blame if she is raped. The results are irrelevant to the fact that the decision itself was not "wrong." Morally, she should be able to walk down an alley and not fear rape. The fact that fearing it may be prudent due to some kind of pragmatic risk assessment is immaterial.
You may even be able to legitimately say she wasn't being as cautious as she should have been. But that's a separate criticism. To imply any degree of blame on her is categorically wrong.
Do you agree with me here?
Now, similarly, I think that, for moral purposes, everybody with a concealed carry license should have the right to walk down the street with a gun, and to talk to people, etc. And the simple fact that they do these things while carrying a gun doesn't automatically attribute any unique moral responsibility upon them.
If you disagree, then that's the real source of the disagreement, right? Certainly Rakeesh has stated clearly that he disagrees with me on this.
So Rakeesh, in essence, thinks that Zimmerman has already done something wrong by carrying a gun. So then, if his carrying a gun leads to something worse, like someone being killed, then in Rakeesh's mind he is (at least partially) culpable. But if Rakeesh believed that it was totally moral to carry a gun, then culpability wouldn't follow.
Destineer: Is your point (the first one in your 2 part list) specifically that you think: It is wrong to follow someone you suspect may be doing something criminal? So if, after following someone, something else bad comes of it, that makes you culpable?
Because otherwise I don't see how you're defining it as a "bad decision."
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Probably we'd need the caveat that the particular bad result that occurred needed to be foreseeable as well, to rule out weird cases.
Yeah, and you can't hand-wave this away. How you define "foreseeable" is a hugely integral part of the moral calculus you're proposing. The same way "wrong decision" is above.
(Edit: Destineer, your post at the end of the last page slipped in before this one like a ninja, in case it isn't obvious)
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: I was thinking a bit about rape examples like that this morning, then for some reason it slipped my mind.
Anyway, I think there are two things going on in your examples. One is that we don't normally blame people, morally, for the harm done to them as a result of relatively innocent mistakes. We normally blame people for bringing about harm to others. That seems right to me. The second thing is that there's quite a bit of social pressure to deny that a woman is ever morally to blame for something that occurred as a result of sexual violence. That's a good rule to follow in almost all cases, but I don't think it's universally true.
So, I would say that while the woman in your first example is not to blame for the harm done to her, the woman in the second example may be to blame to some small extent for the attacker's death.
BUT
The way we think about your second case should also be influenced by the chances that something equally bad or worse would've happened, whether or not she'd gone down the dark alley. If the guy is hanging out there waiting for any old victim, probably he would have gotten someone eventually (maybe the next night). So it's very likely that his death is the best possible outcome of the situation where he's lying in wait and the gun-packing woman is thinking about whether to go down the dark alley. In that case, she would actually be bringing about a better outcome than what would've happened if she'd made the wiser choice, and so we'd be wrong to blame her.
Interesting!
I was not anticipating this response. Thanks!
I think that everything after your "BUT" is really interesting but ultimately looks sort of like moral gymnastics to me. I'm doing my own gymnastics, so it's not necessary for me.
So I'm going to focus on the first part of your post. If you want me to do otherwise, just say the word.
I think you're right that people often perceive a qualitative difference between harm our actions bring on ourselves vs. harm our actions bring on others. Do you think that's right, though? Why?
For example: what if you convince your friend to accompany you down a dark alley, and then they get raped. Now are you responsible, since the rape didn't happen to you?
I don't think that this distinction is actually valuable.
As far as this:
quote:The second thing is that there's quite a bit of social pressure to deny that a woman is ever morally to blame for something that occurred as a result of sexual violence. That's a good rule to follow in almost all cases, but I don't think it's universally true.
That's interesting.
I think, as I alluded earlier, that there's a distinction between assigning moral blame and observing that someone made a mistake in risk assessment or similar.
I stand by my statement that assigning any moral blame to a victim of rape is categorically wrong. But I agree with you insofar as, sometimes people are so concerned about avoiding any resemblance of this, that they fail to point out when someone made a legitimate mistake in risk assessment.
Huge difference, though. If you really think they may sometimes share some blame, then I strongly disagree.
So, to recap:
1: I don't agree that the other people/self distinction is morally very important.
2: I don't agree that sometimes the victim really is to blame for what someone else did to them.
Therefore, in my examples, I don't think the second woman is responsible for the would-be rapists death. End of story.
At which point do you disagree?
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: You may even be able to legitimately say she wasn't being as cautious as she should have been. But that's a separate criticism. To imply any degree of blame on her is categorically wrong.
Do you agree with me here?
Does that cut with people who knowingly endanger themselves? How about if that particular ally was "Rape alley", where there had been a rape every single night all month, and she knew it. And decided to march into the face of danger anyway?
I'm not saying myself either way, just asking how far that principal can be pushed.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
To me, the "wrong decision" is just the one that's more likely to lead to bad outcomes, compared with the alternatives. That was all I meant.
When you have a gun, obviously the potential outcomes change and which decisions are wrong can change as well, as a result.
quote: Destineer: Is your point (the first one in your 2 part list) specifically that you think: It is wrong to follow someone you suspect may be doing something criminal? So if, after following someone, something else bad comes of it, that makes you culpable?
I think it's generally unwise to put yourself in a situation you're not trained to handle. It might have been worth it if Martin appeared to be an immediate physical danger to anyone, but there was no reason for Zimmerman to think that.
My point of view is that cops are trained to do what they do, civilians aren't, and when a civilian forgets this it's almost always a mistake.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:My point of view is that cops are trained to do what they do, civilians aren't, and when a civilian forgets this it's almost always a mistake.
Trained, equipped (with nonlethal alternatives), given the proxy of the people to enforce the laws, have the ability to look up people's criminal histories, have access to back up, are held to different level of responsibility, have to pass extensive background and psych evaluations, regular drug test, etc, ad nausium.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: To me, the "wrong decision" is just the one that's more likely to lead to bad outcomes, compared with the alternatives. That was all I meant.
How do you determine this likelihood?
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
I think answering a couple of your questions will make clear where we disagree.
quote: I think you're right that people often perceive a qualitative difference between harm our actions bring on ourselves vs. harm our actions bring on others. Do you think that's right, though? Why?
Well, I think blame and guilt are closely related attitudes (guilt is essentially blaming yourself for something). I also don't think it normally makes sense to feel guilty about stuff you do to yourself. You may regret it, but that's not the same as guilt. For example, if I attempt suicide I shouldn't feel guilty, but if I attempt murder I should. (This is all complicated by the fact that you may have family who love you, and so you should feel guilty about trying to leave e.g. your orphaned kids behind in the realistic version of the example.)
quote: For example: what if you convince your friend to accompany you down a dark alley, and then they get raped. Now are you responsible, since the rape didn't happen to you?
I would think anyone who didn't feel guilty, or blame themselves a bit in the situation you describe, would be pretty sick.
Obviously I disagree with your #1 at the end of the post. Regarding the other point:
quote: 2: I don't agree that sometimes the victim really is to blame for what someone else did to them.
Even if the victim was gloating about banging the attacker's spouse or something? Not even a little bit blameworthy in a case like that?
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote: I think you're right that people often perceive a qualitative difference between harm our actions bring on ourselves vs. harm our actions bring on others. Do you think that's right, though? Why?
Well, I think blame and guilt are closely related attitudes (guilt is essentially blaming yourself for something). I also don't think it normally makes sense to feel guilty about stuff you do to yourself. You may regret it, but that's not the same as guilt. For example, if I attempt suicide I shouldn't feel guilty, but if I attempt murder I should. (This is all complicated by the fact that you may have family who love you, and so you should feel guilty about trying to leave e.g. your orphaned kids behind in the realistic version of the example.)
You're conflating in stuff you do to yourself intentionally.
People often feel guilty about things they do that, unforeseen by them, then causally lead to something bad. Even if that bad thing only effects them, and no one else.
So again, how is that different?
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote: For example: what if you convince your friend to accompany you down a dark alley, and then they get raped. Now are you responsible, since the rape didn't happen to you?
I would think anyone who didn't feel guilty, or blame themselves a bit in the situation you describe, would be pretty sick.
Really?
I'd think that's the kind of situation where most people would irrationally blame themselves, and then people would try to comfort them by saying "You couldn't have known, don't blame yourself," etc.
I'm confused. You think you would be responsible for the rape? But then you wouldn't, if the rape had happened to you instead of your friend?
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote: 2: I don't agree that sometimes the victim really is to blame for what someone else did to them.
Even if the victim was gloating about banging the attacker's spouse or something? Not even a little bit blameworthy in a case like that?
Yeah, this is a good one!
My answer comes in two parts.
Generally, although I think the Libertarian "Non-Aggression Principle" is so vague and poorly defined (even by them!) as to be meaningless, I do think that the aggressor in a situation is the one morally culpable for the results. Self-defense/retaliation is therefore morally acceptable, in my eyes.
Because I want society to be as open and liberal as possible, I also agree with the US tradition of Free Speech, and I dislike the philosophy behind some of the limitations on this tradition that have been introduced, like "fighting words."
The conflux of these two ideas leads me to draw a pretty specific distinction between being an aggressor with words versus a physical aggressor.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:So Rakeesh, in essence, thinks that Zimmerman has already done something wrong by carrying a gun. So then, if his carrying a gun leads to something worse, like someone being killed, then in Rakeesh's mind he is (at least partially) culpable. But if Rakeesh believed that it was totally moral to carry a gun, then culpability wouldn't follow.
This is not, in fact, what I believe. I don't simply believe that carrying a gun is wrong. I also don't think I've said anything to that effect. I have said, repeatedly, that carrying a gun just to be carrying a gun in case something bad happens, is a bad, unwise decision. People all over the country, all the time, go about their lives peacefully and hardly ever need to even defend themselves with violence, much less be able to put hands on lethal force, just in their daily lives.
Therefore, a responsible person has to ask the question, which is more likely on a day that looks to be completely ordinary: that THIS will be the day they need to defend themselves with violence, or that on this day they might be careless for a few minutes or become very angry for a few minutes, or get into a heated personal nonviolent argument with a spouse or coworker or lover, or have a few beers?
Which of these is more likely? I would love someone defending the right to carry a concealed weapon just for its own sake tell me that.
But this is *only* for people who want a gun simply because 'the world is dangerous' or something. Not the people who live in, say, high crime neighborhoods, or who have violent spouses or family members, or who must carry large amounts of cash or other valuables, so on and so forth.
One party having a gun also brings with it an appreciable rise in the risk in any number of situations, such as above in my either/or question, and not only does that risk not exist if the gun isn't there, there's no additional harm if the gun isn't there. Whereas on the other end of things, even having a gun in the extremely unlikely event we would say it's needed, probably, even then isn't a guarantee of safety-only a very high likelihood of having access to lethal force.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:You're conflating in stuff you do to yourself intentionally.
People often feel guilty about things they do that, unforeseen by them, then causally lead to something bad. Even if that bad thing only effects them, and no one else.
So again, how is that different?
You can certainly feel guilty about stuff you do to other people intentionally. So there's one difference.
I really do dispute whether guilt is ever appropriate when you yourself are the only one harmed. Regret, yes. Guilt, I don't think so.
quote:I'd think that's the kind of situation where most people would irrationally blame themselves, and then people would try to comfort them by saying "You couldn't have known, don't blame yourself," etc.
But we're talking about cases where you could have known, and should at least have known about the risk--by analogy with Zimmerman, who should have known that following Martin involved a risk of violent confrontation.
quote: I'm confused. You think you would be responsible for the rape? But then you wouldn't, if the rape had happened to you instead of your friend?
Well, I would probably say that in both cases you're responsible (partly) for what happened, but only blameworthy when the harm is done to someone else.
quote: Generally, although I think the Libertarian "Non-Aggression Principle" is so vague and poorly defined (even by them!) as to be meaningless, I do think that the aggressor in a situation is the one morally culpable for the results. Self-defense/retaliation is therefore morally acceptable, in my eyes.
Because I want society to be as open and liberal as possible, I also agree with the US tradition of Free Speech, and I dislike the philosophy behind some of the limitations on this tradition that have been introduced, like "fighting words."
The conflux of these two ideas leads me to draw a pretty specific distinction between being an aggressor with words versus a physical aggressor.
As a matter of legal responsibility, I mostly agree with you. As a matter of moral responsibility, I disagree.
The First Amendment doesn't make it morally OK to tell a malicious lie. Nor does it make it morally OK to provoke an attack.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
What if the woman, loaded for bear, decides to walk down "rape ally" and, instead of shooting the rapist she anticipated, kills an innocent bystander instead?
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
There is a raping bear? Thanks for the nightmares boots!
Wait, pepper spray works on bears, whew, that was close.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:But we're talking about cases where you could have known, and should at least have known about the risk--by analogy with Zimmerman, who should have known that following Martin involved a risk of violent confrontation.
This is a crux of the issue, for me. If we're not going to say it's bad Zimmerman 'investigated' Martin's 'suspicious behavior' while he was armed, then we also have to say that it isn't a bad thing to enter what could be a heated dispute with the potential to engage in lethal violence.
This is precisely why, for people in ordinary situations (such as grocery shopping), it's better not to be armed. You can't shoot someone, be it an attacker of bystander or even accidentally yourself, with a gun you don't have-and it's not reasonable to assume that every single possible physical confrontation might result in a need for lethal violence, and then bring that capability even with its other many risks.
That's why it's important we purge ourselves as a society of this dangerous, almost entirely groundless fear that suggests it might be reasonable to come loaded for bear...even if you're only at the damn zoo. If we're going to seriously talk risks, then we have to talk about all of the risks.
I have much, much, much less concern towards gun ownership in the home or at the range, or concealed gun ownership for people with actual risk factors aside from just being a human being. I don't really know why, but there is an attitude in this country that it's reasonable to have the tools at hand in everyday life to deal with the absolute worst case scenario , even when simply possessing those tools carries their own risk.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: I have much, much, much less concern towards gun ownership in the home or at the range, or concealed gun ownership for people with actual risk factors aside from just being a human being. I don't really know why, but there is an attitude in this country that it's reasonable to have the tools at hand in everyday life to deal with the absolute worst case scenario , even when simply possessing those tools carries their own risk.
Well said.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: There is a raping bear? Thanks for the nightmares boots!
Wait, pepper spray works on bears, whew, that was close.
My apologies."Loaded for bear" is an idiom. It means prepared for or even looking for trouble. Heavily armed as if one might expect to have to fight a bear. I didn't realize it might be an unfamilair phrase.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Just goofing.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Zimmerman's side has been proven right, Martin's side has been proven wrong. It's over.
quote:This quote goes up into my "hmm, really?" area too.
Yes, really. There's lots of hand-wringing and there can be lots of political debate about what the role of neighbourhood watch should be, and whether we should or shouldn't gun-control, and there's lots of philosophical arguing about how we should define 'blame' -- but there's hardly any *fact* that remains in real dispute, and all the facts went to the side of Zimmerman.
Is there any factual question that you believe has not been resolved to your satisfaction?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Really? The question of who started the altercation has been unequivocally answered? I've been following the news of this case fairly closely, and I'm surprised I missed that!
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
The only evidence I've seen come out in Zimmerman's favor is that he had some superficial wounds. He had a scratch on the back of his head with a bit of blood running from it. So what? Head wounds bleed like crazy. My husband has had bloodier wounds from shaving his head. Zimmerman had a broken nose. So what? A broken nose is rarely a life threaten injury. Neither is a black eye. Unless there is medical evidence of a brain trauma, those wounds don't indicate that Zimmerman's life was in danger. I broke by nose once by walking into a glass wall. It swelled up like a balloon and I had two black eyes. It was embarrassing but no where near a life threatening emergency.
I've been in exactly one physical fight in my life. I was 13 years old and weighed 65 lbs. I was attacked by two girls in P.E. who were each at least twice my size. I hit one of the girls once, a palm strike to the nose and broke it. It bleed so much she had to go to the hospital to have it cauterized. What some of you seem to be saying is that, given those details, you would have been convinced it was justified self defense if she'd pulled out a gun and shot me. That's freakin' insane.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Really? The question of who started the altercation has been unequivocally answered? I've been following the news of this case fairly closely, and I'm surprised I missed that!
This is what all the "stand your ground" and "legitimate self defense" promoters seems to forget, the law applies to both parties. Martin had a legal right to self defense. It doesn't matter whether or not Martin was beating Zimmerman if Zimmerman started the fight.
Martin was not committing any crime and was in a place he had a legal right to be. If Zimmerman got out of his car and started chasing Martin (which is strongly indicated by the 911 tapes) that constitutes assault. Martin had legitimate reason to fear an imminent violent attack from Zimmerman and the right to defend himself from that attack. If some stranger has been following you and starts chasing you, you don't have to wait until they start beating you or shooting to defend yourself.
Once Zimmerman started chasing Martin, the "stand your ground law" no longer applied to him. He was the aggressor and unless he "withdrew from physical contact with the assailant and indicated clearly to the assailant that he desired to withdraw and terminate the use of force, but the assailant continued or resumed the use of force."**, it wasn't self defense.
Zimmerman claims this is what he did but at this point we have only his word for it. That shouldn't be good enough. When someone with a gun stalks an innocent person and then shoots them, their "word for it" shouldn't hold any weight. Martin won't ever get the chance to tell his side of the story. Unless there is physical evidence to support his claim that he retreated and was crying for help, I won't believe Zimmerman was not the aggressor.
A good forensics team should have been able to gather evidence about the chase and the course of the fight from the crime scene but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the police utterly fumbled on it.
It is important to note that the evidence is being given to the media by the defense team. The prosecution is required to turn over all the evidence to the defense. We have only the parts the defense has turned over to the media and those are certainly the pieces that are most favorable to their client. The evidence that hasn't been released may tell more than that which has.
This case really needs to go to trial so that all the evidence can be scene. The rush to judge Zimmerman either innocent or guilt based on "hear say" (which is all any of us have), is not justice.
**wording taken from Florida law
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I've just seen the news reports about the changes in the eyewitness accounts. Given what's known about memory and the extra-ordinarily poor reliability of eyewitness accounts, this is not at all surprising. Given all the media attention this case has seen, I think there isn't a chance in a million of anyone giving a reliable eyewitness account of what happened. Presuming the case goes to trial and eyewitness testimonies are given, I suspect the testimony of memory experts will be prominently featured.
The strange thing is that it's highly likely that even Zimmerman (maybe especially Zimmerman) doesn't accurately remember what happened. No matter what, it was clearly an intense emotional situation that escalated out of control. He's clearly rethought the events over and over, modifying the stored memory each time. It would not be at all surprising if there is very little correlation between the way he remembers it happening and what actually happened.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
One more thing I've noticed, according to the Coroner's report there was a "quarter inch by half inch abrasion on Martin's left fourth finger. That is being reported all over the web as "bloody knuckles". Talk about biased reporting.
Perhaps someone who is more familiar with fist fighting can comment, but it just doesn't seem that likely to me that such an injury, affecting only the left fourth finger, would have happened from hitting someone.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
As far as my knowledge goes, these things are highly unpredictable. That is part of the problem, that injuries -can- be life threatening from fist fights, but also can be so very superficial as to appear non-existent and there really isn't a consistent rule of thumb for analysis
If we are not able to determine who started the physical altercation, the simple fact that Martin was striking Zimmerman seems likely to lead to a justification of the shooting. Legally speaking that is. Morally speaking, I feel Zimmerman was playing with fire, and Martin got burned.
Yes, fist fights happen all the time where no one sustains permanent injury, but just google "killed in fist fight" to get an idea how often it -does- happen. I can see how legally if there is a chance of death resulting from someone's action then that level of self defense is warranted.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:If we are not able to determine who started the physical altercation, the simple fact that Martin was striking Zimmerman seems likely to lead to a justification of the shooting.
If a person can strap on a firearm, follow and chase anyone they think is acting suspicious, start a fight with them and kill them and get off scott free just because no one saw who started the fight, something is horribly horribly wrong.
I have no idea where the burden of proof lies in the this case. Historically, the person claiming self defense has had the burden of proof. I understand that "stand your ground laws" shift that burden to the prosecution but I have no idea how far. If all the killer has to do is say "self defense", before society has to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that it wasn't, that's legalizing murder.
If this is what stand your ground laws mean, then anyone who can provoke someone into punching them in a spot with no witnesses can legally commit premeditated murder. It is an absolutely horrible travesty of justice.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:If a person can strap on a firearm, follow and chase anyone they think is acting suspicious, start a fight with them and kill them and get off scott free just because no one saw who started the fight, something is horribly horribly wrong.
That is an awfully big -if-. We don't know who started the physical fight. If it was Martin, that would be -understandable- what with minding his own business and being followed and all, but then it would still legally (as far as I understand FL law) be a "clean shoot".
If it was Zimmerman who initiated the physical confrontation, then it would be horribly horribly wrong for him to not be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Either way, I say Zimmerman shares moral blame for being an armed vigilante.
Where I disagree with you is that words are almost -never- a good enough excuse to escalate to physical violence. So yes, it would be an ugly, wrong thing to do, to try and provoke a fight using words, and then further escalate to gun play, but that first escalation, where the "victim" tries to harm the shooter physically is still 100% unacceptable.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: Is there any factual question that you believe has not been resolved to your satisfaction?
...
the issue of provocation in the altercation and the issue of whether what Zimmerman did constituted manslaughter, to say the least.
If this really does not at all ping on your case analysis radar to the extent that you totally don't see them in favor of concluding that 'everything is satisfactorily resolved in Zimmerman's favor' you are so amazingly unaware of the actual ambiguities of the case that you are well behind any point where we could be credibly arguing said case to you, at present.
it is, to be frank, a little bit ridiculous. I know it is amazingly patronizing to put it this way but it is extremely telling to what extent you have concluded this case well beyond actual present ambiguities, and I really am surprised if you could not see why your mindset is perplexing to me when advanced under the pretense of being a fair analysis lacking personal supposed prejudgment.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:If it was Martin, that would be -understandable- what with minding his own business and being followed and all, but then it would still legally (as far as I understand FL law) be a "clean shoot".
I'm not confident of this analysis. Legally, the person who started the fight is not the same as the person who threw the first punch. If Zimmerman was "Doing some act which creates a well-founded fear in that other person that such violence is about to occur.", Zimmerman was guilty of aggravated assault. In other words, Zimmerman started the fight so stand your ground does not apply. I think Martin had a well-founded reason to believe that the stranger who was following him and chasing him intended to commit a violent act.
It seems to me that the three most likely explanations of how the fight started are:
1. Martin was scared that Zimmerman was about violently attack him and chose to improve his odds by making the first blow.
2. Martin chose to make an unprovoked attack on a neighborhood watch person who he knew was no threat to him.
3. Zimmerman grabbed or hit Martin first.
Of those three options, both 1 and 3 would mean Zimmerman started the fight and two is simply the least rational of the three. Unless Martin has a violent history we haven't heard about, that is just a really far fetched possibility. Martin is dead so he can't tell us why he was fighting with Zimmerman. Does that mean we should ignore reason and presume he made a unprovoked attack when we know that most people would have been genuinely scared by Zimmerman's behavior?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
quote:If a person can strap on a firearm, follow and chase anyone they think is acting suspicious, start a fight with them and kill them and get off scott free just because no one saw who started the fight, something is horribly horribly wrong.
That is an awfully big -if-. We don't know who started the physical fight. If it was Martin, that would be -understandable- what with minding his own business and being followed and all, but then it would still legally (as far as I understand FL law) be a "clean shoot".
Why do you see this as an awfully big if? I agree that we don't know exactly how the fight started but that isn't the question. The question is who should have the burden of proof. If you say that the prosecution should have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman started the fight, then you are in effect making it legal to kill some one in a fight whenever there are no witnesses.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: It doesn't matter whether or not Martin was beating Zimmerman if Zimmerman started the fight.
This is exactly right.
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: It seems to me that the three most likely explanations of how the fight started are:
1. Martin was scared that Zimmerman was about violently attack him and chose to improve his odds by making the first blow.
2. Martin chose to make an unprovoked attack on a neighborhood watch person who he knew was no threat to him.
3. Zimmerman grabbed or hit Martin first.
Of those three options, both 1 and 3 would mean Zimmerman started the fight and two is simply the least rational of the three. Unless Martin has a violent history we haven't heard about, that is just a really far fetched possibility.
Overall I agree with your assessment. But I think that option 1 is not as cut-and-dried as you make it out, and doesn't necessarily mean that Zimmerman was at fault.
If Martin genuinely believed he was about to be attacked, then you're right. He would've been justified.
But I can also envision a scenario in which Zimmerman was verbally hostile or abrasive without being overtly threatening. He could have insulted Martin, or otherwise been rude, condescending, bossy, etc.
A sad fact of our culture is that a lot of young men are pretty quick to perceive insults, and to answer them with fists. I don't mean intensely violent unbalanced men, either. No history of reported violence doesn't mean Martin hadn't gotten into scrapes with kids at school. I don't think this possibility is unreasonable, but I also have no reason to think it's more likely than Martin reacting to an overt threat from Zimmerman.
Ultimately, this is why I try to reserve judgment on the actual case. I just don't know enough about what happened, and I'm not on the jury, so I don't need to force myself to pick one conclusion or the other.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
As to who has the burden of proof, I can not say. It is horrible to make it possible for people to kill and then make up the story as they are the only person left to question. It is also horrible to lock people up or execute them because theirs is the only voice left to speak. It's bad either way, and I don't know which is worse.
As to your three options, I don't agree that those are the three most likely explanations.
It was wrong for Zimmerman to play cop, that's for sure in my book. But there are still things that -could have happened- which make him shooting Martin legally not a crime, and possibly morally.
I will be curious to see what evidence comes out at trial, and what conclusions can be drawn from said evidence. And until such time hold my judgement in reserve as to if Zimmerman should be convicted.
No mater what else happens, Zimmerman should have his concealed weapon license revoked (although I'm sure he is getting lots of serious death threats these days, so maybe not). How about convicted of criminal stupidity for bringing a gun on neighborhood watch? That would be appropriate at this time.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Where I disagree with you is that words are almost -never- a good enough excuse to escalate to physical violence. So yes, it would be an ugly, wrong thing to do, to try and provoke a fight using words, and then further escalate to gun play, but that first escalation, where the "victim" tries to harm the shooter physically is still 100% unacceptable.
Are you saying that a person has to wait until a would be attacker commits an act of physical violence before then are justified in defending themself? If a person is shouting that they are going to kill you and you are convinced they could do it and really are about to do it, do you have to wait until they throw the first punch before you are morally justified in use physical force against them? If a person is shouting obscenities at you and waving a gun, are you morally obliged to wait until they fire the gun before you are justified in using physical force?
What you have said, that words are never a justification to commit violence, literally means that if someone has followed you, has your back against the wall and is screaming that they are going to rape and kill you, you have to wait until they actually physically contact you before you would be morally justified in escalating to the use of physical force.
And on the flip side, you are saying that if someone who is much smaller than you punches you in the nose -- you should have the legal right to shoot them in self defense.
That just isn't rational and I'm sure its not what you really mean to be saying.
I think we are in agreement that a person should do everything in their power to avoid behavior that would escalate a shouting match into a physical fight. But there is some point at which threatening words and actions cross from being harmless insults to genuine reason to fear for your life. That line lies in a huge gray territory that isn't as simple as first physical contact. Lot's of times, being actually hit does not morally justify hitting back and at other times you are justified in using deadly force in your own defense before you've ever been hit.
I don't know where you draw the line, but in American society women and children are taught to be scared if someone is following them. We are taught to interpret that as a violent threat. If I were minding my own business and noticed someone tailing me, I'd head for any place where there were likely to be people. If the stranger gave chase and I didn't think I could make it to safety, I'd be prepared to hit him with everything I had as soon as he came in striking distance. Do you think I'd be justified?
Under those circumstance, if I broke the persons nose who'd been following me would it be fair to say I'd started the fight? If the person retaliated by shooting me, should the broken nose serve as evidence that they were acting only in self defense?
Why then do you say that Martin's action, though understandable, constitutes an unprovoked attack on Zimmerman that would justify invoke the stand your ground law.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:But I can also envision a scenario in which Zimmerman was verbally hostile or abrasive without being overtly threatening. He could have insulted Martin, or otherwise been rude, condescending, bossy, etc.
A sad fact of our culture is that a lot of young men are pretty quick to perceive insults, and to answer them with fists. I don't mean intensely violent unbalanced men, either. No history of reported violence doesn't mean Martin hadn't gotten into scrapes with kids at school. I don't think this possibility is unreasonable, but I also have no reason to think it's more likely than Martin reacting to an overt threat from Zimmerman.
In such situations, I don't think that there is a clear distinction between reacting out of fear and reacting out of anger. Fear and anger are both intimately tied to the biological "fight or flight response." In such a situation, no one reacts by rationally weighing the facts, it's a very primal gut response.
I think that even if you had been inside Martin's head during the fight, it would not have impossible to tell whether he was acting out of fear or anger. When one is threatened, fear and anger aren't separable. I'm a cyclist. I've ridden a bike in traffic in the US a lot and so I know what its like to be yelled at by an angry person who is capable of killing me instantly. There is no logic or reasoning involved. It's a very primal gut response that's as well described by terror as it is rage. Every cyclist I know describes the exact same response and though I've never been in the exact situation Martin was in, I imagine that primal mix of terror and rage is what I'd experience.
I recognize that most car drivers have never ridden a bike in traffic and so they don't realize that honking and swearing at a cyclist will be perceived as threatening their life so I'm willing to excuse their behavior. But I think any adult male in America ought to know that following a stranger at night is going to be perceived as a threat and is likely to provoke a fight or flight response. I think every adult in America should be expected to know that accosting a stranger at night on the street is likely to be perceived as threatening. Is it possible that Zimmerman was so utterly stupid that he didn't know that following someone was threatening behavior. Yeah. Is it possible that he was so incredibly dumb that he didn't know that getting out of his car while in pursuit of a person on foot would be seen as intimidating act. Yeah, it's possible, but I think it really doesn't matter. Almost every reasonable adult would consider those actions threatening and Martin certainly would have been within reason to react as though Zimmerman posed an imminent threat to him.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
First of I said "almost never" not never. Big difference. You make a good point that at time non physical threats are appropriately responded to with physical violence. I think this is more rare, and only in certain cases of very threatening words or physically intimidating actions.
I don't think that just following someone is necessarily one of those. But there is a difference between following and chasing. What if in your scenario the guy chasing you, after you brake his nose, pulls out your wallet that you dropped and he was trying to return to you? You misunderstood his intent, and now you have committed assault and battery (I think).
Unless there is also a threat of violence, or an obvious weapon, following someone, in most cases is not sufficient provocation to incite violence.
As to someone smaller hitting me, and me shooting them, if they are initiating violence and I have a reasonable belief that my life is in danger, then I don't see the problem.
As to Martin, I did not say his attack was unprovoked (or that he initiated the attack at all), I said I don't know how it started and hold judgement until such time as I do.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: It doesn't matter whether or not Martin was beating Zimmerman if Zimmerman started the fight.
This is exactly right.
So if someone starts a fight with you, it's okay to beat them to death after any possible threat they were to you was long neutralized?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:As to who has the burden of proof, I can not say. It is horrible to make it possible for people to kill and then make up the story as they are the only person left to question. It is also horrible to lock people up or execute them because theirs is the only voice left to speak. It's bad either way, and I don't know which is worse.
There is always some possibility that a person who has been convicted of a crime is innocent and its always a tragedy when someone innocent is punished.
It is almost never absolutely certain that someone is guilty. Even people who have confessed to crimes have occasionally been proven innocent. If we required absolute proof of guilt, no one would ever be convicted.
I've never been all that keen on punishment but I've observed what happens in a society when it is believed that crime goes unpunished. It's not pretty. To some degree, all people need to believe that their cooperation and respect for the laws will be reciprocated by others. If people don't believe that laws are justly made and enforced, they are less willing to follow laws. I'm not saying that the most people only obey the laws because of fear of punishment, its a lot more complicated than that. What I'm saying is that the more people who are able to break laws and violate societal expectations without any penalty, the less other people are willing cooperate for the good of society. When crime goes unpunished, it breeds general social dysfunction. If people don't believe that their society is just, they are more likely to engage in all kinds of anti-social behavior.
I think that's particularly important in this case because regardless of what really happened, if Zimmerman is not held accountable for killing Martin in some way, there will be all kinds of negative social repercussions. Suppose Zimmerman really was acting purely in self defense. Suppose he had actually apologized to Martin and then headed back to his car when Martin tackled him from behind. Suppose he screamed for help and begged Martin to stop. Suppose Martin tried to take the gun, they wrestled over control of the gun and in the process Martin got shot. Well, then it would be a real tragedy if Zimmerman was punished at all. But unless there is compelling evidence that that is how it happened (and not even Zimmerman hasn't made that claim), I believe it would be worse for our society for Zimmerman to be punished unjustly than to go unpunished.
After all, we know Zimmerman killed Martin. We know that as certainly as we ever know anything in a murder case. We know that if Zimmerman hadn't followed Martin and if he hadn't gotten out of his car, there would have been no fight. Whether or not it rises to the level of a crime is debatable but that whether Zimmerman made mistakes that cost an innocent 17 year old boy his life is not in question.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I don't think that just following someone is necessarily one of those. But there is a difference between following and chasing. What if in your scenario the guy chasing you, after you brake his nose, pulls out your wallet that you dropped and he was trying to return to you? You misunderstood his intent, and now you have committed assault and battery (I think).
I'm pretty sure a person would not be charged with assault and battery under those circumstances unless they continued pounding on the chaser after they had made it clear they were just trying to return a wallet. Maybe things are different if you are a man, but women and children in America are taught that being followed and chased is a threat a violence.
quote:Unless there is also a threat of violence, or an obvious weapon, following someone, in most cases is not sufficient provocation to incite violence.
This is not what women and children are taught. We are taught that if a stranger is following us, we should presume they are trying to hurt us and try to protect ourselves. At least, this is what I have been taught repeatedly. Perhaps other women can comment.
quote:As to someone smaller hitting me, and me shooting them, if they are initiating violence and I have a reasonable belief that my life is in danger, then I don't see the problem.
I believe we agree that its not reasonable to respond with deadly force to every physical attack. That implies that when someone hits you, you have an obligation to decide whether they pose a legitimate threat of killing you or seriously injurying you. You have decided on what constitutes a proportionate response. If the person is unarmed, do you think size should be a factor in making that determination? Certainly its not the only factor, but size is critically important in a fight between unarmed people. Size is a huge advantage in a fight, that's why there are weight classes in all combat sports. Being killed in a fist fight is not impossible, but its very unlikely and it would be extremely unusually to be killed much smaller in an unarmed fight. David only defeated Goliath by using a projectile weapon, and its still considered a legendary feat.
[ May 23, 2012, 05:02 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: It doesn't matter whether or not Martin was beating Zimmerman if Zimmerman started the fight.
This is exactly right.
So if someone starts a fight with you, it's okay to beat them to death after any possible threat they were to you was long neutralized?
No one has said this nor implied it. I think the law is pretty clear on this. If you started the fight, you are no longer covered by the stand your ground law. You are back to the traditional law where you have the burden to prove that your life was in imminent danger and that you had exhausted all other means of escape or defense.
If Martin started the fight, then the stand your ground law put the burden on the state to prove that Zimmerman was not defending himself. If Zimmerman started the fight, he committed murder unless he can prove that he had not other option.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Ah, thank you for the clarification.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
The fact that Zimmerman was carrying again to buy groceries and patrol the neighborhood is reason alone for me doubt his ability accurately assess danger. The people I know who carry a concealed weapon routinely fall into a few simple categories.
1. People whose jobs require them to carry a weapon such as police officers and security guards. They are often encouraged to wear their weapon all the time so they become comfortable with it.
2. People whose jobs or other activities require them to regularly pass through areas with exceptionally high rates of violent crime.
3. People who are facing some specific threat, like being stalked by an abusive ex.
4. Bullies who like to pick fights and intimidate people.
5. People with highly unrealistic ideas about risks, safety and their own abilities. This includes a full spectrum from the paranoid to the firearm obsessed. The worst are those with delusions of heroism.
Zimmerman clearly does not fall into one of the first three categories which suggests a very high probability that he falls into one of the latter two. Based on the available info, it could be either one but I think 5 is the most likely. He just isn't someone I'd trust to be able to accurately assess what constitute real danger and what didn't.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I don't think anyone should say anything has been proven at this point. I don't agree with a lot of what I read here, and I have been defending at least the possibility of Zimmerman being honest.....but even I said, more than once, that I look forward the trial to hear more details and proof.
So far, every time someone has yelled GOTCHA to Zimmerman, they ended up with egg on their face. He was injured, it did show on the tapes....etc....
But that is NOT proof he did nothing wrong.
I also don't think there is anything inherently wrong with carrying a gun. I wish I had had one walking home that night. Either way one of them died....but I almost did too, and two of them were never found.
YOU don't get to decide if my fears are real or not. If I am licensed, and own a gun, I have every right to carry it. And the fact that I am carrying it does not mean I waive all my other rights.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Guns are inherently dangerous, when there is a human in the equation that is. A gun's purpose is to cause major bodily harm. I own many guns myself, and used to teach gun safety as a younger man.
I am in favor of guns being available to citizens in good standing, but I am not for unrestricted ownership or carry. You must respect a gun at all times, treat it with the proper handling and training, have the right equipment to carry and store it safely.
I live in Cali (take that rivka!) where many of the laws of gun ownership and gun safety are already in place, as well as some very stupid limitations which make no one safer what so ever, such as no "high capacity" mags and no "assault weapons". It saddens me deeply that more states do not have the wonderful laws mine do about safe handling/storage and screening for carry permits. Why should it be that it takes a political environment that is so anti gun as to have BS laws on the books to have basic safety laws on the books too? It makes no sense to me.
We make people take tests to prove they are reasonably able to handle a dangerous car, that they can see, but no such tests are in place in quite a few states (as far as I know) for guns.
Guns are not bad, but they are powerful and dangerous. Zimmerman should not have gotten a carry permit with his history. Should not have been paroling his neighborhood armed. Should not have been following a "suspicious subject". He should not have gotten out of his car.
When you are armed you carry a -higher- responsibility, to be clear minded and level headed, to not doing things that can lead to a fight, to not allowing yourself to be goaded by insult, because you have chosen to carry a heavy burden, the burden of life or death.
It is an adult, sober, heavy responsibility, and honestly not everyone is cut out for it. And I disagree with those who say it should be a right. It is a privlege, one that an individual who seeks it out should have to prove they are worthy of, by passing fair and impartial testing of their ability to handle a gun safely, of they mindset and intent in carrying lethal force, of their accuracy and ability not only to hit the right target but to pick the right target.
Tayvron Martin did not have to die. His death is a tragedy. I can not say if Zimmerman is guilty of breaking Florida law or not, and no one really can at this point. But if he wasn't, if what he did is okay in the eyes of the law, then the laws need to be changed, because what he did is wrong.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:"The only evidence I've seen come out in Zimmerman's favor is that he had some superficial wounds"
A broken nose isn't a "superficial" wound, it's a level of violence most of us never experience in our lifetimes.
Plus, the bruised knuckles on Martin.
Plus, all the people that saw Martin standing over Zimmerman.
Plus, the people that recognized Zimmerman's voice being the one that shouted for help.
Plus, that marijuana was in Martin's system, which corroborates Zimmerman's words that he was acting either suspiciously or as if under the influence of drugs.
Plus, that all the supposedly racial focus on his 911 call turned out to be made by careful editing of the tapes to falsely present Zimmerman as racially-focused.
quote:Is there any factual question that you believe has not been resolved to your satisfaction?
quote:the issue of provocation in the altercation and the issue of whether what Zimmerman did constituted manslaughter
I asked for factual questions, not semantical/legalistic debating of what means "provocation" or "manslaughter".
[ May 24, 2012, 04:11 AM: Message edited by: Aris Katsaris ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:"The only evidence I've seen come out in Zimmerman's favor is that he had some superficial wounds"
A broken nose isn't a "superficial" wound, it's a level of violence most of us never experience in our lifetimes.
That's delusional. A non-deviated broken nose, like Zimmerman had, is an extremely common minor injury. Most people who have this kind of injury never seek medical attention and may never realize they broke their nose. I got a broken nose like Zimmerman had from walking at low speed into a glass wall. Athletes and children get this kind of injury all the time. The nose sticks out so its a vulnerable point. Have you ever been in an accident or a fight where you hurt your nose enough that it swelled up? If so, it was probably broken even if you didn't know it. I have no idea whether or not it's most people, but I do know that its extremely common for people to get a broken nose or a black eye in a minor accident or fight.
quote:Plus, the bruised knuckles on Martin.
The coroner reported a single 1/4 inch by 1/2 inch abrasion (scrape) on Martin's left fourth finger as the only injury other than the bullet wound. Bruised and bloody knuckles are not an accurate description of what was found. I asked before but you didn't answer so I'll ask again, explain to me how someone might scrape their forth left finger hitting someone but not injure any other part of their hand.
quote:Plus, all the people that saw Martin standing over Zimmerman.
Plus, the people that recognized Zimmerman's voice being the one that shouted for help.
Plus, that marijuana was in Martin's system, which corroborates Zimmerman's words that he was acting either suspiciously or as if under the influence of drugs.
The coroner found 1.5 ng/ml THC and 7.2 ng/ml THC-COOH in Martin's blood. These are far below the level known to have any psycho-active effect. If Martin had been using pot the day of the incident, one would expect a minimum of 100 ng/ml of THC. Traces of THC remain in the system for weeks. The level's found in Martin's blood are exactly what would be expected for someone who was expelled a few days earlier for possession of marijuana. Contrary to your claims, the levels of THC found in Martin's blood prove conclusively that he was not high or intoxicated on the night he was killed. .
quote:Plus, that all the supposedly racial focus on his 911 call turned out to be made by careful editing of the tapes to falsely present Zimmerman as racially-focused.
Yes the media edited parts to enhance the racial overtones but its unfair to say it was all a result of media falsification. I've read through the full unedited transcripts and listened to the raw tape. Have you? What do you think Zimmerman is saying in the part where he allegedly uses a racial epithet? There is room for honest disagreement but it sure sounds like he says "F__ing Coon" to me. But in the end, the racial element isn't all that relevant. It doesn't really matter why Zimmerman thought Martin was committing some crime.
Martin was absolutely not doing anything illegal that night. He had every right to be where he was, doing what he was doing and to defend himself from an assailant. Do you think those facts are in any question?
quote:
quote:Is there any factual question that you believe has not been resolved to your satisfaction?
quote:the issue of provocation in the altercation and the issue of whether what Zimmerman did constituted manslaughter
I asked for factual questions, not semantical/legalistic debating of what means "provocation" or "manslaughter". [/QB]
I think pretty much every claim you've made here has not been resolved to my satisfaction. It seems like you've been getting your so called facts from Rush Limbaugh and nazi bloggers rather than reading the actual reports. Zimmerman did not have serious injuries -- he had very minor injuries that normally would not even require medical attention. Martin did not have bruised and bloody knuckles, he had a single scape on his left ring finger. The blood tests showed Martin had used drugs sometime in the last several weeks (no surprise there) but verify beyond reasonable doubt that he was not high on the night in question. The eyewitness accounts are conflicting, inconsistent and unreliable. Nothing that has been recently released is at all surprising to me or changes the situation to any significant degree.
The relevant facts that I believe to be clearly indisputably resolved include the following: 1. George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin. 2. Zimmerman pulled the trigger intentionally within a meter or less of Martin's chest, 3. Martin was not armed or involved in any illegal activity when Zimmerman began following him. and 4. immediately before the shooting, Martin and Zimmerman were fighting and one of them was screaming for help. Do you see any of those facts as disputable?
The question that remains unanswered is whether Zimmerman was justified in killing Martin because he was defending himself. That is both a legal question and a moral question. It is impossible to address that question without talking about things like provocation that you say are not "facts".
The facts I think need to be resolved to determine (either morally of legally) whether Zimmerman was justified in killing Martin include
1. How did the fight start? So far the preponderance of evidence indicates the fight started because Zimmerman threatened Martin via actions that American children and teens are taught to fear. It would take some very significant mitigating circumstances for killing to be morally justified because they fought back when you threatened them.
2. Who was calling for help? Witnesses disagree and keep changing their stories. Two expert voice analysts have said it wasn't Zimmerman calling for help. I expect that analysis of the calls for help on the 911 tapes will feature very prominently in the trial. If it was Zimmerman crying for help, that would go a long way toward supporting the claim of self defense. If it was Martin crying for help, it would strongly support the 2nd degree murder charge.
3. When and how did the gun come into play? If Martin knew that Zimmerman was armed, he had every right to respond with deadly force.
4. Had Zimmerman exhausted other reasonable means of defense before he used the gun? He was older and significantly heavier than Martin which would make him a strong favorite in an unarmed fight. He knew that police were on the way. What made him decide he had to shoot right then and couldn't hold out a few minutes for help to arrive.
[ May 24, 2012, 10:38 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
(Would *love* to hear your response, Aris, or several other people's responses, to Rabbit's post which demonstrates pretty conclusively that the idea 'all the evidence' favors Zimmerman is nonsense.)
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
quote: 3. When and how did the gun come into play? If Martin knew that Zimmerman was armed, he had every right to respond with deadly force.
That to me is a big one. If I'm a young black man being chased by a larger man (who is clearly not a police officer), and I see that man has a gun, there's a good chance I am going to attack him. In self defense!
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Xavier:
quote: 3. When and how did the gun come into play? If Martin knew that Zimmerman was armed, he had every right to respond with deadly force.
That to me is a big one. If I'm a young black man being chased by a larger man (who is clearly not a police officer), and I see that man has a gun, there's a good chance I am going to attack him. In self defense!
Exactly. If the assailant is unarmed, it makes the most sense to run. If he has a gun, it changes the equation. You can't out run a bullet.
[ May 24, 2012, 11:45 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Have you ever been in an accident or a fight where you hurt your nose enough that it swelled up?
No.
A fight that involves my head getting injured from both the front and the back (a mere push/stumble to the ground would injure only one side), would almost certainly be a fight for my life -- and if I had a gun on me I'd use it to protect said life.
quote:The coroner reported a single 1/4 inch by 1/2 inch abrasion (scrape) on Martin's left fourth finger as the only injury other than the bullet wound. Bruised and bloody knuckles are not an accurate description of what was found. I asked before but you didn't answer so I'll ask again, explain to me how someone might scrape their forth left finger hitting someone but not injure any other part of their hand.
Wait, are you now actually saying that Martin never once hit Zimmerman?
Is this the actual claim you're saying the evidence points to? That's not credible at all. Even Martin's girlfriend indicates she heard people fighting, no?
quote:You mean all the people who've changed their stories repeatedly?
I trust their earlier testimonies more than their later ones, don't you?
But actually I meant those people who recognized Zimmerman's voice in the recordings, when even Martin's own father didn't recognize his son's voice.
quote:Martin was absolutely not doing anything illegal that night. He had every right to be where he was, doing what he was doing and to defend himself from an assailant.
And Zimmerman was likewise not doing anything illegal that night. He had every right to be where he was, doing what he was doing -- and since the one with the injuries is Zimmerman, it was Zimmerman who was defending himself from an assailant.
quote:But in the end, the racial element isn't all that relevant
It was the only thing that seemed to be relevant, until it was effectively disproven as a motivation.
quote:If it was Martin crying for help, it would strongly support the 2nd degree murder charge.
It wasn't Martin. It was Zimmerman. Once it's definitively proven to not have been Martin that was shouting out, my prediction is that you will change your position to say that who was shouting out to be as irrelevant as you now called the supposed racial motivation.
I say again: It's over for all intends and purposes. The only people who still make something out of this, are the people who want to make something out of this.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:Martin was absolutely not doing anything illegal that night. He had every right to be where he was, doing what he was doing and to defend himself from an assailant.
And Zimmerman was likewise not doing anything illegal that night. He had every right to be where he was, doing what he was doing -- and since the one with the injuries is Zimmerman, it was Zimmerman who was defending himself from an assailant.
You seem to overlook the fact that Martin had a rather more serious injury. In fact, you seem entirely unconcerned about the fact that a boy ended up dead.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Wait, are you now actually saying that Martin never once hit Zimmerman?
Is this the actual claim you're saying the evidence points to? That's not credible at all. Even Martin's girlfriend indicates she heard people fighting, no?
I never made any such claim. I said that your claim that Martin had bruised and bloody knuckles is not supported by the coroners report. Do you dispute this fact? If so, can you please point me to the place in the coroners report that says he had bruised and bloody knuckles?
I think its evident that the two were fighting and extremely likely that Martin broke Zimmerman's nose. It's pretty easy to break some ones nose without injuring your hand. An absence of hand injures is not conclusive. If you know how, you can do a lot of serious damage to a person without injuring your hands. You can also easily break all the bones in your hand by punching someone in the head. In fact, that's much more likely than causing the person a serious head injury.
There are lots of ways Martin might have received a small scrape on one finger during the fight but repeatedly pummeling Zimmerman with his fists (as is implied by the claim of bruised and bloody knuckles) would not likely have left a scrape on just his left ring finger but no other marks. Are you disputing this as fact?
You are the one who claimed that the facts are conclusive evidence of self defense but what you maintain to be established "facts" are demonstrably untrue.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I say again: It's over for all intends and purposes. The only people who still make something out of this, are the people who want to make something out of this.
You and many others who are defending Martin are making claims about the evidence and the facts that are demonstrably untrue. You don't change your tune even when your errors are clearly pointed out. If anyone is rushing to judgement, it's the people who are saying Zimmerman shouldn't be tried. If anyone is demonstrating a clear bias in the case, its the side that is obviously exaggerating the facts from the coroners report to smear the young man who was killed.
If the established facts so clearly support your side, why do you need to exaggerate them? If a scratch on Martin's finger and the other established facts are clear proof that he was giving Zimmerman a serious beating, why is anyone claiming the report said he had bruised and bloody knuckles?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:You seem to overlook the fact that Martin had a rather more serious injury.
Don't play dumb, kmbboots. If before the shooting, only Zimmerman suffered injuries, then we already know who was the assailant, and who wans't -- which is my exact point, that we know who the assailant was.
quote:In fact, you seem entirely unconcerned about the fact that a boy ended up dead.
I'm very concerned about the murderous macho cultures of America which leads to young boys becoming assailants of other people; and thus ruining their lives either by going to prison, or getting themselves killed. You know, the *systematic* harm.
I'm very concerned about the war on drugs, which leads to *hundreds* or thousands of innocent drug-users going to jail, or becoming the victims of drug-related violence.
But I'm not particularly concerned about violent assailants getting themselves killed, when the other alternative seems to be to allow them to kill or maim, instead. The boy was 17 years old. When you have a man's strength, you have a man's responsibility for the violence you perpetrate.
So, yeah, since I'm convinced Martin was the violent assailant, I will shed no tears for him, or any other violent assailant. To do otherwise is to blame the victim of an attack for the means they took to defend themselves. And I don't blame the victims.
quote:I said that your claim that Martin had bruised and bloody knuckles. Do you dispute this fact?
I dispute that I ever used the word "bloody" knuckles. I said "bruised". If you want me to remedy this by saying "scraped" instead, I hereby retract the word "bruised" and replace it with "scraped" - my point stands.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
Edit: In response to Rabbit's post...
And quite predictably, claiming that trace amounts of THC in your blood means that you are high. Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
I don't know enough about drugs, Xavier, to know what amounts mean what. I retract that point, too, if you want. The rest of the evidence remain.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:
quote:quote: But in the end, the racial element isn't all that relevant
It was the only thing that seemed to be relevant, until it was effectively disproven as a motivation.
What? Do you really believe that the only reason most people cared about shooting an unarmed teenager was a because of racism? I'm pretty confident that if all the circumstances had been identical except the victims race, it would have made front page news. I suspect a different set of people would have be protesting, but I'm sure there would have been protesting.
The racial issues obviously got lots of media attention but its pretty clear never understood the racial arguments or why they were relevant.
I don't think anyone ever said that racial bias was relevant to the murder charge. It would only have been relevant if Zimmerman were charged with a hate crime, which has not happened.
The central racial issue was never whether or not Zimmerman was motivated by racial prejudice. The biggest racial question was always about whether the police investigation and attorney's recommendations were tainted by racial bias. That's why the case was turned over to a independent investigator. The central racial issue was not whether Zimmerman would have shot a white teenager under similar circumstances, it was whether the police would have arrested him and done a more thorough investigation if he'd killed a white teenager. If you don't think there are serious reasons to ask that question, you are pitifully naive about race relations in America.
We know that the local police had a history of serious racial bias. We have reason to believe that the police did a shoddy incomplete investigation of the crime scene. They couldn't even identify the victim for nearly a day. They had Martin's cell phone for gosh sakes. I'm confident I could identify most anybody in less than 5 minutes with their cell phone. Two weeks after the crime the police still didn't know Zimmerman had a criminal record -- they were going on Zimmerman's word. There is every reason to believe that the police would have handled the case differently if the victim had been white. If you don't think that's at least a good possibility, you are really seriously naive about race in America. The vast majority of unsolved murder cases in the US involve black victims. There is a well established systematic bias against black victims in the UW. Based on what I observed, this was always the main racial issue. The question of whether Zimmerman was racial motivated was an issue, but it was not the primary issue.
The question of whether or not Zimmerman was racially motivated is irrelevant to whether or not he committed murder but it is relevant to lots of people who regularly face racial discrimination and are victims of racial profiling.
America has a big racial problem that it simply doesn't want to face. That problem has two sides. Statistically black men are more likely to commit violent crimes in America than whites. American neighborhoods are still highly segregated so from a strict statistical stand point, a strange black man walking around a white neighborhood is a lot less likely to be on legitimate business than a strange white person. In most situations, it really isn't an unjustifiable prejudice to be more suspicious of a black stranger than a white stranger.
But on the other side of the coin, the overwhelming majority of blacks in this country are not violent criminals. Those innocent decent people get treated with suspicion, hardship and disdain on a regular basis because of racial profiling. They get treated worse by private citizens, businesses and government. In all kinds of subtle ways, black are treated as suspect until proven otherwise in situations where whites would be assumed to be innocent. If you doubt that, you've never sat down and compared notes with a dark skinned man. If you've experienced racial profiling personally on a regular basis, it's going to be relevant any time an innocent unarmed black kid gets shot by a vigilante. It's going to be relevant to you because you know how easily it might have been you or your kid. Even if Zimmerman wasn't a raging racial bigot mumbling epithets, he would be an extremely unusually American if race was not a significant part of why he thought Treyvon was suspicious. From a strictly statistical standpoint, it's extremely likely that Treyvon would be alive today if he were white.
And that is something that is a real racial problem. Even if 95% of black people were violent criminals, the innocent people with black skin should not suffer because of their skin color. I'm not sure how to fix the problem, but until we admit that it is a real problem we won't.
[ May 24, 2012, 02:48 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Don't play dumb, kmbboots. If before the shooting, only Zimmerman suffered injuries, then we already know who was the assailant, and who wans't -- which is my exact point, that we know who the assailant was.
That's legally, morally and logically incorrect. A person doesn't have to wait until they have sustained an injury to defend themselves. What you are saying implies that even if Zimmerman tackled Martin, Martin should be consider the assailant unless the tackle caused an evident injury? Do you really think that? Legally and morally, a person should not have to wait until they sustained an injury to defend themselves any more than they should have to wait until they've been killed to use deadly force in their defense.
An assailant is by definition anyone who commits assault and not the first person to cause a lasting injury. I suggest you read the definition of assault. By legal definition, If you do something that a reasonable person would understand as a threat and which would cause that person to believe you are about to violently attack them -- you have committed assault and are therefore an assailant. If they hit you first, you are still the assailant and they are justified in defending themselves.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:A fight that involves my head getting injured from both the front and the back (a mere push/stumble to the ground would injure only one side), would almost certainly be a fight for my life -- and if I had a gun on me I'd use it to protect said life.
For someone whose never even got a bloody nose in a fight, you have a surprising amount of confidence in how much you know about what would constitute a fight for your life.
Roughly one person out of 1000 who is attacked by an unarmed assailant seriously enough to attract criminal charges dies. Nearly all of those who are killed by an unarmed assailant are women or children who are much smaller than their attacker. It's easy to break someones nose. It's easy to scratch the back of someones head. It's really hard to kill someone with your bare hands and extra-ordinarily hard to kill someone bigger than you without a weapon.
Is there anyone participating who ever wrestled competitively? How hard would it be for you to pin someone who was 4 weight classes heavier than you? What do you think the chances are that a good wrestler would be able to pin any wrestler 4 weight classes heavier? That's what Martin is alleged to have done. It's claimed he had Zimmerman, a man who outweighed him by 42 pounds, pinned to the ground and unable to escape.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Do you really believe that the only reason most people cared about shooting an unarmed teenager was a because of racism?
Yes. I'm pretty confident that effectively nobody would have cared if it was a white man had shot a white boy, and nobody would have cared if a black man had shot a black boy.
It not only wouldn't been front page news, I doubt it'd have been third page news. Race is what motivates tribal politics in America, much like religion motivates tribal politics in Bosnia.
And if the outrage wasn't political, then you wouldn't see leftwing and rightwing Americans align so *neatly* on whether they assume Zimmerman innocent or guilty. You wouldn't see the President make statement on a case of purely *criminal investigation*.
I'm not an American, so my being what's called "left-wing" in America on pretty much everything else (from same-sex marriage, to legalizing drugs, to America withdrawing troops from Iraq, to whatever) prevents me from aligning so automatically to what my political side's position is assumed automatically to must be.
quote:For someone whose never even got a bloody nose in a fight,
And proud of it, unlike you macho Americans, who see nothing wrong about a supposed "innocent" boy being violent enough to break other people's noses.
If someone's violent enough to break any part of me, including a nose, I wouldn't wait until they break my skull as well.
If you don't like it, here's a solution: Don't be violent, and teach your children not to be violent either.
quote:What you are saying implies that even if Zimmerman tackled Martin, Martin should be consider the assailant unless the tackle caused an evident injury?
No, I'm saying that Zimmerman didn't tackle Martin first. I'm saying we have enough evidence to recognize beyond reasonable doubt who the assailant must have been, and it was Martin.
Given the preceding scenarios and the following consequences, Zimmerman initiating a hand-to-hand fight just doesn't make sense as a narrative. He was armed. When you're an shorter, fatter man, and you're armed, and you're afraid that someone may be a criminal, you don't go for the fistfight, when someone may stab you in a heartbeat.
What makes sense as a narrative, was the young man being pissed off and offended that someone had considered him as a suspect (perhaps because of racial profiling), and being part of the American macho culture in which offense must be repaid with violence, (or you're not a real man at all), he went for the violence, overpowering Zimmerman easily -- at which point a scared Zimmerman cried for help and shot Martin.
If anyone truly thinks that it was Martin who was crying out for help, then you're wrong. That doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense that the guy without the injuries was crying out for help, and the guy with the injuries wasn't. It does make sense for Zimmerman to panic because he was being pummeled by a person he believed to be criminal, shout for help, then shoot Martin.
quote:How hard would it be for you to pin someone who was 4 weight classes heavier than you?
There's a difference between an athlete and a fat man, and it's all about how much of that weight is muscle.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
A scenario that makes just as much sense is for Zimmerman to have grabbed Martin, Martin punching him in the nose to get away and it escalating from there until Zimmerman pulled his gun and killed Martin.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
You forget one thing Aris. Florida is a "Stand Your Ground" state. This means that, "If a person feels threatened they are allowed to defend themselves." In other words, if Zimmerman was threatening in his posture, Martin was within his legal rights to defend himself even if Zimmerman doesn't attack first.
If Martin had a gun, we would have legally been allowed to shoot Zimmerman. Certainly he'd be legally allowed to throw a punch.
That's the problem with Stand Your Ground. Not that it legalizes hunting the poor. If the threshold for violence is the assumed threat of violence, then we get a shoot-out mentality. I need to pull my gun because first because he feels threatened by my so he's going to pull his gun first....
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
Is there anyone participating who ever wrestled competitively? How hard would it be for you to pin someone who was 4 weight classes heavier than you? What do you think the chances are that a good wrestler would be able to pin any wrestler 4 weight classes heavier? That's what Martin is alleged to have done. It's claimed he had Zimmerman, a man who outweighed him by 42 pounds, pinned to the ground and unable to escape.
Weight classes assume equivalent levels of muscle and skill.
Speaking as a fat guy who occasionally spars for fun, I have absolutely been overpowered and pinned by people more than 50 pounds lighter than me. It wasn't even much of a contest.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: You forget one thing Aris. Florida is a "Stand Your Ground" state. This means that, "If a person feels threatened they are allowed to defend themselves." In other words, if Zimmerman was threatening in his posture, Martin was within his legal rights to defend himself even if Zimmerman doesn't attack first.
You put quotes around that, which makes it sound like it's the actual language of the law.
It's not. You're grossly misreading it. That's okay, it's not your fault, since the media has also been misreading it grossly.
The circumstances under which Stand Your Ground allows for deadly force to be used is this:
quote:He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony;
It goes on, but the rest of it is related to the Castle doctrine, which only applies if you are in your home, so it's irrelevant in this case.
So: "feeling threatened" does not appear anywhere in the language of the law. And now you know. Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
And knowledge is half the battle!
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
The other half is violence.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:You seem to overlook the fact that Martin had a rather more serious injury.
Don't play dumb, kmbboots. If before the shooting, only Zimmerman suffered injuries, then we already know who was the assailant, and who wans't -- which is my exact point, that we know who the assailant was.
No, we do *not* know who the assailant was. We know who was injured, and we can judge probably mechanisms of injury. That is the extent of our knowledge. You are overreaching, and assuming fact that are not in evidence. If your view is predicated upon these assumptions, your view is incomplete.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:If before the shooting, only Zimmerman suffered injuries, then we already know who was the assailant, and who wans't
*sigh*
no. no you do not. this is getting stupid. I'm sorry, but this has gotten incredibly, incredibly stupid.
I assure you, I have been directly and criminally assailed by individuals who have ended up with 100% of the injuries, merely through me reactively defending myself. I'm amazed to hear that, according to aris kataris Legal Logic™, said individuals then could have shot me dead, and the presence of said injuries on them and not me (prior to the gunshot wound in the chest, of course) will have conclusively proven that the act could not possibly have been anything other than self-defense on their part.
Jesus
H
Christ.
please back up and severely reanalyze your position. It is so invalid it is boggling me.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:No, I'm saying that Zimmerman didn't tackle Martin first. I'm saying we have enough evidence to recognize beyond reasonable doubt who the assailant must have been, and it was Martin.
How do you know this? What evidence do you have that Zimmerman did not chase Martin and tackle him? What facts are there that show beyond any reasonable doubt that Martin was the assailant? You can't just assert that is obvious. What facts make it obvious?
The facts I know are that Zimmerman was following Martin in his car and that he got out of his car and confronted Martin. A short time after Zimmerman got out of his car he and Martin were observed fighting. Shortly after that, Zimmerman shot Martin in the chest. Following the shooting, it was found that Zimmerman had a broken nose and a scrape on the back of his head. Those are the only facts I've seen about the time line of events. None of those facts tells us how the fight started. If you know of established facts about the course of events that lead to Martin's death, please provide a link.
I don't know what culture you come from, you say you aren't American. In America, following a stranger in your car and then getting out of the car to confront them are widely understood to be threatening acts. A reasonable person in Martin's situation would have feared an imminent attack from Zimmerman. By definition, those circumstances make Zimmerman an assailant.
Of the events we all know happened, this is the only one which might reasonably be considered assault. It's possible that many things intervened between when Zimmerman assaulted Martin and the time Martin was shot. It's possible that Zimmerman's assault did not start the fight.
It's entirely possible that after assaulting Martin, Zimmerman apologized for intruding, assured Martin he meant no harm and headed back to his car. It's also possible that after getting out of the car, Zimmerman chased Martin waving his gun or tackled him as he was trying to run away. It's even possible that the two men started a friendly conversation about the NCAA playoffs and Martin blew up when Zimmerman dissed his favorite team. But anything you think you know about what happened between when Zimmerman confronted Martin and the time when the two of them were seen fighting on the lawn is pure speculation. None of the facts I've seen say anything about what happened in that time period. It's pure speculation.
On the other hand, we know Zimmerman committed assault by the strict legal definition. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the most reasonable assumption is that Zimmerman's assault is what started the fight. It doesn't actually matter who threw the first punch. A reasonable person would have apprehended Zimmerman's acts as a serious threat of an imminent violent attack. Under those circumstances, Martin had a legal right to hit Zimmerman in self defense.
Whether or not he had a moral right to hit Zimmerman at that point is certainly debatable. Personally, I think it would have been preferable both morally and tactically if Martin had run for help. But I don't know enough about the situation to really judge whether that was a reasonable possibility. I don't think people should be expected to always take the morally preferable option when they are scared by a threatening stranger. The truth is, I don't know whether or not Martin tried to run for help. I don't know whether he was scared or just angry over the insult. I don't know how the fight started and neither do you. I think we need to know more facts before we can judge.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Yes. I'm pretty confident that effectively nobody would have cared if it was a white man had shot a white boy, and nobody would have cared if a black man had shot a black boy.
Then your understanding of what its like in America is pretty seriously flawed. It makes headline news whenever a middle class white kid gets killed by an adult. If a white neighborhood kid had been killed by the a white man on neighborhood watch, there would have been serious outrage if the killer wasn't arrested. If a middle class white kid had been shot by a police officer under similar circumstances, it would have been huge deal. It certainly would not have become the a big national political issue and media circus if race had not been involved, but it would not have gone unnoticed.
I can't really even imagine the same situation arising if the victim had been a middle class white teenage girl. I have absolutely no doubt that Zimmerman would have been arrested and charged immediately with murder if the victim had been a white teenage girl. If the victim had been a white teenage girl, it would never occur to anyone that Zimmerman's nose was broken in anything but self defense. People would be arguing about the whether Zimmerman should get the death penalty not whether it was self defense. It's hard for me to even speculate about how politicians and the media would have reacted if the only difference in the facts was that the victim was a white girl instead of a black boy because I can't really imagine that it would ever have happened the way it did.
[ May 24, 2012, 06:04 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Race might have added fuel to the fire, but no matter how much of a tan the shooter and dead kid have or lack, this case gets national attention, and rightfully so.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
As Rabbit noted earlier, the shooting might not have gotten national - international, apparently - attention if the police had behaved differently.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:If someone's violent enough to break any part of me, including a nose, I wouldn't wait until they break my skull as well.
If you don't like it, here's a solution: Don't be violent, and teach your children not to be violent either.
What gives you the right to presume I'm violent and teach my kids to be violent.
I've been in only one fight in my life and was only 13 at the time. I didn't start that fight and I've walked a way from many fights since that time. I'm a committed pacifist. I'd prefer to be killed than to kill in self defense. I don't think I could live with myself after killing another human being. My very worst nightmares involve being in a situation where I have to injure or kill someone to protect myself or someone else. But in all honesty, I really don't know how I would react if my life was seriously threatened by an assailant. I hope I would have the courage and self control to remain non-violent but I can't guarantee that I would. I certainly wouldn't expect anyone else to. That's why I don't just hope I never have to make that choice, I actively avoid situations where I might have to choose between killing and being killed.
I think the right to defend ones self is accompanied by a moral obligation to avoid situations that would make self defense necessary when ever practicable. I think reasonable people can disagree about when its really practicable to avoid a dangerous situation, but Zimmerman didn't just fail to avoid a potential dangerous situation -- he created the situation. He crossed a clear line that I don't think any reasonable person could justify morally.
A person who straps on a gun and goes out pursuing suspicious looking young men is doing the exact opposite of what I is morally required to claim the right of self defense. He's choosing not only to put himself needlessly in a potentially dangerous situation, he's taking actions that are likely to provoke a violent attack and preparing to kill if it does. That person does not deserve the same right of self defense as a person who is minding their own business walking in their own neighborhood on a rainy night.
An unarmed person who is killed while walking home from the store deserves to be presumed innocent of wrong doing until its proven otherwise. An armed person who accosts strangers does not deserve the same presumption of innocence. We owe it to Martin to presume he was acting in self defense until it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he was not. We don't owe Zimmerman that same trust.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
My favorite part of this latest turn in the conversation is probably the way you so authoritatively declare that it was Zimmerman's voice on the phone.
Nationally renowned voice evidence experts apparently are not to be trusted! To hell with what forensics tells us (when convenient), we need to rely on witness testimony...even when it changes. And if it does change, well then for some reason we should consider their first testimony reliable and not the rest, rather than taking all of it a bit less seriously!
It's laughable, man. You're specifically, openly not responding to direct pertinent challenges to your claims, while continually asserting your own argument's superiority. You don't get to do that-or at least do that without being laughed off.
(Oh, and your views on racial politics in America are...odd to say the least. Yeah, people care *so much* about race in America. Pft.)
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:I have been directly and criminally assailed by individuals who have ended up with 100% of the injuries, merely through me reactively defending myself.
Did they call 911 in advance, before they attacked you? Were they armed with guns?
quote:My favorite part of this latest turn in the conversation is probably the way you so authoritatively declare that it was Zimmerman's voice on the phone.
If my life depended on it, that's the option I'd bet on without a question.
And I'd bet a very great deal of money on it with you right now, if I knew of a way where I could trust you to uphold your side of the bet, and where we could find a mutually acceptable third party to determine the answer.
But you don't have to believe, and I no longer care if you do -- you're the sort of person who argues that people don't care that much about race in America, and that this whole issue has nothing much to do about race (half a dozen references to race in the first few paragraphs of this thread illustrate that, I guess).
You have lost all credibility.
quote:Nationally renowned voice evidence experts apparently are not to be trusted!
"Nationally renowned"? Says who, their own webpages? And, yeah, when they claim 55% certainty in one sentence, and >90% certainty in the next; they not only aren't experts, they can't even do arithmetic.
So, yeah, I'll trust the witnesses. I'll trust the people who heard the recordings and recognized or failed to recognize people's voices. Your "experts" are bozos.
quote:And if it does change, well then for some reason we should consider their first testimony reliable
You know the reason. Second testimonies are more removed from the facts, more likely to be influenced by the words of others, more likely to be the result of exerted pressure. First testimonies are more likely to be genuine.
I'm not interested in talking to people who play dumb.
[ May 25, 2012, 05:35 AM: Message edited by: Aris Katsaris ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I find this discussion to be quite interesting from a meta-perspective. Regardless of who is right and who is wrong, I think the thread provides ample evidence for the Denning-Kruger effect.
When a person comes to a fallacious conclusion because of poor reasoning ability, it is very difficult for them to recognize sound reasons for revising their conclusion.
As Denning and Kruger put it,
quote:Those with limited knowledge in a domain suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach mistaken conclusions and make regrettable errors, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.
It's should be self-evident that I think my own reasoning ability is not most likely at fault. After all if I thought my conclusion were very likely wrong, I'd change my conclusions. Nonetheless, like Denning and Kruger, I must admit that if I believe and understand their hypothesis, I can't ever really vanquish the concern that I am simply not competent enough to recognize my own incompetence.
[ May 25, 2012, 11:30 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Oh, well no wonder, Aris. They're not actually experts at all, contrary to what major news organizations and the criminal justice system says about them.
Also, they're stupid-their arithmetic doesn't appear to make sense to you, 100% layman, therefore the obvious conclusion is not only that they're not experts, but that they're actually *stupid*. Not that perhaps you misread a complicated, rarely used set of mathematic principles or something. No. They're idiots.
Can we talk a bit more about credibility, please?
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
I thought we established that the article probably mis-quoted the voice expert about which number was a probability and which was something like a "percent match."
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: I thought we established that the article probably mis-quoted the voice expert about which number was a probability and which was something like a "percent match."
That depends very much on what you mean by "we". If "we" includes just you and me, then yes "we" established that the author almost certainly misreported the experts conclusions.
If you intended "we" to include Aris, then evidently "we" did not all agree to this conclusion.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I remember the conversation being had, and also really strong resistance to the idea that these two experts ought to be taken seriously in spite of an apparent basic math error. I can't recall if anyone who didn't already regard them as credible changed their minds after having the math explained to them.
Which is actually this latest round of chatting with Aris on a small scale, talking about 'all the evidence' points one way. Changeable witness reports? The ones which condemn Martin are the credible ones. Signs on Zimmerman's body which point to a very wide range of levels of violence? It was a brutally savage, powerful beating. Voice evidence experts claim Zimmerman wasn't calling for help on the tape? Well, they're idiots.
Good talk, bro!
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:I thought we established that the article probably mis-quoted the voice expert about which number was a probability and which was something like a "percent match."
So, this is apparently kind of pointless, but, as I tried to make clear before, what the voice experts were quoted as saying in the article was perfectly accurate. I get that this may not intuitively make sense, but I think I did lay out all the information you need to understand this.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
I thought what was established was that the direct quote was accurate, but the journalist's paraphrase at another point in the article was inaccurate. At some point a number that could sum to higher than 1 was referred to as a "probability," which obviously it can't be.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
MrSquicky very clearly explained this matter already. Aris ignored it, and continues to argue from incredulity.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
Right, but there was one inaccurate line in the original article (which I think was probably the reporter's mistake). When the article says
quote:Using sophisticated voice match software, Tom Owen, forensic consultant for Owen Forensic Services LLC and chair emeritus for the American Board of Recorded Evidence, told the Sentinel that there was only a 48% chance that it was Zimmerman crying for help on the tape.
it must actually mean something like "there was only a 48% match between Zimmerman's voice and the one on the tape," since it sounds like the chance that the voice was Zimmerman's is actually much lower than 48%.
Weirdly, when we were discussing this before, Aris said,
quote:"1 What will it take to persuade you the experts we've heard from so far actually are clear it's very unlikely it's Zimmerman's voice?"
I'm now already convinced that they've stated they're clear on this. And that the article misquoted them.
But now it seems like he's no longer convinced of this?
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I don't think that anyone can say that Martin had a right to feel threatened at first. Being followed from a distance isn't particularly threatening, and we still have no evidence or credible witnesses that I am aware of that say Zimmerman did anything threatening.
He called 911, stated he had followed.....we all take that as proof he did. Yet he says, in the same call, that he stopped, and would return to his car.....and no one here seems to give that any credence at all. We DO know that Zimmerman didn't immediately approach and threaten him, because if he had it would be on the call.
Once again, I don't see that as physically threatening.
I want to know how it went from "he ran away" to a physical confrontation. If Zimmerman did stop following him, then I'd say he has a real case, because that means Martin returned and confronted him.
And for the record, no one claims to have seen Zimmerman brandish a gun, or threaten Martin with the fact he had one, so odds are Martin had no idea until it was pulled. At least as far as we can tell right now.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote:"1 What will it take to persuade you the experts we've heard from so far actually are clear it's very unlikely it's Zimmerman's voice?"
I'm now already convinced that they've stated they're clear on this. And that the article misquoted them.
But now it seems like he's no longer convinced of this?
Maybe he forgot? I mean, if you really want to believe something, it's surprisingly easy to forget inconvenient details.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Let's say for the sake of argument that Zimmerman did get out of his car, look for Martin, return to his car without seeing him and then Martin attacked Zimmerman as he was getting back to his car. Martin, attacking from surprise, gets the drop on Zimmerman, and breaks his nose, and creates the injury on the back of his head by hitting it on the ground. Zimmerman calls for help, and then shoots Martin.
To be clear, I'm -not- saying that's what happened, I'm saying, -what if- that's what happened?
Should Zimmerman be convicted -if- that is the case?
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
Of course not. I'd still say he made a disastrous mistake when he decided to follow Martin, but obviously in that case it would actually be self-defense.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Rabbit is saying that following someone is sufficient provocation to initiate physical violence...so, does that mean you disagree Destineer?
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
In some situations it might be, not sure, but returning to the car would probably amount to a "retreat," which would take away any presumed threat. There might be some relevant legal mumbo-jumbo I don't know, though.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Rabbit is saying that following someone is sufficient provocation to initiate physical violence...so, does that mean you disagree Destineer?
You do not get to prescribe The Rabbit's view to a specifically enumerated situation of your choosing for the sake of impeaching it.
Particularly given that the situation you describe goes rather *beyond* having simply followed someone. In the situation you describe, as a hypothetical, the person who has followed the other person has retreated to safety. Thus, I think you should think twice before stating that as The Rabbit's opinion of things.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:But now it seems like he's no longer convinced of this?
Back when I was saying I was convinced the article had misquoted the experts, or else the experts were idiots or liars -- Rakeesh and MrSquicky and all the other bozos here just kept insulting me for claiming to know better math than "experts".
Now, what, in the intervening pages you've all miraculously come to agree to my own point of view, that the stated probabilities of the article don't actually match and that there must a mistake or a lie somewhere?
I was actually using your own argument against you. Too bad people here changed said argument in the meantime.
Thank you very much for *eventually* coming around to my point of view, after first thoroughly insulting me on the issue.
Since all *subsequent* evidence however have shown Zimmerman to have been telling the truth on all other issues that had so far been under dispute, and since I've then found out that Zimmerman's acquaintances recognized the voice, but Martin's father didn't recognize his son's voice on the the tape; then the probability weighs heavily on this being Zimmerman's voice, since it'd be the first lie he'd have told about the whole story otherwise -- and it then becomes correspondingly more likely that the so-called "experts" are just making shit up if they say that it's not his voice. And for all I know it's not certain that they've not pulled different numbers out of their asses at different points in time.
It seems other forensic experts aren't so sure as those self-called experts that were hired by a newspaper.
But really, if it makes *sense* to you, that the person shouting for help was the one who had the *upper hand* and who was inflicting all the violent injuries - then fine, believe what you want, you're too mind-killed for words to describe.
Does it really seem a plausible visual to you? Person A being on top of Person B, punching B, A receiving no injury in return, *and* yet it's A who's shouting for help?
That makes sense to you, only if you've already determined that it *must* make sense to you. The rest of us must however find said scenario highly implausible.
When it's proven beyond even the power of your doublethink to deny that it was Zimmerman who was shouting, I expect you will *all* just refuse that this fact is remotely significant.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Good point Orincoro. Of course I shouldn't speak to Rabbit's views beyond what she has clearly stated.
I do agree with her that if someone was in hot pursuit of me I would likely take that as a threat. Not sure I would initiate combat on that alone, but I can see how a reasonable person could.
And of course as both you and Destineer point out, in this scenario (that is exactly what Zimmerman is claiming right?) the armed man stopped pursuit and returned to his vehicle.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Aris,
quote:Back when I was saying I was convinced the article had misquoted the experts, or else the experts were idiots or liars -- Rakeesh and MrSquicky and all the other bozos here just kept insulting me for claiming to know better math than "experts".
No, this isn't actually what happened. What happened is that you leaned heavily in the direction, "This article is stupid, therefore these 'experts' can be disregarded," and when it was pointed out to you that, in fact, only a small part of the article was misleading...you didn't take that well. You're still not.
quote:Since all *subsequent* evidence however have shown Zimmerman to have been telling the truth on all other issues that had so far been under dispute, and since I've then found out that Zimmerman's acquaintances recognized the voice, but Martin's father didn't recognize his son's voice on the the tape; then the probability weighs heavily on this being Zimmerman's voice, since it'd be the first lie he'd have told about the whole story otherwise -- and it then becomes correspondingly more likely that the so-called "experts" are just making shit up if they say that it's not his voice. And for all I know it's not certain that they've not pulled different numbers out of their asses at different points in time.
First of all, no it doesn't! Much of the subsequent (though before, huh, timing wasn't something that you were talking about, speaking of changeable arguments) doesn't contradict Zimmerman's story, which isn't the same thing as substantiating it. You've been given multiple examples of this-when you began talking about injuries, people pointed out to you just how little force might've been necessary to cause those injuries. When you talked about the conditions of bodies, Martin's extremely minimal physical injuries, aside from the fatal gunshot, was glossed over on your end, despite the supposedly savage, violent beating he administered. When you talked about witness reports, reference was made to the fact that many witness stories have changed-and that eyewitness accounts even under the best circumstances can be unreliable sometimes, much less at night.
So no, the evidence doesn't say what you claim it does. This isn't a matter of opinion, either: it's inconclusive. Not just from an academic perspective, either. But perhaps now, since you seem to conveniently start believing voice expert witness reports, let's see if we can get what you're actually saying pinned down here. I doubt it, but I'm just a bozo, so I could be wrong.
Are you claiming that the experts hired by the Sentinel aren't, in fact, respected voice expert analsysts and that their credentials are self-created? That they have simply made it up?
I'll bet you won't answer that question. I'll bet you'll keep on sticking to the trivia that is whether or not the newspaper reported accurately, when that was only ever a secondary issue. I'll bet you'll continue your convenient, self-serving pattern of believing witnesses when they say something you agree with, but disbelieve them if their story changes; of disbelieving a given voice expert, but then believing another when he casts doubt; of insisting we look at physical injuries on Zimmerman, but glossing aside the extremely minor injuries on Martin.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Yet he says, in the same call, that he stopped, and would return to his car.....and no one here seems to give that any credence at all. We DO know that Zimmerman didn't immediately approach and threaten him, because if he had it would be on the call.
This is incorrect. You can see the full transcript of Zimmerman's 911 call here
He does not at any point in the recorded call say that he stopped following Martin and returned to his car. Towards the end of the call, the dispatcher suggests he meet the police by the mailboxes, Zimmerman says "Actually, have them call me and I'll tell them where I am at". Which implies he did not intend to wait in one spot until the police arrived. Eighteen seconds after making that request, Zimmerman hangs up the phone. One minute and 57 seconds after he hangs up the phone, he shoots Martin. Twenty seconds after that, the police arrive.
I think we can say with near absolute certainty that if Zimmerman had just waited in his truck with the doors locked for the 2 minutes and 20 seconds it took the police to arrived, no fight would have occurred and Martin would still be alive.
[ May 25, 2012, 05:17 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Let's say for the sake of argument that Zimmerman did get out of his car, look for Martin, return to his car without seeing him and then Martin attacked Zimmerman as he was getting back to his car. Martin, attacking from surprise, gets the drop on Zimmerman, and breaks his nose, and creates the injury on the back of his head by hitting it on the ground. Zimmerman calls for help, and then shoots Martin.
I agree that if Zimmerman retreated as you described, it would be self defense but based on the timeline of events and the map, I don't think that is a very likely scenario. [/quote]
I just wanted to add a qualification to my previous answer. If Zimmerman retreated and then Martin attacked from behind, it would likely have been self defense. If Martin attacked as Zimmerman retreated but then tried to stop the fight and escape and was in fact screaming for help, then it would not have been self defense.
I think the converse is also true, if Zimmerman started the fight by assaulting Martin but then tried to stop the fight and was the one screaming for help, then I think it was very likely self defense. I say very likely only because Zimmerman was carrying a gun. If during the course of the fight, Martin became aware that Zimmerman was carrying a gun, I think he would have been justified in using deadly force to prevent Zimmerman from using the gun even if Zimmerman was crying for help and trying to get away.
[ May 25, 2012, 07:27 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:And of course as both you and Destineer point out, in this scenario (that is exactly what Zimmerman is claiming right?) the armed man stopped pursuit and returned to his vehicle.
The difficulty I have with this argument is that argument is that Zimmerman has an obvious motive to lie about what happened so it I don't think it should be considered "evidence" of anything. And his testimony appears to be the only evidence for the claim.
I understand that the stand your ground law places the burden on the state to prove Zimmerman isn't telling the truth but I think that's absolutely crazy. It makes perfect sense to say we should presume a man innocent of killing someone until he is proven guilty. It does not make any sense to me to say we should presume that killing a person was justified until it can be proven unjustified. That's just horribly wrong.
Killing a person is almost never morally justifiable. The default assumption has to be that killing a person is unjustified unless there is compelling evidence to the contrary.
[ May 25, 2012, 07:32 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:I have been directly and criminally assailed by individuals who have ended up with 100% of the injuries, merely through me reactively defending myself.
Did they call 911 in advance, before they attacked you? Were they armed with guns?
Do either of these create a situation wherein when they shoot and kill me, they are guaranteed not to be at fault as long as they have injuries when they get around to showing up at the doctor?
The answer is, of course, no. But it will be interesting at least to see how you try to spin this. Will you claim I'm just the latest to be "playing dumb" when I pick out massive flaws in your reasoning?
Posted by Sphinx (Member # 10219) on :
quote:I just wanted to add a qualification to my previous answer. If Zimmerman retreated and then Martin attacked from behind, it would likely have been self defense. If Martin attacked as Zimmerman retreated but then tried to stop the fight and escape and was in fact screaming for help, then it would not have been self defense.
Just a note: I haven't read the Florida statutes to be absolute sure, but it's likely that neither one of the scenarios would allow Zimmerman to claim self-defense at trial. One of the basic elements of the legal defense of self-defense in pretty much every state is that the action you take in defense of your life/health must be proportional to the harm you're threatened with. A non-deadly threat (like Martin attacking Zimmerman with his fists alone) could only be met with a non-deadly defense. As soon as Zimmerman pulls his gun, he is responding to non-deadly force with deadly force and is making a disproportionate response. In order to claim self-defense at trial, Zimmerman would have to show that Martin not just attacked him but attacked him with deadly force.
The Stand Your Ground laws, like the one in Florida, maintain the requirement that the force threatened would cause 'imminent death or great bodily harm' before it will allow deadly force to be used in response. Whether a court/jury in Florida would think being physically assaulted met those requirements is, honestly, completely up in the air.
If Florida allows, Zimmerman might claim 'imperfect self-defense,' which is a mitigation defense--if he were charged with 2nd degree murder, imperfect self-defense would reduce the charge to involuntary manslaughter. But even in the above scenarios, if the facts were proven beyond a reasonable doubt, he'd still be found guilty of at least involuntary manslaughter.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: The difficulty I have with this argument is that argument is that Zimmerman has an obvious motive to lie about what happened so it I don't think it should be considered "evidence" of anything. And his testimony appears to be the only evidence for the claim.
There was not argument of evidence Rabbit, I was asking a hypothetical question.
Sphinx: Zimmerman is claiming that Martin was bashing his head against the ground, I'm not sure (if evidence shows his claim to be true) that this type of attack would be considered "Martin attacking Zimmerman with his fists alone". I think once you try and bash someone's head in (again, assuming that is the case) that deadly force might indeed be warranted.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Let's say for the sake of argument that Zimmerman did get out of his car, look for Martin, return to his car without seeing him and then Martin attacked Zimmerman as he was getting back to his car. Martin, attacking from surprise, gets the drop on Zimmerman, and breaks his nose, and creates the injury on the back of his head by hitting it on the ground. Zimmerman calls for help, and then shoots Martin.
To be clear, I'm -not- saying that's what happened, I'm saying, -what if- that's what happened?
Should Zimmerman be convicted -if- that is the case?
Not a chance. But I don't think that even if this happened....which we have no proof other than circumstantial to date....that he is bright, or that he acted responsibly. i just don't agree that he was automatically wrong to wear a gun to leave the house.
In that case, even if he was stupid being there he was justified in defending himself. He had every bit as much right as Martin to be in the neighborhood, and out and about.
First thing I would have said is "I called the cops, they are on their way now." then got in my car and drove away, possibly keeping him in sight....if I was sure he was suspicious. I would have also stayed on the phone the whole time, so I'd be covered if he attacked me and I had to defend myself.
I've actually done that a few times.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Sphinx....you don't know about the paw if that is your belief. I've seen 2 people die from "only a fist fight". Personally.
If you attempt to flee and are attacked, you have the right to defend yourself up to and including deadly force. You don't have to think "Gee, I wonder if he is only trying to half beat me to death" while being attacked.
If (big if!) Martin attacked Zimmerman, Zimmerman pretty much gets off, plain and simple. There are a few situations...like if he attacked, then tried running away and got shot, which is why the distance between him and the gun was so important....where Zimmerman may be found guilty, but they are far less common, and a bear to prove.
Rabbit....are you saying that we should treat everyone as innocent until proven guilty EXCEPT for people accused of murder? I am not trying to shark you, or trap you.....but that is what it seemed you were implying above, so I thought I'd let you claify. Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Do either of these create a situation wherein when they shoot and kill me, they are guaranteed not to be at fault as long as they have injuries when they get around to showing up at the doctor?
No event in the real universe is "guaranteed" 100%, nor can be assigned a 0% probability either. But at some point people of reasonable minds realize what is a reasonable and credible scenario and what is an unreasonable and non-credible one. That's why the courts use the phrase "beyond all reasonable doubt".
quote:Will you claim I'm just the latest to be "playing dumb" when I pick out massive flaws in your reasoning?
I think you're most definitely playing dumb when you demand absolute certainty (something that never exists in our universe for *any* event) for Zimmerman to be innocent of wrongdoing, while the slightest remotest chance otherwise is given credibility by you. That's called
The so-called "experts" people here babble about claimed >90% chance that it wasn't Zimmerman's voice. Even given that they trust the findings of said experts this supposedly meant "practically no chance it was Zimmerman" (though ofcourse 90% just means "one chance in ten for the opposite scenario") -- you on the other hand produce outrageous scenario that are probably not encountered one chance in ten thousand -- and yet you still mumble "it's still not guaranteed it didn't happen that way".
Tell me, Samprimary, do you think that the article you linked to in the first post of this thread is *still* a fair summary of the situation?
Described in the text you linked as "An A/B student", what is somehow not mentioned is that Martin was on his third suspension from school; one for vandalism, one for being found with a flathead screwdriver and a dozen items of women's jewelry, one for a baggie with marijuana residue.
Or that his twitter account, had Martin's cousin send him a twit saying "yu ain't tell me yu swung on a bus driver."
[ May 26, 2012, 05:05 AM: Message edited by: Aris Katsaris ]
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
And you continue to demonize the person who is unable to defend himself, of course. How wonderful for you; certainly a teenager who smokes a little weed and possibly even stole some jewelry, allegedly, deserves to be followed, accosted, and subsequently shot. And of course, zimmerman *knew* these details about him when he followed him... Or not.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Rabbit....are you saying that we should treat everyone as innocent until proven guilty EXCEPT for people accused of murder? I am not trying to shark you, or trap you.....but that is what it seemed you were implying above, so I thought I'd let you claify.
I think it's been established beyond any reasonable doubt that Zimmerman committed homicide. The question remaining is not whether or not he is guilty of killing Martin, it's whether he was justified in killing Martin. Are you saying that we should assume that everyone who is proven to be guilty of killing someone was justified?
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
That's beside the point. Homicide is not illegal, the only question is whether or not he is guilty of murder, which is something a jury will decide. You saying "guilty of killing someone," casts this as a question of greater wrongs, when the killing itself has not been established as a matter for guilt.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:And you continue to demonize the person who is unable to defend himself, of course.
Treyvon Martin has a whole army of people willing to defend him. Treyvon Martin has even the President of the United States willing to defend him. He may be dead, but he's not lacking thousands of willing defendants. He's getting a better defense than he could ever have provided for himself. That's why we get his picture as a 12-year old in the news, instead of a more recent one.
quote:How wonderful for you; certainly a teenager who smokes a little weed and possibly even stole some jewelry, allegedly, deserves to be followed, accosted, and subsequently shot.
I'm in favor of legalizing marijuana, and I'm against the death penalty. But both of this aren't the *point*. What people "deserve" isn't the point. What people "deserve" isn't even part of the calculation.
The point is how much said crimes increase the probability that he was the type to initiate violence.
And oh, they increase it so very severely, and so very inconveniently for all his defenders.
quote:And of course, zimmerman *knew* these details about him when he followed him... Or not.
Of course Zimmerman didn't know those details, that's EXACTLY WHY it would be a non-credible coincidence for Zimmerman to be the assailant in this case.
If Zimmerman had known all those details, then one might hypothesize that he had intentionally stalked someone he had already tagged as a "troublemaker", for the purpose of shooting him.
But Zimmerman didn't know all this. It's just that he chanced on a *real* troublemaker, a real vicious person and assailant; and that's why we heard of this case in the first place. Because if Treyvon Martin wasn't the sort of troublemaker who'd violently attack another person, he'd almost certainly never have been shot in the first place.
If Zimmerman had been equally likely to shoot an innocent person, then by the laws of probability, he *would* almost certainly have shot an innocent person.
But he chanced on a thug. And that's why he got assaulted, and was forced to shoot him, and that's why we hear of this case in the first place.
That's the narrative that makes sense. Not that he just decided to shoot a random child or even a random black child, as Samprimary's initial post and the title of this thread so charmingly imply.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
quote:But he chanced on a thug.
Wow, I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt about your passionate defense of Zimmerman not being racially motivated.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:The so-called "experts" people here babble about claimed >90% chance that it wasn't Zimmerman's voice. Even given that they trust the findings of said experts this supposedly meant "practically no chance it was Zimmerman" (though ofcourse 90% just means "one chance in ten for the opposite scenario")
...that's not what that 90% means. That's a confidence interval, not a measure of conditional probability.
I think maybe that's the source of the misunderstanding. You're reading conditional probability when what is being talked about is statistical analysis.
I also think people are reading the initial statement in a way that it is not intended. The question it was trying to answer wasn't really "Was that Zimmerman on the tape?" but rather, "What is the probability that the person (Zimmerman) who provided this voice sample could have also have produced the sounds on the 911 call?" If it is put that way, do people realize why the "This will sum to over 100%" idea doesn't really make sense?
Taking the very low result from that analysis, the voice guys concluded that it was not him with a 90+% degree of confidence. That degree of confidence was reached through the use of well understood and established mathematical calculations.
As I've said, everything that was quoted in that article from the voice guy made sense and was consistent. I can see where people might be confused by it, but you need to realize that this confusion springs in large part because you don't understand something about what was said, not because what was said was wrong.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Ok, just to get your latest bit of nonsense perfectly clear (and I note with a total lack of surprise your unwillingness to clarify and stand by your thoughts on the voice experts): someone smoking pot and (possibly, though in this case I wouldn't bet against if) makes it severely more likely they would abruptly decide to attack someone with savage violence?
Are you insane, or simply so committed to your defense of Zimmerman at this point you're taking a shotgun approach? You talk at length about probabilities (even though you already had to be schooled about math in this thread) as though your wild-ass guesses were authoritative somehow, instead of simply your complete opinion.
Nowhere do you talk, unsurprisingly, about Zimmerman's very possible history of violence, what with a restraining order against him, and his altercation with police. Quite aside from the fact that he made a habit of patrolling his neighborhood with a gun, behavior expressly rejected by police and neighborhood watch groups.
These behavior patterns, they apparently don't point to anything except virtuous vigilant watchman. Martin's pot smoking, not even very heavy, and some jewelry, though...yeah. It's 'severely' more likely he was a violent thug.
Laughable and blatantly hypocritical-and that's not a claim I make lightly. I've disagreed with several people in this thread, some strongly, but you're the first to openly insist we look at what little we know of Martin's past and infer violence, but say nothing at all about Zimmerman's past. Hypocrisy.
Oh, and just to illustrate how clearly ignorant you are about probabilities: how do you know he DIDN'T shoot an innocent person? That this wasn't the time right here? Of course you don't, but will insist you do, but even so: 'we can reckon he's not the sort to shoot an innocent person because he likely would've done it before, or this case would be about a little girl on her way to choir practice or something'. Ridiculous. Even if we granted your premise, something being probable not happening doesn't, of itself, serve as evidence it's improbable!
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: That's beside the point. Homicide is not illegal, the only question is whether or not he is guilty of murder, which is something a jury will decide. You saying "guilty of killing someone," casts this as a question of greater wrongs, when the killing itself has not been established as a matter for guilt.
It's not that simple. The only condition under which Homicide is not a felony is if the victim was trying to kill you. To presume that Zimmerman is innocent requires we presume that Martin was guilty of attempted murder. Is the victim of a killing less deserving of the presumption of innocence than his killer? Should we presume that every teenager shot while walking home from the store deserved to be killed unless we can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they did not?
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:The question it was trying to answer wasn't really "Was that Zimmerman on the tape?" but rather, "What is the probability that the person (Zimmerman) who provided this voice sample could have also have produced the sounds on the 911 call?" If it is put that way, do people realize why the "This will sum to over 100%" idea doesn't really make sense?
What does "the probability that X could be the case" mean? In all my studies I have never before encountered that locution.
It sounds like it means "the probability that X is possible." But "X is possible" normally just means "the probability that X is true is greater than zero."
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote:The question it was trying to answer wasn't really "Was that Zimmerman on the tape?" but rather, "What is the probability that the person (Zimmerman) who provided this voice sample could have also have produced the sounds on the 911 call?" If it is put that way, do people realize why the "This will sum to over 100%" idea doesn't really make sense?
What does "the probability that X could be the case" mean? In all my studies I have never before encountered that locution.
It sounds like it means "the probability that X is possible." But "X is possible" normally just means "the probability that X is true is greater than zero."
I'm not sure I can explain that without a couple weeks of statistics lectures but I'll give it a shot. I'll use a voice recording as an example but the principle applies to almost anything that can be measured.
Suppose we were to record you saying "possible" a thousand times. No two of the recordings would be exactly the same for a number of reasons. There is a normal variation in the way people speak. There is going to be some variation in the distance and angle between your mouth and the recording device. There will be be differences in the background noises and there will be random errors made by the recording device.
However, even though no two recordings would be exactly the same, most of them will be quite similar. If the recording is digitized on a computer, you can compare two recordings and calculate a "difference" between any two recordings. If we did that for a thousand different recordings of you saying "possible", the difference would be small most of the time, but occasionally we'd find one where the difference was a lot greater than average. We might find for example, that 50% of the time the difference between recordings was less than 0.5, 90% of the time the difference was less than 1.5 and 99.9% of the time the difference was less than 4. Given that information we could take a recording of an unknown person saying "possible" and compare it a recording of you saying "possible". If the difference between the two recordings was 4.5, we could then say that there is a greater than 99.9% probability that the unknown speaker was not you.
Does that make any sense?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
If that last post made sense, then consider the case where we compare a recording of an unknown speaker saying "possible" to a recording of you saying "possible" and the get a difference of 0.1. We could never say from that alone what the probability was that you were the unknown speaker. We'd need to know how likely it would be for some other person to say "possible" very nearly the way you say it. So rather than saying there is 90% chance that you were the speaker, one might say there is a 90% that you could have been the speaker. I doubt that's the technically correct term but I'm confident that's what MrSquicky was trying to get at using layman's language.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I think I've found a better example for explaining this. Suppose that there is a dark figure in a surveillance photo. An image analysis expert determines that there is a 90% probability that the person in the image is my height and weight. If the person in the image is my height and weight, it could have been me. So it could be sensible to say that there is a 90% probability that the person in the image could have been me.
The expert might also find that there is a 50% probability that the person in the image is your height and weight. So it would be entirely possible that there could be a 50% change that the person in the image could have been you and a 90% chance that the person in the could have been me.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
That is a painful example Rabbit, as our voices fluxuate wildly with our mood and other factors...where as adult's height and weight are much more constant...except at Thanksgiving.
Posted by happymann (Member # 9559) on :
So Jim Henson and Steve Whitmire are caught on tape...
Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: To presume that Zimmerman is innocent requires we presume that Martin was guilty of attempted murder. Is the victim of a killing less deserving of the presumption of innocence than his killer? Should we presume that every teenager shot while walking home from the store deserved to be killed unless we can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they did not?
I'm not sure a satisfactory answer to this question exists.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: someone smoking pot and (possibly, though in this case I wouldn't bet against if) makes it severely more likely they would abruptly decide to attack someone with savage violence?
No, what I'm saying is that someone having three suspensions from school, for (a) carrying a baggie with drugs (b) vandalism (c) suspected robbery, and (d) whose cousin implied in twitter that he swung on a bus driver -- is severely more likely to attack someone with savage violence than a student who doesn't get suspensions, and is *actually* a good student.
If you want me to cover the racial angle as well, I'd say that someone calling themselves "No_Limit_N*gga" in twitter, is also more likely to be confrontational towards white people.
Are you saying that such a person is *less* likely to initiate violence? Or are you saying he's exactly the same amounts of violence as someone who never got suspended from school at all, never did drugs at all, never swung on a bus driver at all?
quote:You talk at length about probabilities (even though you already had to be schooled about math in this thread)
Oh, so you're back to the "I don't know math" approach, when previously you had supposedly conceded my point that the math didn't match up?
Stop schooling me on basic math. Learn conditional probabilities.
quote:Nowhere do you talk, unsurprisingly, about Zimmerman's very possible history of violence, what with a restraining order against him, and his altercation with police. Quite aside from the fact that he made a habit of patrolling his neighborhood with a gun, behavior expressly rejected by police and neighborhood watch groups.
Yes, this behavior makes him quite likely to be the sort of person to follow someone he considered a suspect with a gun, and not pay too much attention to the police's instructions.
Thankfully this part of the story isn't actually in doubt. We are all in agreement that he followed Martin, while carrying a gun.
quote:Martin's pot smoking, not even very heavy, and some jewelry, though...yeah. It's 'severely' more likely he was a violent thug.
Perhaps in your universe theft isn't a severe crime. It's a major crime in my universe, and yes it most certainly correlates strongly with all-around thuggery.
But you need to justify and excuse major theft now as well, don't you?
quote:Oh, and just to illustrate how clearly ignorant you are about probabilities: how do you know he DIDN'T shoot an innocent person?
Perhaps you misunderstand me. A jewelry-thief doesn't count as "innocent" in my books.
I meant *actual* innocent, e.g. not a participant in thefts, drug-dealing, etc.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Wow, I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt about your passionate defense of Zimmerman not being racially motivated
I suggest you care more about conditional probabilities of scenarios depending on evidence, and less about assigning motivations of those that bring said evidence to your attention.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:If the recording is digitized on a computer, you can compare two recordings and calculate a "difference" between any two recordings. If we did that for a thousand different recordings of you saying "possible", the difference would be small most of the time, but occasionally we'd find one where the difference was a lot greater than average. We might find for example, that 50% of the time the difference between recordings was less than 0.5, 90% of the time the difference was less than 1.5 and 99.9% of the time the difference was less than 4. Given that information we could take a recording of an unknown person saying "possible" and compare it a recording of you saying "possible". If the difference between the two recordings was 4.5, we could then say that there is a greater than 99.9% probability that the unknown speaker was not you.
That last step doesn't follow, though. For instance, imagine that I have the highest voice of anyone in the world, and the events where the difference from the average is 4 or greater represent my hitting the highest notes I ever hit. No one else on earth could hit these high notes. Then, when the difference is 4.5, the probability that the voice is mine will be 100%--even though less than 0.1% of my utterances are that high-pitched.
quote:I think I've found a better example for explaining this. Suppose that there is a dark figure in a surveillance photo. An image analysis expert determines that there is a 90% probability that the person in the image is my height and weight. If the person in the image is my height and weight, it could have been me. So it could be sensible to say that there is a 90% probability that the person in the image could have been me.
Now this makes sense to me! But in this case "probability that the person could be you" is just another way of saying "probability that the person has the same height and weight as you." Is that what's going on in the voice case? We're talking about the probability that the voice in the recording shares some relevant characteristics with Zimmerman's voice?
If so, that's a very different thing from "the probability that the voice is Zimmerman's" (which is what the article was talking about). But I can see, from your example, how "the probability that the voice could be Zimmerman's" would be an appropriate way of putting it.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote:The question it was trying to answer wasn't really "Was that Zimmerman on the tape?" but rather, "What is the probability that the person (Zimmerman) who provided this voice sample could have also have produced the sounds on the 911 call?" If it is put that way, do people realize why the "This will sum to over 100%" idea doesn't really make sense?
What does "the probability that X could be the case" mean? In all my studies I have never before encountered that locution.
It sounds like it means "the probability that X is possible." But "X is possible" normally just means "the probability that X is true is greater than zero."
I was just restating what I'd said earlier, or at least trying to. It's a question of what they are testing and what the probability space is.
The point I was making was that in a matching situation like this, you're not actually trying to directly answer "Who did X?" You are testing the probability that person A...you don't seem to be getting what I'm trying to say with could...how about is capable of doing X. Rabbit touched on this above.
The probability space for who actually made the sounds in the recording is very wide. There's a non-zero, but infinitesimally small probability that it's me on that tape. There's only one answer, so each probability is dependent on each other, and thus cannot sum greater than zero. To put it another way, the probability space contains a vast number of collections where a given person did it and everyone else did not.
Whether a specific person could have been the source, as measured by forensic voice analysis, is, however, independent of whether another given person could have been the source. In that sort of analysis the probability space is contains only "person X could have been the source" and "person X could not have been the source".
This is a pretty basic point of how we do statistical analysis. When testing an apparent relationship between aspects of a set of data, we're not really looking it as "Does this relationship exist?", but rather how likely is it that this pattern could be the result of random chance. We then use that likelihood to determine how confident we can be in saying that a relationship exists.
edit: You posted while I writing this. It looks like you got Rabbit's clarification. I'll just add this:
quote:If so, that's a very different thing from "the probability that the voice is Zimmerman's" (which is what the article was talking about)
That depends on what your definition of "is" is. Like I said, I can see how this could be confusing, but in the context they were speaking in, that statement is not incorrect.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
As an illustration of how bankrupt your position is on this matter: in the very same post, Martin progresses from recreational pot user (all that can be inferred from actual physical evidence) to 'drug-dealer', we can infer from some pot smoking and jewelry theft and unconfirmed cousin Twitter accounts a likelihood of violence (while Zimmerman's history only goes just so far as to point to behavior that isn't at all in doubt), and among crimes, stealing some jewelry of unknown value counts as 'severe'.
Yeah, you're full of crap is I believe the technical term appropriate here. I'm not sure why I'm still surprised when with almost each passing post there's another blatant contradiction or double-standard, but there is.
Here, using your standards: Zimmerman is a wife beating man who moonlights as a cop-beater, too. *snort* And I suppose you'll have some absurd excuse why *this* is unfair, but your not just speculations but outright statements about Martin aren't.
Still waiting to see if you'll commit to your claims that the two experts are liars and/or quacks. I'm not going to drop this, either, as long as you're still blathering on. I understand your reluctance, though. Committing to your statements carries a serious risk of being made to look ridiculous later on, if/when those two experts are respected and credible, whereas backing off now would just be awkward. Best to pretend it didn't happen!
Oh, and re: probabilities and math. By all means, keep sticking to your claim that your only issue was with the article, even though you've since suggested they really were idiots. That's clearly not a pair of contradicting statements. In any event, you're not fooling anyone with the possible exception of yourself as to what your *actual* initial position was. And it wasn't just that the math didn't make sense as presented in the article. It's been explained multiple times now by multiple people, but you're right: if it doesn't make sense to you, Total Layman Aris, then it must obviously be junk science.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Here, using your standards: Zimmerman is a wife beating man who moonlights as a cop-beater, too
Yes. So? You somehow think that I've not taken this into account? Thankfully we know all this from the very first post of the thread, you don't need me to remind people *these* bits of information. It's all the misinformation about Treyvon Martin that needs to be corrected.
quote:Still waiting to see if you'll commit to your claims that the two experts are liars and/or quacks.
They're quacks. They may be well-respected quacks for all I know, but they're still quacks, if they claimed high-level probability conclusion, and ended up so wrong.
quote:in the very same post, Martin progresses from recreational pot user (all that can be inferred from actual physical evidence) to 'drug-dealer',
The drug-dealing is inferred from when a friend's comment is "Damn were u at a nigga needa plant". It's not conclusive evidence, but it's still evidence, in the sense that P(D|C)>P(D) where P(D) the probability of drug-dealing, and P(D|C) the probability of drug-dealing conditional on the comment.
But would it make the slightest difference to you if he was absolutely proven a drug-dealer? Would you update the probabilities in your mind regarding the case at all?
Or is this another case where something will suddenly not matter anymore, same way that it has stopped to matter whether Zimmerman was focused on Martin's race, whether Zimmerman had injuries, whether Martin was a good student, whether Martin was a law-abiding kid, whether Martin was a violent person who was likely to seek a violent confrontation -- and all the other tidbits of information that you adamantly refuse to update your probabilities on?
Right now I'm assigning P(Z)= 95% that it was Zimmerman's voice shouting out for help.
Tell me how much probability *you* assign that it was Zimmerman's voice. If you don't put a number on it, you'll just pretend afterwards that you were just arguing against my methodology -- as opposed to my conclusion.
Come on, Rakeesh, assign a percentage of certainty. You have all the "experts" on your side, and I'm just a "Total Layman". That should therefore be easy for you.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: It's just that he chanced on a *real* troublemaker, a real vicious person and assailant;
Who was waking home from 7/11 with what... a candy bar? Surely, he wlas a violent assailant, making trouble. That's why Zimmerman followed him, got into a scuffle with him, and subsequently shot him to death. Because he was a troublemaker.... walking home with a candy bar.
I'm waiting for you to demonstrate how you can reconcile the actual facts of this case with your innate biases: Martin was walking home, in a neighborhood in which he belonged. Zimmerman followed him. The notion that Zimmerman was justified in following him *because* of the subsequent violence which occurred (the details of which we do not know), is just post hoc rationalization. Zimmerman may have been within his rights to follow anyone of whom he was suspicious, but you may not credit him with foresight and intuition in this case; not least because had he been more cautious, and had he sincerely believed Martin to be a dangerous threat, he might have avoided a physical encounter. As it is, the locus of this event begins with his following Martin- it does not begin with Martin having committed a crime, having been a violent or dangerous person, or even having been in a place he should not have been. The locus of this event begins, possibly, with Martin being a young black man, and Zimmerman being suspicious of such people. It's not unheard of.
[ May 27, 2012, 10:56 AM: Message edited by: Orincoro ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Right now I'm assigning P(Z)= 95% that it was Zimmerman's voice shouting out for help....If you don't put a number on it, you'll just pretend afterwards that you were just arguing against my methodology -- as opposed to my conclusion.
But you haven't demonstrated any methodology in this assignment. You've just put a number on something and asserted that you reached that conclusion based on evidence beyond your own bias.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:"That's why Zimmerman followed him, got into a scuffle with him, and subsequently shot him to death. "
Zimmerman followed him because he didn't recognize him in the neighborhood, and thought he was behaving suspiciously (and he might have looked suspicious for a number of reasons, either benign and non-benign). He got into a scuffle with him, because Treyvon Martin attacked him, probably offended that a white guy had tagged him as suspicious. Zimmerman subsequently shot him to death, because he was losing the fight and was afraid for his life.
quote:But you haven't demonstrated any methodology in this assignment.
Nobody here is going to use formal math, and neither am I -- my number is derived from a list of intuitions about the probability of each event, and so obviously the conclusion is just a rough sum of rough approximation. But "intuition" isn't the same as "pulling a number out of one's ass" -- it's the unconscious calculation derived from how one evaluates all evidence.
When a new piece of evidence appears -- and in the logical sense, evidence E towards a conclusion C is any E in which P(C|E)>P(C|~E); one must adjusts one's assigned probability upwards -- and downwards if it goes the other way.
If e.g. I already think that a person Z getting pummelled is four times more likely to shout for help than the person M having the upper hand, say I must assign a 80% probability on the voice being Z's, let's call it P(Z). If I *also* know that person Z has called the police, then my probability P(Z) must rise a bit further, though there can be no *exact* number for that -- but one informally boosts it up to 90%. Then I see that the initial testimonies had Zimmerman being the one that shouted, and it rises to 99%. Then I see some changed their words, and it pulls a bit down, to say 97%. Then the "expert testimony" that supposedly >90% it wasn't Zimmerman's voice pulls it down to 80% (which may not seem like much, but it effectively takes P(M)=3% to P(M)=20%, and it means I gave it enough value to make that evaluation 6 times more likely). But Then I read that Martin was the type who probably "swung on a driver", was probably dealing drugs, had multiple suspensions, and gave all the signals that he was all part of a macho culture applauding violence, and it goes up to 90%. The I see how the 'expert testimony' is disputed by other experts, and the thing goes to 95%.
This is all informal and imprecise; and for the most part unconscious: one doesn't truly make a knowing separate calculation each time a separate piece of evidence appears; it's just the cumulative effect of all pieces of evidence. There is after all no hard math to precisely calculate the conditional probability of each separate evident -- but one logical necessity remains: RELEVANT EVIDENCE MUST ALWAYS ADJUST ONE'S PROBABILITY UPWARDS OR DOWNWARDS.
When someone keeps dismissing all the evidence in question: "Oh, it was just *jewelry*", "Oh, he was just suspended", "oh, it was just some cousin's words that he perhaps swung on a driver", "oh, it was just minor wounds" -- then effectively one isn't using any methodology at all; one has just already written their bottom line, and are dismissing all evidence that are inconvenient towards that conclusion.
If the jewerly was few, or the injuries were minor you can perhaps adjust the probability *less*. You aren't logically allowed to not adjust them at all.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Martin was walking home, in a neighborhood in which he belonged.
In which he *recently* belonged, having come to stay with relatives only during his suspension, and who therefore wasn't recognized by Zimmerman.
quote:Zimmerman may have been within his rights to follow anyone of whom he was suspicious, but you may not credit him with foresight and intuition in this case;
Thankfully I don't desire to credit Zimmerman with either foresight nor intuition.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
And now you're actually lying about what people have said. Shocker.
I didn't say that Martin's past, what we know of it, shouldn't be taken into account. I-and others-have tried to explain why the details we know about his past don't add much at all to the probability that he just snapped and went murderously berserk on a guy without physical provocation.
By your own 'methodology' (ha), we must now say Zimmerman was a likely wife beater and a likely attacker of police. I'd be curious to know if your shoddy thinking extends so far to let that impact how much weight is given to Zimmerman's claims of events.
I suspect it won't, though. Zimmerman's injuries-which may or may not have been caused by the level of violence he claims took place-they 'substantiate' his claims. Witness reports ought to be believed...the ones that exonerate him, anyway, even if they sometimes changed. People claiming to know whose voice it was, even when experts dispute that-they're just quacks and possibly outright liars (it was nice of you to finally take a stand on that. More guts than you've shown in this discussion so far, which isn't saying much). Zimmerman called the police, that needs to be taken into account-even though he called the police for *all sorts of things* from 'suspicious persons' to open garage doors. Martin's cousin's hearsay on Twitter should be considered, and with more weight than by the same standard Zimmerman's history of beating his wife.
The willful ignorance you're demonstrating in this discussion on so many levels, from judging witness testimony to crediting or discrediting witnesses, to your double standard about wild-ass guessing of probabilities, goes further than just disagreement about current events. There are several people in this discussion who believe closer to you than myself and others, but at least they don't get there like you do.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:I didn't say that Martin's past, what we know of it, shouldn't be taken into account.
Then take it into account.
And let me repeat: Tell me how much probability *you* assign that it was Zimmerman's voice.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Because you will have the slightest respect for an opinion as based in ignorance as your own? Given your view of expert opinions on the matter, I guess that only makes sense.
Though, I think it's cute that you think the question is a zinger and not a big fat "Huh?"
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
A very low probability. When witness accounts and forensics don't match up, the answer is-barring something questionable about the experts themselves-almost always the way to go. Human memory is spotty at best-eye and ear witness reports simply aren't as absolutely credible as you've repeatedly suggested. Which you would know, and probably admit, if the forensic evidence supported Zimmerman and witnesses Martin.
And no, there is simply not a good reason yet to dismiss the two experts as quacks. Your own misunderstanding of their math founded in your *persistent* ignorance doesn't cut it. It's been explained in detail at least four times now, with each explanation being blithely sidestepped by you.
Hell, even the other questioning expert doesn't count by the kinds of standards you're using: he's outnumbered two to one.
But anyway, just for fun and as a measure of how deep your dishonesty runs in this matter, what probability would you assign that a wife beating cop fighting wannabe police officer such as Zimmerman (I don't actually claim he is those things, I'm just using your methods here) would pursue someone he deemed suspicious and start an altercation, then lie about it to save himself from a murder rap?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Because you will have the slightest respect for an opinion as based in ignorance as your own?
I don't have enough respect for *your* opinion, or Rakeesh's either, I'll make it clear right now. I'm asking for the probability you assign, so that you don't try to squirrel out of your respective positions afterwards.
quote:Given your view of expert opinions on the matter, I guess that only makes sense.
Yes. "Expert" opinions that claim 99% confidence, tend to be wrong 3 times out of ten. When they claim 90% confidence, it's probably even less.
quote:Hell, even the other questioning expert doesn't count by the kinds of standards you're using: he's outnumbered two to one
Except that the fact the other experts were hired by a newspaper, means we have no clue what selective reporting *they* used. For all we know they may have contacted ten experts, and reported only the two answers that suited them, covered up the ones that didn't.
That's what makes being hired from a newspaper suspicious -- as opposed to being part of an official lab examination, whose results would have to be reported either way.
quote:But anyway, just for fun and as a measure of how deep your dishonesty runs in this matter, what probability would you assign that a wife beating cop fighting wannabe police officer such as Zimmerman (I don't actually claim he is those things, I'm just using your methods here) would pursue someone he deemed suspicious and start an altercation, then lie about it to save himself from a murder rap?
Start a fistfight then lie about it? About 75%
Start a fistfight with a stronger taller man, then lie about it? About 50%
Start a fistfight with a stronger taller man then lie about it, after being the one that called the police in the first place? About 20%.
Start a fistfight with a stronger taller man then lie about it after having called the police, while carrying a gun? Probably about 10%
Start a fistfight with a stronger taller man then lie about it after having called the police, while carrying a gun, but only he suffering injuries, and the other person not? Probably about 5%
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:Because you will have the slightest respect for an opinion as based in ignorance as your own?
I don't have enough respect for *your* opinion, or Rakeesh's either, I'll make it clear right now.
I think it's clear that you don't have enough respect for us. If you did, you would follow our example and learn how to think more rationally.
quote: I'm asking for the probability you assign, so that you don't try to squirrel out of your respective positions afterwards.
Which is a key problem here: I do not assign a probability to something, and then just stick to arguing that point to death. In fact, I don't even see the benefit in expressing my credulity of something in numerical terms- other than you think, clearly, that this makes my position more easily impeachable. Not least because I'm not a voice recognition expert, and hearing compelling evidence would actually *change my opinion.* Of course, hearing uncompelling and deeply flawed rationalizations and brash declarations from you is not likely to do that. I get the sense that this is what you think discussion means. You are wrong.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:In fact, I don't even see the benefit in expressing my credulity of something in numerical terms- other than you think, clearly, that this makes my position more easily impeachable.
It makes your mind more easily updateable, when you don't require yourself to flip "I'm sure he's guilty" to "I'm sure he's innocent", but can assign yourself various different probabilities in between, as evidence accumulates in one direction or the other.
If at the beginning you had assigned yourself, e.g. a 90% probability that Zimmerman murdered Martin in cold blood, then after other evidence in Zimmerman's favour had come out, you'd have known that logically you should now assign a lesser probability.
And eventually you'd have reached a probability low enough that you'd say "Zimmerman is just innocent of murder, I can say that beyond all reasonable doubt."
But by assigning no probability, not even in your own mind; you can keep on saying "It's not compelling enough evidence to make me change my mind" each and every time something more in Zimmerman's favor appears.
So you get stuck in your first position.
quote:and hearing compelling evidence would actually *change my opinion.*
The problem with that, is that by demanding individual "compelling" evidence, you prevent yourself from acknowledging the mountain of non-compelling bits and pieces of evidence that make in their sum a compelling case, though individually they would not.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:In fact, I don't even see the benefit in expressing my credulity of something in numerical terms- other than you think, clearly, that this makes my position more easily impeachable.
It makes your mind more easily updateable, when you don't require yourself to flip "I'm sure he's guilty" to "I'm sure he's innocent", but can assign yourself various different probabilities in between, as evidence accumulates in one direction or the other.
Ah, I see. You have a problem with uncertainty and are attempting to compensate with a false sense of objectivity about your conclusions by couching them in percentage chances rather than actually attempting to reason them out.
I for one don't need to believe in guilt or innocence as binary properties. Your mental process requires that approach. I feel sorry for you.
quote: It makes your mind more easily updateable, when you don't require yourself to flip "I'm sure he's guilty" to "I'm sure he's innocent", but can assign yourself various different probabilities in between, as evidence accumulates in one direction or the other.
A minute ago this was so that you could pin us down to a specific position that we couldn't weasel out of later. Your inconsistency knows no bounds.
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:and hearing compelling evidence would actually *change my opinion.*
The problem with that, is that by demanding individual "compelling" evidence, you prevent yourself from acknowledging the mountain of non-compelling bits and pieces of evidence that make in their sum a compelling case, though individually they would not.
You are not understanding me: I would be swayed by a compelling case; your case is not compelling, and is based on a rather fervent attachment to specific "bits and pieces," that you wrongly believe to be compelling as a whole.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:You have a problem with uncertainty
No, I'm much more comfortable with uncertainty than most people here are, that's why I keep mocking the people that demand individual conditionals to be "guaranteed" before they take them as acceptable evidence towards a conclusion.
quote:I feel sorry for you.
Feel whatever you like, but since I wasn't a participant in the Martin/Zimmerman case, your estimations about my character don't actually affect the conclusions you should derive about the case based on the evidence, and are thus irrelevant for the thread.
quote:A minute ago this was so that you could pin us down to a specific position that we couldn't weasel out of later.
Yes. That's why I asked you to *tell me* the probabilities you assign. The reason *you* should want to think in terms of probabilities, even if you don't reveal them to me, is because it makes your minds more easily updateable.
quote:You are not understanding me: I would be swayed by a compelling case;
I'm understanding you, I just don't believe you. I think you're fooling yourself about whether you would be swayed or not.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
That's a belief predicated upon your conviction in your own conclusions. I don't agree with you, therefore I don't respond to compelling arguments. Let us not consider whether your arguments are actually compelling, because they are not, or whether your approach and your selective treatment of the facts and your subsequent conclusions betray a strong pre-existing bias, which they do.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:I don't agree with you, therefore I don't respond to compelling arguments.
No, more like "You refuse to assign a probability on your current certainty, even for your private usage, therefore you lack the ability to evaluate whether said probability is wrong. By not pinning down your position, you can't actually change it."
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
That's complete rubbish.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I would love for you to quote something that clearly demonstrates your claim that the people disagreeing with you are committed to 'totally innocent' or 'totally guilty'.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:No, more like "You refuse to assign a probability on your current certainty, even for your private usage, therefore you lack the ability to evaluate whether said probability is wrong. By not pinning down your position, you can't actually change it."
Another amusing notion underlying all of this rot: if you assign something a 'probability' (wild-ass guess), and it turns out not to have happened or have evidence against it, that means your probability was itself flawed.
Which is rot, of course, especially when what you're actually doing is just piling one guess on top of another. You've no real idea how sound each link in your chain is.
Anyway, on another note, likelihood of a fistfight: it was dark, so he could hardly get more than a rough estimate of Martin's approximate size and strength; Zimmerman was armed; and (again, using your standards) has a history of attacking police and beating his wife.
This is someone with a history of experience of beating people and getting away with it, as well as a firearm to help him feel extra safe.
I used your own methods here. Tell me again the likelihood that that man would start a fight with a 'suspicious looking' stranger is 5%. I also love how you suggest that it's *unlikely* Zimmerman would lie about it. If he is lying, it's to avoid a *murder conviction*! How unlikely is that?
Ohh, hey, another little scenario using your methods: how likely is it that this wife beating, cop attacking wannabe police officer, a man who patrols his neighborhood with a gun, would approach a 'suspicious' stranger and demand answers to questions he really doesn't have the authority to demand answers for. The stranger, a young hotheaded teen with a history of bad decisions and exactly half as much history of violence as Zimmerman (again, using your method, cousin tweeting vs restraining order and resisting arrest), unwisely mouths off very rudely to the questioner, who then acting on his history of violence with impunity starts a fight.
Not having realized that unlike his wife, he couldn't simply tune Martin up as he liked, and feeling secure in his gun, the fight begins to go against him, and he receives injuries that could come from a very mild degree of violence or severe. He panics and shoots Martin to end a fight he started.
Yeah, 5%, right? And before you go on about ANY of that, tell me which piece-specifically-wasn't using your methods.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:"Yeah, 5%, right? And before you go on about ANY of that, tell me which piece-specifically-wasn't using your methods."
All the pieces where you are supposed to assign probabilities, atleast vague ones, and adjust upwards or downwards.
Someone starting a fight when they know police is on the way -- you must adjust downwards. Someone starting a *fistfight* when you have a gun, and the other guy may have a knife for all you know? You must adjust downwards. People with guns don't start *fistfights* with strangers. Someone starting a fight with a taller person (and yeah, in the dark you can see someone being taller, if you can see them at all) -- you must adjust downwards.
I've explained all this already, but you don't care. You just care to insult and misconstrue and pretend to misunderstand. So I'll be skipping your posts from now on.
After all you're not discussing the case anymore, you're discussing me.
And I'll repeat: Zimmerman is innocent. The case is effectively over, except for those who actively want it to not be over, because they'll never accept Zimmerman's innocence, ever.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I used your own methods here. Tell me again the likelihood that that man would start a fight with a 'suspicious looking' stranger is 5%. I also love how you suggest that it's *unlikely* Zimmerman would lie about it. If he is lying, it's to avoid a *murder conviction*! How unlikely is that?
Let's look at the evidence on this. In the 911 phone call, Zimmerman was asked to estimate Martin's age. Here is the exact exchange.
quote:911 dispatcher: How old would you say he is?
Zimmerman: He’s got something on his shirt. About like his late teens.
Then during the court hearing Zimmerman said.
quote:"I did not know how old he was. I thought he was a little bit younger than I am."
Zimmerman is 28, at least 9 years or 50% older than the age estimate he gave to the 911 operator.
Based on this fact, we can very accurately say that the probability that Zimmerman would lie about what happened is 100%.
Of course that does not prove that any other part of his testimony was lies, but we know without question that he has lied about what happened.
[ May 27, 2012, 04:17 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
In addition to that clear lie, in the same apology Zimmerman say he did not know whether or not Martin was armed. When the fight started, I don't think there is anyway Zimmerman could have known that Martin was unarmed.
But at the time Zimmerman fired the gun, the two had been fighting for over a minute and Zimmerman knew that Martin had not yet produced a weapon.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Rabbit, let me note that Rakeesh was himself lying or playing dumb when he suggested that I assigned 5% chance that Zimmerman would lie.
I assigned 5% chance to the combined scenario of "Start a fistfight with a stronger taller man then lie about it after having called the police, while carrying a gun, but only he suffering injuries, and the other person not"
Ofcourse Rakeesh pretended that I assigned just 5% to him lying, when I assigned 5% to the combined scenario.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Rabbit, let me note that Rakeesh was himself lying or playing dumb when he suggested that I assigned 5% chance that Zimmerman would lie.
Aris, I find it particularly offensive when you accuse people in this thread of lying or playing dumb. I've have interacted with many of people you have accused of dishonesty for years in this forum and I have no reason to believe that they are not arguing in good faith.
I have disagreed with many of the people you are debating on many occasions. I have often founded their arguments to be wrong headed. I've occasionally questioned their knowledge, reasoning ability and their objectivity -- but I've seen absolutely no evidence that they are less than sincere about what they post.
We do occasionally get people in this forum who like to play the devils advocate and bate people, but I've seen no evidence of that in this thread.
Your repeated accusations are rude and detestable. The demonstrate the lowest form of debate. If you sincerely believe that the other people in this thread are not arguing in good faith, I suggest you simply walk away.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I suppose you started skipping posts you didn't like earlier than your announcement, because my question wasn't about whether Zimmerman would lie, but that the entire scenario happened as described. Wife beater, cop attacker, etc.
Of course it's easier to seize on another unrelated claim that I didn't make, declare that absurd, and then back away. Not at all transparent or anything.
People with guns don't start fistfights...right. That's just a rule or something, apparently. Anytime anyone has a gun on or near to hand, whenever they initiate violence they immediately start with brandishing their weapon. Makes sense, really. I swear.
And people say I'M too judgmental about gun owners!
Oh, and another fun little 'probability' to consider: if Zimmerman believed Martin was 'suspicious looking', why did he turn his back on this scary character at night and begin walking away? That hardly fits what we know of his character, and I'm back in the real world now, not the Aris world where potentially petty theft is a 'severe' crime and a cousin's twitter report indicates a history of violence.
I'm back in the real world where whatever else we can say about Zimmerman's judgment, he was someone who took his personal and neighborhood safety seriously. He was a major mover in that neighborhood watch, he called 911 let's just say a LOT, and was the sort of man who felt he needed a gun for grocery shopping (thus far I know of no reason he felt this way except that the world is scary, or something, but a reason may very well exist).
He sees this 'suspicious character' in his neighborhood (coincidentally also close to Martin's as well, the little thug). Said character is suspicious enough to warrant following, and calling 911 (though really, for Zimmerman, that's not saying much), and exiting his car at night to get closer on foot against dispatch's recommendation.
Then, after whatever happened after he got out of his car and the altercation began...he turned around and walked away from Martin, who then rushed him from behind and began attacking him.
So you're all about your 'probabilities' here, Aris, therefore tell me: what is the probability Zimmerman did that? And for any other part of Zimmerman's story to be true, that part MUST be true: that he put his back to Martin and began walking away. If he backed away from him, he had the gun, why didn't he brandish it if this suspicious character approached him? Tell him to back off, make a move for his gun? What?
Or you could just cut and run. That wouldn't surprise me.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Aris, I find it particularly offensive when you accuse people in this thread of lying or playing dumb.
Rakeesh has been calling me dishonest since page 2 of this thread, and Orincoro has been calling me obtuse since page 1.
As a sidenote let me quote some other bits from April 02 comments in this very thread (first page)
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris We know that Zimmerman had injuries on both the back and the front of his head.
And indeed we did know it.
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: [qb]We do not know that. *We* have been told that. The evidence was not properly collected.
But yeah, it was.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh A minute ago we 'knew' Zimmerman had been seriously beaten-injuries which he didn't get extra medical care for, which didn't leave signs that could be seen from looking at his face,
Oh, my.
My point: Better go with my judgment of the evidence, rather than with Rakeesh or Orincoro. They tend to oh-so-very-reasonably be *wrong*, while I tend to be right.
No, I won't convince them of it. I won't convince them that it's pretty much certain it was Zimmerman's voice. But then again they weren't convinced that Zimmerman had injuries in the front and the back of his head either.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:People with guns don't start fistfights...right. That's just a rule or something, apparently. Anytime anyone has a gun on or near to hand, whenever they initiate violence they immediately start with brandishing their weapon. Makes sense, really. I swear.
Let's assume for a moment that "People with guns don't start fist fights" is something any reasonable person would expect to be accurate almost all the time. If that's the case, then when/if Martin started a fist fight with Zimmerman, any reasonable person would have expected he was unarmed.
If you accept that premise, then Zimmerman should have known he was an armed man fighting a teenager who was almost certainly not armed.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Aris, Lying is not the same thing as making an inaccurate claim. People can be mistaken, like you were when you claimed that the coroner report said Martin had bruised and bloody knuckles.
Lying or "playing dumb" as you call it implies that a person knows that what they are saying is false and is deliberately and intentionally trying to deceive others. Making that kind of defamatory statement about others in this forum violates the terms of service. Please stop. If you sincerely believe that people in this debate are lying or being consciously dishonest and deceptive, then there is no reason for you to continue the discussion. Either show respect to the other members of the discussion, or walk away.
When you mad the false claim that the coroners report said that Martin had bruised and bloody knuckles, I could have assumed that you had read the coroners report and knew the claim was untrue but were choosing to lie to make your point. I could have assumed that you were intentionally saying something you knew was untrue. I granted you the benefit of a doubt and assumed that you were simply repeating what you had heard from other sources without checking the facts. Give others that same benefit of a doubt or you don't belong here.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:like you were when you claimed that the coroner report said Martin had bruised and bloody knuckles.
I never used the word "bloody".
quote:When you mad the false claim that the coroners report said that Martin had bruised and bloody knuckles
I never used the word "bloody".
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:like you were when you claimed that the coroner report said Martin had bruised and bloody knuckles.
I never used the word "bloody".
quote:When you mad the false claim that the coroners report said that Martin had bruised and bloody knuckles
I never used the word "bloody".
I'm sorry, I didn't go back to check your original post. My memory of the post was inaccurate.
You did however use the words "bruised" and "knuckles" neither of which appear in the coroners report. Would you prefer that I believe that you knew these words were not in the report but chose to deliberately lie about it or that you were mistaken when you made that post?
If you would prefer that I presume you were mistaken, then grant others the same courtesy.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
So, what, I guess you were also full of crap with your little declaration about ignoring posts, eh?
Anyway, I'd love to know how you knew at that point in the story he had those injuries (and he didn't, I believe but could be mistaken, seek medical care then, rather waiting awhile after his 'savage beating').
Of course you didn't. And of course Zimmerman having or not having those injuries doesn't do much at all to answer the most important couple of questions about this case. And of course those injuries are consistent with quite a few kinds of violence, not all of them in line with Zimmerman's story-no mention of that from you, though. And of course witness reports can often be misleading, especially when there are changes in story.
I count at least two fundamental, major problems mentioned in that last paragraph-what amount and kind of violence might've caused those injuries, and changeable witness reports-but you've still got the nerve to claim to be the one fairly arguing and reasonably examining things.
You, who claims it is all but proven Zimmerman was right. Meanwhile over on this side there is no such certainty, yet you've more than once claimed otherwise. If it happened once, I would think misunderstanding. Twice or even three times, stubbornness or poor mutual communication. Four or five times, though, yeah, I'm no longer assuming honesty and kindness of thought from you on this subject-not that you ever did really, of others.
Oh! Another convenient not-mentioned on your part: hey, what's the probability that Zimmerman would've put his back to Martin?
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
There needs to be less discussion about who is full of crap, lying, playing dumb, etc. If it doesn't stop, individuals are going to start being called out.
I can't imagine any of the parties involved in this latest discussion are even enjoying the conversation.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Anyway, I'd love to know how you knew at that point in the story he had those injuries
Divine inspiration.
Either that, or I properly evaluated the evidence at hand. We had video that showed officers looking at the back of Zimmerman's head, and we had police reports of said injuries. The people that *did* have access to the evidence (namely the police department) all claimed that Zimmerman had been injured, and given how many cops had seen Zimmerman or had access to photographs from his day of arrest, it would have taken a conspiracy in the entire department for Zimmerman to *not* have been injured; nor was it a sustainable conspiracy, since photographs would have to be produced sooner or later; and the supposed conspirators would have known that, and therefore they wouldn't have bothered with the conspiracy in the first place, and certainly wouldn't have persisted with it if they had been foolish enough to begin it.
I don't remember what further pieces of evidence we had at that point, but I think we had that much at least. So, yeah, we knew it.
If it was bad reasoning, it wouldn't so often take me to the right conclusions.
As a personal sidenote, when I was predicting Greece's bankruptcy to my family 4 years ago, none of them believed me then either.
And when I predicted to myself that a certain child-murder case in Greece back in 1995 (or so) had been committed by the father, because his reactions afterwards wasn't making sense to me if he was innocent, why I was right then too.
And I actually made a small amount of money recently, out of predicting HPMoR plotpoints
My "bad" reasoning tends to lead me so often to right predictions. When I say we know something, it tends to be true.
[ May 27, 2012, 07:41 PM: Message edited by: Aris Katsaris ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Oh, Aris, you've crossed over into straight-up hubris, now. Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
*now?*
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Aris, perhaps your position would receive less strife if you labeled it an opinion or a prediction instead of a fact.
The case -isn't- over, and when the trial begins and all evidence is brought to light we will have much better ability to judge Zimmerman's guilt or innocence.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: I think you're most definitely playing dumb when you demand absolute certainty (something that never exists in our universe for *any* event) for Zimmerman to be innocent of wrongdoing, while the slightest remotest chance otherwise is given credibility by you. That's called
... it's called ... what? The inability or unwillingness on your part to understand my position is not 'demanding absolute certainty for Zimmerman to be innocent of wrongdoing' as opposed to casting doubt on your own plainly erroneous claims of certainty?
You have descended into a level of irrationality which isn't even really worth contemplating. Go back to my last two posts before this one and see if you can come up with a real response to them.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I ... actually, as I catch up with this thread
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: And I actually made a small amount of money recently, out of predicting HPMoR plotpoints
My "bad" reasoning tends to lead me so often to right predictions. When I say we know something, it tends to be true.
I just wanted to catch this part here just in case you delete your posts in the future or something; I want to have it forever. Aris Kataris on Why We Should Accept Aris Kataris is Right, ladies and gentlemen.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: I ... actually, as I catch up with this thread
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: And I actually made a small amount of money recently, out of predicting HPMoR plotpoints
My "bad" reasoning tends to lead me so often to right predictions. When I say we know something, it tends to be true.
I just wanted to catch this part here just in case you delete your posts in the future or something; I want to have it forever. Aris Kataris on Why We Should Accept Aris Kataris is Right, ladies and gentlemen.
And I'll just quote your post, here, Samprimary just in case you ever claim you aren't selectively choosing what bits to quote and which not. Ofcourse you would choose the silliest bit and then claim it's a fair representation of the whole. For some strange reason you failed to quote the bit about previous points in this case, or about the previous murder case, or about the Greek bankruptcy.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and *won't* assume you're misrepresenting my post out of mere malice. But the alternative (that your brain unconsciously and automatically edits out anything that you don't want to hear, so that you aren't even aware of the misrepresentations you're making) isn't that much better.
quote:Go back to my last two posts before this one and see if you can come up with a real response to them.
Samprimary, be silent. Much more so than Rakeesh and Orincoro, you've performed moral sins in this thread, starting from the very first post. Your rush to false judgment, your unthinking repetition of lies; even the shameful title of this thread -- morally you made yourself the internet equivalent of a lynch mob participant; while all the while being aware enough of what it was that you were doing because the very first comment of yours actually mocks this by saying "Whoa now, put the pitchforks down."
The "mysteriously invisible" injuries you talked about, turned out to be real after all, didn't they? While my "irrationality" keeps taking me to right conclusions. And yet you dare accuse *me* of erroneous claims to certainty? What about your erroneous certainty in the very first comment of this thread, have you acknowedged that?
Learn some humility and shut up about this case, or you'll be adding to your sins.
As for your last two posts, I've already answered it, so let me repost your question, and my answer here:
quote:
quote: Do either of these create a situation wherein when they shoot and kill me, they are guaranteed not to be at fault as long as they have injuries when they get around to showing up at the doctor?
No event in the real universe is "guaranteed" 100%, nor can be assigned a 0% probability either. But at some point people of reasonable minds realize what is a reasonable and credible scenario and what is an unreasonable and non-credible one. That's why the courts use the phrase "beyond all reasonable doubt".
You are effectively demanding Zimmerman to be 'guaranteed' "not at fault" for him to be declared innocent, and indeed you're demanding for each piece of evidence to *individually* guarantee him innocent, instead of noting the cumulative effect of several different pieces of evidence.
[ May 28, 2012, 04:36 AM: Message edited by: Aris Katsaris ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Dude, the bragging about your predictions was ridiculous because that means precisely nothing about your predictive skill unless we have some idea how many predictions you got *wrong*.
And anyway, even without that those examples are far from compelling. In a murder case, you predicted the husband did it-very often a good bet. You predicted Greece's bankruptcy, which is fine, except for Greece having been infamous for poor economics long before the crash anyway-so not a really difficult get either.
But even if it was, still not worth much alone. The fanfic example, though, that was laughable. Anyway, hey, it'd be cool if you'd stop insisting people have made up their minds Martin is innocent, as you continuously and falsely claim. Or if you will, quote someone directly.
But you can't. We all know what *that* is.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Dude, the bragging about your predictions was ridiculous because that means precisely nothing about your predictive skill unless we have some idea how many predictions you got *wrong*.
Thankfully I didn't have to reach beyond this thread to find some implicit wrong predictions *you* all made, back when you were all making fun of the supposedly "invisible" injuries.
quote:The fanfic example, though, that was laughable
That's just because fanfic is low-status. It's respectable to show interest (and make predictions) in murder cases, or about how economies go, because murder-cases and economies are high-status -- it's less respectable to show interest in sport championships and TV shows, because they're just entertainment (lesser status) -- and it's even lower status to show interest in *fringe* entertainment associated with teens, like fanfics/fanvids/comics, etc.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Dude, if you read the Hatrack thread on that story, you'd see why that dismissal doesn't really apply to me.
So your response to 'how many wrong predictions have you made?' is 'you guys were wrong about stuff too'? Well, I can't say that sort of response is a surprise.
So far of the predictions you showcased to highlight your predictive skill, *only* the fanfic example carried much weight-the others weren't hard gets at all, from your description. So...ummm, well done, I guess?
Yeah, Zimmerman did in fact have some injuries. Some people were wrong about that, myself included, and said so. Unsurprising you'd gloss over that, though.
Just to get another example of how you dodge a direct question, what if anything do you have to say in response to: the injuries could've been caused by a wide range of violence, witness accounts have changed, there have been some claims of witness coaching, and why ought we think of Martin as a drug dealing thug based on his history but not consider Zimmerman a wife beating arrest-resister? Oh, and why DID Zimmerman turn his back on Martin anyway?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:So your response to 'how many wrong predictions have you made?'
I didn't recognize it for a question. I thought it was just a remark that you can't be sure that I've not made a hundred other predictions that I got wrong and am hiding away.
To respond to your question: Right now I don't remember making a high-certainty prediction (one I e.g. assign > 90%) and being proven wrong. But then again I don't often make such predictions.
quote:Oh, and why DID Zimmerman turn his back on Martin anyway?
I can imagine several reasons: Perhaps he dismissed Martin as a potential threat (which would itself be an insult). Perhaps he considered him a threat, but was momentarily careless about how to deal with such threat. Perhaps Zimmerman actually lied about this bit.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
So Zimmerman deemed Martin sufficiently threatening and suspicious to call the police, follow him, and exit his car...but in just a brief nonphysical encounter determined he *wasn't* a threat...and then Martin just snapped?
Huh. It's strange. It's *almost* like when there's an event that doesn't support your conclusion, there are a lot of maybes and can't be sures and such, but they don't seem to make much of an impact on your (self) vaunted predictions. When something *does* happen to lend weight, though, it gets nearly tabulated and held forward as an example.
That's...huh. There's a word for that kind of thinking, isn't there?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:and then Martin just snapped?
It wouldn't be surprising: Some people consider turning your back on them to be an insult. Especially if Zimmerman sneered at him or looked him with contempt or anything like that, it wouldn't be surprising at all.
But just tell me which alternative scenario do you consider more likely than all three possibilities I suggested (dismissing Martin as threat, misjudging how to deal with his threat, Zimmerman lying about turning his back).
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Those are good possibilities, and more importantly, Aris is allowing for variables.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:and then Martin just snapped?
It wouldn't be surprising: Some people consider turning your back on them to be an insult. Especially if Zimmerman sneered at him or looked him with contempt or anything like that, it wouldn't be surprising at all.
I only agree with you because we're talking about black people. As a white man, of course, I have control over myself, and I can countenance the deep insult of having a stranger sneer at me and turn his back without attempting to murder him in the street. But black people... I think you're on to something there.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:And I'll just quote your post, here, Samprimary just in case you ever claim you aren't selectively choosing what bits to quote and which not. Ofcourse you would choose the silliest bit and then claim it's a fair representation of the whole.
At least you seem to be catching on to the fact that it's ridiculously silly. That's a start.
quote:And yet you dare accuse *me* of erroneous claims to certainty? What about your erroneous certainty in the very first comment of this thread, have you acknowedged that?
Learn some humility and shut up about this case, or you'll be adding to your sins.
Yes. I accuse you of erroneous claims to certainty, because you have made them. It's why I ask you to go back to the prior posts and come up with real answers to them, and it's also why I suspect you don't bother to do it and continue to try to harp on the OP as though it is perfectly analogous.
quote:You are effectively demanding Zimmerman to be 'guaranteed' "not at fault" for him to be declared innocent, and indeed you're demanding for each piece of evidence to *individually* guarantee him innocent, instead of noting the cumulative effect of several different pieces of evidence.
No, I have not even remotely done this, and you would be unable to quote me doing this, either. You have just crafted a conflated argument of my own in your head and are sticking to it when defending yourself from the ridiculous claim you made earlier about the certain proof of Zimmerman's innocence.
I'm actually sort of noticing a pattern! Whenever you're called on this, you have repeatedly made sure to try to distract the issue to talking about others. It's VERY telling. Please continue!
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
And just so that it doesn't get to go away, I just want to keep it fresh in everyone's mind exactly what kind of plainly, obviously erroneous thinking we're talking about here:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:If before the shooting, only Zimmerman suffered injuries, then we already know who was the assailant, and who wans't
*sigh*
no. no you do not. this is getting stupid. I'm sorry, but this has gotten incredibly, incredibly stupid.
I assure you, I have been directly and criminally assailed by individuals who have ended up with 100% of the injuries, merely through me reactively defending myself. I'm amazed to hear that, according to aris kataris Legal Logic™, said individuals then could have shot me dead, and the presence of said injuries on them and not me (prior to the gunshot wound in the chest, of course) will have conclusively proven that the act could not possibly have been anything other than self-defense on their part.
Jesus
H
Christ.
please back up and severely reanalyze your position. It is so invalid it is boggling me.
"If before the shooting, only Zimmerman suffered injuries, then we already know who was the assailant, and who wans't (sp)"
You actually said this. You really, really said this. And you (so far) resist admitting that it is painfully false logic on its face.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:"If before the shooting, only Zimmerman suffered injuries, then we already know who was the assailant, and who wasn't"
You actually said this. You really, really said this.
Yes, I actually said this, I really really said this. More even, I really really *really* said it. It may have even been "really" four or five times even, but it was most definitely "really" three times at least.
How many reallys do you need to add to signal something to be ludicrous, without actually having to *argue* that it was ludicrous?
You're not arguing, you've been playing a status game.
Sidenote: Amusingly enough the supposed (and quite false) lack of injuries on *Zimmerman* was quite sufficient for Samprimary to judge Zimmerman as not having been assaulted, back in the first comment of this thread.
The *actual* lack of (non-gun) injuries on Martin is somehow not sufficient to judge *Martin* as not having been assaulted.
[ May 28, 2012, 01:50 PM: Message edited by: Aris Katsaris ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Martin's having been assaulted to the point of noteworthy bruising isn't necessary to incriminate Zimmerman. While you go on at length about his injuries, though, isn't it at least strange that from this 'savage' beating he gave him, Martin's hands showed almost no damage at all so far as we know so far?
Anyway. As to which is more likely: I think it is likeliest that Zimmerman, having noted, followed in his car and then on foot the suspicious character Martin, approached him and began to demand he account for himself, with a shove or two or a good turn around by Martin's arm for emphasis. Martin retaliates, and being stronger and better at physical violence than Zimmerman, quickly begins to win, and in Zimmerman's panic and wounded pride is shot for his trouble.
This accounts for Zimmerman's past behavior of general suspicion, nigh-vigilantism, and overreaction. It is also consistent with his choice to exit the car and confront Martin, who was it's true 'no angel' but for whom there is also nothing so far to suggest he would simply begin to start whaling on a total stranger who asked some rude questions. Should more about Martin's history come forward, my thoughts will change.
As for witnesses, they seem to be almost uniformly unreliable to me-some accounts have changed, some accounts may reportedly have been coached, and even in a reasonably intelligent observant human, memory in quick emergencies can be suspect. IS suspect. This also accounts for the peculiar claim by Zimmerman that he turned his back on Martin-because he wouldn't have.
I don't know where you get your notions of adolescent masculinity, but while turning one's back on someone can often be an insult, by far the most common reaction is to mouth off, not simply charge the guy and start whaling on him.
This would also account for the (as far as we know) very minor injuries on Martin's hands: the violence wasn't as extreme and brutal as Zimmerman suggests, because he overreacted, which also fits quite well with his known history re: neighborhood watch-filled with overreactions (again, the 911 calls, and exiting the car at all).
From what we know of both of them, it just seems much more likely to me for those and other reasons that Zimmerman, overzealous in his self-appointed duty, started a confrontation that he then made (probably mildly) physical, such as a shove or a yank, and then when Martin reacts to this with violence, Zimmerman continued his pattern of overreaction and shot him. The reactions I described here are consistent with Zimmerman, but for Martin to have suddenly and without physical provocation bullrushed and tried to beat the crap out of someone who had only spoken to him? That requires new things thus far unhinted at in his history.
As for the witnesses, you can believe it or not as you like, but I tend to wariness of human senses and memory for things like this. That's not to say I mistrust by default, but then when changed stories and reports of coaching are heard too? Then I am highly skeptical-it needs much more than its own weight to hold weight.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:YOU don't get to decide if my fears are real or not. If I am licensed, and own a gun, I have every right to carry it. And the fact that I am carrying it does not mean I waive all my other rights.
It's not about rights, it's about obligations and responsibilities. If you choose to carry a gun, you have an obligation to minimize the danger it poses to other people. If you carry a gun, you have a greater obligation to avoid creating situations where that gun is likely to be used.
Second degree murder is defined as " a non-premeditated killing, resulting from an assault in which death of the victim was a distinct possibility." An assault is defined as a threat of violence. If you threaten someone when you are carrying a gun, the chance that the threat will result in a death are vastly increased. When you threaten someone while you are carrying a gun, the chances that another person will suffer serious consequence are much greater so it's only fair that the consequences for you should also be much greater.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I have for a question for any one who thinks that Zimmerman is definitely not guilty of any wrong doing.
If you saw a young man wandering around at night in the rain and you thought he was on drugs and planning to commit a crime, under what circumstances would you choose to get out of your car and follow him on foot? What would you expect to be the likely outcome of following someone you thought was involved in criminal activity of some sort? As several people have pointed out, it's not uncommon for young men to react violently to provocation. How would you expect a suspicious young man to react to being followed? If you confronted him, what do you think the chances are that he would fight back?
Zimmer patrolled the neighborhood looking for anything suspicious. He reported minor things to the police. He carried a concealed hand gun. What do you think the chances are that he was oblivious to the potential dangers of following a young "thug"?
What are the odds that a guy like that would underestimate the probability that his actions would lead to a fight?
What are the odds that someone like Zimmerman would have gotten out of his car to follow Martin if he been unarmed?
[ May 28, 2012, 07:03 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:How many reallys do you need to add to signal something to be ludicrous, without actually having to *argue* that it was ludicrous?
How many times do we have to argue (fairly completely, I might add) that it's ludicrous, before you exceed your capacity to pretend that no such argument was ever presented?
quote:You're not arguing, you've been playing a status game.
... said the guy who tried to talk up how he guessed a few things correctly here and there to demonstrate how correct he is obviously assured to be here. Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:said the guy who tried to talk up how he guessed a few things correctly here and there to demonstrate how correct he is obviously assured to be here
Yes. Says that guy.
If in our world status was earned by making right predictions and lost by making wrong predictions, the world would be a far better place.
So, that's the sort of status game I would support, in which you lose status when you're proven wrong in your predictions, and gain status when you're proven right.
Not happening in our universe, of course.
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
you guys should have recognized that Aris wasn't really worth engaging back when the issue was over statistical certainty measurements he didn't want to include in his irrationally certain conclusion that martin HAD to be at fault.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:As to which is more likely: I think it is likeliest that Zimmerman, having noted, followed in his car and then on foot the suspicious character Martin, approached him and began to demand he account for himself, with a shove or two or a good turn around by Martin's arm for emphasis. Martin retaliates, and being stronger and better at physical violence than Zimmerman, quickly begins to win, and in Zimmerman's panic and wounded pride is shot for his trouble.
And though Zimmerman is the one panicking and losing, it's Martin who's shouting for help?
I'm sorry, but I could almost imagine the scenario you depict, if it was not for the detail that Martin who's "quickly beginning to win" and retaliating against being shoved, is also supposed to be shouting for help.
With that last detail added I can't visualize this at all.
quote:As several people have pointed out, it's not uncommon for young men to react violently to provocation.
I'm the person here who agrees with that and believes that it would therefore not be surprising for Martin to have reacted violently to provocation.
Orincoro above instead seemed to argue that it was racist of me to claim that Martin may have reacted violently to being offended, and Rakeesh argues that mouthing off would be much more likely that a violent reaction (and I agree with him that it is more likely, but we don't hear of the cases where people just mouth off at each other).
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Ahh, yes, the shouting for help. Well, you arrived at the conclusion that it must have been Zimmerman shouting based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the methods used to determine that in the first place, pivoting initially between it being bad reporting or bad science, and have now landed safely in the 'they're quacks' nest. You'll dispute almost all of that, of course, but anyone who is interested may go back a half dozen pages or so and see your initial reaction: this is junk because the math is bad, and you stuck to that even after if was explained to you that, no, the math wasn't bad. You're more credible than experts (well, no, they're not experts, they're quacks, right, I forgot) and people here on Hatrack actually trained in the kind of math you renounced.
The other thing necessary for you to believe it must have been Zimmerman's voice is...ear witness testimony. Some of which has changed, some of which reportedly may have been coached, but hey. You're totally arriving at your conclusion based on objective analysis, and in no way because you made up your mind quite awhile ago what 'must' be true, and now of course all of the evidence that comes out supports this. Don't even admit the possibility of bias on your part, because after all, your analytical ability is to be trusted. You predicted Greece's bankruptcy, plot points in a story, and the correct suspect in another murder investigation. Iron-clad reliability there!
Just for fun, too: you agree with me that we don't hear of the cases where people just mouth off to each other-you agree it's more likely that's what Martin did, rather than abruptly going berserk on a total stranger. But...you just can't seem to take the next step. We don't hear about cases where they just shout at each other, because this time Martin went berserk, and one of the reasons we know that is because turning one's back is a provocation...
Yeah, no misfiring there.
Oh, and before I forget: there is another very simple explanation as to why Martin may have been the one screaming for help: because he saw Zimmerman had a gun and was trying to get it! But you skip over that other option, for no other reason than because it doesn't make sense for Martin to have screamed in a fight he was winning. It's a completely plausible, totally sensible possible explanation that just...I'm not sure, really. Never even gets into your vetting process.
Because, really, for all your talk of probabilities, you've made up your mind. It wasn't Martin screaming because Martin was winning the fight. We *know* that, and this leads to only one possible conclusion, because we know Martin was at fault...apparently.
I've said it before, and others have as well: there's something very wrong with this country if when a kid armed only with skittles and tea is shot to death by a self-appointed armed neighborhood watchman, there are a lot of us who say to ourselves, "Well maybe he had it coming," or a kinder, gentler, more civilized, "Maybe he provoked the shooting somehow." I'm not talking about 'Let's wait until all the facts are in before we decide what to do with the shooter', I'm talking about the idea that kids packing skittles and tea are so dangerous that we need to make sure we've got the right to be ready with lethal force against them.
And for all of you responsible gun owners out there-and I really do think there are quite a big lot of them-I just wish y'all would tell the NRA about your views on things like background checks, waiting periods, restrictions on kinds of guns owned, so on and so forth. Because they sure as hell ain't listening to us.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
So you've again returned to insulting me, instead of actually discussing evidence and scenarios. Insult, insult, and some more insults.
Well fine. Soon enough I'm guessing it'll proven even in the minds of idiots that the voice was Zimmerman's -- and I know this for the same reason I had known Zimmerman was injured on the back and the front of the head, while all you oh-so-very-reasonable-people were all making fun of the supposedly "invisible injuries"; and are still unapologetic about how without real cause you slandered both the man and the police department that supposedly lied about said injuries.
And then, after even idiots will have to admit that the voice is Zimmerman's, in the best case scenario you'll perhaps again say that new evidence has convinced you otherwise, while you'll be making fun of the idea that if you had evaluated all evidence properly in the first place you would have been convinced long before.
The bottomline, is that I'll have reached a true conclusion, and you'll again insult me for reaching it before you.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Yeah, certainly I wasn't discussing any real scenarios and evidence. Nope. You haven't again seized on the option of talking about someone else rather than what they've said.
The funny thing is, my personal belief that Zimmerman is probably at fault has little to do with whether or not he was injured-he could have received injuries either having started or responses to a fight, after all. No, instead it's based mostly on his history, and Martin's reason for being there, with an admittedly stiff dose of wariness for a rampant 911 caller who patrols his neighborhood on his own and wears a gun to go grocery shopping.
Your responses on the issue of what kind of violence was necessary to injure Zimmerman in that way, how Martin's hands came to be so undamaged, and why Zimmerman turned his back on Martin have been either consistently evasive, or nonexistent, or simply unsatisfying in terms of reason. Quite a long time ago in this discussion, yeah, I didn't add in scorn for your reasoning process, because I didn't think it would be so profoundly biased and lazy. But time has shown different.
The funny thing about this is, for me, I can easily imagine several scenarios where Martin really MAY have been at fault-and not just in academic hypotheticals, but real possibilities. My stake isn't in lynching Zimmerman, but rather highlighting how dangerous and stupid some of our gun laws and thinking about guns can be. I deplore Zimmerman's behavior-his abuse of 911, his method of patrolling, his going about armed-but none of this means, to me, that he's guilty.
But we're talking about *likelihoods* here which is a different discussion, and it's not surprising that the examples you gave of your predictive ability were 2/3s very easy gets: the process by which you predict things is, if this thread is an example, quite bad. So you don't predict, say, the fate of blind Chinese activists or the outcome of closely contested elections or the specific stocks, but rather much broader things.
And then when you predict those easier things, why, that leads to an unwarranted trust in your own process. Challenges to it must be stupid, because your process is so reliable.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:YOU don't get to decide if my fears are real or not. If I am licensed, and own a gun, I have every right to carry it. And the fact that I am carrying it does not mean I waive all my other rights.
It's not about rights, it's about obligations and responsibilities. If you choose to carry a gun, you have an obligation to minimize the danger it poses to other people. If you carry a gun, you have a greater obligation to avoid creating situations where that gun is likely to be used.
Second degree murder is defined as " a non-premeditated killing, resulting from an assault in which death of the victim was a distinct possibility." An assault is defined as a threat of violence. If you threaten someone when you are carrying a gun, the chance that the threat will result in a death are vastly increased. When you threaten someone while you are carrying a gun, the chances that another person will suffer serious consequence are much greater so it's only fair that the consequences for you should also be much greater.
Depends on what you are threatening them with, doesn't it? And we have no proof that Zimmerman did anything other than follow someone he thought looked suspicious while he called the police about it, up to that point.
If, after that, he was physically assaulted, he has every right to use any amount of force necessary to stop that assault, up to and including deadly force.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Aris...I agree wiht SOME of what you said, and I've been taking a lot of crap here for defending the possibility that Zimmerman is innocent, or at least won't be convicted....
...and even I think that 80% of your arguments are poorly reasoned, and that you are not presenting them well.
And even if you are telling the truth about the other case, I'd hardly say that that supports poor logic simply because once and a while you might be right. Because you are right on those occasions DESPITE yourself and your reasoning, not because of them.
You have some decent points, but they get lost in all your blustering. People are mainly taking issue with your boasting that you will be right, even if your logic is wrong, so that they should just take you at your word.
I am looking forward to hearing what the other evidence is, and the picture it paints. It will be far more interesting than that horrible Casey Anthony case was for sure.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
The decent points don't get lost in the blustering so much as they get lost in intractably wrong and useless analyses, such as the one above about zimmerman's injuries proving trayvon's guilt as an assailant; nor do they surpass painfully obvious selective "methodologies."
At this point though I want to make sure that Aris doesn't poison my position with his repeated failure to even comprehend it — that there was enough of a murky situation in this case that the police department's behavior was deeply and profoundly disturbing.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:People are mainly taking issue with your boasting that you will be right, even if your logic is wrong, so that they should just take you at your word.
My logic is right, even if beyond your puny Earth logic. :-)
Thankfully, I don't claim that I'm a good presenter of cases. I don't claim a high occurrence of managing to *convince* people of anything. Only a high occurrence of being right.
Rakeesh wants me every single time to dig through the mountain of his insults in order to find and answer his arguments, while ignoring his name-calling and insults and insinuations -- same way that Samprimary wants us all to dig through the mountain of his initial post in which he portrays Zimmerman as a rabid killer purposefully stalking and murdering black kids, in order to just find his supposed position that it was a "murky situation".
No, his position wasn't that it was a murky situation. His position was that there was no injuries on Zimmerman, and that Zimmerman was a rabid killer of black kids.
Read Samprimary's initial posts. And read his pointing-and-laughing at me in other posts of this thread. And read how I've been called obtuse and dishonest from the very first page of this thread. And how even simple clear-cut questions to Rakeesh haven't gotten a response since the very first page (back when I asked him whether his position would change if it turned out that Martin *was* bashing Zimmerman's head on the ground), while he keeps pestering me with a dozen different questions coached inside his insults and ridicule until I respond to them, at which point I must answer another dozen.
And though I've probably personally answered just him two dozen questions about my position in this thread, he keeps saying that I don't respond or evade his questions. Instead of just being *tired* of constantly needing to ignore more and more of his insults and answering more of more of his questions, which answers he then proceeds to misrepresent anyway.
At this point, I don't see why I should bother convincing Rakeesh or Samprimary of anything? I'm just making my position clear, so that you know I was unambiguously right when the unambiguous truth unambiguously comes out anyway.
At which point you will all probably still argue that I was just lucky or whatever. Same as I must have been lucky in believing that Zimmerman did have injuries on the front and the back of his head. Whatever.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
That's fine. Having read your posts, I doubt you have a chance of being completely right, nor do I see any proof that you have a high rate of being right.
Should be an interesting trial.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Having read your posts, I doubt you have a chance of being completely right
For the purpose of summarization these are the two claims I assign high-level certainty in: - Zimmerman didn't initiate the violence. - Zimmerman was the one shouting out for help.
I do *not* put such certainty in things like "Zimmerman not lying about anything relevant to the case." or "Zimmerman not provoking Martin with words/insults."
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
One thing it mentions is that when we talk about witnesses changing their testimony, in one case it's something like going from ("heard no struggle, just a cry for help and a shot and went from "Selma, is it a black guy who got shot?" and "There's a black guy standing over him" on the 911 call") to (making press conferences with Team Crump and going on TV repeatedly insisting they both saw everything from the moment of the shot, it was the boy crying out for help and this wasn't self defense.)
So, tell me, does anyone here genuinely think I must believe both testimonies as *equally* likely to be true? If you had to bet your lives (or someone else's life) on which testimony to believe sincere, which would you *honestly* pick?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:At which point you will all probably still argue that I was just lucky or whatever.
Zimmerman could be totally exonerated and there's absolutely no way it's going to be for the reasons you have stated detailing your position of certainty as to why this case is already concluded in zimmerman's favor. Which is what is being argued, not that you are just 'lucky' if you turn out to be 'right.' Sucks, but .. there you go?
quote:same way that Samprimary wants us all to dig through the mountain of his initial post in which he portrays Zimmerman as a rabid killer purposefully stalking and murdering black kids, in order to just find his supposed position that it was a "murky situation".
I do indeed desire for people to comprehend my posts correctly, yes. Otherwise they might start portraying my position with the kind of entrenchment and inflexibly erroneous certainty that you do, and that's bad.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:"Zimmerman could be totally exonerated and there's absolutely no way it's going to be for the reasons you have stated detailing your position of certainty as to why this case is already concluded in zimmerman's favor."
My prediction wasn't about what reasons they would exonerate him for. I'm using logical evidence, prosecution and defense are limited to legal evidence.
I can e.g. allow myself to update on such minor pieces of evidence as whether Treyvon Martin called himself "NO_LIMIT_N*GGA" in twitter, and my personal intuition on whether such a nickname increases the probability of a confrontational attitude towards white people, and therefore increases the probability he initiated violence.
Both prosecution and defense will have to steer a thousand miles away from such -- the prosecution because it doesn't favour their side, the defense because bringing issues of race into this doesn't favour their side.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Depends on what you are threatening them with, doesn't it?
Not entirely. Certainly if you used the weapon to threaten the victim they would have greater justification for responding with deadly force. But using a weapon is not the only way to threaten to kill or seriously injure a person and what the victim knows isn't the only thing that matters. If you know you have a weapon, you know that making a threat creates the distinct possibility that you will use the weapon. That obligates you to avoid making threats that could reasonably lead to a situation where you would use the gun.
And that isn't something I just made up. It's something I've been told repeatedly by self defense experts including gun lovers and martial arts instructors. The more capable you are of defending yourself with deadly force, the more you are obliged to avoid situations where self defense might be needed.
quote:And we have no proof that Zimmerman did anything other than follow someone he thought looked suspicious while he called the police about it, up to that point.
Clearly we disagree about how threatening it is to be followed by a stranger on a dark rainy night. I am quite certain that an awful lot of reasonable people would apprehend being followed by a stranger at night as a serious threat of violence. It's something people are routinely taught to look for as a sign of imminent danger. I'm quite confident that Zimmerman knew that following someone he suspected to be a criminal was likely to lead to a violent confrontation.
We obviously don't know if Martin apprehended it as such or not. We won't ever know whether Martin hit Zimmerman because he though he was in danger or not. We never will know that because Martin is dead. What I do know is that a reasonable person in Martin's position could easily have believed they were in danger and needed to defend themselves. That doesn't mean Zimmerman would have no right to defend himself. It means he loses the presumption of innocense. Zimmerman was not just "standing his ground" so he has to prove that he exhausted all other options before choosing to shoot Martin.
I'm not saying that following Martin certainly was enough to justify anything Martin might have done, I'm saying it was enough to shift the burden of proof to Zimmerman. Because Zimmerman was following Martin, Zimmerman needs to prove that he tried all other means to end the fight by escaping or pleading for help. He needs to prove that he was in immediate danger of being killed and could not wait a few more seconds for the the police to arrive.
A lot of people act like requiring a killer to prove it was self defense is some sort of liberal agenda to deprive people of the right to self defense. Nothing could be further than the truth. For centuries, every person claiming that they were not guilty on the ground of self defense has been required to prove the claim in court. "Stand your ground laws" that shift that burden of proof to the state and allow a known killer to avoid even being tried are a very recent radical change in a legal tradition that is centuries old. In my opinion, its a horrid change that devalues human life and endangers civil society.
[ May 29, 2012, 12:27 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Both prosecution and defense will have to steer a thousand miles away from such -- the prosecution because it doesn't favour their side, the defense because bringing issues of race into this doesn't favour their side.
You really have no idea what kind of evidence the prosecution has on its side. The prosecution has not released all their evidence publicly. They legal can not do that. The evidence available to you and me is the evidence that has been released by Zimmerman's lawyers. There is a serious selection bias in that process. We have have only the evidence that Zimmerman's lawyers thought it would benefit their client to release. There is no way the defense would release information that hurt Zimmerman's case. In the US, that would be legal malpractice. The lawyers involved could be disbarred, fined and even sued.
If you think you any knowledge about the strength of the prosecutions case, you don't understand the US legal system at all. We won't see the strongest data against Zimmerman until it comes to trial --- that is why it is some critically important that it does go to trial.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:Depends on what you are threatening them with, doesn't it?
Not entirely. Certainly if you used the weapon to threaten the victim they would have greater justification for responding with deadly force. But using a weapon is not the only way to threaten to kill or seriously injure a person and what the victim knows isn't the only thing that matters. If you know you have a weapon, you know that making a threat creates the distinct possibility that you will use the weapon. That obligates you to avoid making threats that could reasonably lead to a situation where you would use the gun.
And that isn't something I just made up. It's something I've been told repeatedly by self defense experts including gun lovers and martial arts instructors. The more capable you are of defending yourself with deadly force, the more you are obliged to avoid situations where self defense might be needed.
quote:And we have no proof that Zimmerman did anything other than follow someone he thought looked suspicious while he called the police about it, up to that point.
Clearly we disagree about how threatening it is to be followed by a stranger on a dark rainy night. I am quite certain that an awful lot of reasonable people would apprehend being followed by a stranger at night as a serious threat of violence. It's something people are routinely taught to look for as a sign of imminent danger. I'm quite confident that Zimmerman knew that following someone he suspected to be a criminal was likely to lead to a violent confrontation.
We obviously don't know if Martin apprehended it as such or not. We won't ever know whether Martin hit Zimmerman because he though he was in danger or not. We never will know that because Martin is dead. What I do know is that a reasonable person in Martin's position could easily have believed they were in danger and needed to defend themselves. That doesn't mean Zimmerman would have no right to defend himself. It means he loses the presumption of innocense. Zimmerman was not just "standing his ground" so he has to prove that he exhausted all other options before choosing to shoot Martin.
I'm not saying that following Martin certainly was enough to justify anything Martin might have done, I'm saying it was enough to shift the burden of proof to Zimmerman. Because Zimmerman was following Martin, Zimmerman needs to prove that he tried all other means to end the fight by escaping or pleading for help. He needs to prove that he was in immediate danger of being killed and could not wait a few more seconds for the the police to arrive.
A lot of people act like requiring a killer to prove it was self defense is some sort of liberal agenda to deprive people of the right to self defense. Nothing could be further than the truth. For centuries, every person claiming that they were not guilty on the ground of self defense has been required to prove the claim in court. "Stand your ground laws" that shift that burden of proof to the state and allow a known killer to avoid even being tried are a very recent radical change in a legal tradition that is centuries old. In my opinion, its a horrid change that devalues human life and endangers civil society.
Awesome post. Any time you carry a weapon, you DO have more responsibility. Any situation you find yourself in should be attempted to be resolved without anyone even knowing you have a firearm.
We don't know when Martin became aware that Zimmerman was carrying a firearm. He may have never known. I don't believe Martin would have rushed Zimmerman had he known Zimmerman was carrying a gun.
We don't know if Martin saw that Zimmerman had a gun or if he tried to wrestle it out of Zimmerman's control. Martin may have seen it and, fearing for his life, tried to get it away from Zimmerman. Zimmerman may have also seen this as a threat to himself, so he discharged the weapon.
There are simply too many variables to determine what exactly happened. Zimmerman now has the burden of proving his case since Martin is not around to tell his side of the story.
Zimmerman may be convicted and actually be completely innocent. Martin may have been an innocent kid that was shot. We will probably never know the whole story.
I think any time there is a shooting by someone who claims "self defense," there should be an investigation performed by a third party that is completely uninvolved in the case to determine that it was justified. The police may be the first responders, but it just makes more sense to me to have an independant entity do an investigation as well.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Are the police not independent? I mean, they are looking for the truth, right? Not any particular agenda?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: I can e.g. allow myself to update on such minor pieces of evidence as whether Treyvon Martin called himself "NO_LIMIT_N*GGA" in twitter, and my personal intuition on whether such a nickname increases the probability of a confrontational attitude towards white people, and therefore increases the probability he initiated violence.
Does this selfsame "personal intuition" which has allowed you to intuit that Trayvon's twitter name is evidence to be submitted that Trayvon was confrontational towards whites (HINT: if the defense doesn't use this ~personal probability intuition~, it's not going to be for the reasons you think) have anything to do with the whole part where you are "using logical evidence" and conclude based on the distribution of (non-gunshot) injury between Trayvon and Zimmerman that Trayvon HAD to be assaulter liable for his own death?
Because that's the crux of what's at issue here: your "logical evidence" is anything but; it's direly illogical, and you have entrenched yourself in so deeply involving it that you refuse to budge even when it can be plainly shown on its face. To wit, it is fairly easy to apply a scenario fitting known data in which Zimmerman commits prosecutable manslaughter or murder 2 yet possesses 100% of the (non-gunshot-to-chest) injuries, but you won't back down from your ludicrous assertion that the distribution of injuries conclusively proves Zimmerman's innocence.
You are not being logical or fairminded in this case, and your position is direly tainted by your own evident bias. Part of the process of doing this while not being AWARE of it is to, I suppose, pathologically distract to talking about the bias you see in others when you have it pointed out in yourself. Apropos of which, it's probably about time for you to mention yet again how much you dislike the bias of what you perceive my position to be.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Are the police not independent? I mean, they are looking for the truth, right? Not any particular agenda?
In this case, certainly not. Their treatment of the case results in a scenario in which they become one of the parties under investigation. They and their handling of this situation really the central issue here — alongside the SYG laws, upon which Zimmerman becomes a sideshow.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Are the police not independent? I mean, they are looking for the truth, right? Not any particular agenda?
One would hope so but sadly the police in the country are all to often not unbiased and independent.
I don't think the major problem lies with having the police do the investigation, I think the problem lies with allowing the police and prosecutors to decide guilt.
Even when you start without any bias at all, investigating something will usually generate a kind of bias. During the course of an investigation, you will start to put together a theory about what happened. And once you've come up with a theory, there is a very strong natural tendency to defend that theory. In science, this is a very well known phenomena. That's why we have to do double blind studies with proper controls and then have our methods and conclusions reviewed by an independent expert.
That's why decisions about guilt or innocence shouldn't be left to the police. If it is likely that you commited a crime, then your guilt or innocence should be decided in courts where the accused has a chance to dispute the theory put together by the investigators and present their own side of the story.
In first degree murder cases, we don't even let the investigators decide whether or not to bring charges -- it has to go before a grand jury. I think that any case where a person was killed by the voluntary acts of another is serious enough that the final decision should be made in court and not be an investigative team.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Wah, people are mean, wah, except those two positions of yours *must rely* on witness testimony which has changed and for which there are reports of coaching, and basically Zimmerman's word and a supposedly higher likelihood that Martin would just snap and start a fight versus Zimmerman overzealously starting a fight.
These aren't just things I've said, either. Nearly half a dozen people have brought up those points, with rejections mainly centered on reliance on changeable witness reports, disbelief of expert reports, and an insistence that it's likelier that Martin went berserk in response to verbal offenses than it is Zimmerman started by getting a bit too physical and confrontational.
Your best piece, Zimmerman's wounds, do lend weight to your side of things, but not nearly as much as you suggest when you consider Martin's hands had almost no injury, Zimmerman's injuries could have been caused by many degrees of violence, and most of all: they do nothing to tell us who started things.
Frankly I'd still love to hear anyone tell me why it should be considered unlikely to an extent that Zimmerman, with his history, would have been too verbally aggressive and even thrown in a yank on the arm if Martin didn't give him the respect he felt due.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Because that's the crux of what's at issue here: your "logical evidence" is anything but; it's direly illogical
In the end the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If my reasoning consistently leads me to the right conclusions, it is proper reasoning. If it leads me to wrong conclusions, it is flawed.
If I'm wrong (more often than the percentage of uncertainty I allow in my predictions allows), I'll have to revise not just my position but adjust the reasoning that led me to said wrong certainty.
But what part of your reasoning process have you revised when you found out *you* were wrong about Zimmerman's injuries. What was the flawed logic you had succumbed to, which you afterwards determined you should not succumb to again?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I'd love to hear why people think it is so dramatically more likely that Martin went berserk with rage for no legitimate reason than that Martin was terrified of a stranger who seemed to be stalking him.
Clearly both are possible given the established facts.
Being followed by a stranger is the sort of thing that's likely to trigger any person's primal fight or flight response. A threat of violence triggers a general release of the sympathetic nervous system that causes a physiological response that is a powerful mix of fear and rage and energy. Being followed by a stranger at night is the kind of thing that is likely to trigger this physiological response in mammals.
Without knowing any more about Martin than that he was in fact a mammal, we can say that it is likely that Zimmerman's actions (getting out of the car and following him on foot) triggered this response. In humans, the fight or flight response tends to lead to aggression in males and flight in females. With out knowing anything more about this situation than the barest facts twe can say its likely that Martin would have experienced the release of chemicals known as the "fight or flight response" and this would very likely be manifested by aggression.
The other option, that Martin attacked Zimmerman because he went berserk for reason at all or because Zimmerman dissed him, requires that we presume a lot of things about Martin and the fight that are not in evidence. Why are people speculating that Martin was an angry, violent, short tempered kid with a bad attitude about adults and authority and race when his behavior is easily explained by the known facts? Why are people speculating that Zimmerman might have insulted Martin and pissed him off, when the things we know he did could very easily have triggered the fight or flight response in Martin?
[ May 29, 2012, 03:36 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:Because that's the crux of what's at issue here: your "logical evidence" is anything but; it's direly illogical
In the end the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If my reasoning consistently leads me to the right conclusions, it is proper reasoning. If it leads me to wrong conclusions, it is flawed.
"W-21 is the board president for the homeowner's association. He describes how the neighborhood watch started (after a string of burglaries), the police participation in getting it going, and that more than 50 people attended the first meeting, where George was appointed by the board to be watch captain. (The police representative puts the number at 25, but still, that's a far cry from only George and one or two of his buddies.) He says the watch group met the same days as the Board, just an hour earlier. He says George went around the neighborhood for a week or two asking people to support the creation of the board (not asking to lead it). Another example of misreporting by mainstream media, which continually referred to GZ as the "self-appointed" watch captain. (According to Lexis, the first use of the "self-appointed" meme came from a certain Miami Herald reporter, both in print and on TV, and seems to have spread virally from there. One night Diane Sawyer called him "the neighborhood watchdog" on the evening news which got spread by reporters from the Caribbean to Toronto.)"
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:
quote:In the end the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If my reasoning consistently leads me to the right conclusions, it is proper reasoning. If it leads me to wrong conclusions, it is flawed.
You confuse propositions with reasoning methods, Orincoro. The page you linked to illustrates the fallacy of 'Affirming the consequent' exactly by showing how the method of 'Affirming the consequent' leads you to reach false conclusions.
If "Affirming the consequent" led to *right* conclusions, it wouldn't be a fallacy.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:If "Affirming the consequent" led to *right* conclusions, it wouldn't be a fallacy.
Wrong. You have implied that if Zimmerman is found innocent, it will prove that you a skilled in analyzing the case. This does not logically follow.
If a theory is valid, it will accurately predict the outcomes but the converse is not true. A theory can predict the some outcomes and still be completely incorrect.
If A, then B does not imply if B then A.
If you disagree with this, I think we are safe in concluding you suffer from the Denning-Kruger effect.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:If "Affirming the consequent" led to *right* conclusions, it wouldn't be a fallacy.
Let me offer an example. Suppose I claimed that I could predict the outcome of a coin toss from the time of day, the latitude, the phase of the moon and the age of the coin flipper. If I correctly predicted one or two coin flips this way, would it be valid to conclude my methods were sound.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:You have implied that if Zimmerman is found innocent, it will prove that you a skilled in analyzing the case.
No, it won't "prove" anything, if by proof you mean 100% certainty; it's just significant evidence towards that effect -- I think the problem is you think I'm using Aristotelian logic of the "if A then B" type. What you say is correct, given Aristotelian logic, but the problem with Aristotelian logic is that it doesn't handle uncertainty and probabilities.
But I only use such Aristotelian expressions as a necessary shorthand: In reality I'm trying to use informal Bayesian reasoning of conditional probabilities, where new evidence leads you to update the assigned probabilities.
Let's say that "V" stands for "my reasoning is valid". Let's say that "Z" stands for "my positions about the Zimmerman case are correct".
By Bayes' theorem: P(Z|V)/P(Z) = P(V|Z)/P(V)
So conditional probabilities mean that if P(Z|V) > P(Z) (if a valid reasoning makes it more likely for the position to be correct) it also stands that P(V|Z) > P(V) (a correct conclusion makes it more likely that the reasoning is valid)
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
The above btw is why "absence of evidence" is indeed "evidence of absence" -- but "absence of proof" isn't "proof of absence".
The latter is Aristotelian and is about 'proof', the former is probabilistic and is about 'evidence' -- the two work slightly different, because proof means something that leads you to 100% certainty, while evidence just means something that cause you adjust your certainty upwards (without needing to reach 100%).
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:Because that's the crux of what's at issue here: your "logical evidence" is anything but; it's direly illogical
In the end the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If my reasoning consistently leads me to the right conclusions, it is proper reasoning. If it leads me to wrong conclusions, it is flawed.
I have reasoned that the sun is a sentient mass that thinks it is a giant ball of butterscotch pudding. I predict conclusively that it will rise tomorrow morning and I will continue to analyze its mindset every morning thereafter with similar predicted output. That, powered by its desire to escape death at the hands of hungry terrestrial children, or whatever else I predict it is thinking that day, it shall rise, run out of power in the evening and descend to its closest approximation of a hiding place. If this reasoning consistently leads me to the right conclusions (i.e., if the sun rises tomorrow morning ... and is continued to be proven by the sun rising every morning thereafter) then according to you, this reasoning is proper reasoning, and is not flawed.
Furthermore, I have reasoned that you murdered a young girl in 1990, much like a certain TV host, and that your guilt over this senseless murder drives you to post in this forum and that your posting is, in fact, a byproduct of that guilt. Let's see where this additionally proper chain of reasoning goes.
quote:But what part of your reasoning process have you revised when you found out *you* were wrong about Zimmerman's injuries. What was the flawed logic you had succumbed to, which you afterwards determined you should not succumb to again?
"Part of the process of doing this while not being AWARE of it is to, I suppose, pathologically distract to talking about the bias you see in others when you have it pointed out in yourself."
See, I'm better at this predictive thing.
Anyway, looking back — flawed logic? You mean where I concluded that Zimmerman had to be guilty?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:You mean where I concluded that Zimmerman had to be guilty?
I told specifically: Where you concluded that he hadn't suffered the injuries reported (back at the same time that I concluded that he *had*).
You made that conclusion. You've admitted yourself wrong I think. What flawed reasoning lead you to that false conclusion?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:I predict conclusively that it will rise tomorrow morning
Wait, Samprimary, are you implying that my predictions in this case (e.g. that it was Zimmerman's voice crying out for help) are as certain to turn out correct as a prediction that the sun will rise tomorrow?
If so, you've gone much further than I myself have in your support of Zimmerman. :-)
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:I told specifically: Where you concluded that he hadn't suffered the injuries reported (back at the same time that I concluded that he *had*).
You understand the difference between strongly doubting self-reported levels of injury given available data, and concluding "Zimmerman definitely was uninjured," right?
My correctly reasoned (according to you) giant ball of sentient butterscotch pudding sun does; you should too.
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:I predict conclusively that it will rise tomorrow morning
Wait, Samprimary, are you implying that my predictions in this case (e.g. that it was Zimmerman's voice crying out for help) are as certain to turn out correct
No; but you can try to figure it out again if you want.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:and concluding "Zimmerman definitely was uninjured," right?
I didn't say you used the word 'definitely', I said you reached the wrong conclusion.
Let me quote you: "Zimmerman on video after the supposed assault by candy-wielding kids. Supposed serious head injuries from his minute-long assault by Trayvon reported by cops — mysteriously invisible to video cameras. Ha ha. Ha."
Here's your conclusion, word for word: "I highly doubt Zimmerman's injuries were simply invisible to a camera, I think they did not really exist to even remotely the extent claimed by the involved police department. "
You were wrong about this conclusion. This non-definite conclusion, if you want. What false reasoning led you so astray?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:You were wrong about this conclusion. This non-definite conclusion, if you want.
quote:You understand the difference between strongly doubting self-reported levels of injury given available data, and concluding "Zimmerman definitely was uninjured," right?
My correctly reasoned (according to you) giant ball of sentient butterscotch pudding sun does; you should too.
(if it helps you, you can remove 'definitely' from that and it is the exact same point, btdubs)
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
I see. So basically you can constantly be wrong and never have to correct yourself, just because you never use the words "I conclude", or "definitely" -- you just say things like "I think" or you mock people who think otherwise. And you therefore never even have to notice when you constantly believe things that are proven false. Because you just "think" them, you didn't "conclude" them.
For the same reason you'll never have to correct yourself when it's proven beyond reasonable doubt (even for you to acknowledge) that it was Zimmerman's voice. Because there's never a post where you use the word "conclude" to say it wasn't -- you just mock and attack those of us who actually state different positions clearly.
Brave, brave sir Samprimary, bravely voicing his position...
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:I see. So basically you can constantly be wrong and never have to correct yourself, just because you never use the words "I conclude", or "definitely" -- you just say things like "I think" or you mock people who think otherwise.
No. You're wrong, and blustering, as usual. The issue is that you are loudly trumpeting poor reasoning and prejudgment as good reasoning. You are making statements of 'logical fact' which are bogus, you are sticking to reasoning which is false on its face regardless of the outcome of the trial, and think yourself vindicated on the most tenuous of 'resolutions,' and you steadfastly refuse to change them.
You're mocked for having bogus positions you treat as 'logical' and sound reasoning, when they can so transparently be mocked through things like the butterscotch sun example (by the way, if you can't understand how that demonstrates the illogic of your position on 'sound reasoning,' you've done more than just fallen to pure hubris, so I'd at least like to see you TRY, so I'll just keep asking) and then you translate that as meaning "I'm just mocked for actually stating my positions clearly!"
It's troubling. You are in so far over your depth that you are embarrassing yourself and you don't understand why. And I'm not stating that to 'score a point' or sit here and sneer over you, I really seriously want to point out to you that you are doing yourself no favors.
Here's the most important bit: you notice how the lot of us are continually harping on the bit where you said this:
quote:If before the shooting, only Zimmerman suffered injuries, then we already know who was the assailant, and who wans't -- which is my exact point, that we know who the assailant was.
Here is the
*ABSOLUTE MOST IMPORTANT PART*
of this argument: WHAT do you think people's objection to this logic is? Based on anything you have picked up from the continual retorts you have gotten to this statement, WHAT do you think our point is? WHAT do you think we think is wrong with it? I am straightforwardly asking you if you even understand our objection to this 'logic.' Can you demonstrate? Will you try? Or will you shift away again (you're up to five times now, which makes this back-and-forth pretty wibbly).
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:The issue is that you
No, you expressed that wrong conclusion before I participated in the thread, so the issue about you reaching a wrong conclusion and then refusing to examine *why* you came to such a wrong conclusion can't be me. I wasn't in this thread yet when you expressed that wrong conclusion.
That was all you.
The rest is just rambling *yet again* about how wrong I am -- except that your idea of 'wrongness' doesn't have anything to do with accuracy of predictive power, so it's not my idea of wrongness it seems.
If I'm so wrong about my logic, you'll be able to tell me so when my predictions are proven wrong. Instead you spent a lot of time, trying to explain away in advance the eventual *correctness* of my predictions.
This implies to me (if we're now psychoanalyzing each other, it seems) that deep down you really recognize that I'll turn out correct in my predictions, and therefore try to deny any significance to such accuracy. You wouldn't bother otherwise.
quote:I am straightforwardly asking you if you even understand our objection to this 'logic.'
"Our" objection? Are you a hive mind in there? I'm sure that *some people* object, because they think it overconfident prediction based on the evidence at hand. *Some* would object, because they felt I shouldn't use the word "we know", as if I speak for them as well. *Some* would object, because they don't realize that I informally use "know" to mean extremely high levels of certainty (e.g. 98%), not necessarily 100% guarantee of anything (which as I've repeatedly said can't be assigned to *any* event in the real world).
[ May 29, 2012, 06:12 PM: Message edited by: Aris Katsaris ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Just to clarify: am I understanding you correctly, that reasonable people ought to think young black men wearing clothing that says 'No Limits N@$ga!' as more likely to be violent towards white people than someone who didn't? Does this apply as a comparison only of other young black men not wearing such clothing, or to any young men in any clothing, or to men period, or to humans period
To be perfectly up front here, I think that if you *do* actually believe such clothing ought to be considered a danger signal, you're so far out of touch as to be completely unaware of your ignorance. Which would be fine, there's no obligation for anyone to be current on the slang of cultural groups not their own...except when they use them as tools for analysis and then claim that as accurate.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:This implies to me (if we're now psychoanalyzing each other, it seems) that deep down you really recognize that I'll turn out correct in my predictions, and therefore try to deny any significance to such accuracy. You wouldn't bother otherwise.
Wow, rabbit really was right about the dunning-kreuger effect, wasn't she. I assume you think you are pretty good at psychoanalysis? Because this is pretty ... uh, profoundly wrong. Haha.
quote:"Our" objection? Are you a hive mind in there? I'm sure that *some people* object, because they think it overconfident prediction based on the evidence at hand.
Yes, because what you claimed as something that gave you certainty of Zimmerman's evidence is based on poor reasoning, and actually does no such thing. That's what I'm asking you if you can understand. I'll wait on that.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Wow, rabbit really was right about the dunning-kreuger effect, wasn't she.
Please note that I predicted this outcome 4 days ago.
All hail The Rabbit!!! The proof is in the pudding after all.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:"am I understanding you correctly, that reasonable people ought to think young black men wearing clothing that says 'No Limits N@$ga!' as more likely to be violent towards white people than someone who didn't?
Oh, I think it's a bit more generic than that: I'd guess that anyone who self-identifies in an account (that's a bit more self-revealing as it's a bit more permanent than clothing) with his underprivileged group's "reclaimed" slur, is more likely to be hostile towards a member of the privileged group. A woman labelling herself 'c*nt' would probably be more likely to be hostile towards men, some gay guy labelling himself 'f*g' would probably be more likely to be hostile towards heterosexuals.
That's not the kind of label you attach to yourself to make yourself converse and coexist comfortably with privileged-group members.
Such hostility doesn't need to become aggression of course. That's why I called it just "minor" evidence.
And it would of course be even better evidence to the contrary if Martin is known to have had friends of different races. I honestly don't know about that - anyone knows?
[ May 29, 2012, 07:36 PM: Message edited by: Aris Katsaris ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Oh, I think it's a bit more generic than that: I'd guess that anyone who self-identifies in an account (that's a bit more self-revealing as it's a bit more permanent than clothing) with his underprivileged group's "reclaimed" slur, is more likely to be hostile towards a member of the privileged group. A woman labelling herself 'c*nt' would probably be more likely to be hostile towards men, some gay guy labelling himself 'f*g' would probably be more likely to be hostile towards heterosexuals.
This set of reasoning is so vague and general, and uses comparison between such radically different cultures and terms, as to be almost meaningless. You can't possibly measure this on an individual level within any sort of margin of error. It's another wild-ass guess.
If you had said, "This use of the term is a reason to look for other signs of higher likelihood of racially motivated violence," that would be one thing. Instead you just plug it right on into your never-actually-stated set of equations (and how could it be?) and insist your reasoning be considered credible.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:But all the slight evidence seems to pile up. And frankly that's the fundamental difference in our methodologies. All the sum of slight evidence, which individually you can dismiss with a contemptuous wave, but it seems to pile up... in mostly the same direction.
Now if only this analysis went both ways. Carrying a gun to grocery shop without a reason to feel one needs it, many (even dozens) of unnecessary 911 calls, a restraining order, dropped resisting arrest charges, the (un)likelihood he would've turned his back on Martin if Martin was as he would need to be for Zimmerman's account to be accurate, so on and so forth. These things, to me, individually tick towards a man who is confrontational, shows poor judgment, is overzealous in his 'duty', and when we're comparing just the two people involved, it adds up to quite a higher degree of likelihood of starting both a verbal confrontation in this scenario and starting an initially mild physical one.
As has been said at great length, your claims notwithstanding, it may very well be that there are other factors that come to light that tip this balance in Zimmerman's favor, or even that nothing else comes out and yet in spite of the probabilities, this time it was the less likely guy who turned things physical.
Your defense is basically that the witnesses (so far, and only in some ways) support Zimmerman. You even acknowledge that stories have changed, but expect to be taken seriously when you say in effect, "Well sure, but it's unlikely they would've changed their stories *much."
You're probably right, though. The reason people are disagreeing with you is a secret pride in our predictive ability (secret, because nobody except you has prided themselves for that skill, or with such poor stated reasons), and a secret fear that this pride will prove unwarranted. That seems actually to be much more applicable to your thoughts on prediction, though.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:You even acknowledge that stories have changed, but expect to be taken seriously when you say in effect, "Well sure, but it's unlikely they would've changed their stories *much."
What? This doesn't make sense. And it's certainly nothing I've ever claimed.
From the witnesses that Sentinel claimed to have "changed" their stories, we know which ones were major changes (e.g. the guys who on the 911 call seemed to not have seen anything, and then later claimed to the media to have seen the whole shooting ), and which ones were minor changes (e.g. the woman who initially said wasn't sure who was on top, later said that it must have been Zimmerman on top because it was the *bigger* person on top -- of course we know the larger person was Trayvon Martin, but the media kept showing his picture as a 12-year kid, so the woman afterwards assumed that the larger person was Zimmerman)
You can judge the approximate value of those changes yourself. Or perhaps you can't.
And there of course remain those witnesses who *didn't* change their stories.
quote:You're probably right, though. The reason people are disagreeing with you is
I don't think I have stated *why* I think people are disagreeing with me, and I'll ask you not to go out of your way to misrepresent my positions twice in the space of a single post, or even worse misrepresent me as misrepresenting others.
quote:because nobody except you has prided themselves for that skill
I know that. You would be tons better if you at least acknowledged predictive capacity as a virtue. Nobody else here seems to think it's even of importance, to have your theorizing and ideas be evaluated and checked by actual reality.
Nobody here has even granted that *if* I'm proven correct, they will update upwards the credibility they assign to my reasoning. Several people have gone out of the way to imply the opposite, that they'll still be mocking and paying no attention.
[ May 30, 2012, 05:53 AM: Message edited by: Aris Katsaris ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:I don't think I have stated *why* I think people are disagreeing with me,
quote:This implies to me (if we're now psychoanalyzing each other, it seems) that deep down you really recognize that I'll turn out correct in my predictions, and therefore try to deny any significance to such accuracy.
hmm
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Samprimary, are you really that bad at reading comprehension, or are you just pretending?
The first sentence is about people disagreeing with my positions/predictions/reasoning. The other sentence is about people spending time denying the significance of correct (hypothetically) predictions.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:
quote:In the end the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If my reasoning consistently leads me to the right conclusions, it is proper reasoning. If it leads me to wrong conclusions, it is flawed.
You confuse propositions with reasoning methods, Orincoro. The page you linked to illustrates the fallacy of 'Affirming the consequent' exactly by showing how the method of 'Affirming the consequent' leads you to reach false conclusions.
If "Affirming the consequent" led to *right* conclusions, it wouldn't be a fallacy.
I can't even unravel the irony of affirming the consequent when it comes to committing that *same* formal fallacy. You are affirming the consequent in claiming that affirming the consequent is valid reasoning.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:"You are affirming the consequent in claiming in claiming that affirming the consequent is valid reasoning."
Orincoro, you seem to not recognize certain English grammatical constructions: This sentence for example:
quote:"If "Affirming the consequent" led to *right* conclusions, it wouldn't be a fallacy. "
actually means that I claim 'Affirming the consequent' to *be* a fallacy in reality -- I was simply talking about a counterfactual world in which it led to right conclusions. That's what the "If..., it wouldn't" means.
You somehow misunderstood this to mean that I claimed it valid reasoning. No, I was claiming it a fallacy.
We have enough real disagreements without having to deal with grammatical misunderstandings as well.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: Samprimary, are you really that bad at reading comprehension, or are you just pretending?
quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade: There needs to be less discussion about who is full of crap, lying, playing dumb, etc. If it doesn't stop, individuals are going to start being called out.
hmm
Really though, I'm not bad at reading comprehension. Second sentence is you doing exactly what you describe yourself as not doing in the first.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Really, Samprimary? Fine, let's play that game, and quote all the bits in just page 15, where you're discussing/hypothesizing/speculating about my own person and motivations, or attempt to provoke me by getting personal, JUST ON PAGE 15.
quote:Furthermore, I have reasoned that you murdered a young girl in 1990, much like a certain TV host, and that your guilt over this senseless murder drives you to post in this forum and that your posting is, in fact, a byproduct of that guilt
quote:You're wrong, and blustering, as usual
quote:It's troubling. You are in so far over your depth that you are embarrassing yourself and you don't understand why. And I'm not stating that to 'score a point' or sit here and sneer over you, I really seriously want to point out to you that you are doing yourself no favors.
quote:Wow, rabbit really was right about the dunning-kreuger effect, wasn't she. I assume you think you are pretty good at psychoanalysis? Because this is pretty ... uh, profoundly wrong. Haha.
Since you seem to be asking for moderator intervention now, I'm now asking the same in regards to all the above comments.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
You guys should probably move this to the "jerk/drama" thread.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Really, Samprimary? Fine, let's play that game, and quote all the bits in just page 15, where you're discussing/hypothesizing/speculating about my own person and motivations, ...
You were stating why you think I was disagreeing with you. That's it. That's all there is to it. You can act like this in response to it all you want.
The moderator comment, you will note, was precipitated by the repeated tendency to say people were acting dumb or pretending. Since you went right back to that, I thought it would be pertinent to mention that there's already a prodding response to that. Hmm. If at any time there is a prodding response to what I am doing in the future, I'm sure you can reference that again too.
Anyway, hope that behind the outrage and consternation, you can see that my point stands.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
My request for moderation still stands. If the moderator decides that what I said is a no-no, but everything I quoted *you* saying are fine, then fine.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: You guys should probably move this to the "jerk/drama" thread.
No kidding!
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:My request for moderation still stands.
Great! Now, we can recycle back to:
quote:what you claimed as something that gave you certainty of Zimmerman's evidence is based on poor reasoning, and actually does no such thing. That's what I'm asking you if you can understand. I'll wait on that.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Are you asking for understanding or for agreement?
I've already stated both my understanding of what you're saying, and my disagreement to it.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Okay, so let's c/p again:
quote:If before the shooting, only Zimmerman suffered injuries, then we already know who was the assailant, and who wans't -- which is my exact point, that we know who the assailant was.
basically, you're saying that if Zimmerman was the only one to suffer injuries before the shooting, we KNOW that Trayvon was the assailant. It's completely false, of course. It provides no such guarantee. I'm asking if you understand why this, as written, is poor reasoning of assurance for Zimmerman's innocence.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
So, you're gonna just spam the board now? Once again: I understand what you're saying and I disagree with it.
If you ask the same question again, I'll report you for spamming.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
HOW are you disagreeing with it. Under what conceptualization of reality are you saying that the presence of injuries on Zimmerman but not on Martin, prior to gunshot wound, prove Zimmerman's innocence in 100% of situations, even when it's easy to come up with conceptual situations in which Zimmerman has acted criminally yet has 100% of the evident physical injury?
Also, I get that you're now big on reporting me. Go ahead, just report me for whatever you want. ESPECIALLY report me for continuing to try to get answers out of you about pertinent points. I get that you want to. It is totally understood.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:"HOW are you disagreeing with it."
For starters, I disagree that your rephrasing and interpretation of it is fair. I disagree that I was using the word "know" to mean "100%" (In fact I've repeatedly clarified, in several places in this thread, that I wasn't using it to mean 100%").
quote:"ESPECIALLY report me for continuing to try to get answers out of you about pertinent points."
Getting answers out of me has never been difficult, as long as you *actually* ask what you want to get an answer to, not express it in terms of "Do you understand why you're so very stupid?"
In fact, it's getting me to shut up with my answers that is more difficult.
Compare and contrast the continuing refusal of anyone here to e.g. assign their actual level of certainty as to it being Martin's voice that was shouting for help. Are they 90% certain? 80% certain? 70% certain?
Or compare and contrast that nobody here responded when I asked a question about which testimony they would choose as more likely to be sincere if they had to bet their lives on it.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I have a suggestion for Aris and all the people (myself included) who have been disagreeing with him.
Give it up!!!
It was evident at least five days ago that this was a pointless discussion. Either Aris is too incompetent to recognizing sound reason or the rest of us are. No amount of elaborating is likely to fix that underlying problem.
I understand the temptation to keep trying. I keep giving into it myself, but it really is an exercise in futility. Unless you are getting some sort of perverse pleasure in goading your opponents into making claims that are more and more ridiculous, just give it up. Find something else to talk about.
[ May 30, 2012, 02:50 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:For starters, I disagree that your rephrasing and interpretation of it is fair. I disagree that I was using the word "know" to mean "100%" (In fact I've repeatedly clarified, in several places in this thread, that I wasn't using it to mean 100%").
So when you say "we know X" you are really more saying "I am guessing X"
Hmm. Good to know, I guess. Or know.
Rabbit:
And even if everyone else decides it's best not to engage him, does that really work if he remains in the thread constantly asserting that other people's rationales are flawed?
I suppose I could be part of a concerted effort among most parties to NOT engage him, and just leave it at "you are wrong." I mean, if Squicky's attempts to straightforwardly work him through his errors in understanding certainties was going to do no good, it might be the only course of action.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:So when you say "we know X" you are really more saying "I am guessing X"
No. I wouldn't use the word 'guess' to refer to the same ranges of probability that I'd use the word 'know' for.
Nor would most people. I think few people would use the word 'guess' for something they're e.g. 99% sure of.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:And even if everyone else decides it's best not to engage him, does that really work if he remains in the thread constantly asserting that other people's rationales are flawed?
I'm not sure. What do you see as the worst likely consequences of allowing Aris to continue to making fallacious assertions in this thread, uncontested? What is the probability that continuing to contest Aris' claims will reduce the severity of those consequences?
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Samp: I agree with Rabbit that the best course of action is to disengage. This thread has utterly derailed into the argument room (although not as funny by far) and the more you engage him, the more fuel he has to inflame.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I'm not sure. What do you see as the worst likely consequences of allowing Aris to continue to making fallacious assertions in this thread, uncontested?
I dunno, it just doesn't work usually. It would be nice if there were some way to ensure that it would be feasible, but this seldom happens. It's like why "Do not feed the trolls!" is pretty much useless advice, overall, because only rarely can you get EVERYONE to follow it, and there's no ignore feature.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Does everyone have to stop feeding the trolls for it to be an improvement?
I honestly understand the dilemma. Even since I've asked people to just drop it, I keep being tempted to post just one more response to Aris. It will certainly be easier for me to resist if other people do as well.
Posted by Misha McBride (Member # 6578) on :
It really sucks, nothing you say is going to make him shut up and his stone headed arguments have managed to suck every bit of readability out of this thread. I've only been scanning it for the last few pages hoping it will get un-derailed but looks like this one's pretty much ruined at this point.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
I'm the one who was willing to say "Fine, I won't argue anymore, let's see how it goes, and it gets decided from that."
I'm willing to say it again.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Yeah, when I was a little kid, I used to try to bargain for things that I didn't deserve and hadn't earned. And then I grew up and realized that it doesn't work.
You know how little kids make up rules and set conditions on things that favor an outcome they desire, because they don't really have a concept of the agency of other people, and think reality can be bent to accomodate their needs? Yeah, that's what this reminds me of. Not really "reminds," I should say.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:"You know how little kids make up rules and set conditions on things that favor an outcome they desire"
In which case the "rules" and "conditions" in question are "I'll be proven right in my predictions, and you'll be proven wrong in yours"?
People can judge by themselves whether that's a fair test or not, or if I'm cheating in some manner.
Tempted to report for unwarranted insult.
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
See, I was so right.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Well it seems tomorrow (today, actually) there will be a hearing on whether or not to make public quite a lot of the evidence thus far gathered, from personal histories, an autopsy report, text messages, audio of witness statements, and many other things.
It's interesting. On the one hand, I would be very interested to learn all of those things, but I can also see how they could really impede a fair trial if made public. Also while I'm usually a big fan of daylight in this sort of thing, I'm also smirking in amused disgust at the bevy of media companies (15, I think) that are going through the courts to try and get this stuff made public. While there are certainly elements there that have good, unselfish reasons for wanting this stuff made public...well, I have basically zero trust that the people who will be broadcasting breathless wide-eyed news bulletins and talk shows are moving for this for anything other than a good strong whiff of ratings. In the balance of things, I hope they do keep things sealed, maybe if it's possible until shortly before the trial.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Yeah...there has been so much disinformation so far I'd say I am in favor of revealing it, but I can see how it might cause trouble.
I also wonder even if the new evidence DOES (not that I am "predicting" it will) show GZ had some cause for the shooting that it will matter. The people who think he should be hung out to dry already are the very ones who spread the disinformation in the first place, and I doubt any of them will change their mind regardless of what might be revealed.
Tough call to make, for sure.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
Tempted to report for unwarranted insult.
Heh. That would fit nicely with your pattern. As does the toothless threat. Go and tell mom, I'll wait.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Since you asked it, done.
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
The hostility is back and I'd hate to lock a thread that people have an interest in discussing in. For now I'm asking Orincoro, and Samprimary to not address Aris Katsaris at this time, and vice versa. You may continue to participate in the thread otherwise.
[ June 01, 2012, 03:07 PM: Message edited by: JanitorBlade ]
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
I love you mom. Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Sexy Aris = Aros?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Am I just collateral damage in order to try to save the thread? I wasn't being hostile enough to warrant that. (Not that it changes things otherwise, I'd stopped responding anyway).
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
Samprimary: I'll try to get into specifics later.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Well, you better hurry. This is a perfectly purposeless opportunity for pointless outrage, and I demand answers for your fascist moderation overreach.
*throws a chair to fill time*
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Sam, I've been skipping over a lot of posts so I'm not asking this rhetorically, it's a real question: Was Aris hostile enough to you to warrant JB asking him not to keep talking to you?
If so, making the gag order reciprocal seems like the best idea, don't you think?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Haha, i doubt it? since threads are not 'quality' moderated here (i.e., 'shut up you are making this thread suck') I wouldn't have called for any moderation here. Especially not if what was going on between aris and rakeesh apparently didn't count for the threshold.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Okay then, that's fair. As I said, I've been avoiding reading most of what's been happening the last couple pages.
I'm biased, of course, but it strikes me that when Destineer and I derailed this thread with gun rights and increasingly esoteric epistemology, I think it was less distracting and, well, derailing, than this conversation that has actually been on topic. Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
it's because something doesn't have to be off topic to be so exasperating and bizarre. It had already even been going on for a long long time before I finally just felt like I had to join the fray.
Sorry everyone I helped ruin your thread. Wait. My thread?? You jerks ruined my thread.
*throws another chair*
Mod abuse, etc
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
"Angry rants" with only one item on them and the word "etc" loose 95% of their effectiveness by my estimation.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
I actually read about that and said "Yeah, that .. sounds about right" — it's hardly the weirdest not-doing-yourself-any-favors activity that has come from him.
Zimmerman has not done any of his attorneys any favors. Even with details coming out that would have otherwise been potent ways to exonerate Zimmerman, he has massively ****ed up in how he's approached this, both before and after the shooting, and the police themselves didn't help matters much at the scene of the crime — for instance, leaving open the potential for the prosecution to say that there is little proof that the injuries reported by Zimmerman could not have been self-inflicted after the shooting in order to create physical evidence of a confrontation. It's gonna be a big mess for a while.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
Simple. The bond issue has nothing to do with the shooting of Martin. And before we can be sure Zimmerman lied during the bond hearing, it will be necessary to wait until a new bond hearing is held to determine the motives of his decisions, or, as the CNN story states, "a new bond hearing to revisit Zimmerman's status and allow the defense to 'explain why what happened seems to have happened.'" It's possible he misunderstood or was misled by his counsel. In any case, he was, and has been since the story went national, under extreme duress, having been terrorized emotionally and received threats against his life. There were lynch mobs in the street and the press was pretty much wholly against him. It must be taxing to make critical decisions in an environment of such hostility.
This development, like the greater story, is so lacking in details that any rational, level-headed mind would await more information before making any judgments.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Oh, bull. There are plenty of judgments that can be rationally come to with what is prevalent about the case so far. They just probably don't involve whether, conclusively, Zimmerman should be or could be successfully prosecuted for murder 2 or manslaughter, or if he is innocent.
You can still render a whole host of judgments about this case, especially involving the legal idiocy of Stand Your Ground as written, and the idiocy of the police department in question — the one potentially advantageous part of this whole fiasco being that Stand Your Ground will likely not at all survive if Zimmerman walks.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
"They just probably don't involve whether, conclusively, Zimmerman should be or could be successfully prosecuted for murder 2 or manslaughter, or if he is innocent."
That's what is really at issue here. It's almost certain the bond issue won't be deemed admissible evidence in court due to its lack of relevance.
And if you want to put SYG or the Sanford PD on trial, that's fine, just don't get your judgements and speculations muddled with the trial of George Zimmerman.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Well, now, if extreme duress is to be held as a mitigating factor for lying in bond hearings (if that is in fact what happened; the judge appears so far at least to think so, but time will tell), I wonder who else will be allowed to exclaim, "I was really, really stressed out!"
I'm asking because I suspect quite a lot of people involved in bond hearings, especially the accused themselves, are under stress hard to imagine by us ordinary folks not having been on trial for our lives.
Now, all that said, some generalizing, with the usual hazards involved in doing that: it is precisely the same type of people, politically speaking-those who want to be tougher on crime, support the status quo or even less gun regulation, etc.-who would be likely to sneer outright at this sort of 'defense' of 'I was in a really bad place, emotionally!' Hell, we've all heard the callous, grimly satisfied response to that sort of thing: "Then you shouldn't have been a criminal!"
And yet...we need to take into account how much stress Zimmerman is under, this time. Admittedly it's a lot. This time, though, morally it may very well be an excuse. Just an oppsie. I wonder why that is, exactly?
---------
Aris, if as is possible Zimmerman has lied, or permitted his attorney to deceive, or engaged in some shenanigans to hide money with his wife, I am positively on the edge of my seat as to whether that sort of behavior factors in to your 'predictive analysis' or if, after all, it will be chalked up to major stress.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Should be interesting. The passport issue is common, and his lawyer said it was his fault not GZ's, but the finances are another issue. Turns out that at least in one report that the money is held in trust, and that neither GZ or his lawyer have access to it directly, so this may be a tempest in a teapot.
Or not.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Aris, if as is possible Zimmerman has lied, or permitted his attorney to deceive, or engaged in some shenanigans to hide money with his wife, I am positively on the edge of my seat as to whether that sort of behavior factors in to your 'predictive analysis' or if, after all, it will be chalked up to major stress.
It certainly is Bayesian evidence in favor of Zimmerman being generally prone to deceit, and thus Bayesian evidence supportive of his lying about other parts of his testimony -- I can hardly see how it would be evidence *against* the same, after all.
That, mind you, isn't mutually contradictory to chalking it up to "major stress". Something being done for reasons doesn't automatically make it non-evidence.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
I said duress, not stress, though stress would be abundant when one encounters the threat of violence and the possibility of incarceration without due process. Bet even if we go with that, the impact of stress on judgment and decision making is well studied. It's no excuse for lying but is a defense when accused of making non-critical mistakes.
"I'm asking because I suspect quite a lot of people involved in bond hearings, especially the accused themselves, are under stress hard to imagine by us ordinary folks not having been on trial for our lives."
Which is why one might lean more heavily on one's legal counsel, who may or may not be adequately skilled in interpreting guidelines concerning bond hearings, or who may or may not be privy to every detail of the defendants life.
Maybe Zimmerman can justify his statements at the bond hearing; maybe he lied. It's not like you or I have superior precognitive abilities above those of every other armchair legal expert so it looks like we will have to wait until the legal system does its job.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:I said duress, not stress, though stress would be abundant when one encounters the threat of violence and the possibility of incarceration without due process. Bet even if we go with that, the impact of stress on judgment and decision making is well studied. It's no excuse for lying but is a defense when accused of making non-critical mistakes.
Oh, I absolutely agree. It's just that this sort of empathetic thinking isn't, let's just say universally[ applied when looking at the character of an accused criminal.
To take it a step further, I really have no idea yet which is more likely-that nothing wrong was done, that something sneaky but not illegal was done, that the wife did something clever, that Zimmerman outright lied or misled, or that the lawyer made a negligent mistake.
What I'm mostly trying to draw attention to is, "My client is under enormous strain!" is not even remotely an acceptable excuse even for the appearance of wrongdoing for quite a lot of people.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Haha, i doubt it? since threads are not 'quality' moderated here (i.e., 'shut up you are making this thread suck') I wouldn't have called for any moderation here. Especially not if what was going on between aris and rakeesh apparently didn't count for the threshold.
I don't think I can turn thread moderating into an exact science. What I can do is monitor the ebb and flow and go with what I feel is needed to steer the conversation back on track when it comes off the rails.
Yes Rakeesh, and Aris were pretty intense and angry, but sometimes I suspect an exchange will fizzle out and things will sort themselves out. If somebody whistles a post I will always read the post and the context, *always*. But again, sometimes I get the feeling the participants/person will take a step back and moderate themselves. In this case things got heated, seemed to calm down, got heated again. And I felt I needed to apply the brakes to a degree.
I wouldn't say you were doing anything specific, worthy of discipline, but when I ask a poster to stop addressing another poster, I make it reciprocal, because it wouldn't be fair for one poster to be required to sit in silence while they are addressed even in a non-prodding manner.
The thread seems to be OK at present, and so I hope I made the right call. You're always welcome to PM me with your case that I am being unfair. I take it very seriously.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: Should be interesting. The passport issue is common,
The second passport issue is anything but common. I just got off the phone talking to the US embassy about obtaining a 2nd passport because I need to travel while my UK work VISA is being processed. I was told that 2nd passports are only issued under very rare circumstances (mine being one of them) and that it must be approved by the state department. I have to provide all kinds of documents to prove my situation warrants a 2nd passport. I have absolutely no idea how Zimmerman was able to obtain one.
One news report says something about getting a replacement passport for one he lost and then finding the lost passport but that would not explain having 2 valid passports. The minute you report that your passport is lost or stolen, its cancelled. It doesn't matter if you find it, its no longer valid.
If you find a lost passport, you are supposed to return it to the state department but even if you don't, you couldn't use it. That might have worked decades ago, but these days passports always get scanned electronically so even if it hasn't been physically stamped and punched as canceled -- its not a valid passport and you'd likely be arrested if you were trying to travel with it.
quote:and his lawyer said it was his fault not GZ's
I don't see how it could possibly not be GZs fault. It is really hard to get two valid passports. It's not something you'd forget about.
quote:but the finances are another issue. Turns out that at least in one report that the money is held in trust, and that neither GZ or his lawyer have access to it directly, so this may be a tempest in a teapot.
The prosecutor claims that Zimmerman's had full access to the trust account and were able to transfer money from it to their private bank accounts at their discretion. I can see how the Zimmermans might have been mistaken about needing to report these funds, but its hard to believe their lawyer would not have known and would not have advised them correctly on the issue. If I were in that situation and was going to jail because of bad advice from my legal council, I'd be looking for new legal council immediately.
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: It's almost certain the bond issue won't be deemed admissible evidence in court due to its lack of relevance
Certainly it isn't directly relevant to the murder charge so I don't imagine it would be admissible as part of the prosecution's case, but they might be allowed to present this evidence to rebut claims made by the defense about Zimmerman's character and integrity.
George Zimmerman's testimony is the foundation of his defense. If the jury doesn't trust Zimmerman's word, his case is in serious trouble. It could seriously hurt his case if his defense has to choose to avoid making any claims about Zimmerman's character in order to exclude evidence like this.
I admit that most of my knowledge of criminal law comes from "fiction" so if someone with a legal background says otherwise, I'm happy to listen.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
In addition to the bond issues, several things have come to my attention over the last week that I think don't bode well for Zimmerman.
First, Zimmerman and his defense team have waved the right to a speedy trial. If the evidence were as one sided as some are arguing, I'd expect the defense to be pushing for an immediate trial. If the prosecution's case is really that weak, why give them any more time strengthen it?
Second, Both the prosecution and the defense are pushing to have a lot of the evidence sealed. Both sides want Zimmerman's testimony and the detailed autopsy reports sealed. The prosecution has said inconsistency between his testimony and the physical data will play a crucial role in the case. They also expressed concerns about racial violence if the data is released. The defense has indicated they may try to have portions of the evidence ruled inadmissible and echoed the prosecution sentiments about possible racial violence.
Neither of those things are direct evidence either for or against Zimmerman, but they are signs that his case is not nearly as stronger as his backers seem to think.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:First, Zimmerman and his defense team have waved the right to a speedy trial. If the evidence were as one sided as some are arguing, I'd expect the defense to be pushing for an immediate trial. If the prosecution's case is really that weak, why give them any more time strengthen it?
This reasoning isn't clear to me. It seems to me judgments depend on basically two elements: the weight of the evidence, and the weight of public sentiment.
And in this case, public sentiment was pretty darn crucial in reopening a case regarding which the police had originally determined didn't have enough evidence for Zimmerman to be prosecuted.
Right now, after an original uproar over a grown man shooting what in the released photos looked like an angelic 12-year old, the uproar has cooled down significantly, and is probably going to cool down some more as time passes.
Which means that a delay tactic is to the defense's benefit, as sentiments cool down and more relative weight is given to the evidence.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: And in this case, public sentiment was pretty darn crucial in reopening a case regarding which the police had originally determined didn't have enough evidence for Zimmerman to be prosecuted.
Point of fact only: The district attorney, states attorney or U.S. attorney request indictments, not the police. And in the case of such a serious felony, as laid out in the 5th amendment, the indictment must be handed down by a grand jury. The police do not make these determinations, nor do they make the decision to prosecute (tv depictions notwithstanding), they make arrests and collect evidence.
So, whatever your argument regarding the reasons for or against prosecution, you'd be talking about the D.A. and not the police in that case.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: And in this case, public sentiment was pretty darn crucial in reopening a case regarding which the police had originally determined didn't have enough evidence for Zimmerman to be prosecuted.
Right now, after an original uproar over a grown man shooting what in the released photos looked like an angelic 12-year old, the uproar has cooled down significantly, and is probably going to cool down some more as time passes.
Well, the uproar was aimed at getting the case reopened. That's been accomplished, so it isn't surprising that the uproar is dying down.
A subset of those people are probably interested in the broader questions around Stand Your Ground, particularly Florida's implementation, so there's still a little buzz, but not all that much.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Right. It was uproar largely over the apparent neglect, incompetence, and probable bagging of a whole police department in this case. Since it has since resulted in ~an actual trial~ and, upon observation, multiple separate federal investigations being launched into the questionable activities of this police department, there you go.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Well, the uproar was aimed at getting the case reopened.
The uproar was largely caused by several bits of misrepresentation (intentional or otherwise) -- showing Trayvon's picture as a 12 year old, media intentionally editing the audio so that Zimmerman looked to be focusing on the race of the person he was following, people claiming that Zimmerman was uninjured (though even the initial video showed injuries, which were never mysteriously invisible at all).
Even the claim that Zimmerman was "self-appointed" ended up being false.
We can look back at the claims of the initial post of this very thread as evidence to how the uproar was caused.
So, yeah, likely part of the reason that the uproar has subsided is because *some* of the people uproaring have achieved their aim (though other people's aim, e.g. Spike Lee's or the New Panthers, had ofcourse been Zimmerman's brutal death, and that hasn't been achieved yet).
But I'm guessing that significant part of the subsiding is that lots of people are starting to realize they were plainly deceived and fooled into their uproar. Unfortunately the backlash isn't enough yet that people like the deliberately lying media in question can be brought to charges of libel (as they ought have been), or Spike Lee be brought to criminal charges (as he ought have been)
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
The media bit about him making a particular racial statement didn't happen until well into the coverage, which only happened because of the uproar. Doesn't factor in as you claim it does.
The self-appointed bit is tricky. If you think he actually represented to his neighbors how he would 'patrol', all well and good, but he was approved of by them to the NW...which isn't supposed to patrol the way he does.
The photo certainly did its work, not that that kind of thing is uncommon in sensational killings-hardly unique here.
Of course you forget to mention the biggest factor that led to outrage: kid with skittles and tea is shot to death by neighborhood watchman while traveling in his own area. If you think that wouldn't lead to outrage, you're just kidding yourself, which would be surprising;)
There are a few possibilities. Perhaps the uproar is dying down because the public, possessing of your (self) vaunted predictive skills have realized it's a bogus case. Perhaps it's the inevitable decrease of public interest in any current events, ever. Or most likely, it's that combined with a couple of news cycles going Zimmerman's way.
To attribute it to widespread public realization that the only rational conclusion is that Zimmerman is most likely innocent is just showcasing your own unacknowledged bias once again.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:To attribute it to widespread public realization that the only rational conclusion is that Zimmerman is most likely innocent is just showcasing your own unacknowledged bias once again.
Zimmerman should be found guilty of murder: 33% in late March, 30% in early April, 24% in May
Zimmerman acted in self-defense: 15% in March, 24% in April, 40% in May
"Interestingly, 47% of black adults still feel Zimmerman should be found guilty of murdering the black teenager, compared to 55% in March. Now nearly as many blacks (40%) think Zimmerman acted in self-defense. Whites and adults of other races tend to believe the shooter acted in self-defense, but there is a much higher level of uncertainty among both groups than there is among blacks."
"Only 20% of all adults now think Zimmerman will be found guilty of murder, down 13 points from 33% in April just after he was officially charged. Thirty-nine percent (39%) believe the legal system will determine that he acted in self-defense, up from 25% last month. Forty-one percent (41%), however, still are not sure."
So, in short: Whatever, Rakeesh. The public's opinion about Zimmerman's guilt innocence is indeed actually heading into the direction I'm saying it's heading.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:Well, the uproar was aimed at getting the case reopened.
The uproar was largely caused by several bits of misrepresentation ...
Their rallying cry was "arrest Zimmerman." I'm sure you heard it in the coverage of the protests. Regardless of whether people were misled or facts were misrepresented, the goal was to bring about the trial that is currently happening.
Re: the polls, I want to point out that it's possible to believe Zimmerman will be found not guilty under SYG and still believe Florida's SYG statute is terrible law that shouldn't be on the books.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Also re: the polls
Rasmussen. Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
I was leaving that alone, since for all I know they're way better at non-election polling.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Their methodology results in even wonkier results in terms of social issues, because they trend towards heavily weighted questioning (which often changes alongside the 'attitudes' they are monitoring) — and their polling system is dirt cheap so they are subject to irreconcilable poll structure bias results.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: And in this case, public sentiment was pretty darn crucial in reopening a case regarding which the police had originally determined didn't have enough evidence for Zimmerman to be prosecuted.
Point of fact only: The district attorney, states attorney or U.S. attorney request indictments, not the police. And in the case of such a serious felony, as laid out in the 5th amendment, the indictment must be handed down by a grand jury. The police do not make these determinations, nor do they make the decision to prosecute (tv depictions notwithstanding), they make arrests and collect evidence.
So, whatever your argument regarding the reasons for or against prosecution, you'd be talking about the D.A. and not the police in that case.
Also, the police recommended from the first night that GZ be arrested, and several pieces of evidence have been released showing that. The DA's office initially refused to arrest him, citing a lack of evidence.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: [qb] Should be interesting. The passport issue is common,
The second passport issue is anything but common. I just got off the phone talking to the US embassy about obtaining a 2nd passport because I need to travel while my UK work VISA is being processed. I was told that 2nd passports are only issued under very rare circumstances (mine being one of them) and that it must be approved by the state department. I have to provide all kinds of documents to prove my situation warrants a 2nd passport. I have absolutely no idea how Zimmerman was able to obtain one.
One news report says something about getting a replacement passport for one he lost and then finding the lost passport but that would not explain having 2 valid passports. The minute you report that your passport is lost or stolen, its cancelled. It doesn't matter if you find it, its no longer valid.
If you find a lost passport, you are supposed to return it to the state department but even if you don't, you couldn't use it. That might have worked decades ago, but these days passports always get scanned electronically so even if it hasn't been physically stamped and punched as canceled -- its not a valid passport and you'd likely be arrested if you were trying to travel with it.
He had 2 passports, but not both of them were valid. Also, he surrendered the second one to his lawyer right away, as soon as he found it/remembered it, and his lawyer stated he did so....but the lawyer didn't report it to the judge right away, which is the ONLY reason I said that the lag was not his fault.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Zimmerman and his wife's perjury was apparently pretty bad and pretty blatant. Caught red handed conspiring on it. They're both probably going to jail over that alone.
quote:Taped phone calls between the couple revealed that they had discussed the money transfers in code to hide the funds, according to the affidavit. The calls also showed that George Zimmerman instructed his wife to "pay off all the bills," including payments to American Express and Sam's Club. Nearly $50,000 was transferred to an account held by Zimmerman's sister.
They would then go on to testify at the bond hearing that they were "indigent" and had no assets. When asked about the website, she testified she had 'no knowledge of how much money had been collected.'
Well, good job on their end helping us address the personal credibility issue prior to trial, yanno.
Especially considering he failed to disclose having taken out the second passport. He gets labeled a flight risk and spends his time in a pretty small jail cell all the way up to the trial.
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
It really sucks that this is going to be about their credibility. He might be entirely honest about what happened with Martin but now that they've lied about the money that was heaped on them, we can't really believe anything they say. Only two people will ever know the truth of what actually happened.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
In light of this, I know who I am more inclined to believe is at fault re: passport 'misunderstandings'. The guy kind of shrieks 'flight risk' now, actually.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
As I said....not bright. ::shrugs::
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: As I said....not bright. ::shrugs::
It's more than just not being bright, which we already knew from his ditched attorneys/sean hannity/etc events. Being caught red-handed doing something like this is more of a matter of just him being dumb, it's about his credibility as a person, about dishonesty.
The special bonus is that this is the latest in a chain of events showing that he makes markedly irrational decisions under duress, which some have offered as a defense of his post-arrest behavior without really understanding the connotations of such a statement in relation to the event that put him here in the first place.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
It doesn't prove anything regarding the death of Martin. But I do think you're right: it calls his honesty into question, and his decision-making ability under stress-and this ain't even the fast-acting short-term stress either. This is that should-know-you'll-get-caught (from what I've read, this is the sort of money hiding scheme they might've learned from half an episode of Law and Order) expert-available kind of stress.
I wonder if this will have any impact on whether Zimmerman ever takes the stand?
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
That would depend on a ruling about whether these shenanigans are admissible. An argument can be made for it going to character, although even without this, his testimony would also introduce the dozens of 9/11 calls and his history with the police as well. He cannot really help himself by testifying.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I don't think he can make a claim of self-defense unless he takes the stand.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
No, I suppose you have a good point. The question would be then what past history the judge is likely to allow into evidence on cross-examination. It seems probable that the calls will be admitted, but the financial issues seem likely to fall outside the purview of the case as charged. I would also bet his previous arrests will be ruled out, As he wasn't convicted. I don't know that that would stop the ex from testifying as to character, but it seems as if it likely would do- its a claim unsubstantiated by any conviction.
Still, if he testifies, it's always possible that these items could get in, one way or another. Personally, I am guessing that Zimmerman may plead a lesser charge before this case goes through a trial. It will depend on the strength of his defense, and these motions I've mentioned, and of course upon whether or not he really did initiate this encounter with violence or not. If he didn't, that would make his pleading less likely, but if there is a shadow of guilt in him for what has happened, he may be more likely to plead to, say, aggravated manslaughter or manslaughter. Given the right sentencing requests, that could turn it to be a *lot* more attractive for everyone involved than felony murder. But all that is purely speculation.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:The question would be then what past history the judge is likely to allow into evidence on cross-examination.
It's apparently pretty likely; it'll be added to his call history and end up being a pretty ... brutal character assessment of zimmerman during the trial.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I just did some searching on the net and it seems you do not have to testify in florida court in order to claim self defense. You do, however, have to provide clear and convincing evidence that you acted in self defense. Considering that there are no eye witnesses to how the fight started, I imagine it would be fairly difficult for the defense to build a convincing argument of self defense without having Zimmerman testify or at least arguing that Zimmerman was a man of high moral character.
The charge of 2nd degree murder in florida requires that the prosecution prove the defendant acted with a "depraved mind". I'm not sure exactly what is meant by a "depraved mind" s but I suspect that the prosecution will argue that "vigilantism" qualifies. The case hinges on the theory that Zimmerman acted out of vigilantism rather than out of reasonable concern for his safety and I think that will give the prosecution a lot of lead way to present evidence that Zimmerman had demonstrated disrespect for the legal system, aggressive behavior, obsession with crime and racism even if Zimmerman does not testify. That evidence is directly relevant to whether he acted with a "depraved mind" (presuming of course that vigilantism is a form of depravity). It will be interesting to see how the judge views it.
The subtext coming out of the defense and prosecution requests to seal Zimmerman's statements to the police suggest that Zimmerman has already made sworn statements that undermine his own case. I suspect the defense will put a great deal of effort into suppressing those statements. It's also interesting that evidence that the victim had a history of aggressive behavior is also often admissible as evidence of self defense. That could give the defense more than usual lead way to present evidence about Martin's character. Although, generally speaking this should not be considered relevant unless Zimmerman knew Martin's history at the time of the killing.
I suspect the outcome of the case will depend heavily on what the judge decides to admit as evidence. There is plenty of reason to believe that the police royally screwed up in the early part of the investigation. If Zimmerman is found not guilty because evidence against him is deemed inadmissible because of police incompetence or bigotry, I think there is a good chance that feds could press charges under civil rights law.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Although, generally speaking this should not be considered relevant unless Zimmerman knew Martin's history at the time of the killing.
Considering both sides are going to try and paint a picture of what happened, GZ's knowledge at the time of Martin's past seems like it is not the hinge of whether or not any history of violence is relevant.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
quote:Although, generally speaking this should not be considered relevant unless Zimmerman knew Martin's history at the time of the killing.
Considering both sides are going to try and paint a picture of what happened, GZ's knowledge at the time of Martin's past seems like it is not the hinge of whether or not any history of violence is relevant.
Martin's history is not evidence of how he behaved on the night he was killed. Even if he was a hardened criminal with a history of assaulting strangers at random, that would not be evidence that he assaulted GZ.
Normally, it would not be allowed as part of the defense. In the cases I've read about where evidence of the victims past was allowed, it was justified because the victim's history of violent behavior could reasonably have influenced the accused killers perceived need to defend themselves. That argument would only be valid if GZ knew Martin's history.
I can imagine exceptions to that. I can see a reasonable argument that a victim's history of say martial arts training or having inflicted serious bodily injury in previous fights was an indicator of how likely it was that GZ perceived a real threat o his life during the fight. But I think that's a stretch, particularly since we haven't heard anything of that kind about TM.
Evidence that he was expelled from school for possession of dope or that he tweeted nasty stuff, simply isn't relevant. Unless the prosecution tries to paint TM as being a squeaky clean honors student, there is just no way a judge should allow the defense to smear the victim.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Even if he was a hardened criminal with a history of assaulting strangers at random, that would not be evidence that he assaulted GZ.
I'm no law expert, so I won't claim to -know- anything specific, but this seems very counter intuitive. You may be right, often the law is counter intuitive.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I would think that the defense would be able to bring up elements of martin's history to try to paint aggressive confrontation by martin as more likely.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
It looks like I was wrong. I was assuming that the same rules that apply to sexual assault would apply. They don't, at least not at the federal level. Here is the relevant rule.
It appears that the defense has a lot more latitude on this than the prosecution but by attacking TM's character they open the door for the prosecution to counter with attacks on GZs character.
That may turn out to be irrelevant since the prosecution is already allowed to use character evidence for the variety of purposes "such as proving motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, absence of mistake, or lack of accident." I would presume this means that the prosecution can use character evidence to demonstrate GZ acted out of a "depraved mind regardless of human life".
It will be interesting to see whether the judge considers things like school suspensions and low levels of THC in TMs blood to be evidence of traits that are pertinent to the chase. While I appreciate the importance of allowing GZ to offer all relevant evidence in his defense, victims and their families should also have some rights. It seems cruel to me to allow GZ to publicly smear TM unless the claims are actually directly relevant to what happened that night. But then depriving GZ of the means to defend himself is probably worse.
I would not want to be the judge in this case.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Part of a trial is to figure out who is the victim.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
it's all relevant, technically, in helping a jury decide if trayvon was likely to have been the assailant. I don't know, it probably at least comes up for review to decide if admissable as character evidence in favor of zimmerman.
I mean, I don't PERSONALLY see why not, and I'd really like to see the defense bring up trayvon's wisps of remnant thc.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:He had 2 passports, but not both of them were valid. Also, he surrendered the second one to his lawyer right away, as soon as he found it/remembered it, and his lawyer stated he did so....but the lawyer didn't report it to the judge right away, which is the ONLY reason I said that the lag was not his fault.
I have 4 or 5 passports. All but one of them are clearly stamped as cancelled. They have holes punched through them so they could never be mistaken for a valid passport. If for some reason you have an invalid passport that isn't clearly punched as cancelled, you are in violation of the law.
The regulations on this are quite clear. If you apply for a passport to replace one that has been lost or stolen and later recover the lost passport, you are supposed to return it to the state department to be properly cancelled. Attempting to use the recovered passport for any official purpose violated federal law. When GZ turned over his invalid lost/recovered passport to the court rather than his current valid passport -- he was violating federal law.
GZ doesn't seem to be very smart so I'm willing to buy that he didn't understand that, but his lawyer should have. The lawyer claims he had the second passport in his possession but failed to turn it over to the court. That makes the lawyer either dishonest, complicit, or incompetent.
The entire debacle regarding GZs bail raises some serious questions about GZs legal council. It seems that either GZs legal council is incompetent or GZ isn't accepting the advice of his legal council. Either way its a red flag that's something is wrong. In any case this serious it's a travesty of justice if defendant does not receive the best possible legal council.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I mean, I don't PERSONALLY see why not, and I'd really like to see the defense bring up trayvon's wisps of remnant thc.
Why?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Part of a trial is to figure out who is the victim.
No. We know that TM was the victim of homicide. Part of the trial will be to determine whether Martin's homicide was justified. But justified or not, Trayvon Martin is unquestionably the victim of homicide.
[ June 13, 2012, 05:01 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
The word "victim" implies more then "person who was shot to death", and when you are talking about smearing victims and victim's rights, there is a definite implication of "innocent victim".
Whether or not TM was an innocent victim has yet to be determined, and very well might never be.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: The word "victim" implies more then "person who was shot to death", and when you are talking about smearing victims and victim's rights, there is a definite implication of "innocent victim".
Not by any definition with which I am familiar. A victim is any person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action. Martin is a victim of homicide. Part of this trial will be to determine whether or not there is sufficient evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that his homicide was a crime -- but Martin's victimhood is not in question.
quote:Whether or not TM was an innocent victim has yet to be determined, and very well might never be. [/qb]
Doesn't a person killed in a fight deserve to have the same right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty as the person who killed them?
Trayvon Martin will not be on trial. If he were, he would be given the same legal protection and rights as Zimmerman. He won't be. Zimmerman's defense doesn't have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Martin was trying to kill him. They only have to show convincing evidence that a reasonable person in Zimmerman's position would have believed deadly force was necessary to defend themselves.
Zimmerman could legitimately be found innocent even if the majority of evidence shows that Martin was an innocent victim. Martin's innocence or guilt will never be on trial.
Because we aren't deciding whether or not Martin will go to jail, he will not be given the same legal protections in this trial as Zimmerman. That does not mean he does not have the same moral right to be presumed innocent or that we do not owe him and his family a certain level of protection.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Denying GW's defense the opportunity to show TM's past because we don't want to infringe on the "presumption of innocence" of TM I feel is...forgive me...silly. A trial is the place to hash this stuff out, and if we were to not look at anything incriminating -in a trial- to avoid stepping on the presumption of innocence, there wouldn't be a whole lot of reason for the trial.
TM's guilt or innocence might not be paramount, as you pointed out, but it is bloody well relevant, and in question.
Again, a trial is the -perfect- place for this question to be answered, and -trying- to answer that question does not infringe in anyway on the presumption of innocence.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:I mean, I don't PERSONALLY see why not, and I'd really like to see the defense bring up trayvon's wisps of remnant thc.
Why?
Because it could so easily be turned against them and reeks of desperation, especially given how trace the quantities were and that trace cannabanoids in your system (of the level detailed in the autopsy report) can't be said to be a contributing factor to an alleged unprovoked assault by trayvon. If they try to make it out as a 'look, see, zimmerman said that he looked like he was on something, and he was on something' then, well.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote: but Martin's victimhood is not in question.
If Zimmerman is alleging self defense and that he was assailed by martin to the extent of validating lethal force used against martin (which he is) then martin's victimhood IS in question. At least, by the courts.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Denying GW's defense the opportunity to show TM's past because we don't want to infringe on the "presumption of innocence" of TM I feel is...forgive me...silly.
I think that depends very strongly on what kind of evidence the defense wants to present about TM's character. If there is evidence that has direct relevance to TM's propensity toward violence or his capacity to seriously injure another, then I agree that the defense should have the right to present it in court. I don't think that gives GZs defense the unconditional right to present defamatory evidence against TM in attempt to sway the jury's sympathy.
So for example, if there was evidence that TM had been involved in other physical fights or that he frequently lost his temper and became violent when confronted by authority -- I think that would be relevant. On the other hand evidence of non-violent wrong doing does not indicate a propensity toward violence and should not be admissible in court.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
As a principal, I agree (the evidence should be relevant, not simply emotionally biasing).
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:I mean, I don't PERSONALLY see why not, and I'd really like to see the defense bring up trayvon's wisps of remnant thc.
Why?
Because it could so easily be turned against them and reeks of desperation, especially given how trace the quantities were and that trace cannabanoids in your system (of the level detailed in the autopsy report) can't be said to be a contributing factor to an alleged unprovoked assault by trayvon. If they try to make it out as a 'look, see, zimmerman said that he looked like he was on something, and he was on something' then, well.
I think you have a lot more faith in a jury's ability to recognize the silliness of the ridiculousness of the argument than is justifiable. There is a reason that marijuana continues to be illegal in the US. A very large number of people are convinced its a dangerous drug and that any illegal drug use is evidence that a person is likely a dangerous criminal.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Part of a trial is to figure out who is the victim.
What are you talking about?
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: TM's guilt or innocence might not be paramount, as you pointed out, but it is bloody well relevant, and in question.
Again, a trial is the -perfect- place for this question to be answered, and -trying- to answer that question does not infringe in anyway on the presumption of innocence.
His guilt or innocence in relation to *this* event are material. Thus, any serious past of violence or criminality might also be material. Maybe. If he had been convicted of a crime, perhaps, or if his character were anything but implication and innuendo, then maybe it would matter. But would it matter if he had been a convicted murderer, and Zimmerman had initiated a fight with him and shot him? Actually, no. Zimmerman's guilt or lack thereof are what the trial determines, and not whetherMartin was guilty of anything, in particular. Crimes don't equalize other crimes- even if Martin committed felony assault against Zimmerman, Zimmerman may be guilty of a crime, depending upon his actions. As was said, Martin's guilt in this is not at issue, particularly, and doesn't effect the outcome.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:But would it matter if he had been a convicted murderer, and Zimmerman had initiated a fight with him and shot him?
If there was no proof who started the fight, and we had to figure it out based in part on past behavior...yes, it would matter.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Hey, guess what we get in 15 days.
quote:...laywers for Florida-based and national news outlets argued that the public had a right to see everything possible in the high-profile case.
That's a bullshit argument. The public doesn't have a "right" to "everything possible" just because it's a high-profile case. Those sensationalizing, newscorp bastards and their lawyers are doing the same thing they did with the Casey Anthony trial. It's sad the judge caved to their pressure.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Yeah, he could've just said no...
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
And probably should have...
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I don't believe he could've just said 'no', actually. Or at least not as simply as folks are implying.
I'm curious what their lawyers 'did' with regards to the Anthony trial, too. In any event? Not the judge's responsibility for the actual problem.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Does the fact that Zimmerman claims not to have known the name of (one of three) street names this event took place on sound strange to anyone else? Particularly given that he *does* claim to have become concerned initially because the house he saw Martin in front of had been burglarized in the past? It rings odd to me. I can certainly see an ordinary resident not knowing the street names around his home in his neighborhood-I do only in a spotty, inconsistent way. But a neighborhood watch 'captain', who specifically recognizes a house based on a past burglary...ehh, I'm not saying he's lying, I don't think we'll ever know that, but it seems unlikely to me. What's y'alls take on it?
Also, apparently now Martin lurked in bushes to ambush Zimmerman, and specifically threatened to kill him while beating him during their altercation. So now Martin didn't just snap into administering a violent beating, he snapped into a violent premeditated murder.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Doesn't seem odd to me. I was a paperboy in a neighborhood for years, and knew most of the streets, but not all of them in the entire neighborhood.
Where is the other info coming from though? Lurking, ambushing, and threatening? I've been working a lot, and must have missed those...lol...
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Hmmm....seems that there were witnesses to at least some of this....we will see.
Not good news for the Martin camp, though.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: TM's guilt or innocence might not be paramount, as you pointed out, but it is bloody well relevant, and in question.
Again, a trial is the -perfect- place for this question to be answered, and -trying- to answer that question does not infringe in anyway on the presumption of innocence.
His guilt or innocence in relation to *this* event are material. Thus, any serious past of violence or criminality might also be material. Maybe. If he had been convicted of a crime, perhaps, or if his character were anything but implication and innuendo, then maybe it would matter. But would it matter if he had been a convicted murderer, and Zimmerman had initiated a fight with him and shot him? Actually, no. Zimmerman's guilt or lack thereof are what the trial determines, and not whetherMartin was guilty of anything, in particular. Crimes don't equalize other crimes- even if Martin committed felony assault against Zimmerman, Zimmerman may be guilty of a crime, depending upon his actions. As was said, Martin's guilt in this is not at issue, particularly, and doesn't effect the outcome.
The way I see it is that by claiming their son was a perfect little angel, and releasing a picture of their kid when he was 14 as if that was how he looked the night of his death, his parents made his character an issue. I don't think that it is character assassination, but it is valid, and it is refuting claims made by the other side.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Wait a second, so now *his parents* are required to, for some reason, present their dead son in a way that meets your approval, else they're opening up his character for scrutiny? Geeze. I guess that's in a handbook somewhere for parents who outlive their children, or something.
And you know, sneer all you like about how he wasn't a 'perfect little angel', but so far? School pot bust. Ohhhhhhh! Scary. You must have a pretty good idea how many kids in school could be busted for that at any given moment.
As for lurking and spouting death threats, that comes from Zimmerman's own mouth: he got out of the car, was heading back, and Martin sprang out of the bushes where he was lurking and attacked him-and while doing so, told Zimmerman he would die today.
Now, as for the street name-he wasn't a dang paperboy, he was the 'captain' of his neighborhood watch-and supposedly recognized the house from a previous burglary.
He knew the neighborhood, knew the house, and knew everyone IN the neighborhood to by sight at night tell Martin didn't belong there...but didn't know what street he was on.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
As for witnesses, yeah, could be bad. I wonder how dark it was, though, and whether or not these were any of the witnesses who reported coaching.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I could easily see having confused or lost track of a street name during the altercation; our memories are weird and we can futz or drop otherwise normal details very, very easily and plausibly when our adrenaline is going. It fits perfectly with what we know so far; zimmerman is oddly agitated during the call and has a record of being high strung.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I would regard knowing the street name but having forgotten it during the struggle as credible, less so not knowing it in the first place. But in any event, I think it's unlikely but not strong enough to condemn him:
Him being deeply, stupidly deceptive under the stress of bond hearings, though...now that to me screams, "Hey, this guy has terrible judgment even after thinking about things, and is willing to lie about it!" even in a drawn out process. Why on Earth anyone would credit him with anything approaching sound judgment in a crisis is totally beyond me-so much so that I really can't help but wonder if 'scary young black dude' doesn't enter into it.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
In earnest, beyond any speculation of the relevance of martin's race, the most important things related to his character and judgment are the call recording, the 911 call history recordings, and the perjury and money movement post-release. There's probably more coming; he had apparently been recorded for a while and had been engaging in this cloak-and-duh-ger 'coded messages' about sneaking money around, making travel plans, etc.
I dunno! Case manages to keep itself very interesting, because zimmerman is just not a smart person and he makes very bad decisions.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Oh, even better, we get back to my favorite subject in all of this nuttery
quote:However, police documents released later showed that the lead investigator in the Sanford Police Department believed there was enough evidence to arrest Zimmerman for manslaughter. The investigator wrote in his summary that Martin was not involved in any criminal activity, and that Zimmerman could have avoided the encounter.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
...
quote:A newly released videotape shows George Zimmerman re-enacting for investigators his version of events the night he shot and killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin.
The re-enactment, which was conducted at the scene one day after the Feb. 26 shooting, was among new evidence released by prosecutors in advance of Zimmerman's trial for second-degree murder. Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, says he killed Martin in self-defense.
The full tape was made available on the GZlegalcase.com website managed by Zimmerman's defense team.
Portions were broadcast today by reporter Pierre Thomas on ABC's Good Morning America.
In the tape, ABC reports, Zimmerman claims that he was attacked by Martin that night in a gated community in Sanford, Fla.
"He took my head and slammed it against the concrete several times, and each time I thought my head was going to explode and I thought I was going to lose consciousness," George Zimmerman tells police in the tape, according to ABC News.
He says he "started screaming for help," but that Martin pressed his hands over Zimmerman's mouth and nose and told him to shut up.
"I didn't want him to keep slamming my head on the concrete so I kind of shifted. But when I shifted my jacket came up … and it exposed my firearm. That's when he said you are going to die tonight. He took one hand off my mouth, and slid it down my chest. I took my gun aimed it at him and fired."
I um
...
what.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
What does that bleeding heart liberal gun-rights hating cop know, anyway? Clearly he was just twisting the evidence!
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Another person effectively lynched (punished without a trial) in the name of that 12-year-old-looking "innocent kid" Trayvon Martin.
Not because he did anything wrong but because of the "escalating divisiveness". And gee, don't you think that the people WHO LIED about what Trayvon looked like, and the people WHO LIED about what Zimmerman claimed, and the people WHO LIED by portraying this as clearly racial, and the people WHO LIED when they said Zimmerman was without injuries, do you think these people are sinless in such contributing to the destruction of actually innocent people's lives?
Let see how many *actually* innocent lives and careers this bloodlust will require for it to be sated whenever a violent thug like Trayvon gets killed in self-defense.
One wonders why Trayvon, if he was not lurking to ambush Zimmerman, didn't keep on heading for the friendly house he had been heading for. Or is the prosecutor story supposed to be that Zimmerman actually outrun and caught him?
[ June 21, 2012, 09:18 PM: Message edited by: Aris Katsaris ]
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
The quotes mentioned a couple comments ago don't exactly correspond to what is spoken in the actual video, so I suggest people actually see it.-
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Violnet thug Trayvon Martin: condemned as such by supposed Twitter posts of a cousin, the hideous crime of being suspended for pot, witness accounts at night (some of which report coaching), and most importantly...the word of the guy who later used deeply stupid lies to hide publicly collected money from the authorities.
Just love how yet another wrinkle in Zimmerman's account is just accepted unchallenged by you, Aris. Zimmerman claims Martin didn't just snap but lurked in ambush? Oh, well it must be true. How do we know? Why, because Zimmerman also tells us Martin told him he'd kill him after ambushing him.
And yeah, those evil life-destroying parents! Don't they know they're supposed to coordinate their press releases with the defense team, vetting them through Zimmerman's lawyers for approval? And who does that investigator think he is, anyway? Getting all skeptical of Zimmerman's account weeks before it became a media circus. Didn't he know Zimmerman was clearly innocent? And that judge...his dare he!! Demand that the Zimmermans abide by the law with respect to divulging their finances? Who does he think he is? Actually innocent people, they're *allowed* to purjur themselves, doesn't he know that? It's all bloodlust after Zimmerman just for...I don't know, because people just dislike and distrust him for no reason at all.
*sigh* Alas for the days when you could just shoot a 'suspicious' young black man in your neighborhood, and the police would have to find a signed KKK membership card in your wallet to start wondering (and not always then).
I would ask if you were listening to yourself, Aris, but if even deeply stupid perjury doesn't put a dent in your faith in Zimmerman's honesty and judgment, I really don't know what will. Let me guess: it was all the wife, George can't be criticized for it, stress or something.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Also, Aris, I would love to hear how Zimmerman's behavior with respect to his finances factors into how credible his accounting of the events should be considered. You know, with your thoroughly tested, peerless predictive analytical ability.
Totally on the edge of my seat over here to hear all about how it's not that big a deal, and how we should regard Martin as a 'violent thug' but not Zimmerman as an incredibly foolish liar.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
For the life of me I can not figgure out why Aris/Rakeesh communications were not included in the admin ban.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Oh, are we doing this again, Stone_Wolf? That thing where you attempt to police and/or speak for others?
If you think it should be, by all means, use that whistle button. It was right there when you instead decided to-again-criticize and stand in judgment of me and a few others out of nowhere.
Pretend for a moment that I made that sort of remark to or about you, especially if it was totally unnecessary except to say 'I disapprove!' and imagine your reaction. Keep that reaction in mind if/when you reply to this, would you?
Or we could skip all that and you could simply refrain from that style of post, unless you actually want to mix it up like that again. I can't think why, though, when it means it won't be long before you start talking about bullying or something. We've had this discussion before. You can't have it both ways.
[ June 22, 2012, 12:35 PM: Message edited by: Rakeesh ]
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I'm sorry if you find my opinion offensive, I'm hope that in time you will be able to come to terms that at times people will have opinions which you do not agree with or approve of without throwing down gauntlets or trying to make one comment into a one sided summery of an entire poster's time here.
Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: I dunno! Case manages to keep itself very interesting, because zimmerman is just not a smart person and he makes very bad decisions.
That's being very charitable, I think.
Guy with some violence in his criminal record ignores a dispatcher, pursues and shoots a kid who the police say wasn't doing anything illegal to begin with, lies to a judge, but deserves the benefit of the doubt? And the kid is the "violent thug?" Come on.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Dude, it's very simple: if you want to make that sort of post, that's fine-though if it were actually sincere by its own lights, you would've simply whistled it. You wanted to make sure your disapproval was known.
Alright! But I don't want to hear any of your bleating later when it happens to you. Expect to be criticized for...inconsistency when that inevitably happens.
But above all, remember how very straightforward this is: if this apparent moderator inconsistency was actually so distressing to you, you would've whistled it and been done with it. You wanted to get a shot in. It's not your opinion that is upsetting, it's your dishonesty, and the continual implied suggestion that others are too foolish to see through it.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Haha, i doubt it? since threads are not 'quality' moderated here (i.e., 'shut up you are making this thread suck') I wouldn't have called for any moderation here. Especially not if what was going on between aris and rakeesh apparently didn't count for the threshold.
You can read anything you like in my original comment, I was just stating my bewilderment that there was a ban to curb this type of behavior and communications between you and Aris were not included.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Oh, of course that's what you were doing. Expressing neutral bewilderment.
I'll be sure to be watchful for when I can express similar bewilderment in the future. When you begin to complain, I'll to on to express my hope that someday you'll be able to hear contrary opinions without claiming victimization, and I'll be sure to do this with all sincerity, too, as though it weren't thoroughly transparent.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Man, can you just skip all the drama please? So tired of it.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
No, you're really not. Again, there's a thoroughly effective way to avoid it if you really wanted to. Nowhere on the list of things included in that method is to take shots out of nowhere just for their own sake.
If you want to skip something, skip that, and stop behaving as though I'm reading something that isn't there when you make posts like that. I remember quite well your opinion about me-you expressed it in a pretty detailed, surprisingly honest (for this subject) post. Do you want me to go and find it?
No? Then skip the shots, or if you won't then for once quit whining.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
You put so many words in my mouth, and they are all negative.
You are so sure I'm saying all this crap, that for a second I wasn't sure so I went back and reread my initial post that upset you so, just to be sure, and sure enough, nothing of the sort was said.
You are so caught up in looking for negatives you are seeing things that aren't there.
But hey, you seem to enjoy the drama, so maybe fighting figments is it's own reward.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
It's not a figment that if the tone between Aris and myself were so objectionable, the way anyone would handle that would be to whistle it-unless they had something else they were after, too.
It's not a figment that the post was a shot.
And it's not a figment that you're personally antagonistic towards me, and have openly said so in very specific terms. You're only kidding yourself here. If the 'drama' were so tiresome, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now. If if started in the first place, which is unlikely, it would've stopped by now. Do you really think I don't recognize someone who wants to be seen to be right more than they want to just drop a tiresome conversation? Me? I've got virtues, but that ain't one of them. But I can fake it. Here, I'll show you.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I'm sorry that you take it as a shot, I can only say that it wasn't meant as one.
Had I been trying to take a shot at you it would not have been something that was subjective, I would have said it in clear terms.
I don't like your antagonistic posting style, but that is hardly a secret. But that wasn't the point of my post.
I don't really agree with the way JB handled the situation in this thread, and feel it was vastly unfair to Samp, who was trying very hard to communicate with Aris.
I like JB, and he has a difficult job, but when I whistled capaxinfiniti's post on the previous page for swearing (which is clearly in violation of the ToS) and nothing happened, why would I think that whistling your post would have any effect at all, as your post is barely, arguably in violation.
You may not like to admit it, but it was not a shot at you.
I do understand that anything I say that might in anyway be taken as criticism of you will be instantly pounced upon with a whirlwind of accusations, putting words in my mouth and melodrama. Okay. I'll stop asking you to keep it to a low roar. Go ahead and blow the roof off, have fun.
I'm not going to curtail my comments just to avoid you throwing a hissy fit. I'm also not going to get dragged down into that particular bog.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by James Tiberius Kirk:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: I dunno! Case manages to keep itself very interesting, because zimmerman is just not a smart person and he makes very bad decisions.
That's being very charitable, I think.
Guy with some violence in his criminal record ignores a dispatcher, pursues and shoots a kid who the police say wasn't doing anything illegal to begin with, lies to a judge, but deserves the benefit of the doubt? And the kid is the "violent thug?" Come on.
It's pretty amazing. It is almost kind of surreal, considering to what extent Zimmerman has amply demonstrated questionable behavior and a lack of credibility (far beyond what we can present and apply to Martin), to take the Zimmerman ostensible account of events and remain assured at this juncture that Martin was a "violent thug."
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Violnet thug Trayvon Martin: condemned as such by supposed Twitter posts of a cousin, the hideous crime of being suspended for pot, witness accounts at night (some of which report coaching), and most importantly...the word of the guy who later used deeply stupid lies to hide publicly collected money from the authorities.
Also, you know, by the fact of the very injuries on Zimmerman's head.
How much more evidence would suffice to you?
quote:Also, Aris, I would love to hear how Zimmerman's behavior with respect to his finances factors into how credible his accounting of the events should be considered
I already answered that question of yours, WEEKS ago -- unlike you I tend to answer the questions you ask of me, and it's not my fault if you don't actually read my responses.
quote:And the kid is the "violent thug?"
Are we back to people trying to wish away Zimmerman's broken nose, and his injuries both in the front and the back of his head? Trying to say he was never attacked by Trayvon?
And didn't those injuries get caused quite certainly BEFORE Zimmerman shot Martin?
How many people who aren't violent thugs have caused such injuries to another person in the whole of their goddamn lives?
I don't know any definition of "innocence" that allows you to bash a person's head in, just because they were lawfully following you.
Yes, Trayvon Martin was a violent thug, by all meaningful definitions of violent thuggery.
quote:witness accounts at night (some of which report coaching),
You've said this before, but I don't think you realize that they tend to report coaching towards the direction of people coaching them to make Zimmerman look *guilty*. So keep speaking about "coaching" as if this discredits Zimmerman's side, but such reports of coaching have actually been in Zimmerman's favor.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
And so that we don't misunderstand each other, Rakeesh, "How much more evidence would suffice to you?" is a real question that I'd like a real answer to, same way that I responded to YOUR question.
I'd also like people to explain to me something that I had thought commonly accepted by both sides: the fact that Trayvon spent some time hiding or waiting in the darkness, instead of keep on proceeding to his friendly house.
Is that now under dispute? Are people now claiming that Trayvon kept heading for his house?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:and feel it was vastly unfair to Samp, who was trying very hard to communicate with Aris.
Stone_Wolf, if Samprimary had been trying very hard to communicate with me, then pretty much every single post of his would be different. He wouldn't pretend to misunderstand me, he would answer to my questions, and he wouldn't say things like "Wow, rabbit really was right about the dunning-kreuger effect, wasn't she. I assume you think you are pretty good at psychoanalysis? Because this is pretty ... uh, profoundly wrong. Haha."
Perhaps you think "Haha" is a communication -- I see it as a attempt to status-lowering. As has been pretty much *every* response of his to me: to mock me for mentioning fanfiction, to mock me for using "know" instead of "guess" when I'm 99.9% certain of something, to mock me for pretty much everything.
He doesn't communicate, he mocks. There's nothing he has said to me that would meaningfully be said if it wasn't for the sake of audience to do his status-lowering games in front.
How many people who aren't violent thugs have caused such injuries to another person in the whole of their goddamn lives?
Probably more than have killed another person.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:and feel it was vastly unfair to Samp, who was trying very hard to communicate with Aris.
Stone_Wolf, if Samprimary had been trying very hard to communicate with me, then he'd have been able to read the several times throughout the thread where I clarified that my usage of the verb "know" doesn't mean literally 100% certainty -- and when he finally got it in his head, he wouldn't have mocked by saying that then my "know" means nothing more than "guess".
If someone's 99.9999% certain about something, they don't use the word "guess". Everyone knows that. For Samprimary to pretend to not know it, is an indication that he wants to mock, to play a status game, to waste my time and energy -- BUT CERTAINLY NOT TO COMMUNICATE.
If Samprimary had been trying to communnicate, instead of playing status games, he'd not have said stuff like "Wow, rabbit really was right about the dunning-kreuger effect, wasn't she. I assume you think you are pretty good at psychoanalysis? Because this is pretty ... uh, profoundly wrong. Haha."
If Samprimary had been trying to communicate, instead of playing status games, he'd not have said stuff like "Furthermore, I have reasoned that you murdered a young girl in 1990, much like a certain TV host, and that your guilt over this senseless murder drives you to post in this forum and that your posting is, in fact, a byproduct of that guilt"
If he wanted to communicate, then he'd have conceded that IN THE HYPOTHETICAL SCENARIO WHERE my predictions are right, he should update upwards his estimations about my analytical capacity.
The attitude of someone who actually wants to communicate with someone else, is vastly different to what Samprimary was doing.
I do not understand how there is any way this post does not blatantly and crassly violate the necessary intent of JB's do not address instructions. I expect that the whole mutual gag order idea is at this point now completely off-rails.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Also, you know, by the fact of the very injuries on Zimmerman's head.
How much more evidence would suffice to you?
There is really only one thing which would determine whether Martin should (you know, have been) considered a violent thug: who started the altercation? And in what way. You persist in believing Zimmerman's accounting of how it began, despite him being shown to be a liar with incredibly poor judgment, when the truth is we just don't know who started it.
By your reasoning, if you give me a hard shove and grab me, and I punch you and we get into a fracas, I am to be classed as a 'violent thug' (though I'm not sure if I'd get the word 'thug').
quote:I already answered that question of yours, WEEKS ago -- unlike you I tend to answer the questions you ask of me, and it's not my fault if you don't actually read my responses.
Wait, so it was known weeks ago that Zimmerman was a liar with terrible judgment under pressure weeks ago? I could be mistaken, but I didn't think the story was that old. But just humor me: how does it factor? Even if you are repeating myself, it's a nearly 20 page thread. People forget sometimes.
quote:How many people who aren't violent thugs have caused such injuries to another person in the whole of their goddamn lives?
I don't know any definition of "innocence" that allows you to bash a person's head in, just because they were lawfully following you.
Oh, for pity's sake, are we back to this? Now the only thing Zimmerman did was 'lawfully follow' Martin? We know that how, exactly? Are there now eye and forensic to the *beginning* of things, before there was even any noise made?
Or is this more of your circular reasoning, wherein Martin was a violent thug (despite, yknow, no known other instances of violent thuggery in his life) because he attacked Zimmerman, and we know he attacked Zimmerman because of the wounds on Zimmerman's head, and we know Martin struck first because he was a violent thug?
quote:You've said this before, but I don't think you realize that they tend to report coaching towards the direction of people coaching them to make Zimmerman look *guilty*. So keep speaking about "coaching" as if this discredits Zimmerman's side, but such reports of coaching have actually been in Zimmerman's favor.
Here's what it says to me: that witness accounts may be highly questionable, if there is coaching anywhere in any direction in the statements. That's what it *should* say to anyone attempting objectivity, but then you're not.
quote:And so that we don't misunderstand each other, Rakeesh, "How much more evidence would suffice to you?" is a real question that I'd like a real answer to, same way that I responded to YOUR question.
I'm not sure you did actually-certainly not just now-but here are a few examples of evidence that would lead me to think Martin likely did attack Zimmerman: serious damage to Martin's hands, of the sort one would expect on someone who bludgeoned another human being many times with great violence with their fists; some sort of actual forensic evidence left on the scene that shows who attacked first, maybe some sort of blood spatter or something (I don't think we would find such a thing, but it's an example); documented history of aggressive violence on Martin's part, said documentation being a *hell* of a lot more compelling than a cousin's Twitter post about an event that may or may not have happened; an explanation for how Zimmerman could have called 911 so many times for such stupid reasons, or his uncertain record with police, or his court dealings, that would explain how he could have done such things without showing terrible judgment; video footage.
quote:I'd also like people to explain to me something that I had thought commonly accepted by both sides: the fact that Trayvon spent some time hiding or waiting in the darkness, instead of keep on proceeding to his friendly house.
Well he was being followed at night by a stranger while he wasn't actually doing anything wrong. But whereas Zimmerman was 'lawfully following', Martin was apparently 'hiding in darkness'. What is new, though, is that Zimmerman claims Martin was waiting specifically to ambush him, and then when he did, told him he'd kill him.
As for thuggery...it's strange. The actual police investigator didn't seem to think Martin was a violent thug. I guess his experience and training, though, simply doesn't measure up to the prognosticatorial abilities of Aris. Shame. You should consult!
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Aris: Samp's style can take a bit of getting used to, but from what I could see he was using kid gloves and trying to stay on topic as much as possible. My point was that for JB's ban for the benefit of this thread to have any effect at all, that communications between you and Rakeesh needed to be included in it. It was unfair to Samp who was trying harder to be nice then Rakeesh was (in my opinion) that he got singled out (of his own thread) when someone who was doing more got to continue on with immunity.
I'm not sure what exactly is the right solution any more, but it seems clear to me that a new round admin intervention might be required.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Wait, so it was known weeks ago that Zimmerman was a liar with terrible judgment under pressure weeks ago? I could be mistaken, but I didn't think the story was that old.
You asked me and I responded on June 4 - that's almost 3 weeks ago, so yeah, it is that old.
Here, let me repeat the exchange:
quote:
quote:Aris, if as is possible Zimmerman has lied, or permitted his attorney to deceive, or engaged in some shenanigans to hide money with his wife, I am positively on the edge of my seat as to whether that sort of behavior factors in to your 'predictive analysis' or if, after all, it will be chalked up to major stress.
It certainly is Bayesian evidence in favor of Zimmerman being generally prone to deceit, and thus Bayesian evidence supportive of his lying about other parts of his testimony -- I can hardly see how it would be evidence *against* the same, after all.
quote:"There is really only one thing which would determine whether Martin should (you know, have been) considered a violent thug: who started the altercation? And in what way."
That's not an answer regarding WHAT EVIDENCE would convince you of these things.
DeeDee's own witnessing seems to indicate that Trayvon spoke first to Zimmerman, not vice-versa.
All the timeline only makes sense if Trayvon waited to encounter Zimmerman or headed back to find him.
There's no witness to who threw the first punch, but we know there was no non-bullet injury on Trayvon, and there was on Zimmerman.
So WHAT EVIDENCE would suffice for you?
quote:You persist in believing Zimmerman's accounting of how it began, despite him being shown to be a liar with incredibly poor judgment, when the truth is we just don't know who started it.
Yes, I persist in believing Zimmerman's accounting, despite him being shown to be a liar with incredibly poor judgment; even liars can tell the truth when the truth is convenient enough for them. There are more liars than murderers in the world; there are many more people who commit fraud regarding their finances than who do wanton killing.
And so far his liar's/fraudster's account of what happened makes sense, in a way that the pro-Trayvon side hasn't been making any sense at all.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:It was unfair to Samp who was trying harder to be nice then Rakeesh was
Rakeesh was attacking my *argument*, if often rudely and with contempt; but as I likewise tend to fail at politeness, it would be hypocritical of me to call the moderator on him -- Samp was *only* playing status games, and I don't even remember him attacking any point of my arguments at all, certainly he didn't do so in any of the last few pages before the moderator got called in.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I tend to disagree, but I'm sure your memory of recent events is more accurate then my own, as you were more then peripherally involved, like myself.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Well that's okay at least I can directly defend myself from these categorical descriptions of my behavior oh wait
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
As Aris said things -about- you Samp to me, it seems only fair that you should be able to address those things that were said...to me, about Aris.
Turn about is fair play after all.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
An eye for an eye makes the whole thread suck? No, in this case, turnabout is debasement. I have no desire to be matching behavior I am calling out as inappropriate and waiting on a response to.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Fair enough.
Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: I don't know any definition of "innocence" that allows you to bash a person's head in, just because they were lawfully following you.
Are we going to continue to pretend that Zimmerman is at all credible? Because the only evidence supporting Zimmerman's telling of events is Zimmerman himself. You know, they perjurer and violent thug who has every reason to try to make the guy he shot and killed out to be a "violent thug."
So you'll excuse me if I don't take his story on its face: that an unarmed teenager with no history of violence "jumped out of the bushes," unprovoked, at at a armed 'neighborhood watch' guy who has a criminal record. No, I'll reserve the term "violent thug" for his killer.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:an explanation for how Zimmerman could have called 911 so many times for such stupid reasons
I don't see how Zimmerman calling the police lots of times makes him *more* likely to initiate violence. To me that makes him *less* likely: he is the type who calls the police instead of taking things in his own hands.
As a sidenote here is Martin fighting at his local fight club: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e73_1337581575 (EDIT TO ADD: Or not, I think Trayvon is actually the guy refereeing -- this changes the weight of the evidence some)
So, does such a video make it more likely to you that Martin might be the violent type? Even *slightly* more likely? Even *infinitesmally* more likely?
quote:serious damage to Martin's hands, of the sort one would expect on someone who bludgeoned another human being many times with great violence with their fists;
If I remember Zimmerman's account correctly, Zimmerman speaks of one punch, and then of Martin slamming his head on the ground: not of repeated punches by Martin's fists.
Is this consistent with the scrape found on Martin's knuckles, and the injuries incurred by Zimmerman? It seems to me that it is, though of course I'm no medical examiner.
It seems to me that it if it wasn't consistent with the injuries, we'd have a much more clear smoking gun regarding Zimmerman *significantly* lying than fraud regarding his finances.
[ June 22, 2012, 06:26 PM: Message edited by: Aris Katsaris ]
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Because the only evidence supporting Zimmerman's telling of events is Zimmerman himself.
And all the physical evidence. And all the witnesses' initial testimonies. And the fact that the timeline doesn't make sense if Trayvon *wasn't* either hiding for Zimmerman or heading back for him.
quote:that an unarmed teenager with no history of violence "jumped out of the bushes" at at a random guy, unprovoked.
No history of violence on his *legal record* -- he had a youtube video fighting (or refereeing a fight), and he had a cousin twitting about Trayvon swinging on a bus driver (it'll certainly be nice if Zimmerman's defense manages to track down that bus driver)
And who said anything about unprovoked? Zimmerman was a white (Hispanic) guy that had tagged Martin as suspicious and followed him in his own neighbourhood when Martin was doing nothing wrong. That's like serious provocation, no?
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by James Tiberius Kirk: Are we going to continue to pretend that Zimmerman is at all credible? Because the only evidence supporting Zimmerman's telling of events is Zimmerman himself.
At all credible? He didn't disclose all his finances at a bond hearing therefore he's no longer credible and we should throw out his whole testimony and ignore the evidence and witness testimony we already have if they cast Zimmerman as anything but a violent thug? That seems drastic..
Remember, he's being charged with second-degree murder. You can't simply say, "You lie. You're guilty." You need evidence and proof the event transpired in a way other than Zimmerman's recounting. Because you don't find him credible doesn't mean he has a depraved mind and shows no regard for human life.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
The physical evidence on the bodies of the two people involved *doesn't touch* on the most important question here, one way or another, so please, for like the tenth time, stop asserting that it does, would you?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:The physical evidence on the bodies of the two people involved *doesn't touch* on the most important question here, one way or another, so please, for like the tenth time, stop asserting that it does, would you?
If Treyvon had injuries indicating that he had been hit at all, you'd definitely use that as evidence against Zimmerman.
If Zimmerman didn't have injuries indicating that he had been hit, it would likewise definitely be used as evidence against Zimmerman -- AND back when people were deluded into thinking that he didn't have injuries, it was indeed REPEATEDLY used as evidence against Zimmerman, as can be seen from the very first posts of this very thread.
So, no, I won't suddenly do you the favor of accepting that the state of the bodies is somehow not evidence in favor of Zimmerman and against Treyvon.
As for the "most important" question, you're posing a question that can't be directly answered since there are no witnesses (e.g. whether Zimmerman shoved Martin before Martin punched Zimmerman).
Since there can be no evidence that can prove that one way or another, that's a convenient "most important" question for the people who want to drag this out.
But of course if that question is so damn important and so damn unanswerable, then Zimmerman would have to be acquitted on the basis of doubt alone. So that argument doesn't go really well for your side either.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:At all credible? He didn't disclose all his finances at a bond hearing therefore he's no longer credible and we should throw out his whole testimony and ignore the evidence and witness testimony we already have if they cast Zimmerman as anything but a violent thug? That seems drastic..
Remember, he's being charged with second-degree murder. You can't simply say, "You lie. You're guilty." You need evidence and proof the event transpired in a way other than Zimmerman's recounting. Because you don't find him credible doesn't mean he has a depraved mind and shows no regard for human life.
He did more than simply 'not disclose'. Characterizing it as such, the initial lie, the involvement of his wife, the speaking in code, and above all the willingness to lie in such a deeply stupid way about publicly gathered money like this, as just 'not disclosing'? Cmon, capaxinfiniti.
It doesn't mean that every single statement of his is immediately a lie regardless of what other evidence says, but to a reasonable observer it *does* point a very serious finger at terrible judgment in a crisis, and willingness to be deceptive when he should know he'll be caught. What it means is frankly, yeah, if his word is the balance that pushed you into believing something happened or not, you ought to remove that influence and see where you are. If you don't, well, clearly an axe to grind.
As for it not being enough to show he had some sort of depraved mind...heh. Strange, then, that his word is apparently enough condemn *Martin* to being a violent thug.
-------
Which should be held an indicator of stronger probability, I wonder? A cousin who we know nothing about Tweeting about an attack on a bus driver we know nothing about either? Or dropped resisting arrest charges and restraining orders?
This is a trick question: the answer is obvious to anyone who doesn't insist Martin was a violent thug on the word of Zimmerman and his *refereeing* of controlled fights.
To answer your question, though, Aris, Martin's involvement in a fight club-even if he did actually fight-doesn't signify one way or another to me. It could point to someone with a lust for violence, taking every opportunity to slams that thirst. Or it could point to someone who enjoyed physical struggle, but also a disciplined, scored struggle. I would have to see something of his record. Does it include lots of penalties? What's his reputation there? How long has he been a member, and how much fighting has he done? Etc.
It does, however, point to *skill* with violence-which still does nothing to answer the question of who started the physical element of the struggle one way or another.
As for your notion of the timeline supporting only Zimmerman's accounting...well, frankly, nonsense. Numerous events on this timeline are hotly disputed, so how it can be said to be so conclusive is a mystery to me. But then, I don't go into this thinking Zimmerman was a gun wielding maniac as you do Martin was a violent thug. I went into it thinking 'terrible judgment about what is an emergency', and now 'liar'.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:If Treyvon had injuries indicating that he had been hit at all, you'd definitely use that as evidence against Zimmerman.
If the physical evidence on the bodies was such that it strongly pointed in one direction as to this question...well, yes, that would certainly be relevant! Obviously.
quote:Since there can be no evidence that can prove that one way or another, that's a convenient "most important" question for the people who want to drag this out.
Yes, clearly I'm just lying about the importance of who struck first because it convenient. Rather than it being, you know, very important. *snort*
As for an acquittal, yes in fact, as things stand if we cannot find conclusive evidence with respect to this question, I feel Zimmerman should be found not guilty on the 2nd degree charges-and have always, your accusations of bias notwithstanding, said so. That's one of the reasons we have trials.
Perhaps it will turn out he's lied about those events, though. Won't be the first time he would have lied in court, now would it?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Numerous events on this timeline are hotly disputed, so how it can be said to be so conclusive is a mystery to me.
We know the timeline well-enough from the phonecalls. Martin had enough time to return to his house, if he kept heading for his house. That's not really in doubt.
The Martin side has to argue that terrified of Zimmerman, Martin chose to hide instead of running to the nearby house.
quote:Yes, clearly I'm just lying about the importance of who struck first because it convenient. Rather than it being, you know, very important. *snort*
Well previously it was a very important question whether Zimmerman had injuries on him. It nowadays somehow no longer seems to be so very important, since it was resolved conclusively on Zimmerman's favour.
So, frankly, I'm not quite convinced that this new important question will actually *remain* an important question, if we find a magical way to determine that Zimmerman did *not* shove or otherwise assault Martin.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Aris: I know I am on BB not JB right now but when I ask you not to address a poster talking about the poster and their posts is essentially asking them to engage you in conversation. It would be grating to be asked not to address a poster and then have them discussing you.
Stop please.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Well previously it was a very important question whether Zimmerman had injuries on him. It nowadays somehow no longer seems to be so very important, since it was resolved conclusively on Zimmerman's favour.
So, frankly, I'm not quite convinced that this new important question will actually *remain* an important question, if we find a magical way to determine that Zimmerman did *not* shove or otherwise assault Martin.
It was never vitally important to me. The closest it came to that degree of importance for me was skepticism that whatever injuries Zimmerman had, if any serious ones at all, could have come from a beating so dangerous as to shoot someone.
So no, it was neither resolved conclusively in Zimmerman's favor (unless you mean the question of whether he had injuries at all), nor did it stop being relevant when the answer came back unfavorable-because for me, it didn't.
What it did do was force me to take a serious look at the question who attacked whom, and how badly were they being beaten when the shot was fired. The one question remains totally unanswered, and the other is inconclusive-his injuries could be from savage violence, or a single punch and his head hitting the ground.
quote:We know the timeline well-enough from the phonecalls. Martin had enough time to return to his house, if he kept heading for his house. That's not really in doubt.
The Martin side has to argue that terrified of Zimmerman, Martin chose to hide instead of running to the nearby house.
Because hiding-if that's what he was doing-while being followed at night is supposed to be a wildly unlikely course of action? Again, I'd ask if you were listening to yourself, but I know what answer I'd get.
Here's a bit of a pivot from that question: if Zimmerman deemed Martin so suspicious on sight (because he knew who lived there and who didn't, but not what street he was on, etc), why did he go looking for this hulking, menacing stranger in the night when he couldn't see him?
The timeline as pieced together by secondhand sources doesn't say what you insist it says, but if it did, the courses of action you suggest are laughably unlikely simply aren't. That's all there is to it.
I wonder: if Martin's cousin's word is enough to point to his being a violent thug...goodness, what worth is the word of the lead investigator of the case?
Huh. It's almost like there's some incredibly obvious contradiction here or something...
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti:
quote:Originally posted by James Tiberius Kirk: Are we going to continue to pretend that Zimmerman is at all credible? Because the only evidence supporting Zimmerman's telling of events is Zimmerman himself.
At all credible? He didn't disclose all his finances at a bond hearing therefore he's no longer credible and we should throw out his whole testimony and ignore the evidence and witness testimony we already have if they cast Zimmerman as anything but a violent thug? That seems drastic..
Ignoring entirely the huge amount of narrative that you're cramming into the mouths of others here about what zimmerman's perjury affair should be used as in the upcoming case, it's like you don't even understand the full implications of what zimmerman & wife got caught doing. Hint: it is not just "didn't disclose finances."
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
BB, okay.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Ignoring entirely the huge amount of narrative that you're cramming into the mouths of others here about what zimmerman's perjury affair should be used as in the upcoming case, it's like you don't even understand the full implications of what zimmerman & wife got caught doing. Hint: it is not just "didn't disclose finances."
Either that, or maybe Clinton really did just make a mistake about the definition of 'is'!
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Because hiding-if that's what he was doing-while being followed at night is supposed to be a wildly unlikely course of action?
When there's a nearby house and safe-haven, and you're an able-bodied man that can run at least as fast as any pursuer?
Yes, hiding instead of running to your house, does seems unlikely to me. Not completely impossible but certainly *strange*.
quote:if Zimmerman deemed Martin so suspicious on sight (because he knew who lived there and who didn't, but not what street he was on, etc), why did he go looking for this hulking, menacing stranger in the night when he couldn't see him?
I don't know that Zimmerman had tagged him as "hulking and menacing" instead of just suspicious.
It seems to me that he had seen him running away. He wanted to see where he had run *to* -- away from the neighborhood, or hiding behind someone's backyard, etc.. So that the police would know where to search.
And I don't understand what alternate explanation you're insinuating -- can you PLEASE make it explicit for me? Are you saying that Zimmerman did NOT consider Martin suspicious, or are you saying that Zimmerman didn't follow Martin? Neither makes sense to me. So what ARE you saying?
It seems to me that the parts of the story you consider strange isn't actually in dispute by *either* side.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:When there's a nearby house and safe-haven, and you're an able-bodied man that can run at least as fast as any pursuer?
Yes, hiding instead of running to your house, does seems unlikely to me. Not completely impossible but certainly *strange*.
The line between the things you find likely or nigh-certain and the things you find unlikely or strange or all-but-impossible is, man. It's like an EKG. If someone was being followed at night by a stranger while they were doing nothing wrong, I wouldn't consider hiding the best or wisest course in many instances, but if someone *did* I wouldn't deem it even remotely strange. That you claim it as such frankly says a lot more about your prejudgment of the situation than it does about hiding vs fleeing.
[quore]I don't know that Zimmerman had tagged him as "hulking and menacing" instead of just suspicious.[/quote]
Oh, I figured surely he must have. It's so clear from pictures of Martin that he was a hulking scary (nothing to do with black, surely not, we're all over that in America) teenager. Alright, so he couldn't tell how big and scary Martin was...because it was dark (which begs the question of how reliable eyewitness observation ought to be, no, never mind, that's silly).
So Zimmerman sees Martin running away, but he doesn't manage to see him hide, and is then ambushed. Let's see if I understand this: Martin realizes he is being followed, and flees...a short ways. Then he hides, waiting to ambush Zimmerman. Then he attacks Zimmerman from ambush, and either before or during decides to murder him.
Clearly Martin wasn't just a violent thug, he was some sort of sociopath. Violent thugs only rarely concoct plans to murder strangers just for the hell of it. Why? Was he going to steal something? Zimmerman's car, maybe? Perhaps expand his violent, nefarious high school pot empire? Or travel to other towns to set up new fight clubs nobody is supposed to talk about? Or...what, exactly?
I'm sure I don't know, but we *do* know Martin was a violent thug. Not might be or could be shown to be, but actually was. Man. How many others might Martin have murdered, before Zimmerman protected all of us?
quote:And I don't understand what alternate explanation you're insinuating -- can you PLEASE make it explicit for me? Are you saying that Zimmerman did NOT consider Martin suspicious, or are you saying that Zimmerman didn't follow Martin? Neither makes sense to me. So what ARE you saying?
I'm saying we have at best dubious, poor reasons to believe Zimmerman's account of the stealthy (but tall, large) teen who ambushed him and then told him he would murder him. The closest you've actually come to lending support to that is 'the timeline', since the injuries don't, and Martin's incredibly thin history pointing to such behavior certainly doesn't, or if it does, Zimmerman's is much more suspect. And we've got some very, very good reasons to disbelieve Zimmerman: one, he is known to lie for selfish ends under lressure; two, he is known to show extraordinarily bad judgment; three, his reading of an emergency situation is demonstrably poor (911 calls); and four, by lying he could avoid a murder sentence.
Would love an answer to my question about the lead investigator, btw, since you've repeatedly lauded your own diligence on answering questions.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Rakeesh, first of all, your constant sarcasm makes it really REALLY difficult for me to understand what exactly you're trying to communicate, what exactly you are stating, and what exactly you are asking.
Perhaps in your world, sarcasm is a really efficient way for communication, but it's REALLY REALLY not in mine.
quote:Let's see if I understand this: Martin realizes he is being followed, and flees...a short ways. Then he hides, waiting to ambush Zimmerman.
Want me my really big guesswork, to which I don't assign anywhere near certainty, and possibly less that 50% probability? Martin may have had marijuana on him -- being followed, and fearing it was a cop, he ran out of sight and ditched it somewhere. Then he doubled back to see who it was who was following him -- and when he saw it was some lame neighbourhood watch guy, instead of cops, he was angry at this dude causing him to panic.
Another scenario which I've seen hypothesize is that Martin's phone call with DeeDee caused him to want to sound tough infront of her, instead of admitting he ran away from a confrontation. This doesn't require him to have ditched anything, and it allows Martin to have been truly scared of Zimmerman at the beginning of the scenario -- and yet be super-macho aggressive at the end.
But just look at the map of the recreation, and look at the timeline, and you'll see it doesn't make sense for Martin to be hiding in fear of Zimmerman.
quote:Would love an answer to my question about the lead investigator, btw, since you've repeatedly lauded your own diligence on answering questions.
The question you asked about the lead investigator seems meaningless to me "what worth is the word of the lead investigator". Character witnesses are character witnesses. Lead investigators investigate. How can I compare the words of a witness about Trayvon's character, to the word of a lead investigator? What exactly am I even supposed to compare? His word about what?
Just cut the sarcasm, and ask me in plain words whatever it is you want to ask me, I may understand your question better.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Rakeesh, first of all, your constant sarcasm makes it really REALLY difficult for me to understand what exactly you're trying to communicate, what exactly you are stating, and what exactly you are asking.
Perhaps in your world, sarcasm is a really efficient way for communication, but it's REALLY REALLY not in mine.
Fair enough. In return, perhaps you could cut the remarks as though it were proven that Martin was a 'violent thug' and such a claim were unassailable. It makes it quite difficult to believe you're actually someone who can be talked to about this topic. Or perhaps just clarify: do you believe it is as obvious as you've repeatedly suggested that Martin acted as a 'violent thug', or was your dander just up?
quote:Want me my really big guesswork, to which I don't assign anywhere near certainty, and possibly less that 50% probability? Martin may have had marijuana on him -- being followed, and fearing it was a cop, he ran out of sight and ditched it somewhere. Then he doubled back to see who it was who was following him -- and when he saw it was some lame neighbourhood watch guy, instead of cops, he was angry at this dude causing him to panic.
If the first, where did this marijuana end up, exactly? And also, why wouldn't he have run like hell if he thought it was a cop? Hiding vs fleeing actually *is* strange in that scenario. As for the second, were we to accept Zimmerman's word on what Martin said, which for whatever reason you're doing, he was quite a lot more than 'super macho aggressive' and well into psychotic murderous rage territory.
So...it's good you don't assign much certainty to either scenario, because-and I say this not intending sarcasm, but to convey a measure of their imperfection-they're laughable. They're just absurd. They either rely on events that simply don't make sense with each other at all-the thought he was police scenario-or rely on Zimmerman's word.
quote:The question you asked about the lead investigator seems meaningless to me "what worth is the word of the lead investigator". Character witnesses are character witnesses. Lead investigators investigate. How can I compare the words of a witness about Trayvon's character, to the word of a lead investigator? What exactly am I even supposed to compare? His word about what?
Nothing any witnesses as to Martin's character point to him being a 'violent thug'. Not the drug suspension, not the reffing or participating in the fight club, and not even the cousin's supposed recounting of an attack. That last, if it were in any way corroborates, might. Yet you've persisted for weeks in labeling Martin a violent thug, on 'evidence' so flimsy it really does beg the question of whether it's actually evidence or pretext.
Which is why my question about the lead investigator. He actually walked the scene, and has experience investigating crimes and evaluating suspects and witnesses. So-why does a cousin's tweet help to stick that label to him, but the lead investigator's read be 'meaningless'?
Like it or not, the reason is pretty clear: if we *don't* say Martin was a violent thug, so much of Zimmerman's accounting falls apart. It is *vital* to that story that for whatever reason, Martin was a violent thug that night. But when we actually look at what we know of his life...the label doesn't seem to fit. Only the most reaching of looks gets us to that label.
What is needed for Zimmerman to be lying, on the other hand, to have started the altercation...when we look at his life, that is a much, much, much less difficult sell. Bad judgment, lying in court, misjudging emergencies, all of it.
I've looked at four different timelines, though two were almost identical, and one of the themes running through all of them was simply this: gaps. Uncertainties. The timeline doesn't say what you claim it does, leaving us almost where we started with respect to the most important question.
Why didn't Martin flee the rest of the <180yds remaining to his home? Why did Zimmerman call him a 'kid' if he posed such a fearsome figure? On a dark, rainy night exactly how reliable should we regard witness accounts? If Martin did behave as Zimmerman said...why? And why can't we find any signs of such behavior in his past? And so on and so forth.
Martin may very well have made some really bad decisions that night-in fact almost certainly he made at least one, not running as fast as he could for his father's fiance's house. But *every* bad decision Martin could've conveivably made that resulted in his death were only options because of Zimmerman's own terrible decision making-and for him, we've got a documented history before, during, and after of really stupid, even dangerous decisions Zimmerman made. And now we've got a history of deceit under foolish circumstances. Plus, you know, the kid-Zimmerman's word-armed with tea and candy, shot to death a football field away from his home because a neighborhood watch 'captain' started off not thinking he belonged there.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:In return, perhaps you could cut the remarks as though it were proven that Martin was a 'violent thug' and such a claim were unassailable
I'll clarify for your sake that 'violent thug' is my *conclusion* about Martin, and I don't expect any of you to take it as an unassailable claim.
Your saying that repeated suspensions/drug usage/possible jewelry burglary/fight club participation/Plzz shoot da #mf dat lied 2 u! don't all point to the type of person that Martin was, is the fundamental difference between your analysis of the situation and mine. I accept all these slight non-conclusive-by-themselves evidence that KEEP PILING UP -- you on the other hand just tend to go "well, this doesn't tell us anything one way or another", which if you realized a bit more about conditional probability, you'd perceive that it tends to be really really rare for something to be literally *zero* evidence towards a conclusion one way or another.
quote:Which is why my question about the lead investigator.
WHAT is your question about the lead investigator? Can you state it again in full?
quote:Plus, you know, the kid-Zimmerman's word-armed with tea and candy
And his fists, man. Being merely *armed* with more than tea and candy is a constitutional right in America. But hitting people with your fists is NOT such a right.
And btw, honest question: were the tea and candy actually found at the scene -- has the crime scene report been released? Because if they were not found there, that's evidence he may have actually reached the house (as he seemed to imply in the DeeDee phonecall) and doubled back after leaving them there. If they *were* found at the crime scene, that's evidence that he didn't so reach it.
quote:What is needed for Zimmerman to be lying, on the other hand, to have started the altercation...when we look at his life, that is a much, much, much less difficult sell. Bad judgment, lying in court, misjudging emergencies, all of it.
No. You don't get to use that double standard. If Treyvon is absolutely required to be a violent thug for Treyvon to have started the altercation, then by the exact same standard you need to assign the same label to Zimmerman -- and the *only* thing you have in that regard is that he *shoved* an undercover (plainclothes) police officer in a bar several years ago (which he hadn't recognized for a cop), and that he and his former wife both put restraining orders on each other. Treyvon has more worrisome signs regarding crime-or-violence in the space of a few months.
Calling the police many times doesn't make Zimmerman *more* likely to be a violent thug, it makes him less likely -- it was his type to use the police constantly, instead of getting into fights himself.
That he started violence when *expecting* the police to be there any time soon, that's what's an unbelievable scenario.
[ June 23, 2012, 09:46 AM: Message edited by: Aris Katsaris ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Your saying that repeated suspensions/drug usage/possible jewelry burglary/fight club participation/Plzz shoot da #mf dat lied 2 u! don't all point to the type of person that Martin was, is the fundamental difference between your analysis of the situation and mine. I accept all these slight non-conclusive-by-themselves evidence that KEEP PILING UP -- you on the other hand just tend to go "well, this doesn't tell us anything one way or another", which if you realized a bit more about conditional probability, you'd perceive that it tends to be really really rare for something to be literally *zero* evidence towards a conclusion one way or another.
I understand a bit about conditional probability, though I am almost sure less than you. It's just...well, for one thing, other people whose judgment I tend to trust have in this thread repeatedly claimed you're misusing the ideas here. And I don't need anyone else to know that when you weight the things you've mentioned to conclude he was a 'violent thug', you're not using any sort of scientific analysis-you've simply made your mind up already. Do you have some idea how many people would be 'violent thugs' if their Twitter feeds and whether they had pot in school? I don't either, but I know both are incredibly common so until I know more it's irresponsible to apply such weight to them as you do.
The jewelry theft, if it happened, *would* be a serious indicator, though. The Twitter feed is so innocuous in terms of how many people actually talk on the Internet to be, by itself, utterly inconsequential to any sort of reasoned analysis. His fight club participation *could be* an indicator, but then depending on the nature of that participation could actually count *against* him having been a violent thug, so it gets added to the pile...why, exactly?
quote:WHAT is your question about the lead investigator? Can you state it again in full?
What weight to the conditional probability Martin was a violent thug that night (and I've reread, your language goes quite a lot further than 'it's just my conclusion', but alright) does the lead investigator's analysis of the crime apply, and in what direction? He didn't think Martin was a violent thug that night, so I'm asking you, does that add weight to your 'analysis' and in which direction? If none, why not, if his cousin's Tweets about events that may or may not have happened *do* add weight?
quote:And btw, honest question: were the tea and candy actually found at the scene -- has the crime scene report been released? Because if they were not found there, that's slight evidence he may have actually reached the house (as he seemed to imply in the DeeDee phonecall) and doubled back after leaving them there. If they *were* found at the crime scene, that's slight evidence that he didn't so reach it.
I don't know if they were found on the scene-I think we've got a few more days before the next big information dump. As for getting home and doubling back...heh. Zimmerman's own word about what happened apparently carries some weight. If anyone else, his father or father's fiancé, were home and said Martin never arrived, I suppose that would be dismissed, right?
quote:No. You don't get to use that double standard. If Treyvon is absolutely required to be a violent thug for Treyvon to have started the altercation, then by the exact same standard you need to assign the same label to Zimmerman -- and the *only* thing you have in that regard is that he shoved a police officer several years ago, and that he and his former wife both put restraining orders on each other. Treyvon has more worrisome signs regarding crime-or-violence in the space of a few months.
But it's not what would've been needed for Zimmerman to have started an altercation that night. For him to have done so, all that is necessary to believe is that Zimmerman, after following a 'suspicious kid' at night in the rain, after exiting his car after being advised not to, grabs this kid from behind to start demanding an accounting of himself. If Zimmerman did as little as that, if he so much as laid a finger on Martin first...then it's night and after being followed some lays hands on Martin, who then attempts to defend himself.
And for *that*, evidence of Zimmerman's past life actually adds up in a compelling way. It's not violent thuggery, but it IS incredibly bad judgment coupled with a sense of entitlement to require answers from 'punks'. I use two different standards because Zimmerman himself has set the bar so much higher with regards to Martin's behavior.
quote:Calling the police many times doesn't make Zimmerman *more* likely to be a violent thug, it makes him less likely -- it was his type to use the police constantly, instead of getting into fights himself.
Oh, I agree. But as said above, not necessary for Zimmerman to have been a violent thug initially. And one tbjnf we DO know from his past is that involving the police should not be held as a sign that after the call, Zimmerman's judgment would be good-that he would be calm and level headed, not jumping to conclusions or taking unwise action. One of his first actions aside from speaking after calling police is to disregard what he's told.
quote:That he started violence when *expecting* the police to be there any time soon, that's what's an unbelievable scenario.
He needn't have expected to be 'starting violence' at all. Which is why the bar is different for him than Martin, who apparently lay in ambush with the intent to murder Zimmerman.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:"For him to have done so, all that is necessary to believe is that Zimmerman, after following a 'suspicious kid' at night in the rain, after exiting his car after being advised not to, grabs this kid from behind to start demanding an accounting of himself"
The DeeDee testimony itself indicates that Martin spoke to Zimmerman first, then Zimmerman answered, then there was a physical altercation.
That's consistent with Zimmerman's testimony -- and neither is consistent with Zimmerman grabbing Martin from behind while Martin was hiding from Zimmerman.
quote:And I don't need anyone else to know that when you weight the things you've mentioned to conclude he was a 'violent thug', you're not using any sort of scientific analysis-you've simply made your mind up already
There's a big range between "scientific analysis" and "simply made your mind up already". Human brains aren't built in such a fashion that we can easily hold hundred-variable equations in our heads.
So yes my estimation of every bit of evidence is QUITE INFORMAL and QUITE INTUITIVE; and if this was a case where evidence piled up in different directions rather than almost all in a single direction, it might have been quite hard for me to reach as definite as conclusion as I've reached in this case.
But that's not the same thing as "simply made up my mind already".
quote:He didn't think Martin was a violent thug that night, so I'm asking you, does that add weight to your 'analysis' and in which direction?
Any analysis by an informed person that Martin wasn't a violent thug is obviously Bayesian evidence towards the direction that Martin wasn't a violent thug -- since it can't be possibly Bayesian evidence towards the different direction.
But did this guy really use the words "Martin wasn't being a violent thug"? They seem a bit unprofessional, so I'm guessing he said something different which you're interpreting in this fashion.
quote:Which is why the bar is different for him than Martin, who apparently lay in ambush with the intent to murder Zimmerman.
I don't think anyone is saying that he lay in ambush with intent to murder. Personally I don't think Martin was intending to murder even if/when he said "You're going to die tonight mother****er".
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:If anyone else, his father or father's fiancé, were home and said Martin never arrived, I suppose that would be dismissed, right?
I'm not one of the people here who dismiss evidence, so no, I wouldn't "dismiss" their words.
I've not yet dismissed any witness's words -- though when they *change* their testimony, I do indeed assign more weight to their earlier testimony than to the later one; as is appropriate according to all studies on the matter of whether earlier testimonies are more credible than later ones.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:So yes my estimation of every bit of evidence is QUITE INFORMAL and QUITE INTUITIVE; and if this was a case where evidence piled up in different directions rather than almost all in a single direction, it might have been quite hard for me to reach as definite as conclusion as I've reached in this case.
Except of course it doesn't. You've been given examples and explanations dozens of times now why it doesn't, and while you don't quite outright dismiss evidence, bits and pieces which slant to your own conclusion-Martin as a violent thug-are weighted, over and over again, significantly higher than bits and pieces which slant towards Zimmerman being a terrifically stupid liar as far as crises and emergencies are concerned. Example: Martin's cousin Tweets about an assault Martin supposedly committee. "Bayesian probabilities so on so forth highly reliable predictive ability shows an uptick towards 'violent thug'." Zimmerman's lying in a deeply stupid way about his money in court. "Even liars can tell the truth sometimes, when it's convenient."
That is not a rational way of looking at things, if a significant portion of your take on events relies on Zimmerman's word-which it does. A rational person would see the deeply stupid lie and reason, "Huh. Well I know Zimmerman will lie when it's convenient to his interest, even when he should expect to be caught. Therefore his word carries very, very little weight with me when a lie would be very helpful to him."
quote:But did this guy really use the words "Martin wasn't being a violent thug"? They seem a bit unprofessional, so I'm guessing he said something different which you're interpreting in this fashion.
His remarks can be found, I believe it's about halfway down the last page. He doesn't specifically remark one way or another on Martin's supposed (well, by you) thuggery-he says Martin wasn't doing anything wrong. If he thought Martin was behaving in a violent, thuggish way that's not the sort of remark he would've made.
quote:I've not yet dismissed any witness's words -- though when they *change* their testimony, I do indeed assign more weight to their earlier testimony than to the later one; as is appropriate according to all studies on the matter of whether earlier testimonies are more credible than later ones.
'More credible' doesn't equal credible. If you say there are studies to the effect you describe, I don't doubt you. But do they say, for example, that an initial statement receives, for simplicity's sake, +10 credibility, and when changed that statement receives +5 credibility? Because that's how you're treating things. The changed witness reports don't seem to count at all towards events happening differently, they only seem-in your analysis-to slightly lessen the weight of the initial statement, still totaling an overall complete positive in Zimmerman's favor.
quote:I don't think anyone is saying that he lay in ambush with intent to murder. Personally I don't think Martin was intending to murder even if/when he said "You're going to die tonight mother****er".
According to Zimmerman, Martin was going for his gun when he said that. Zimmerman is certainly claiming Martin proclaimed his intent to do murder.
[ June 23, 2012, 01:23 PM: Message edited by: Rakeesh ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Boy I can't wait till I can participate in my own thread again
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I'm just lucky *I* can, and grateful for it, since Aris's own judgment of how badly I have treated him is apparently dubious;)
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Samprimary: Not being able to address one poster does not mean you cannot participate in the thread. I understand in this case there are not many people advocating for Mr. Zimmerman, but that's how it goes.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
LOL....Sorry Sam. Most of what I was saying earlier still stands, but I was mainly arguing for people to own up to the fact that a lot of the speculation at that point was plain wrong.
There is evidence of a physical fight. There is fairly decent proof that at least some of what Zimmerman said during the call happened, pretty much as he said it.
It was never my point that there was no evidence against Zimmerman, that he was completely reliable, or that he was innocent.
A lot of what I saw earlier in this case was bull...edited videotapes, edited phone conversations, people claiming that Martin was a great kid never in trouble, and of course the cute as a button picture of him in the news, over and over, from when he was 14.
All of that has been proven false, pretty much, and anyone paying attention should know that, so there isn't much more to debate as far as I am concerned.
All of this proves Zimmerman got a raw deal once the investigation picked up, but none of it means he is innocent. At beast, some of it may be enough to be reasonable doubt, but we won't know that until the trial.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
The really bad part is that all this crap has muddied the waters of what should be fairly straight forward. The edited call, the picture, the misrepresentations, etc, all have unfocused the case, which is really really simple:
You don't go on neighborhood watch with a gun because some law abiding citizen might end up shot dead because of a misunderstanding! Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
*shrug* Zimmerman did get a crummy deal in terms of media coverage...as you say, once the outcry started. On the other hand, of course, the actual police involved didn't want to just drop it which is what happened for quite some time, either.
But in this scenario, Zimmerman getting unfavorable and in a couple of cases misleading (well, the edited call and the picture, I don't recall any videotape) media coverage isn't exactly special. An unarmed kid (Zimmerman's word, not mine) was shot to death a hundred yards from home. Unless he turned out to be a *cannibal* or something, Zimmerman was going to get bad press.
I'm not saying it's right, or that we should just be blasé about it, just that it's not a special sign of media conspiracy or something.
So I don't see how Zimmerman can be said to have been treated badly, when he should've been arrested immediately. Ironically it would've been better for him had he been-the outcry against him wouldn't be as bad, and when he claimed indigence in his hearing, it would've been true, and he likely would've been out until trial.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:You don't go on neighborhood watch with a gun because some law abiding citizen might end up shot dead because of a misunderstanding!
Let's assume the counterfactual world for the moment in which Zimmerman didn't have a gun, and therefore didn't shoot Martin. The police arrives and finds both people alive, with Martin not having a scratch on him (except the scrape in his knuckles), and Zimmerman with a broken nose, bleeding from the back of his head, etc. Namely the state of the bodies, minus gunshot.
Would there be much likelihood that this situation would end up with Martin not getting some mention of being guilty of serious violence on his record? And therefore not actually being law-abiding during the night in question?
Even if Martin claimed that Zimmerman pushed him first, it'd be strange to see how he could prove the same or justify the level of response when he had no sign of injury on him; and therefore it would be strange to see how Martin would avoid trial and conviction.
So law-abiding? Law-abiding at the moment where he started being followed by Zimmerman. Probably not law-abiding at the moment he was actually getting shot.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
He would be alive, even if he would be in a pickle with the cops for roughing up the neighborhood watch captain.
I think he might prefer a bit of trouble over being dead.
Considering that Zimmerman went against the 911 operator and followed him, and if he claimed Zimmerman started the physical confrontation, they would likely -both- be in trouble with the cops, or both be released with a warning.
But the real point here is, they would both be alive.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Even if Martin claimed that Zimmerman pushed him first, it'd be strange to see how he could prove the same or justify the level of response when he had no sign of injury on him; and therefore it would be strange to see how Martin would avoid trial and conviction.
It really depends, though in that sort of no-witnesses scenario, an initial arrest doesn't necessarily mean much-in many situations, police will simply arrest who looks guilty. If they both had injuries from fighting, they might both be arrested for example.
As for a trial, though...well, in a trial Zimmerman's ignoring of dispatch, and his scores of 911 calls, and perhaps even his history with the police, might have come up. A jury might indeed think there was reasonable doubt as to whether Zimmerman shoved or grabbed him or not.
Your larger point does stand, though perhaps not in the way you intended: had the scene not included an unarmed kid (and again, I use Zimmerman's word) who had been shot to death very close to home, Martin would indeed look pretty bad!
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: So I don't see how Zimmerman can be said to have been treated badly, when he should've been arrested immediately. Ironically it would've been better for him had he been-the outcry against him wouldn't be as bad, and when he claimed indigence in his hearing, it would've been true, and he likely would've been out until trial.
Exactly. Right up until Zimmerman perjured himself and was caught in the money-moving and story-waffling, I considered him the sideshow to the police department's incompetent bagging of the whole case. So much immediate investigation was not done. Many clearly absolutely required things just NOT done. In combination with the department's history of similarly suspect acts, it was what made this whole thing look as much a wanton breach of justice as it is.
However, though, I've upgraded zimmerman from sideshow to Dumbass Prime of the event. Given what he has proven about himself so far — from codewords to a re-enactment video that prosecutors already know contradicts the 911 call and other accounts, the whole thing — a friend of mine who works with the county prosecutors mused that one can't even reasonably trust that his wounds weren't self-inflicted after he freaked and shot martin, because apparently that's pretty common when someone's whipping up a story of self-defense, and zimmerman now seems the perfect profile for the kind of person who does that. Proper investigation at the scene and at initial booking is vital to provide for zimmerman's account plus his wounds, but we don't have that, because the police response was a bagging.
Instead we have: Savagely Beating Head Against Concrete In Black Thug Beating versus the minor wounds he did actually have, which, well.
Anyway at this point I think what the prosecution is doing is designed around the intent to show Zimmerman's actions following Martin would qualify as "culpably negligent." Because of Zimmerman's prior legal history, under the 10/20/Life law he would be subject to a 25 to life term.
Also every one of the beagles I know who has been following this case have told me so far that Zimmerman's re-enactment video is going to be even worse for him than the perjury, because now the prosecution has a veritable gold mine of sketchy details and contradictions including getting out of the car to look at street names.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Question: in the video from the link in Samp's post above GZ says he called the "non-emergency police number"...it's always been reported that he called 911...is he lying or are the reports incorrect...or did I just hear wrong?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Zimmerman's "911" call that night was to the SPD non-emergency number. It's usually reported as such but often times 911 call is used as nomenclature since he did end up speaking (I believe) to the same dispatch pool.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
*snort* So it was his friend's house, too, and he still didn't know what street he was on? That is certainly possible, if it was a friend's home, but also does make it less likely.
I'd be interested in your analysis of the likelihood that he didn't know what street he was on, Aris;)
Also, I think we can dispense with anything that would've made Martin reasonably appear suspicious except standing in the rain. It's apparently quite common for foot traffic right there, and in any event he was close to home.
There are, of course, plenty of unreasonable reasons he might've been considered suspicious.
I wonder if he actually believes he was asked to follow Martin?
I do love his reasoning, though. "He's got something wrong with him," because he's 'checking me out'. I guess Martin didn't know Zimmerman was the guy who followed residents around at night when they weren't doing anything wrong. I don't know why on Earth that would make Martin behave strangely-if he was.
"These assholes always get away." Yeah, those goddamned pedestrians, always getting away!
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The numerous lapses between the reenactment and the call, much of that I have no problem attributing to ordinary memory failings. It was a lot of small details that people often don't even try to remember, much less forget.
What seems very, very bad for Zimmerman to me are the things that simply don't make sense within his own account, and that can be flatly contradicted from the call. Such as the house numbers bit-clearly lit from a point he says he couldn't see them would've been a number, right where anyone would look. Which bushes, exactly, did Martin hide behind? How did Martin walk so quickly to arrive in such places?
I'm curious to see how much can withstand defense scrutiny, since I'm sure those problems will come up elsewhere. But quite a few points seem unambiguous.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:"I'd be interested in your analysis of the likelihood that he didn't know what street he was on, Aris;"
Since I personally don't know the name of more than half the streets in my neighborhood, and just a week ago for my tax statement I had to look at Google Maps to determine the name of two out of four streets that surrounded the block of my apartment -- and since I assume I'm not unique in the world regarding such ignorance of street names in my neighborhood, I'd call such likelihood quite damn high.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I wasn't asking the likelihood of *you* not knowing, Aris, and that's a poor standard to use given the question. You're not (correct me if I'm wrong) a neighborhood watch member, you have more than three streets in your little area, and the location isn't near both the neighborhood clubhouse nor is it right in front of a friend's house.
It is *certainly* possible Zimmerman didn't know the name of the street. I don't suggest he's lying for that-I don't need to anyway, since he's condemned as a liar elsewhere. But 'damned high' likelihood he wouldn't have known? Nonsense.
What would you say is the likelihood he forgot so much, and said so many things in the reenactment that simply don't make sense?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:and said so many things in the reenactment that simply don't make sense?
Throughout the thread we've had vast disagreements about what things make sense and what things don't make sense, as I'm sure you can remember.
So frankly, if you want me to answer a question, you'll have to ask it in a more factual way.
Btw, I have never required Zimmerman to have been telling the full and complete truth about the encounter in order to believe him innocent of wrongdoing in shooting Trayvon Martin. He could have been deliberately trying to keep on following Trayvon Martin and lied about wanting to check out the address -- that doesn't really pertain on his guilt of other matters; though it certainly hurts his credibility, as you say.
But thankfully his personal credibility is far from the most crucial evidence in his favor.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Zimmerman's "911" call that night was to the SPD non-emergency number. It's usually reported as such but often times 911 call is used as nomenclature since he did end up speaking (I believe) to the same dispatch pool.
This calls into question the previous "911 calls" for dubious emergencies.
Was he calling "911", the really real emergency number to report open garages and pot holes, or just letting the police know in general.
I myself have called the non emergency local police number for such mundane issues (it was a sensor in the road which let the light know to change that wasn't working, so the light -never- changed).
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
As a sidenote -- having recently reread the first couple pages of this thread, it reminded me of how you were the one who *repeatedly* refused to answer my questions.
As such, I think it's shameless of you to keep asking me question, when you never answered that first one of mine: "If Trey *was* bashing Zimmerman's head on the ground, would you consider Zimmerman's shooting a justifiable act of self-defense, and therefore Zimmerman would be innocent of any criminal wrongdoing?"
You never answered that one.
And btw, in the spirit of full disclosure about our feelings, rereading that first page has currently made me very very angry at the way you were mocking me for BEING RIGHT ABOUT ZIMMERMAN'S INJURIES.
So I suggest you don't sin the same sin twice, and try to tread lightly with your mockery of me now.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:This calls into question the previous "911 calls" for dubious emergencies.
Was he calling "911", the really real emergency number to report open garages and pot holes, or just letting the police know in general.
Here's the log of his 46 calls to both 911 and non-emergency numbers.
In the whole of 2011 and 2012, the only 911 call was "Zimmerman requested an officer meet him regarding a pit bull in his garage" All the other were non-emergency calls.
In 2010 and 2009 there are a couple of 911 calls about "disturbance" and fire-alarms, but most of them are still non-emergency calls.
Prior to 2006, all of them were 911 calls (perhaps he didn't know to use a non-emergency number back then or something?)
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Aris, you demanded I rebut an absurd claim I never made and then declared 'BULLSHIT' when I didn't reject it but rather pointed out it was a strawman. I just checked-I said as much at the time. So I think you know what you can do with your anger, and your 'suggestions', if you persist in holding onto them.
But, I'm fine with chalking that up to anger at the time. No problem: if it could be shown that Martin *did* attack Zimmerman first, and then was bludgeoning him into the pavement, then of course that makes a decisive difference.
I called it a straw man because it was. Obviously if Zimmerman were being beaten to death, he had a right to defend himself, even with lethal force. But frankly? I didn't believe then and don't believe now that you ever actually thought, even for a second, that my answer would be otherwise. If you did, your self-vaunted predictive ability is utter hogwash. If you didn't, the question was as I said it was.
So complain all you like about how much you've been victimized, though for pity's sake there's enough of that around here lately anyway. Or not. But I'm certainly not going to apologize for refusing wrapping my arms arms around the position you built for me, to reject it at your amazing insight. It was a transparent ploy.
'Very angry' indeed. This from the man who has claimed, over and over again, that it's been proven Martin was a 'violent thug' on the flimsiest of pretexts. Please.
---------
The non-emergency number bit does mitigate questions of Zimmeran's (provably bad) judgment. It's a downtick in the reasons why it's bad-though one relevant factor would be why he changed his calling style. Did he realize, "Wait, 911 needs to be free for real, pressing emergencies?" Or was he asked? Don't know. Will be interested if it comes out.
Left in the bad judgment column, though, are the ignoring the dispatcher, following Martin at all, taking a gun to go grocery shopping, and lying about his finances in court. The log of ridiculous 911 calls could be taken out, though.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Left in the bad judgment column, though, are the ignoring the dispatcher, following Martin at all, taking a gun to go grocery shopping, and lying about his finances in court. The log of ridiculous 911 calls could be taken out, though.
I agree with most of this with this change;
....taking a gun to go grocery shopping...
into
...taking a gun on neighborhood watch...
and the addition of:
...getting out of his vehicle...
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
Aris: I would recommend you sit this thread out for some time if you are "very very angry". I don't think I've ever seen a poster write their best material in that frame of mind.
Mind, I'm not telling you to stay out, but I am saying that option is on the table if you start doing the things that are characteristic with angry posting.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Taking a gun on NW is, in fact, almost universally condemned by police and NW groups. Not at all the sort of thing any responsible cop or NW leader would want done.
But for some reason, to some people, that's not supposed to be a sign to sit back and take a good hard look at how much we want to trust Zimmerman's judgment, just because it's legal. Frequent random unprotected sex is legal. Gambling away one's savings is legal. Eating cereal out of a lead bowl is legal. Marrying a known repeat adulterer with no prenup is legal.
Anyway, as for the gun to the grocery store-unless it's a response to some sort of specific threat or danger, or unless he had training beyond the appalling little needed to get a concealed permit, yeah, it was simply bad judgment to take a gun grocery shopping.
Yes, something bad could happen anywhere anytime. Who knows where the next crazy axe murderer will appear? Perhaps it will be hungry zombies, or even an ordinary mugging. Why, then, is the whole 'potential of deadly mistake or accident with firearm' not thrown into account here? Particularly for people without careful training, good judgment, and discipline, or at least some of those, that risk is always there. The likelihood of needing a gun, on the other hand, varies.
I've tread this ground before without success, but very, very few people are ever even harmed much less killed going to the grocery store. In terms of people we know, it's an incredibly tiny number, despite what our fear driven society tells us-there are many other ways one can protect one's self and others that are more useful, more reliable, and less likely to lead to tragedy than a gun-you're something of an impassioned advocate of one of them.
Hell, how many times did Zimmerman actually go out *looking* for trouble (to report as NW), and never need a firearm? But it's supposed to not be a sign of bad judgment to feel he needs one to get eggs and milk?
No. We'd be safer if the sorts of people who felt endangered (without a specific threat or danger) by grocery shopping had cell phones and pepper spray rather than firearms. Good luck selling that in this gun/fear culture, though.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:We'd be safer if the sorts of people who felt endangered (without a specific threat or danger) by grocery shopping had cell phones and pepper spray rather than firearms.
I do agree with this conclusion, while I don't categorize those who shop armed as a sign of having bad judgement.
On the other hand I -do- classify those who take a gun on neighborhood watch as having bad judgement. Want to patrol the streets with a gun? Go sign up to be a police officer. Because if you are not carrying a badge of some sort (I have an exposed carry permit as a security guard) then you have no business patrolling with a firearm.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
If we would all-including the carrier-be safer if they didn't, how is it not bad judgment? It endangers everyone to a greater degree than it protects anyone.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I doubt the stats back you up.
I'll poke around for some numbers a bit later.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Nope. You still have a right to defend yourself, up to and including the used of deadly force, when attacked. IF (not saying this happened) Martin attacked him, he had a right to shoot him in self defense. You don't have to accept a beating, and making a call about how bad they MIGHT hurt you WHILE a beating is happening is not a good idea.
I know that most NW frown on carrying a weapon, but they don't ban it......and most of their objections come from liability issues rather than anything else.
It would be a rare situation where you are safer unarmed.
I'd rather worry about how I felt killing another person after being attacked than not survive a beating by a person who jumps me. I know I am not going to be threatening anyone, or breaking the law. I can't say that of them.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Nope. You still have a right to defend yourself, up to and including the used of deadly force, when attacked. IF (not saying this happened) Martin attacked him, he had a right to shoot him in self defense. You don't have to accept a beating, and making a call about how bad they MIGHT hurt you WHILE a beating is happening is not a good idea.
Who has said otherwise?
Though personally I would rather take a beating than kill someone, *if* I knew that was the choice.
quote:I know that most NW frown on carrying a weapon, but they don't ban it......and most of their objections come from liability issues rather than anything else.
First of all, attributing it to liability issues amounts to the same thing: they 'object' to it because more often than not, when someone in the NW were to use it, it turns out not to have been necessary.
Second, it is irrational to plan for the most dangerous scenario by carrying around a degree of force that carries its own dangers, and then not factoring in those dangers into the overall question. It's just bad thinking. And anyway, there is more to consider than whether you, personally, will be safer.
quote:I'd rather worry about how I felt killing another person after being attacked than not survive a beating by a person who jumps me. I know I am not going to be threatening anyone, or breaking the law. I can't say that of them.
I wonder how many of the thousands of gun owners each year whose firearms were used in illegal or accidental ways would've said the same thing prior to that accident or crime? You can't shoot someone by accident or in a fit of rage or drunkeness with a gun you don't have, and we've got quite a lot of those in our fear-ridden society. Quite a lot less muggings or murders completely out of nowhere while getting eggs and milk at the store.
It is an incredibly rare, in our society, scenario where deadly force might actually be called for, and in a majority of those scenarios, there are many steps before carrying a gun just because 'it's dangerous out there' that would be more effective.
--------
As for looking up stats, there's really not much point. It's inevitable that someone will bring up the dog that didn't bark, so to speak-all of the countless and uncounted (but certainly there, or so says the gun rights advocate) crimes that were prevented by gun ownership. No number of accidental or heat of the moment gun deaths can overcome such a number, because it will rise to the occasion if the fear is great enough.
But you know, I don't feel safer knowing that people can strap up just to go shopping, and that's about the only justification they need. And I know which organization will be absolutely sure to stand up and fight for that right against any challenge. It ain't the 'Let's Stay Calm and Talk About This Association', either.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: Nope. You still have a right to defend yourself, up to and including the used of deadly force, when attacked.
Well sorta. this is not a categorical across-the-board right. Escalation to deadly force can be negligent manslaughter or homicide based on a number of mitigating circumstances. Things like stalking, threatening assault, property invasion and "terroristic threats in close proximity" can create situations in which someone can attack you but you're still pretty on the hook for potential criminal liability based on what led up to the initial physical altercation.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Just wanted to reiterate, since it was apparently an unknown: if you're being attacked, I think you do have the right to defend yourself. I even think you have should have the right to defend yourself with lethal force, if you're fearing for your life.
But damnit, we've got to have some constraints, some limits somewhere. If I come up out of nowhere and punch you in the face, an EMT killed my father or something and I just can't stand `em anymore, do you have a right to pull out your piece and shoot me in the head?
Well, maybe, but we've got to at least look at my death when it happens to make an attempt to see what happened. Was I about to deck you again when you shot me? Did I draw back to declaim my reason for vengeance in a passionate voice? Was I eighty pounds lighter and a foot shorter than you? Did I unclench my fist and sneer at you as you were drawing your gun to shoot me? If it laid you out, was I drawing my steel-toed boot back to kick you in the ribs? Did you spit on my face because you saw me litter?
If we don't do that sort of thing-and to be clear, I'm not suggesting anyone is claiming we are, but with some of the remarks in this thread, I'm not really sure if that's not what some people think-it would be really, really easy to get away with murder. And I don't just mean easy in that nerd sense where us nerds like to wonder if we could outsmart the authorities and get away with murder, I mean really easy as in a guy shoots another guy in a drunken brawl and is able to come up with this defense while still plastered level of easy.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I'd have to say that while I am generally for issuing carry permits (with a list of prereqs) I strongly feel that there should be a no drinking conditional. That is to say, you drink, and your legally carried firearm becomes a crime. You want to drink, leave the heater in the safe at home. Simple as that.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
If you are advancing after hitting me, or even threatening to hit me as I back away, I get to shoot. I don't care if you are 100 lbs soaking wet. I've seen someone die in a fight like that, and it wasn't the little guy.
I don't care if you hate nurses. I don't care what you weight, what color your skin is, or even if you are armed. If you are threatening me, and I try to get away and you don't let me (in FL there is no legal need for me to try and flee, BTW), I have a right to defend myself, plain and simple.
I personally try and run. But it isn't right to make someone try and flee, the person could pull a gun and shoot them in the back.
IRL, it depends on a number of factors, and would probably come down to a split second decision on how likely violence would be to my person.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Personally, I can't mine myself shooting somebody who was 100lb soaking wet. I mean, that person would have to be pretty expert at martial arts to defeat the natural advantage I would have in height and bulk. And there's no amount of training that can teach you to manhandle 250% of your mass with a reach longer than yours and a high center of gravity. But that's always been interesting to me, since I kept growing through my late teens and early 20s. I wasn't exceptionally large in high school, and I did get in a few fights. But since my early 20s, nobody has ever showed me physical aggression.
The idea that violence finds people has been something hard for me to accept, but almost certainly because I don't have to worry about it, and nobody wants me to be worried for my safety in their presence.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
My karate sensei's sensei was a 8th degree black belt, and was 4'11" and probably weighed 90 lbs. He was from Okinawa I think, and at least 70 years old. I was 16 and a green belt and about 6' and 220 lbs, and I thought, "I could take this guy."
He was instructing a class, showing how to side kick. He had his body turned to the class, and just lifted his leg and in slow motion demonstrated the steps of the kick, leaving his leg extended in the air while he talked to the class. And just left it there.
Sometimes size and age are not the deciding factors. That guy could have killed every person in the room with his bear hands without breaking a sweat.
You could tell he loved working with children, he was very nice.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Yes, sometimes size and weight and physical strength aren't the decisive factors, I certainly agree. In a minority of cases. To the extent you're discussing, an incredibly small minority of cases.
There's a disconnect here. The harshest possible response, justified only by the worst case scenario, is eagerly defended as just and moral even though the worst case scenario is only ever going to happen a very, very, very small amount of the time.
Well, alright, but don't let's stand in the way of the authorities taking a good hard look at the person standing over the body with a smoking gun when all is said and done. If we're going to permit the worst-case scenario response to violence that only *might* have risen to that level, well, alright. If you're going to respond with lethal force because you genuinely fear your life *might be* in danger, there need to be different consequences than if you respond with lethal force because your life *definitely is* in danger.
Not an automatic conviction, or an assumption of guilt, but we shouldn't just take the shooter's word for it-we should check. It's rather in the state's, and everyone else's by the way, interest to prevent murder from being *really really* easy.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: The harshest possible response, justified only by the worst case scenario, is eagerly defended as just and moral even though the worst case scenario is only ever going to happen a very, very, very small amount of the time.
I'm not sure who this comment is aimed at, but surely it is not me...as I am an advocate of carrying pepper spray, not hand guns.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:But 'damned high' likelihood he wouldn't have known? Nonsense.
"Dispatcher: Alright, what address are you parked in front of? [3:21] Zimmerman: Um, I don’t know. It’s a cut-through so I don’t know the address. [3:25]"
So, since Zimmerman said that he didn't know an address BEFORE he had shot anyone -- does this increase the likelihood for you that he really didn't know the address?
And later on he says: "Zimmerman: Could you have them call me and I’ll tell them where I’m at? [3:49]"
This seems to imply that he doesn't know the address, but he's about to go and check it out.
Not proof indisputable, no -- but it's certainly CONSISTENT with what he claimed.
Gee, yet another part of Zimmerman's testimony that is completely consistent with recorded evidence.
What a surprise.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Oh , my freaking god, Aris. Are you seriously going to simply flat-out ignore the several-like, half a dozen-contradictions between Zimmerman's reenactment and the actual audio record?
Because we just went over quite a few of them, recently. This isn't something I can just chalk up to difference of opinion, either, if this is going to be your tack.
Just here, for example, you fail to take note that the house he was standing right in front of had a plainly lit address on it. Now, i can't remember exactly, but was it earlier in events that Zimmerman saw Martin in front of a friend's house? Or was it the hoise he exited his truck (unprompted) in front of?
But he didn't. Did he just not think to look right where every home in the neighborhood has their house number plainly displayed?
What bushes was Martin hiding behind, exactly? How did Martin *walk* so quickly to be in the places Zimmerman reported him earlier in the calls? Why just a day later were there numerous contradictions between what the dispatcher said and Zimmerman claimed he was asked?
Now, I'm not sure if it's simple eagerness which caused you to seize on this one detail (that doesn't actually say what you claim) or if you've not watched the reenactment, or what. But no, Aris. You don't get to point to one supposed (but not, in fact) corroboration and dismiss the many other contradictions, and still be taken seriously.
Oh, and just for fun: "The assholes always get away." Zimmerman 'knew' Martin was a would-be burglar before he ever even got out of his truck. Im sure that's in a NW handbook somewhere, too: that anyone they suspect is an asshole who will get away, and that it is their job in the NW to stop them from getting away. Another sign of terrible judgment and a nod to vigilantism that you're sure to ignore.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:So, since Zimmerman said that he didn't know an address BEFORE he had shot anyone -- does this increase the likelihood for you that he really didn't know the address?
Also, no. It seems clear Zimmerman *wanted* a confrontation with Martin, whose only 'suspicious activity' to this point was to be a pedestrian in a high traffic area while it was raining, and to look askance at someone following him. He was an asshole who would get away before that part of the conversation.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I guess swearing is now acceptable in Hatrack... Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
It's a quote from Zimmerman. But I'm sure you mentioned that out of genuine surprise and concern for community standards, and no other reason. Even though mild swearing particularly in quotes has been done before.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Oh , my freaking god, Aris.
Another big surprise. Your respond is to mock yet again: Try to mock reality away, Rakeesh. When you've mocked all reality away, perhaps then Zimmerman will actually be guilty.
quote:Are you seriously going to simply flat-out ignore the several-like, half a dozen-contradictions between Zimmerman's reenactment and the actual audio record?
Oh, you're changing the subject? Up to now the biggest "contradiction" you found was supposed to be that he didn't know the address, that's what you challenged me on, and that's why I focused on it.
Now that you're challenging me on the rest of the supposed contradiction, here's what I think: I suspect that of the supposed "contradictions" you claim most of them are about as big contradictions as the supposed contradiction between Zimmerman saying he was injured, and him supposedly *not* being injured.
Didn't I tell you not to sin the same sin twice?
quote:Because we just went over quite a few of them, recently.
Not really, "went over" implies a bit of discussion, not just linking to a youtube video and assuming that anything that it says is a contradiction actually is one.
quote:What bushes was Martin hiding behind, exactly?
Zimmerman doesn't say anything about bushes in the reenactment.
quote:How did Martin *walk* so quickly to be in the places Zimmerman reported him earlier in the calls?
How quickly was it? Are you telling me you actually discussed Martin's speed in this thread? Link me to the post where you discuss this amazing contradiction, and I'll let you know what I think about it.
quote:"Why just a day later were there numerous contradictions between what the dispatcher said and Zimmerman claimed he was asked?"
Wow such amazing contradictions like him being asked "Do you want to meet with the officer when they get out there?" and him remembering "Would you still like an officer." -- or remembering that he said Martin was "circling" his car, while he actually only said that he was "checking him out".
Such terrible contradictions in his memory of events. But frankly they all seem to within the range of actual plausible error.
quote:Did he just not think to look right where every home in the neighborhood has their house number plainly displayed
It was the street name he said he wanted to see, not the house number, no?
quote:
quote:So, since Zimmerman said that he didn't know an address BEFORE he had shot anyone -- does this increase the likelihood for you that he really didn't know the address?
Also, no
Really? So it's literally ZERO or even negative evidence towards that conclusion for you? I've explained to you already that relevant things are rarely of ZERO evidence.
A scenario that previously was A:"Zimmerman lied after the shooting about not knowing the address" has just by necessity transformed (for it to retain validity) into B:"Zimmerman lied both after AND before the shooting about not knowing the address" -- and yet you treat these two different statements as of equal probability; though the latter is a conjuction that is necessarily of less likelihood than the former.
You don't understand the laws of probability; and therefore you don't understand the meaning of logical evidence.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Well, when I whistled cussin' a few pages back -nothing happened- and so I figure there has been a change...
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Yes, of course, Stone_Wolf. Very high-minded of you. Whyever did I wonder if there might be another motive?
----------
Aris, you're lying about what I said. I didn't say Zimmerman lied about not knowing the address. In fact I specifically stated I *didn't* know that he was lying. I guess they didn't cover putting words into people's mouths when you took that class on predicting fanfictions and obvious financial crises? And before you whine some more about mockery, do kindly remember that you did just lie about what I said, intentionally or not.
Just for fun, though, since you can be pinned down about as effectively as a blob of jello, which aspects of the flaws in Zimmerman's account linked above do you dispute, exactly?
quote:Really? So it's literally ZERO or even negative evidence towards that conclusion for you? I've explained to you already that relevant things are rarely of ZERO evidence.
You're not in a position to explain these things to anyone in this discussion. Even when you were citing your own authority to do so, the examples you used were laughable. Anyway, relevant things are often of *unknown* influence on the probability.
*snort* Changing the subject indeed. The subject was, actually, the numerous contradictions in his reenactment, not your own very narrow 'Zimmerman is innocent, Martin was a violent thug' careful cherry-picking that doesn't even serve to illustrate what you claim.
But hey, lecture me about sin some more. Assume that position of authority which you haven't earned. Proclaim your own superior understanding of probability. You've either worn out or seen banned from the discussion others who would disagree, including experienced scientists. Perhaps I'll be next, if Stone_Wolf has his way.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Yes, of course, Stone_Wolf. Very high-minded of you. Whyever did I wonder if there might be another motive?
Bored? Assuming the very worst in people is a hobby of yours? Not sure. Don't really care.
quote:You've either worn out or seen banned from the discussion others who would disagree, including experienced scientists. Perhaps I'll be next, if Stone_Wolf has his way.
If I had -my way- individual posts which were problematic would be addressed by authority, and not whole posters banned from speaking to each other. But hey, given how numerous your negative assumptions are, why should I expect you to find out my actual opinion before putting words in my mouth?
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Well, when I whistled cussin' a few pages back -nothing happened- and so I figure there has been a change...
I don't always swoop in and tell somebody to edit their post when they swear. If it's got enough of it in one post then I do. If a poster is starting to swear regularly I'll tell them to stop. If the board would be better served were I to stamp out every single instance of vulgar language I would. But I don't think that is the case.
Edit: That said, could you dial it back a little Rakeesh? Thanks.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Thanks for the info BB.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Aris, you're lying about what I said.
Can you quote the exact statement of mine in which I supposedly lied?
quote:And before you whine some more about mockery, do kindly remember that you did just lie about what I said, intentionally or not.
Quote the statement in which I supposedly lied. Or you're the liar.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Of course. Though I would like to point out I was done with that bit of mild profanity before the issue was even raised-I was making a point using Zimmerman's own words, that was all. I believe I did so...two or three times, no more.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:A scenario that previously was A:"Zimmerman lied after the shooting about not knowing the address" has just by necessity transformed (for it to retain validity) into B:"Zimmerman lied both after AND before the shooting about not knowing the address" -- and yet you treat these two different statements as of equal probability; though the latter is a conjuction that is necessarily of less likelihood than the former.
I didn't say he lied, I used your own standards. I specifically stated, at least once, that I couldn't be sure he was lying-but that we had several reasons to doubt him. Nowhere did I state any kind of certainty that he lied, but unlike you with your 'probabilities' (chiefly Martin the violent thug, which sometimes you outright stated as proven), I copped to it at once.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:I didn't say he lied,
And I didn't say you said that he lied, I spoke about the scenarios "Zimmerman lied after the shooting" and the scenario "Zimmerman lied both before and after the shooting" -- and that you effectively treated them as both having the same probability.
And for that you accuse me of lying? You accuse me of calling you "certain" that he lied? Burn in hell.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: Burn in hell.
Aris, Rakeesh can be a little much at times, I of all people should know, but this response is a good indicator that you might want to step out of the thread (or at least talking to him) for a while and cool your jets.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Hey, with all the 'sinning' I'm doing with respect to you, Aris, I probably will!
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Aris: Take a break from the thread please. I'll be messaging you later today.
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
I went from being annoyed that people wouldn't just ignore aris to being kind of impressed that it would go on THIS LONG.
Pouring out a 40:
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Personally, I can't mine myself shooting somebody who was 100lb soaking wet. I mean, that person would have to be pretty expert at martial arts to defeat the natural advantage I would have in height and bulk. And there's no amount of training that can teach you to manhandle 250% of your mass with a reach longer than yours and a high center of gravity. But that's always been interesting to me, since I kept growing through my late teens and early 20s. I wasn't exceptionally large in high school, and I did get in a few fights. But since my early 20s, nobody has ever showed me physical aggression.
You can believe this if you want, but it isn't true. I was walking, alone, though a park. I didn't even talk to anyone, and had no interaction with the people who tried to kill me. All 3 of them were 18 or younger, and 2 of them were taller than me, but thinner.
I ran away, and when they caught me I fought. They left me for dead, and one of them died.
In today's day and age, size doesn't correlate with physical danger a lot of the time. Your size does protect you somewhat, but just because someone is smaller than you doesn't mean they can't get a lucky punch in, or shove you down, or catch you off guard. And that doesn't even count the fact they could be armed....tazers, pepper spray, knives and guns don't care what size you are, for sure.
I've seen 3 people die from a single punch or shove. All it takes is a curb to be in the wrong place, or a railing to give way.
I probably am more likely to be wary of a larger person....it's ingrained in who we are...but I don't think that someone is wrong reacting strongly just because their attacker is 100 lbs.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
You weren't talking about 3 people before. As I said, I couldn't imagine myself being intimidated enough by a 100lb attacker to shoot him. 3 medium sized attackers in a park? Who knows. Of course a 100lb attacker *could* hurt me, but my very natural reaction to an attack by such a small assailant would be less fearful.
Incidentally I disagree on your last point. I think it *would* be slightly unreasonable for me to react with maximum force to such a situation as a 100lb assailant. I could easily kill such a person needlessly. Now, sure, if they got the upper hand or the fight went their way a little, I would step it up. But I've never gone 0-60 all at once, and don't see as thats a good policy in general.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
*bounds back into thread*
I could imagine myself shooting someone if they were really laying into me and had me pinned to the ground, I mean, I wouldn't internally reassess killing them based on how light they seemed as they were jumping out of bushes and hammering my head into the ground and reaching for my gun and saying cartoon villainry things like YOU DIE TONIGHT.
This is to say that if things transpired exactly how Zimmerman describes in his story, yeah, I would have shot Martin too. It is not something I would consider unreasonable self defense at all. The thing is really that we have little in the way of any good reason to take Zimmerman's story on its face, and plenty of reason to disbelieve his testimony on the matter, especially given the abnormally large number of discrepancies present in his reenactment as well as the perjury fiasco, 'covert' money movement and flight risk plans, and a series of recorded calls, incidences, mismatch between description of injuries received and actual injuries, and criminal history on the part of Zimmerman which the prosecution can do two things with:
- Elaborately detail a profile of him as an overly confrontational individual with poor judgment in heated situations and a tendency to rash escalation
- Hammer the crap out of the defense for literal days over incongruities between the phone recording, recorded statements on-scene and booking, and his extremely inadvisable 'recreation'
But that's just Zimmerman; he's an idiot, whatever. To speak to the larger issue, yeah, in the defense's account I would easily exonerate in such a hypothetical assault and I don't think I would spend a lot of time mentally assessing his weight afore I done shot him.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Sure, I was thinking of a slightly different cartoon scenario: 100lb thug approaches me Ina threatening manner, and I'm carrying a gun. In that case, I'm concerned with protecting myself, but also concerned, in part, with not hurting the person more badly than necessary. I don't have much propensity for panic, (for example, I once checked the seatbelts of my fellow passengers to make sure they were secure *while* the car was careening into an accident scene- and only later did a friend point out how preternaturally calm I had been) but I do understand that there are those who do panic in such circumstances. Perhaps they shouldn't follow teenagers in residential neighborhoods against police advise while carrying guns...
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
One very wise person I know who is a concealed carry permit advocate and a trainer says his pattern advice on the matter is that if you've got a gun on you in a potential confrontation situation, your job is to be the agent of non-confrontation. You are going to be the one it falls on to try to de-escalate. You are going to apologize, back down, say you are not looking for trouble, offer to leave without incident, not aggress onto any territory, whether literal or figurative, because you know that if things escalate into a physical altercation you have a gun you do not know if you will then be at liberty not to use and you want to make sure you have owned the moment and not rushed or provoked into a situation that involves that kind of terminal altercation. It is both for one's personal safety as well as their moral and legal safety.
he is fond of SYG laws but not fond of what zimmerman's case and his actions will do in terms of the law's future.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
I've heard the " makes me responsible" argument plenty of times myself. I even believe it- but it doesn't change the stats on gun deaths. You're still a zillion times more likely to be killed by a gun accidentally, or unnecessarily kill someone else.
Just from a purely statistical perspective, why would I want something in my house that had a vastly higher likelihood of hurting me, than helping?
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I think I would like your friend Samp.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Just from a purely statistical perspective, why would I want something in my house that had a vastly higher likelihood of hurting me, than helping?
Because when/if you really do need a gun, almost nothing else will do.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: I've heard the " makes me responsible" argument plenty of times myself. I even believe it- but it doesn't change the stats on gun deaths. You're still a zillion times more likely to be killed by a gun accidentally, or unnecessarily kill someone else.
Absolutely. I recognize guns in the context of a thing that "ideally we would not have them, but they are there and not going away, so let's figure out how best to deal with them" — the way to statistically manage the issue of guns is, if you have decided at your own liberty you WISH to be a gun owner, whatever your motivations, to look at where the statistics put you as an individual. Gun users who do this versus gun users who do that, etc. Gun users who take classes versus gun users who don't. Gun users who have a gun safe and trigger locks versus those who don't. It is always contextual. if you only look at it in terms of purely statistical overviews, sure, you would never own a gun. But at the same time, you would also never have a swimming pool, or live in a house with stairs.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
God forbid you find yourself on the stairs that lead to your pool with a hand gun, it's all over then.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
Only if you stop in the bathroom along the way.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: I've heard the " makes me responsible" argument plenty of times myself. I even believe it- but it doesn't change the stats on gun deaths. You're still a zillion times more likely to be killed by a gun accidentally, or unnecessarily kill someone else.
Absolutely. I recognize guns in the context of a thing that "ideally we would not have them, but they are there and not going away, so let's figure out how best to deal with them" — the way to statistically manage the issue of guns is, if you have decided at your own liberty you WISH to be a gun owner, whatever your motivations, to look at where the statistics put you as an individual. Gun users who do this versus gun users who do that, etc. Gun users who take classes versus gun users who don't. Gun users who have a gun safe and trigger locks versus those who don't. It is always contextual. if you only look at it in terms of purely statistical overviews, sure, you would never own a gun. But at the same time, you would also never have a swimming pool, or live in a house with stairs.
Good points. It's difficult to be so nuanced in a pro/anti gun debate. I'm in favor of guns being legal when the owners are highly responsible with their guns. I even taught shooting at summer camp, though I've never owned a gun myself. But I know also that the practical reality of gun freedom is irresponsible ownership in a preponderance of cases, and I have a hard time reconciling that with my feeling that it should be a right. Because unlike, say, a pool, the gun has an express purpose, and it tends to get its job done *regardless* of whether it is used properly or not. Sort of a situation where we make tools that are just way too good at doing what they are designed for- sort of like how race cars have restrictors these days, because if you actually tried to make the *fastest* car you could, it would be literally impossible to actually race in it without getting yourself killed.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: But I know also that the practical reality of gun freedom is irresponsible ownership in a preponderance of cases...
How do you know that?
With as common place gun ownership is in this country, I would think that safe ownership/handling is by far the majority circumstance.
Of course, that's just my thinking, if you really do -know- that the vast majority of gun owners are unsafe, say, statistically, I would like to see those numbers.
It is exactly yahoos like Zimmerman who make those of us who lock our guns up and handle/use them safely and responsibly look bad.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
"preponderance" refers to excess, or to "superiority in weight, importance, or strength," but is not a perfect synonym for majority, though majority, in some contexts, is a valid synonym. I'd have said majority, had I meant it. Instead, what I expressed was a vast number, or an unnacceptably large incidence. That is to say, that although irresponsible gun ownership comprises a minority of cases, the number of cases amount to a preponderance- an excessive number.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Just from a purely statistical perspective, why would I want something in my house that had a vastly higher likelihood of hurting me, than helping?
Because when/if you really do need a gun, almost nothing else will do.
I don't keep cream in my fridge, because the likelihood of me having a guest who wants cream is too small to justify the expense and waste. Simple math on my part. I'm willing to accept the inconvenience of not having cream on that day when someone asks me for it.
And while I'm sure if I'm ever attacked in my home, I will wish that I had a gun, the actual likelihood is that if I had a gun, and if that gun killed anyone, it would be me, or someone I would rather not have die.
[ June 27, 2012, 09:43 PM: Message edited by: Orincoro ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:And while I'm sure if I'm ever attacked in my home, I will wish that I had a gun, the actual likelihood is that if I had a gun, and if that gun killed anyone, it would be me, or someone I would rather not have die.
This is basically it. While, yes, a gun will in incredibly rare (nevermind what our fear-driven society tells us) cases be just what's needed, in cases that occur more often than that, it is either uncalled for or exactly what ISN'T needed. Since it's a lethal tool, that frequently means serious injury or death.
Why, for example, do more men own guns than men? They are more likely to be the victims of violence in their homes, they are generally at greater risk of being overpowered in an attack outside the home, they usually spend more time with the kids meaning they have more to protect. And yet it's men, not women, who own more guns in this country.
Personally I think there's a pretty obvious few answers for that difference, but that's not important. What's important is that this, as well as how very rare violent crime is in our society-especially once drugs are taken off the table-indicates that most gun ownership *isn't* a measured response to the dangers life presents us as human beings. Which begs the question: why *do* people often own guns? It cannot just be for self-defense and feelings of safety. For quite a few of them, there's got to be something more-and the possible reasons are often problematic.
It gets worse when you start looking at ordinary citizens who feel the need to strap up in their daily out of home lives. I'm not talking about the people who have been victims of crime, or carry large sums of money, or have had threats made, so on and so forth. We teach ourselves that defensive driving is the best outlook for driving we've got-doing everything possible to minimize the risk others pose to us on the road, because we realize that by the time we're actually faced with a danger, it's too late to take extra steps.
With guns it's somehow different. People talk about the right to bear arms, but what about everybody else's right not to have to accidentally bump into someone carrying a gun on the street, or rear-end them in traffic, or work in the next cubicle or scratch their car or so on and so forth? We just get swept up with gun rights advocates. It's essentially extortion, because the only real response offered to us is, "Start carrying yourself!"
Now as for responsible gun ownership, I'm absolutely all for it, but I would have a *lot* more patience with those replies if the most powerful gun-related (not just gun rights) organization in the country didn't do its damnedest whenever the issue comes up to block, inhibit, cripple, or completely kill any effort to ensure responsible gun ownership beyond what we've already got. If ya'all would clean house a bit, you'd be met with less skepticism-and this isn't like other political issues, which will either take or leave alone a bit more money in a taxpayer's pocket.
I keep coming back in my mind to a city government-about as small local government as we can get-casting about for some way to decrease a horrendous homicide rate and seeing it bitterly opposed by supposed conservatives and fans of small government.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: That is to say, that although irresponsible gun ownership comprises a minority of cases, the number of cases amount to a preponderance- an excessive number.
I can agree with that.
quote:I'm willing to accept the inconvenience of not having cream on that day when someone asks me for it.
Generally speaking, when one needs a gun it is not because someone has asked you for cream but instead when what is at stake is the life and well being of yourself and your family.
quote:the actual likelihood is that if I had a gun, and if that gun killed anyone, it would be me, or someone I would rather not have die.
(OLD) I'm okay with people -not- being armed, it is heavy responsibility which not everyone should shoulder...like you and Rakeesh who choose not to.
Because let's not be coy here, guns are effing dangerous without the training, discipline and commitment to handle them safely.
(NEW) I strongly prefer those like yourself and Rakeesh who acknowledge the inherent danger of firearms and choose to abstain from gun ownership over someone who ignores the heavy extra responsibility and is casual or unsafe with a gun, like GZ was. All gun owners should go beyond simple safety measures and that goes double for those who carry because without such considerations, guns are inherently dangerous.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: What's important is...how very rare violent crime is in our society-especially once drugs are taken off the table-indicates that most gun ownership *isn't* a measured response to the dangers life presents us as human beings. Which begs the question: why *do* people often own guns?
For one thing, we are a country who's start was throwing off the yoke of foreign oppressors which was possible because we were armed. Our country has been a frontier where guns were a part of the tools that kept you alive for longer then it hasn't. So our culture and national identity is still an armed and independent one. For two, if history has taught us anything, it is to not rely on society's protection, that barbarism and holocaust bubble mere inches beneath the surface of civilization, looking for the right moment rear their ugly heads.
Sounds far fetched, but my family moved to Minnesota after the LA riots for a reason. My father pulled a gun on someone in our back yard...our back yard was surrounded by a ten-twelve foot high cinder block wall. My father had to shoot a clear path for the moving truck as two cars full of armed men tried to hijack him as he drove solo out of LA. He used half his clip to convince them to find another victim, aiming at the ground.
What would it seriously take for our society to unhinge? How about a month with no power? You might ask the residents of New Orleans a couple years back that same question.
[ June 28, 2012, 06:18 PM: Message edited by: Stone_Wolf_ ]
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote: Because let's not be coy here, guns are effing dangerous without the training, discipline and commitment to handle them safely.
Don't condescend to me in this way. I told you, I've taught gun safety and shooting. You're not talking to someone who knows not of what he speaks. I don't not own a gun out of blind fear. I choose not to own a gun for the reasons I have outlined to you. Not because I don't judge myself a competent disciplined person.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:I'm okay with people -not- being armed, it is heavy responsibility which not everyone should shoulder...like you and Rakeesh who choose not to.
Because let's not be coy here, guns are effing dangerous without the training, discipline and commitment to handle them safely.
It's not a matter of being unwilling (or unable, as you imply) to shoulder this responsibility, it's a matter of looking to the world and realizing that it isn't necessary. That preparing for the very rare worst-case scenario at the expense of a much less rare danger is a poor trade.
quote:For one thing, we are a country who's start was throwing off the yoke of foreign oppressors which was possible because we were armed. Our country has been a frontier where guns were a part of the tools that kept you alive for longer then it hasn't. So our culture and national identity is still an armed and independent one.
I don't disagree, because you've made my point: in 2012, these reasons are relevant historical justifications and explanations, but not arguments in favor of present day ownership. These are specifically not responses to current and predicted future danger.
quote:For two, if history has taught us anything, it is to not rely on society's protection, that barbarism and holocaust bubble mere inches beneath the surface of civilization, looking for the right moment rear their ugly heads.
That is one possible, fear driven lesson of history. The other is that lessening to tools of violence, and relying on proactive rather than reactive protections is the better bet-and that we are significantly safer and longer lived, with better standards of living even with all of our many problems than our forebears.
But even if that was a good argument, it's actually an argument against your point: if barbarism lurks so closely beneath the surface (which I don't dispute), the correct response is to ensure a populace with more firearms?
quote:Sounds far fetched, but my family moved to Minnesota after the LA riots for a reason. My father pulled a gun on someone in our back yard...our back yard was surrounded by a ten-twelve foot high cinder block wall. My father had to shoot a clear path for the moving truck as two cars full of armed men tried to hijack him as he drove solo out of LA. He used half his clip to convince them to find another victim, aiming at the ground.
I can't fault him for that-quite the contrary. And having that experience is a compelling argument for one to seek a gun. But-and here's the question-how many riots have there been in LA in the past century? And for every brave father who uses his gun responsibly to escape danger without killing, how many unnecessary deaths or injuries were there?
This is what I meant earlier when I said statistics wouldn't be useful. There will always be a plausible but wildly unlikely worst-case scenario which grips the mind fiercely enough to overcome any amount of bland, non-gripping statistics. Your father's story will necessarily be more real to you than, say, thirty deaths by gunshot by accident or by fit of rage two cities over in a month's time. It would likely be so for me, if I had that memory.
quote:What would it seriously take for our society to unhinge? How about a month with no power? You might ask the residents of New Orleans a couple years back that same question.
You're using excellent examples throughtout that argue consistently against your point. If we're going to be asking the people of New Orleans questions about civilization and barbarism, well, shouldn't we also ask, "How shall we best keep barbarity at bay? Through a well armed society, or layers of failsafes and redundancies between it and natural disaster?" I know which answer I'd pick, and I'm not reaching very far to say their answer would be the same.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
You misread me...I said because you choose not to own guns...not because you are undisciplined or incompetent.
My point was that it takes the choice to pursue training to being safe, and for that, one must -want- to pursue it.
You may very well be able to handle a gun safely, but if Russians where falling from the sky you best believe I would not put one in your hands after you have said this:
quote:...the actual likelihood is that if I had a gun, and if that gun killed anyone, it would be me, or someone I would rather not have die.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:But even if that was a good argument, it's actually an argument against your point: if barbarism lurks so closely beneath the surface (which I don't dispute), the correct response is to ensure a populace with more firearms?
There are SO MANY guns out there, that unless you are talking about a magic wand or genie wishes, then yes, more guns in more honest, honorable, law abiding citizen's hands is exactly what I want.
Heck, if you are talking about magic, I'd be all for that. Killing with a bow or a sword or your bare hands takes a lot of practice and discipline, which means that user friendly death is not in the hands of every neerdowell who can scrounge up $200, as well as those weapons are not nearly as prone to deadly accidents.
Guns aren't going anywhere, and if this country is having a problem with accidental deaths that means this country should put some mandatory safety classes into place, mandatory secure storage, harsher punishment for those who leave guns unattended in the home, etc.
As to people who just "go off", well, since we can't wave that magic wand, it would be better if there was someone to stop them from picking a third, fourth, fifth and sixth victim, right?
quote:If we're going to be asking the people of New Orleans questions about civilization and barbarism, well, shouldn't we also ask, "How shall we best keep barbarity at bay? Through a well armed society, or layers of failsafes and redundancies between it and natural disaster?"
And why are those things mutually exclusive? The point I was making is that even in this safer, more advanced society where we don't have a daily need to strap our shootin' irons to our legs, there is still a valid and real reason to have a 12 gauge in a safe in the garage.
[ June 27, 2012, 11:47 PM: Message edited by: Stone_Wolf_ ]
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Well, if you wait that long into a fight, you stand to lose your gun when you try to draw it. I'm not saying don't make a threat assessment, just draw.....of course not. But I am saying that I hear things like :You didn't have to do that, you outweigh him by 80 lbs!.....and that doesn't mean a thing.
If I say don't tough me, and you do, I have a right to defend myself....and I DO go 0-60 right away. I don't act aggressively, never start a physical situation, and try to walk away.....but if it does become physical, then I don't care if they get seriously hurt, because I've seen people die in fights with one push or shove.
I also don't own a handgun for that very reason. I have a temper, and have no problem laying into someone hard, but I never make it physical. Some people react like physical threats or aggression are OK....and if I had a gun, I would shoot them, plain and simple. NO ONE has the right to touch me, or hit me.
No one.
I'll used whatever is at hand...a gun, a knife, a lamp, a tazer, whatever....once it gets to that point. There is no such things as a "friendly fight".
I'll never get beat that way again. Not without doing anything I can to prevent it, even if I have to kill them.
My parents live part of the year in northern MI, and I think they are fools not to have at least a strong shotgun. They are 30 min away from the nearest police station, and there are all sorts of animals that wander though their lawn. Just this years they have had 4 black bears....a momma and 3 cubs one time, no less....a fox, and all sorts of snakes and critters.
Right now there are 3 kids less than 10 years old staying there, and both my parents are in their late 60's, and my mom in particular doesn't move fast. At least with a shotgun you could make noise, then protect yourself with the rest of the shots if necessary.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Also....I prefer guns to other weapons. I shoot a bow well, si I wouldn't be helpless, but as far as swords and whatnot....it too YEARS to training, and only the very rich had the resources....both for the metal and the training...so abuses happened all of the time. Normal people just couldn't fight back.
Now they can.
God made man, but Samuel Colt made them all equal.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: You misread me...I said because you choose not to own guns...not because you are undisciplined or incompetent.
My point was that it takes the choice to pursue training to being safe, and for that, one must -want- to pursue it.
You may very well be able to handle a gun safely, but if Russians where falling from the sky you best believe I would not put one in your hands after you have said this:
quote:...the actual likelihood is that if I had a gun, and if that gun killed anyone, it would be me, or someone I would rather not have die.
Aww shucks, I misread you... Except no I didn't, and you continue to condescend. I want you to be aware of this pattern, of passive aggressive "comments" about other people, and then "aww gee wiz" excuses about how people misread you. I was very, very clear that I was talking about statistical liklihoods, and you made that about me. Then you said, oh, no, I didn't mean to slight you... Then you reiterated the slight. This is your pattern.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I'll keep that in mind...as I honestly wasn't -trying- to take a shot at anyone. Regardless of my intent, both you and Rakeesh took this as a slight, so I guess it appear as one.
My point was that guns really are dangerous, and owning them should be a huge commitment. Just like Samp was sharing his friend's feelings, carrying (and for that matter owning and handling) a gun puts a heavy responsibility, the responsibility of life and death, on the wielder.
Unlike my feelings of pepper spray, where carrying it is good for most people, I do not feel the same for firearms. If someone, like you and Rakeesh wish to abstain, then you should! That's all. No judgements.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
If you actually don't understand why your comment was insulting and patronizing, then well, wow. But part of your passive aggressive thing is to "just say" things, and then roll back on " that wasn't a shot." Ok... If it wasn't, then it was just a Total failure to communicate or comprehend what is being said. Either way, not good.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I wasn't typing in french, so a total failure to communicate or comprehend seems unlikely.
But I will reword the post in question to help clear up any confusion.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Heh. Keep at it. A failure to communicate csn occurr on many different levels. In your case, the problem is not usually linguistic or lexical. It's usually something a little deeper then that. But go on and keep playing the game with me. That's ok.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I'm not playing a game, you exaggerated and I called you on it.
I also clarified previous statements to avoid unintentional pique.
As I told Rakeesh earlier, I don't need to make veiled, subjective shots. If I have something to say to you, I'll say it, clear as day and plain as the nose on my face.
One thing that doesn't make any sense to me is you saying this: "...the actual likelihood is that if I had a gun, and if that gun killed anyone, it would be me, or someone I would rather not have die." AND "I've taught gun safety and shooting." You seem to be saying that you are incompetent with a gun. But since you have taught gun safety and shooting...does that mean you would shoot yourself or a loved one intentionally? Are you saying you are mentally unhinged?
And it wouldn't be you panicking, since you have a "preternatural sense of calmness in an emergency", so what else could the possibly mean?
I guess I don't get your point of saying that.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Really you don't get this? All my harping on just plain statistics? The fact tht even were I a responsible, careful gun owner, the highest probability is that if my gun killed anyone,, it would not be someone who I wanted to die? This logic is too difficult for you? You think I'm saying someone *would* likely die? So I'm mentally unhinged? Im incompetent eith a gun, because i know that statistically, anyone is more likely to shoot himself in his own home, than any intruder? Really? You do have a reading problem. You need to follow that sentence more closely, and see what it's actually saying.
My point, in saying that, is that it is statistically accurate. If I own a gun, the person most likely to be killed with tht gun, if anyone is to be killed with it, is me, or a family member, or a friend. Criminal and Russian parachutist is way down the list.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Yea, responsible, careful gun owners tend to not shoot themselves or others on accident...by definition.
I'm afraid the lapse in logic is not on this side.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Really you don't get this? All my harping on just plain statistics? The fact tht even were I a responsible, careful gun owner, the highest probability is that if my gun killed anyone,, it would not be someone who I wanted to die? This logic is too difficult for you? You think I'm saying someone *would* likely die? So I'm mentally unhinged? Im incompetent eith a gun, because i know that statistically, anyone is more likely to shoot himself in his own home, than any intruder? Really? You do have a reading problem. You need to follow that sentence more closely, and see what it's actually saying.
My point, in saying that, is that it is statistically accurate. If I own a gun, the person most likely to be killed with tht gun, if anyone is to be killed with it, is me, or a family member, or a friend. Criminal and Russian parachutist is way down the list.
I think one of the factors contributing to Stone Wolf's confusion is that you're taking broad gun statistics and then applying them incorrectly to a specific contextual situation.
He's focused on that context, and since the gun stats don't represent that context, when applied to it they seem very nonsensical. So he sees what you're saying as nonsensical, and is trying various (incorrect) approaches to make sense of it.
So, yeah, I get what you're driving at, but it's inaccurate, and kind of silly.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:I think one of the factors contributing to Stone Wolf's confusion is that you're taking broad gun statistics and then applying them incorrectly to a specific contextual situation.
This gets right to the heart of really arguing in favor of gun control: every opponent will almost invariably say that they, and the people they want to have guns, will be this platonic ideal of gun ownership, and no amount of statistics or reasoned argument will persuade most people to admit, "Hey, it's more likely I would be irresponsible or there would be an accident or theft involving my gun than that I would adhere to this ideal."
I flat out guarantee you that of the many thousands of gun deaths in this country each year, committed with a legally purchased firearm-either ultimately or somewhere in its past-you won't find a gun owner at the root who said, "I included the risk that some bystander or family member or friend would be killed." In fact, human nature being what it is, they will be convinced that they had accounted for it.
But *shrug* there are incredibly rare riots to prepare for, or months-long collapse of municipal city services, or muggings. I need to spend money every week putting cream in my refrigerator in case my Aunt Bonnie comes to visit, even though she's visited once in the past decade and nobody else uses it.
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quote:There are SO MANY guns out there, that unless you are talking about a magic wand or genie wishes, then yes, more guns in more honest, honorable, law abiding citizen's hands is exactly what I want.
You do see where this leads, don't you? More guns for everyone, including criminals, because if there are more guns, they're easier for anyone to get, period. This isn't a solution, it's a delaying tactic applied as a long-term policy, with predictable results.
But even so, if what y'all gun fans want is policies that ensure only legal owners ever get guns, I wish so very much that you guys would see to it that your enormously powerful national lobby would actually work towards that goal, instead of stripping restrictions to ownership wherever possible and doing whatever they can to slow them down where they're not.
Politically speaking? Citizens in favor of gun rights want government oversight of responsible ownership less than they want to stop, as much as they can, anyone from taking a citizen's gun away, or making it harder for them to get one.
quote:Guns aren't going anywhere, and if this country is having a problem with accidental deaths that means this country should put some mandatory safety classes into place, mandatory secure storage, harsher punishment for those who leave guns unattended in the home, etc.
Hey, we aren't the ones that need convincing on this. If the gun rights lobby in this country proposed such measures, opponents would be first flabbergasted and then ecstatic.
quote:As to people who just "go off", well, since we can't wave that magic wand, it would be better if there was someone to stop them from picking a third, fourth, fifth and sixth victim, right?
Ahh, the appeal to heroism. Well, we've got people to stop that, and despite what the news tells you, they're actually quite good at it. Of course, stopping that person might be easier if he could've laid legal, easy hands on just a *few* fewer guns, but.
quote:And why are those things mutually exclusive? The point I was making is that even in this safer, more advanced society where we don't have a daily need to strap our shootin' irons to our legs, there is still a valid and real reason to have a 12 gauge in a safe in the garage.
Dude, your point was terrible. You suggested that one reason to have widespread gun ownership was in case of the collapse of civilization. That's ridiculous. There are about fifteen different things that could be done to address that fear before guns.
Coming up next: reasons why planning for the worst-case scenario remains more important than planning for scenarios that are actually likely to happen,
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
I'll be very clear: I taught gun safety and shooting. I am comfortable with and knowledgable about guns. I m confident that I would be an exemplary gun owner. And having examined the costs and benefits of having one, I choose not to. For my safety and that of others. If other people were as cautious and thoughtful as I am, there would be far fewer gun deaths.
It's easy math. There are even some solid examples: I live Ina country where guns are heavily permitted, but legal to own and even carry. But the culture does not approve of having them in the home, unless the owner is a veteran. Shockingly there are very few gun deaths here. In 2010, for example, there were 2 gun murders in the country- both of them crimes of passion. There havent been more thsn 20 in a given year for over a decade- and with rare exception, those murders were commited by Russian mobsters, and not Czechs. There are 200,000 licensed gun owners here, out of a population of 10 million.
So it's an interesting thing. I'm not against guns being legal- I feel entirely safe knowing they're legal here. But people don't find them necessary. People feel safe without them. How is it that the US can't be this way?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
The reason why the gun deaths are probably way lower in general probably has less to do with a lack of cultural approval for having the guns in the hime, and probably more to do with socioeconomic considerations.
Not to say that it doesn't probably help to some degree not to have quite the same gun culture as the U.S., but ultimately the factors that are behind most gun deaths ultimately come down to things like economic disparity.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Of course. I just find it remarkable that, a tv series here that is based on Law and Order: Kriminalka Andel, could actually depict *more* gun violence in one season than actually occurs in the entire country in that same period.
Edit: this is actually a source of unintentional comedy. The show ends up focusing sometimes on things like drunk driving, and police corruption and petty crime, because the idea of there being a violent homicide with a complex investigation every week is unrealistic.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Law and Order: Minor Domestic Dispute
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
The conclusions you are drawing are erroneous. You are more likely to have an accidental shooting then defend your home from an intruder = guns are bad. Using the same logic: the birth ratio in 2011 was 984 females for every 1,000 males. Where you born in 2011? Then you are a boy. Right? Not at all. But if you were born in 2011 you are more likely to be a boy then a girl, just as you are more likely to have a gun used tragically then heroically.
Do we need better laws concerning gun safety in this country? Yes. I have complained about this very thing many times.
quote:But even so, if what y'all gun fans want is policies that ensure only legal owners ever get guns, I wish so very much that you guys would see to it that your enormously powerful national lobby would actually work towards that goal, instead of stripping restrictions to ownership wherever possible and doing whatever they can to slow them down where they're not.
I'm not a member of the NRA, and "gun fans" and "NRA policy makers" are as synonymous as "liberal" and "leader of the Democrats".
quote:You do see where this leads, don't you? More guns for everyone, including criminals, because if there are more guns, they're easier for anyone to get, period.
That is ridiculous! I'm calling for mandatory gun safes (less theft/accidents), more background/skill/physiological tests (less criminal/unsafe/unhinged people with guns).
Here is the pit your side always falls into: However are you going to get all the guns? By definition, only law abiding citizens are going to turn in their guns...so who will have the guns? Criminals. Criminals who will be fairly sure their victims are not armed. Or are you going to have the Gestapo go door to door and search each household in the whole country? Again, if it is magic you are talking about, I'm on board. No guns, period. But since magic is not real...what is your plan? I want to hear it.
quote:Politically speaking? Citizens in favor of gun rights want government oversight of responsible ownership less than they want to stop, as much as they can, anyone from taking a citizen's gun away, or making it harder for them to get one.
How is that even remotely relevant? Are you talking to some random citizen in favor of gun rights/NRA directors? No. You want to score points off of people who are not in this conversation? Seems pointless. Please try and keep your arguments pertinent to what people here have actually said.
quote:Ahh, the appeal to heroism. Well, we've got people to stop that, and despite what the news tells you, they're actually quite good at it.
People like the police...who have an instantaneous response time? Or maybe they can predict the future, like in Minority Report? Come on! The police show up after the crime is long done and draw a nice, neat chalk outline around you and then do their darnedest to figure out who done it.
quote: Of course, stopping that person might be easier if he could've laid legal, easy hands on just a *few* fewer guns, but.
Show me where anyone has suggested "legal, easy hands" as you put it. No one did. This strawman is transparent.
quote:Dude, your point was terrible. You suggested that one reason to have widespread gun ownership was in case of the collapse of civilization. That's ridiculous. There are about fifteen different things that could be done to address that fear before guns.
Let's see the list of fifteen things individuals can do to protect their family against the collapse of civilization that are more effective then owning a gun. I'd love to see it.
Also make sure to include temporary collapses, like a riot or natural disaster, not just permanent ones.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:The conclusions you are drawing are erroneous. You are more likely to have an accidental shooting then defend your home from an intruder = guns are bad. Using the same logic: the birth ratio in 2011 was 984 females for every 1,000 males. Where you born in 2011? Then you are a boy. Right?
... what?
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
The conclusion that a gun is unsafe to have in the house, and all guns should be removed from all houses being drawn from the statistic that an accidental shooting is more likely then defending your home is as valid a conclusion that if you were born in 2011 then you are male, drawn from the statistic that more males were born in 2011 then females. That is to say, they are both erroneous.
A much better (and actually valid) conclusion to draw from the data is that we desperately need to change the laws concerning safe storage and handling of firearms in this country.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
the two conclusions are not actually logically comparable and one does not draw upon the latter hypothetical conclusion "using the same logic" as the argument of the former.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
How's that?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:The conclusions you are drawing are erroneous. You are more likely to have an accidental shooting then defend your home from an intruder = guns are bad. Using the same logic: the birth ratio in 2011 was 984 females for every 1,000 males. Where you born in 2011? Then you are a boy. Right? Not at all. But if you were born in 2011 you are more likely to be a boy then a girl, just as you are more likely to have a gun used tragically then heroically.
Just to be very, very clear here: is your argument that a gun owner is only infinitesimally more likely to have their gun used illegally, accidentally, or improperly than they are to see it used heroically-and there's that word again, by the way. Because I'm almost sure you'll back off this statement, or explain why its plain meaning isn't what you meant, and I'd just as soon skip that step.
quote:I'm not a member of the NRA, and "gun fans" and "NRA policy makers" are as synonymous as "liberal" and "leader of the Democrats".
Wrong, because the gap is so much narrower in the former case than the latter. And in any event, the NRA is the most powerful advocate in this country if gun rights and minimizing gun control-the same cannot be said of the President and, I'm not even sure, liberal politics in general? Or something.
Another key difference: if those responsible gun ownership advocates desire effective laws such as you describe, you're perfectly aware who must be convinced-and it's not us. We aren't the ones doing our damnedest to stop such regulations when they're proposed.
So, bad comparison all around.
quote:Here is the pit your side always falls into: However are you going to get all the guns? By definition, only law abiding citizens are going to turn in their guns...so who will have the guns? Criminals. Criminals who will be fairly sure their victims are not armed. Or are you going to have the Gestapo go door to door and search each household in the whole country? Again, if it is magic you are talking about, I'm on board. No guns, period. But since magic is not real...what is your plan? I want to hear it.
I suppose it was inevitable in such a discussion that someone on your side of the fence would bring up the Gestapo or Nazis or Stalin or something. It never takes long. As to my plan, ridicule (with laughable specters of Nazis) all you like, but it takes time. Increase penalties for illegal and accidental use of firearms. Stiffer background checks. Better regulation of gun dealers (that's a big one). Something such as a tax for a gun permit, like tag registration, with major incentives for redundant gun safety measures such as safes and trigger locks. Broaden gun control so that if one type of gun is deemed too dangerous (to, yknow, police) it can't be circumvented by just reducing the clip size or something. Incentivize turning in old or unused guns to the police to be destroyed.
So on and so forth. It's not magic, as you repeatedly sneer. It's just a gradual, steady shift in public policy to disincentives gun ownership. As for only criminals having guns...well here we come back to it: even if you have a gun, it is more likely not to be used defending against a criminal, or used tragically in such a way, than otherwise! Or will you still claim this isn't true?
quote:How is that even remotely relevant? Are you talking to some random citizen in favor of gun rights/NRA directors? No. You want to score points off of people who are not in this conversation? Seems pointless. Please try and keep your arguments pertinent to what people here have actually said.
We're talking about gun control in the US. Just because the most powerful organization on your side of the fence takes stances contrary to what you say you wish done, doesn't mean it's not relevant-just inconvenient. Again, if you want the kinds of things you describe, you know who needs convincing. They certainly won't listen to me-I'm a liberal holding open the door for the Gestapo.
quote:People like the police...who have an instantaneous response time? Or maybe they can predict the future, like in Minority Report? Come on! The police show up after the crime is long done and draw a nice, neat chalk outline around you and then do their darnedest to figure out who done it.
*snort* Yeah, that's all cops do. I didn't think you'd rise above your Gestapo remark, but you did! Yes. The only thing cops do to prevent violent crime is to show up afterwards.
But, hey, for the times they don't-we need more gun ownership that is statistically more likely to hurt than help. Perfect remedy.
quote:Show me where anyone has suggested "legal, easy hands" as you put it. No one did. This strawman is transparent.
I was talking about the reality in this country. It's not a strawman.
quote:Let's see the list of fifteen things individuals can do to protect their family against the collapse of civilization that are more effective then owning a gun. I'd love to see it.
Also make sure to include temporary collapses, like a riot or natural disaster, not just permanent ones.
You're serious? This is an actual thing to plan for, something to actually be feared in one's daily life? Well, alright, just for laughs: stockpiling food, water, medicine, fuel, clothing-that's five. Living in a remote area, stocking up on cash, getting livestock, farming crops, learn some serious first aid. That's ten. Make sure your family has means of communication that will be reliable-radios. Eleven. Practice emergency drills regularly for all sorts of scenarios. Twelve. Keep a vigilant eye on weather and social patterns. We'll count that as just one-thirteen.
Of course, those methods-which took me about as long to think of as to type-are based in the foolish notion underlying so much of this, that the only thing anyone can really rely on for their safety with any kind if certainty is themselves. Two of the biggest, most simple methods of being prepared for the collapse of civilization are organization and planning within your own community, and your own local government, ensuring backup plans exist should infrastructure or services abruptly fail.
I have no doubt you'll reply with something like, "But how will you protect all of that without a gun?" Which is actually a fair point in this profoundly silly tangent-except those other steps are actually beneficial even without catastrophe (with the exception of the cash), much less aren't actively more likely to hurt than help.
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In the interests of pinning anyone down: what sort of statistics *would* be persuasive? Is there ANYTHING that you could be presented with that you wouldn't simply reply, "Yeah, but that wasn't responsible gun ownership," or as I suspect is there nothing?
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:...is your argument that a gun owner is only infinitesimally more likely to have their gun used illegally, accidentally, or improperly than they are to see it used heroically(?)...
This statistic (which I've never seen a source for btw) doesn't mean what you say it means. A statistic about all shootings in the country vs all home defenses...is a simple ratio...one question is does this include where a gun was used to threaten a baddy into leaving without actually shooting them?...but if we had better training/storage/testing, the number of accidents would decrease. Thus the ratio would change. This stat doesn't mean that guns are never helpful, or needed, just that more accidents happen then defensive shootings (for what time frame) at a certain point in time.
This stat could mean that for every 100 accidents there are 99 defenses. The phrase "more likely" is pretty open.
My point with the birth gender ratio is that a simple case of "more likely" doesn't mean much when it comes to actual individuals.
Now, let's see the statistics for accidental shootings vs defenses when the gun owner locks their guns in a safe or has taken extensive safety training.
These stats are only useful for charting the overall trends of a system, and are not specifically relevant to individuals, just like birth gender ratios.
quote:Wrong, because the gap is so much narrower in the former case than the latter. And in any event, the NRA is the most powerful advocate in this country if gun rights and minimizing gun control-the same cannot be said of the President and, I'm not even sure, liberal politics in general? Or something.
You are entirely missing the point. You keep arguing against figments of your own imagination...which is just so pointless. Who the hell cares what "average gun guy" thinks...until such time as "average gun guy" pops his greasy head into our form and pipes up with an opinion, it is not relevant to our discussion.
quote:As to my plan...it takes time. Increase penalties for illegal and accidental use of firearms. Stiffer background checks. Better regulation of gun dealers (that's a big one)...major incentives for redundant gun safety measures such as safes and trigger locks.
All things I have already called for.
The other things in your list...I disagree with, but will save for another time.
quote: quote:People like the police...who have an instantaneous response time? Or maybe they can predict the future, like in Minority Report? Come on! The police show up after the crime is long done and draw a nice, neat chalk outline around you and then do their darnedest to figure out who done it.
*snort* Yeah, that's all cops do...Yes. The only thing cops do to prevent violent crime is to show up afterwards.
I never said it was the -only- thing they did, but in most cases, that's all they -can do-. If someone goes nuts with a hatchet and starts a killing spree, most likely, only an armed person is going to be able to stop them...whether a cop or a citizen. If you have tested and safe, responsible citizens who are armed on the scene, then there will be fewer victims then if you have to wait for the cops. They can't be everywhere all the time...it isn't a shot at the cops, it's just reality.
quote:You're serious? This is an actual thing to plan for, something to actually be feared in one's daily life?
If it were the -only- reason, it -might- be not enough, but certainly not laughable, but since it happened to my father...temporary collapse of society...and many upon many others throughout our brief country's history, and so very many more throughout the history of civilization, I find your take on it naive...and annoying.
Oh and here is another reason this country is and should stay armed...
quote:But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Our very first document as a country names it our individual duty to hold in check our government, and forceably overthrow it if it becomes evil.
quote:...what sort of statistics *would* be persuasive?
None that come to mind, as statistics are just numbers, they must be interrupted, and given context. They should be taken into consideration, and I have considered the one you seem to answer all questions with...and it clearly speaks to me that we need to make safety a bigger part of our gun culture.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Oh and about the Gestapo...-if- you were calling for the government to invade every home in the country with armed men and forcibly remove all firearms (and you weren't it turns out) then it would be a fair comparison.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
You cannot possibly have thought I was suggesting that. So keep that in mind when you're being critical about things nobody has said, yes? Or, hey, another double-standard.
I wonder: how many of the firearms used in improper or illegal ways do you think were actually built illegally?
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I -was- asking the question...which you then decided was a huge affront...OMG he said Gestapo! How low will he dare to drag us? *drama drama dram*
No double standard, just your normal love of theatrics.
As to your question...no idea.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Now, let's see the statistics for accidental shootings vs defenses when the gun owner locks their guns in a safe or has taken extensive safety training.
Ok, so the answer is 'there are no statistics I would find persuasive.' I knew that, but it's helpful to have it spelled out. If there are more bad uses of guns than good (and there are, or at least according to the uses we can actually FIND), then that's not persuasive-we need to look at expanding the number of good uses. If we do, we need to see how many of the bad uses had good safeguards. Etc etc etc, and of course this insistence on more and more specifics won't stop-until suddenly we arrived at the answer you wanted.
quote:I never said it was the -only- thing they did, but in most cases, that's all they -can do-. If someone goes nuts with a hatchet and starts a killing spree, most likely, only an armed person is going to be able to stop them...whether a cop or a citizen. If you have tested and safe, responsible citizens who are armed on the scene, then there will be fewer victims then if you have to wait for the cops. They can't be everywhere all the time...it isn't a shot at the cops, it's just reality.
The truth is in this incredibly rare scenario (he would have a gun, of course, not a hatchet, and likely *several* guns, give me a break) a good pair of sneakers and good cellular service will probably be more likely than the single or group of well trained heroic citizens. Because the truth is, that random place the nut decides to shoot up *won't have* that.
quote:If it were the -only- reason, it -might- be not enough, but certainly not laughable, but since it happened to my father...temporary collapse of society...and many upon many others throughout our brief country's history, and so very many more throughout the history of civilization, I find your take on it naive...and annoying.
Ugh. Don't want to talk about the many other better, safer ways to protect against this, huh? Surprising. If you hadn't actually asked for a list and gotten one, though, I wouldn't be able to label that as transparent dishonesty.
As for annoying...yeah. Message received. You really, really don't like me. It's been clear for quite some time, you've stated it in very explicit terms, but you're not nearly as good at concealing that as you imagine.
Naïveté. Really. From the guy who Godwined the discussion. Heh.
quote:Our very first document as a country names it our individual duty to hold in check our government, and forceably overthrow it if it becomes evil.
I wonder what else we might find that should thus be permitted today in there? Hmmm
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Want to talk about gun stats? How about Switzerland where every adult male has a gun, and gun violence is nearly nonexistent? Statistics have to have contexts, and your personal baby of one doesn't mean what you want it to. So sorry. Firearms and our particular country is a nuanced discussion which should not be decided by one equation based on one year's totals. That you imply that that makes me unreasonable just shows how elementary your understanding of this topic is. This is not black and white. This is not kindergarten.
Incredibly rare ≠ not worth trying to prepare for. It's rare, so let's give up and never worry about it. People -should- be able to defend themselves even from the very rare, if they can do so in a safe and responsible fashion. You're saying, "It's not safe, so take it away." and I'm saying "Make it safe!"
Your list is nice...it has -nothing- to do with defending your family. Those are good ideas for survival...but have almost nothing to do with reality if there were armed bands of baddies roaming the streets looking for victims and supplies.
Yes Naivete. That's right. "Society will protect us!" Naive.
If you think that me saying that something you said is annoying is the same as me saying I really really don't like you, then you should take a class on reading comprehension. You love to drag out the fact that you goaded me into saying I don't like you...but no one cares! I don't like your tactics, your attitude, your hollier then thou approach, but as a person...I don't know you! And I don't really care to beyond the confines of this board.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: I need to spend money every week putting cream in my refrigerator in case my Aunt Bonnie comes to visit, even though she's visited once in the past decade and nobody else uses it.
Man, it was bad enough when Orincoro made this analogy. Now you're doing it too?
Guys, I get that you blame a lack of gun control for gun violence. I get that you want more gun control. Okay, fine, that can be argued. I'm not terribly interested in getting into the pros and cons of gun control.
But this analogy is deeply stupid.
Do you have any form of insurance? Smoke alarms? A spare house key? A spare tire? Does the infrequent need for these things mean they're all irrational wastes of resources?
Seriously, guys. Think this stuff through a little more. It's fine to argue that specifically in the case of gun ownership, the risks involved outweigh the self-defense benefits, but this analogy doesn't do that. Stop using it.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Do you have any form of insurance? Smoke alarms? A spare house key? A spare tire? Does the infrequent need for these things mean they're all irrational wastes of resources?
Insurance will, for nearly everyone in the country, be needed or at least useful at some point in their lives-for a serious majority, many times and not just once. Spare tires cost little, and carry no additional risks at all once purchased and stored. Spare house keys are a minuscule investment, for again no additional risk, and again, quite a lot of people will need them. Smoke alarms are incentized for insurance purposes, and again aside from the initial cost pose zero dsnger or expense aside from some batteries.
These things aren't like firearms, and they're also unlike the cream in the refrigerator scenario, in which I take on an ongoing cost-buying cream over and over and over again-for only the slightest likelihood of future gain. It's the same with firearms: for a majority of people, they are taking on a constant risk with only a very small likelihood of gain. But when I buy that cream and throw it away month in and month out, someone will say, "Dude, you're wasting money. If Aunt Bonnie comes calling, it likely won't be a surprise, and even if it is, you can go get some cream."
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quote:Want to talk about gun stats? How about Switzerland where every adult male has a gun, and gun violence is nearly nonexistent? Statistics have to have contexts, and your personal baby of one doesn't mean what you want it to. So sorry. Firearms and our particular country is a nuanced discussion which should not be decided by one equation based on one year's totals. That you imply that that makes me unreasonable just shows how elementary your understanding of this topic is. This is not black and white. This is not kindergarten.
Ahh, Switzerland. As inevitable in this discussion as Gestapo. Actually, there's much to learn from that example. You continue to dodge the point, though, that implementing much of that requires *your* side of the debate to pony up. Instead, your response, "That's not me."
quote:Incredibly rare ≠ not worth trying to prepare for. It's rare, so let's give up and never worry about it. People -should- be able to defend themselves even from the very rare, if they can do so in a safe and responsible fashion. You're saying, "It's not safe, so take it away." and I'm saying "Make it safe!"
I didn't say don't prepare for it-having cast my words in such a profoundly stupid, non-factual way, would you like to talk more about reading comprehension? I'm saying that if the preparation imposes more danger than it addresses, it's a bad idea. And should be credited as such.
quote:Your list is nice...it has -nothing- to do with defending your family. Those are good ideas for survival...but have almost nothing to do with reality if there were armed bands of baddies roaming the streets looking for victims and supplies.
Yes Naivete. That's right. "Society will protect us!" Naive.
So now you'll pretend I didn't come up with the list you suggested I couldn't. Heh. That's a nice shift in the conversation, too. Inititially it was 'safeguard family in the event of collapse of civilization', now it's 'defend family against armed bands of brigands.'
The funny thing is, even with THAT scenario, the proper, most effective way to go is society-band together with your community to present greater numbers and greater force to any such band of thugs. You speak as though my suggestions were a passive reliance on society. They weren't. They were *proactive, aggressive involvement* with the community to protect itself.
If you suggest I said 'rely on society', it will be a lie. That's not what I said. Reading comprehension and all that.
quote:If you think that me saying that something you said is annoying is the same as me saying I really really don't like you, then you should take a class on reading comprehension. You love to drag out the fact that you goaded me into saying I don't like you...but no one cares! I don't like your tactics, your attitude, your hollier then thou approach, but as a person...I don't know you! And I don't really care to beyond the confines of this board.
Heh, so what, now I tricked you? Goodness, what a comfortable world it must be, when that sort of thing is my fault. As for holier than thou...well, again, let's talk more about reading comprehension, shall we (where you provably misstated my positions, with no examples in reverse)? For some reason you think people won't notice these little swipes of yours. I'm not sure why, if it usually works or something.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Want to talk about gun stats? How about Switzerland where every adult male has a gun, and gun violence is nearly nonexistent? Statistics have to have contexts...
Literally snorted at this gem.
SW, Switzerland has one of the highest average incomes, and lowest poverty rates in the world. Income disparity among the lower 50% of earners is razor thin. That's why they have no crime. The guns are an interesting artifact of their civic culture- not the reason why they don't have any crime.
And a high level of education, along with mandatory military service, has taught the citizenry a respect for weapons that is not approached in our united states. So appeals to look at Switzerland are ludicrous, unless you're arguing with someone who thinks gun violence *wouldnt* be low if there was no poverty, no illiteracy, no unemployment, and basically no reason for there to be *any* major problems with crime. If we had such a society, I'd not worry much about guns. In fact, I don't worry much about guns now, and I live in whathappens to be one of the few countries in Europe where you can carry a concealed firearm without a special permit. But we have little income disparity, little poverty, little illiteracy, and thus, less crime.
The problem is that you haven't offered any sort of convincing argument that guns are in any way a positive force in society. Instead, you point to instances in which they clearly do little harm. That is small comfort, when in your own back yard, they clearly do a great deal of harm, and when there is every reason to suppose that regulating against them, in the long term, can mitigate that harm. I'm all for a perfect society where everyone carries a gun all the time. If we were all rich, happy, safe and well educated, the guns wouldn't be a big deal for me. I still wouldn't keep one in my home, because I wouldn't see a need for it st outweighed the risk, but I old care much less about what others chose to do. But we don't have that society, and pretending that that doesn't matter is shortsighted.
[ June 29, 2012, 09:49 PM: Message edited by: Orincoro ]
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I seriously can't believe I hit refresh on my browser countless time waiting for that steaming pile of a response.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
...and it's time to take a break from this thread.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: I seriously can't believe I hit refresh on my browser countless time waiting for that steaming pile of a response.
Let's go back to the thread where you waxed poetic about courtesy oh that's right you're a hypocrit. Sorry. Forgot.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Just one quick note before I take my break...
I brought up the Swiss not to say: Here are my stats which show guns = good to match yours which show guns = bad. Instead my point was that statistics do not tell the whole story. Just as the Swiss numbers do not show in and of themselves that guns are good, neither do the stat you refer to show that guns are bad.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Hit the refresh button? Im surprised to hear that, with your repeated claims of not caring.
But, hey, "Deuces, I'm out, that was a steaming pile," is I suppose one way to reply to a series of pointed objections and pointed corrections of mischaracterizations you've made.
As for statistics, you continually make the false claim that we are relying on *one* simple statistic and saying that tells the whole story. You can claim this as often as you like, but it won't make it any more true. In fact, few people in this discussion have offered much in the way of statistics, though I've tried repeatedly to discover what sort of statistics would be compelling one way or another-with an answer that amounts to 'none', as much as you'd like to deny it.
The beginning of a start if you were actually interested in getting past the stage where you seriously advance ideas such as 'prepare for the collapse of society' and 'Gestapo' and 'Switzerland' as though they were anything but laughable for your side of the argument-that side being the one which proclaims a desire for increased safety regulations around gun ownership, but refuses to be associated with the group most influential in gun policy. You don't have to be tarred with that brush, because you can disavow their biggest outrages while still having your interest served by their lobbying! Nifty!
Fun fact: most gun deaths in this country are suicides (I didn't know that myself, I thought it was a sizable minority). Another one is that the second largest group most likely to be killed by a gun are 17-24 year olds.
Yeah, we're doing a *great* job. It's important we *spread* gun ownership-but only to the responsible, honorable people who we'll somehow be able to find because they answer test questions properly, or something. Yeah.
The funny thing is, if you try and find statistics on crimes *prevented* by guns...well, things get much, much harder. Go ahead and take a look now, 'assuming' you're still reading. I guarantee at least a majority of the responses will be nakedly partisan, even in the dang name of the link. So you won't find any. Makes it easy to disregard the tons of damning statistics from the other end, doesn't it? That's always a nice, secure thing to hide behind.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
You are too right Orincoro, that was rude of me.
And I apologize.
Yet I feel the content of this particular discussion has deteriorated into something personal and moved quite a bit away from useful debate.
So I will take a while to allow my personal feelings retranquilize and in my absence perhaps the conversation will get back on track.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Insurance will, for nearly everyone in the country, be needed or at least useful at some point in their lives-for a serious majority, many times and not just once. Spare tires cost little, and carry no additional risks at all once purchased and stored. Spare house keys are a minuscule investment, for again no additional risk, and again, quite a lot of people will need them. Smoke alarms are incentized for insurance purposes, and again aside from the initial cost pose zero dsnger or expense aside from some batteries.
These things aren't like firearms, and they're also unlike the cream in the refrigerator scenario, in which I take on an ongoing cost-buying cream over and over and over again-for only the slightest likelihood of future gain. It's the same with firearms: for a majority of people, they are taking on a constant risk with only a very small likelihood of gain. But when I buy that cream and throw it away month in and month out, someone will say, "Dude, you're wasting money. If Aunt Bonnie comes calling, it likely won't be a surprise, and even if it is, you can go get some cream."
To date, I've never utilized my renter's insurance. Maybe I will one day. I don't know. But it is an ongoing cost I pay because of the old adage: I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
And heck, spare house keys can pose actual real risk to you and your property, depending on where you store 'em.
Look, man, if your argument is that most people in most places aren't likely to be attacked or otherwise need a gun for self defense, it's a fair argument to be made. I don't own a gun for that very reason.
So maybe your point is that it's like buying earthquake insurance for your Nebraska home. Or flood insurance for your Death Valley house (unless they have flash floods there the way they do in Arizona. I'm not sure.)
But the cream thing is too vague and too easily comparable to any form of insurance, I think.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:To date, I've never utilized my renter's insurance. Maybe I will one day. I don't know. But it is an ongoing cost I pay because of the old adage: I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
Well, on that particular property? Depends on how long you'll live there, of course. Any sort of insurance on any dwelling you or your family occupy, now that's another story. There are also quite a lot of other entanglements involved in not insuring one's home too, of course.
quote:And heck, spare house keys can pose actual real risk to you and your property, depending on where you store 'em.
Sure. And it is similar, of course, with one difference: if you were so unwise to store a spare key under, say, the mat at your front door, I, your neighbor, am unlikely to be harmed.
The same cannot be said of a firearm. Nobody gets shot with the gun that isn't there, and for most people who ARE shot, it's by a gun that was initially manufactured and sold legally. 'You can't get rid of the guns' is the old saw, which is ultimately something of a dishonest argument since opponents won't even let us try. In any event, no, we can't get rid of the enormous excess (what is it, 70-100 million, and I would love to hear about how that's necessary for self defense, btw) of firearms today. Granted. I wasn't aware we should only take on goals we can accomplish instantly.
quote:So maybe your point is that it's like buying earthquake insurance for your Nebraska home. Or flood insurance for your Death Valley house (unless they have flash floods there the way they do in Arizona. I'm not sure.)
This is also close, with the added drawback that your buying avalanche insurance in South Carolina is really never going to hurt *me*, unless I'm the regional Velociraptor Insurance salesman and you're tapped out.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I think we need better gun control AND better firearms education and training.
I love shooting guns, they are fun. It's a useful skill to have at times. But I also don't own one, and if I eve do it will probably be a shotgun or rifle.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
This thread makes me want at least two more guns for self defense.
Oh well I sat down and listened to the police questioning sessions with zimmerman, and it sort of reinforced a few things
- yes zimmerman's story is incredibly fishy - don't talk to the police without an attorney - zimmerman is dumb - do. not. talk. to the police without an attorney
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: This thread makes me want at least two more guns for self defense.
Anyone in particular in mind?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:This thread makes me want at least two more guns for self defense.
If you've got one gun, might that then make you three times as safe? After all, that first gun might jam or its ammunition fail, so really to be ready for anything you need at least one more.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
A "gun" is like a "car".
You would want a different car for your daily driver, vs off roading, vs racing vs car show vs family car, vs construction truck, etc.
Different guns are more and less useful in different circumstances.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:This thread makes me want at least two more guns for self defense.
If you've got one gun, might that then make you three times as safe? After all, that first gun might jam or its ammunition fail, so really to be ready for anything you need at least one more.
Four guns now
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
That's a problem, since each new gun grants you less of an increase in safety! Talk about opportunity costs.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
One gun locked in a safe is just as safe (very) as ten guns locked in a safe. There is no "paying for the cream each week".
Now, if you don't have a safe, or don't keep your guns in one, then you -do- have a daily risk of accidental shooting which would increase with the number of firearms.
But seriously, who here has said they think keeping guns around not in a safe is a good idea?
Nobody! Quite the contrary.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:One gun locked in a safe is just as safe (very) as ten guns locked in a safe. There is no "paying for the cream each week".
If the gun only ever stays in the safe, there was no point having it in the first place. Keeping them in a safe does dramatically reduce the risk, though they can still be stolen, removed by someone who shouldn't, or when someone shouldn't for the wrong reasons. Or, of course, removed by who should remove them, why-but then used inaccurately or improperly, or even properly and accurately but still tragically.
Yup, these are unlikely, but then so is needing a gun in the first place.
Anyway, there isn't a single ordinary person who needs ten guns for self-defense. There just isn't. It's their right (right now), so of course not illegal, but 'want' is the appropriate word here.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Keeping them in a safe does dramatically reduce the risk, though they can still be stolen, removed by someone who shouldn't, or when someone shouldn't for the wrong reasons. Or, of course, removed by who should remove them, why-but then used inaccurately or improperly, or even properly and accurately but still tragically.
Safes hugely reduce the risk of theft...if I had to guess, I'd say 99.99%...
Also, anyone who shouldn't have access to the guns, shouldn't have access to the safe either.
And as inaccurately/improperly or tragically...that's what training and a psych eval is for.
That's the point of me (and others) calling for greater training and safer storage.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I'm serious guys is anyone else following the infodump on Zimmerman's pending trial?
I want everyone to be on the same page with this — Zimmerman:
- signed a waiver of his rights
- continued forward to give multiple statements
- provided a re-enactment
- allowed himself to be interrogated
- all without counsel present
The multiple statements and the re-enactment have so many points of contradiction that it is astounding and I am no longer surprised that they thought they could hit Zimmerman with more than manslaughter.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
I think Mr. Zimmerman has learned 2 valuable lessons we should all remember.
1) No matter how just you think you are, you can not be a Policeman with out training and a badge.
2) No matter how smart you think you are, you can not be a lawyer with out education and a degree.
There are times to call on each. Do so or suffer grave penalties.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
I once watched a video of a lawyer addressing a college class on criminal justice and he talked about what you should and should not do when you encounter the police. He went in depth into why you shouldn't give anything to the police without an attorney present not because he's against justice but because even when you are just being cooperative the police can get innocent people thrown in jail. Even if the police believe you are innocent things you say can land you in jail for crimes you didn't commit. I should find it and link it because it really was very interesting.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:I once watched a video of a lawyer addressing a college class on criminal justice and he talked about what you should and should not do when you encounter the police.
It will BE there right for the foreseeable future, and I am glad. YOU don't get to determine how many guns I need, or how many I get to own.
I also don't get to force you to own one.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Anyway, there isn't a single ordinary person who needs ten guns for self-defense. There just isn't. It's their right (right now), so of course not illegal, but 'want' is the appropriate word here.
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: It will BE there (their) right for the foreseeable future, and I am glad. YOU don't get to determine how many guns I need, or how many I get to own.
I also don't get to force you to own one.
Is this right Kwea?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I didn't mean it in a legal sense, I meant in a practical self-defense way. Yeah, anyone can (God help us) say they need a dozen guns for self defense-they don't even have to say it, actually. But that doesn't make it true. Even honest to goodness cops actually out looking for trouble make do with a firearm, taser, spray, nightstick, shotgun, so don't let's kid ourselves, OK?
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
You forgot body armor, radio, hand cuffs and an AR15.
Not to mention extra ammo. Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Yeah, that's what I was referring to. And it wasn't just directed at Rakeesh, but to anyone wanting to stop people owning guns.
If you are looking out for trouble you are fine with that. But that means you have a good idea WHEN trouble will be there.
I know people who have different guns for different reasons, and that's fine. They also have 2-3 guns in different parts of the home. You might not agree with their reasoning....but you weren't there when they WERE broken into, and they chased an armed burglar out of their home.
Rakeesh...I thought you meant in a legal sense. Thanks for clarifying.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Most of those not counting as weapons much less firearms.
------
quote:It will BE there right for the foreseeable future, and I am glad. YOU don't get to determine how many guns I need, or how many I get to own.
I also don't get to force you to own one.
True enough, on this last, but owning a gun isn't quite like owning a taser or a can of pepper spray or a baseball bat or a dog or a car or most other things one might decide to own.
It's not prying or unreasonable for me, as a fellow citizen, to be concerned with my neighbor's access to tools of lethal violence in ways I wouldn't have a right to be concerned about for other purchases.
But just for fun, what ordinary citizen would actually need a dozen handguns for personal security, say? Excepting, I don't know, muskets and blunderbusses I suppose.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
What ordinary citizen needs 90% of their purchases?
Maybe I missed some earlier comment that caused you to fixate on "need," Rakeesh, in which case my bad. But it seems odd to me. Who cares if they need it? And why is it reasonable for you to be concerned with your neighbor's access to tools of lethal violence? I'm not sure I follow.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:I know people who have different guns for different reasons, and that's fine. They also have 2-3 guns in different parts of the home. You might not agree with their reasoning....but you weren't there when they WERE broken into, and they chased an armed burglar out of their home
I also wasn't there when, while shooting at the armed burglar, a round went through a window and then the throat of a passerby in front of their house. Since we're talking about unlikelihoods again.
Anyway, if you're prepared to suggest that decisions made from the (very understandable) major fear instilled by a home invasion like this are rational and measured...well, then. The woman who was, say raped, survives and despises-vocally and publicly-all males. She goes out of her way to treat every male she encounters, even the ones she knows and trusts, as imminent rapists.
I suspect-you'll correct me if I'm wrong-you wouldn't defend the rationality of her thinking quite so adamantly, which now that I think about it, part way through the comparison, is odd when you consider that the likelihood a woman will be raped is higher than that a home will be burgled.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:What ordinary citizen needs 90% of their purchases?
Maybe I missed some earlier comment that caused you to fixate on "need," Rakeesh, in which case my bad. But it seems odd to me. Who cares if they need it? And why is it reasonable for you to be concerned with your neighbor's access to tools of lethal violence? I'm not sure I follow.
Because I might be killed with them. It's pretty straightforward, and since we're talking so much about likelihoods of being the victims of violent crime (in tones, by the way, far in excess of the actual likelihood), the likelihood of being accidentally or wrongly shot to death...
I don't mean this as a shot, Dan, but rather to illustrate the disconnect that's going on. In my mind, that you even have to ask that question-'why is it reasonable for you to be concerned with your neighbor's access to lethal tools?'-points to the thinking that the huge (it is, in fact, a majority!) number of wrongful deaths by gunshot don't even figure into your thoughts on the matter-perhaps because it's something that can be, supposedly, totally neutralized by proper safety measures or something.
Perhaps another part of the disconnect is that these risks, well they're not *really* risks in your mind? Because with proper safety etc they won't happen. But that is just supposition-I don't insist that's what your thinking.
But I do want to put forward the idea that needing to ask that question is a sign that you're improperly weighting risks and benefits here.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
No, but I wouldn't blame her for thinking that. And I probably wouldn't actively try and change her mind.
And there are thousands of people shooting at ranges and hunting every day, teaching gun safety, and very few accidents and issues considering the volume of shots fired and guns owned.
BTW... they used bullets that won't penetrate walls, and only fired a single shot...and hit him.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:No, but I wouldn't blame her for thinking that. And I probably wouldn't actively try and change her mind.
Blaming her, or trying to change her mind wasn't the question. I wouldn't blame her either, nor-particularly as a man-try to change her mind. The question was whether or not her outlook and decision-making would be held up as a reasonable and measured way to go about living. To be clear, and I said as much before: I wouldn't blame the home invasion victim for strapping up, either.
quote:And there are thousands of people shooting at ranges and hunting every day, teaching gun safety, and very few accidents and issues considering the volume of shots fired and guns owned.
If more gun owners took an attitude towards gun control in line with shooting range safety and discipline, we wouldn't be having this discussion-because if they did, well for gun safety to become the way you describe, it is people with guns who need to change their mind about it.
quote:BTW... they used bullets that won't penetrate walls, and only fired a single shot...and hit him.
It would be a hell of a bullet that would penetrate human flesh but not an ordinary glass window. Before you cry 'so unlikely!' (which is true), remember we're in a scenario right now where someone reasonably needs dozens of gun for self defense. I'd like to keep that in mind if likelihood comes up.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: No, but I wouldn't blame her for thinking that. And I probably wouldn't actively try and change her mind.
And there are thousands of people shooting at ranges and hunting every day, teaching gun safety, and very few accidents and issues considering the volume of shots fired and guns owned.
BTW... they used bullets that won't penetrate walls, and only fired a single shot...and hit him.
There are about 600-700 accidental gun deaths in the US every year. I don't know what would qualify as very few. That rate is one of the highest in the world, and it is the highest of all developed countries. The total death toll from guns in the US is somewhere around 30,000 a year. Twelve World trade centers. These are big numbers. They're big percentages in the developed world.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
If there are 600-700 accidental gun deaths and 30,000 total, then that's 2-2.3%. Not bad!
Where did you get these figures? I'll bet police shootings (where the cops shoot someone) are included.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: If there are 600-700 accidental gun deaths and 30,000 total, then that's 2-2.3%. Not bad! .
... You're sick.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
...with roughly twenty thousand of the remainder being due to either suicide or homicide. Yes, I suppose 'not bad' is one way to describe that. Back about five years ago there was a study done that was unable to find a reduction in gun suicides and juvenile accidents where there were safe storage laws. A few moments with Google ought to turn it up.
But, again, no amount of gun deaths will ever be able to trump the unknown specter of crimes prevented. The little old lady who thwarted someone trying for her social security check is more powerful than any number of dozens of thousands of deaths.
-----
Wait, Orincoro, are you suggesting that casually (even happily) shrugging off tens of thousands of gun homicides and suicides every year is somehow objectionable? Just who do you think you are?
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Suicides I can see, but juvenile accidents...that seems entirely unlikely.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Well, it was presumptuous of me to include the figures from cops shooting people. Those homicides shouldn't count in our reckoning of gun violence.
It's not like there are advanced 1st world nations where the cops don't carry OH MY GOD!
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Suicides I can see, but juvenile accidents...that seems entirely unlikely.
Just two examples. Took about twenty seconds. But then, I did predict that this sort of thing would be brushed off, too. To hell with what researchers say, it's unlikely! Things that are unlikely always turn out the way they seem at first.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:It's not like there are advanced 1st world nations where the cops don't carry OH MY GOD!
Yeah, but you forgot that those foreigners have to constantly live in fear of their government becoming tyrannical, which happens all the time with open shows of...wait, actually. Whoops! It's almost like fears of despotism using a volunteer army drawn from the population aren't really what the Founders were looking at over two centuries ago.
Weird!
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
So when I didn't do your homework for you, I was just "brushing it off". Please.
I'll look at your links when I have a moment.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
It took, as I said, about twenty seconds, and it wasn't my homework-I already knew about it.
Shocking prognostication forthcoming! If and when you actually look at them, the researchers' conclusion will be wrong for some reason. Because the statistics don't matter. Tens of thousands of known deaths don't matter-they get shrugged off because of a totally unknown number of crimes prevented or thwarted.
Please, indeed.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
The next time I have some stats to share, I'll give you some key words to google and see if you bloody like it. My twenty seconds are not yours to use as you see fit. Also, you still have not provided a link to your precious statistic of how there are more accidental deaths then defenses and I straight up demand that you either declare your sources or stop claiming that it is a real statistic.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Would you feel justified if e numbers were equal? Like, it's okay that 700 died, as long as guns stopped 700 attacks? That kind of thing? If so... Why?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Ohhh, tough talk!
I've asked you what sort of statistic you'd accept, repeatedly, on that question before answering. You predictably haven't replied. Bear that in mind before making any further ridiculous 'demands', hmm? Of course for one thing, even before we get to the part where you reject answer you don't like, the question is framed badly. For this discussion it needs to be accidental and wrongful/illegal deaths vs defensive deaths.
One wonders why on *Earth* I wouldn't take you at your word about being willing to be answered.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I'd be happy if there were not guns in the world...because there was no need for them as we lived in peace in harmony.
I'd be happier if guns were treated with such universal respect and with such a thorough culture of education and responsibility that there were no accidental deaths.
Guns are the reigns of power, and it is important that we do not let them slip into lesser hands, it is important that we keep our independent traditions, but that doesn't mean we can't do it in a responsible and safe way.
One accidental death is too many.
I just don't think that banning guns from law abiding citizens is an effective way of lowering the death toll.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
You should get into politics Rakeesh, mudslinging, avoiding the question while blaming the other guy for it and lying at the same time...you have got a future son!
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Sure. And as we all know, the death toll in countries that have banned these weapons has stayed the sa..... No wait its virtually non-existent.
Your hypothesis is, happily in the case of those countries, proven to be false.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: You should get into politics Rakeesh, mudslinging, avoiding the question while blaming the other guy for it and lying at the same time...you have got a future son!
Nobody here finds your passive-aggression charming. I've told you this already.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
We never lived in harmony.
quote:I'd be happier if guns were treated with such universal respect and with such a thorough culture of education and responsibility that there were no accidental deaths.
We don't need to be convinced this happy outcome is desirable.
quote:Guns are the reigns of power, and it is important that we do not let them slip into lesser hands, it is important that we keep our independent traditions, but that doesn't mean we can't do it in a responsible and safe way.
Bunk. Guns aren't the reins of power in this country, and haven't been for some time. As for keeping our traditions, it's only important we keep them if they're good ones. Keeping them for their own sake is unwise.
American history, actually, shows that we *can't* do it in a safe and responsible way reliably. If we could, our rates of death wouldn't be so very much higher.
quote:One accidental death is too many.
A minute ago, several hundred times that was 'not bad'. Which statement do you mean?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Ok, that didn't take long, Stone_Wolf. Man, I am some sort of mind-controller, because I'm sure I tricked you into saying that, too. Though of course your own personal attacks are hardly uncommon, and you just recently told a direct lie (I didn't say *you* were a dick, I just called you dickish wouldn't have fooled even you had I said as much to you).
Here, I'll show you how to actually avoid having another amusing temper tantrum when I say something you don't like. It's easy: watch!
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
You guys are funny. The militant compassionate. "WE CARE ABOUT PEOPLE! AGREE OR ELSE!"
[ July 03, 2012, 12:36 AM: Message edited by: Stone_Wolf_ ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: You guys are funny. The militant compassionate. "WE CARE ABOUT PEOPLE! AGREE OR ELSE!"
Someone said almost the exact same thing to me when I said he was a dangerous idiot for disciplining his child with a rod. And yes, it's because I care about people, especially children whose parents are dangerous idiots. Regardless, not the best 'comeback.'
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: You guys are funny. The militant compassionate. "WE CARE ABOUT PEOPLE! AGREE OR ELSE!"
Someone said almost the exact same thing to me when I said he was a dangerous idiot for disciplining his child with a rod. And yes, it's because I care about people, especially children whose parents are dangerous idiots. Regardless, not the best 'comeback.'
Among the many strange things in this discussion: I'm not even sure which thing either of us said that would suggest that sort of label. Anger, sure, because goodness we all know I can just get into Stone_Wolf's head and force him to feel and say things, but 'militant compassionate' baffles me in this context. Is that just for pointing out the let's just be charitable 'Not bad!' and 'one accidental death is too many' contradiction? Still puzzled.
Anyway, rod. Sheesh. That's taking it old school.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
I'm unsurprised to see how much the thread has improved in my days of absence from it.
But it must be self-inflicted I'm sure: Deceiving the government about your finances is after all *exactly* as likely as breaking your own nose and then bashing the back of your own head with a blunt instrument so much that it bleeds from multiple locations.
That Zimmerman had the intelligence and presence of mind to fake his own injuries in the few seconds he had between shooting a shouting-for-help-Martin and people actually coming out to see what was happening, shows what a criminal mastermind he must be: and therefore it also shows that he could have very easily planned to say that he didn't know an address in *advance*, so that *afterwards* he could claim he kept walking just in order to see a street name.
Also, at the same time he's dumb; dumb enough to speak to the police without a lawyer present, dumb enough to do all this without any visible benefit to himself and to his great detriment. He's such a dumb criminal mastermind. We must keep these two contradictory ideas in our heads at the same time, my doubleplusgood brethren -- he was dumb enough to have been rash and recklessly confrontational, killing an innocent with no good reason and for no actual benefit to himself; at the same time he was clever enough to set up in advance his own later excuses and to fake his own injuries (with blunt injuries on the back of his head) in a timespan of a few seconds.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I'm not sure why self inflicted injuries to sustain a claim of self defense are cast as a sign of a criminal mastermind.
That does nothing one way or another to lead to them being self inflicted or not, but I'm just saying: if there's a contradiction here, it's not between him being so dumb and him possibly inflicting injuries on himself.
Anyway, let's be clear, even if as is possible but unlikely a jury finds him not guilty, he *was* dumb, rash, and recklessly confrontational-even if every word he said is true.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I'm not really taking a stance on any of this, but if that really is from 3 minutes after the incident and it wasn't cleaned up at all then that looks like an extremely minor head injury. Head wounds bleed a lot. With that little blood, and no visible break in the skin, I'd be inclined to think that it is basically a scratch.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I thought as much myself, but from me it's not much of a guess-I've banged up my head a few times in my life, but always with hair, and I haven't seen them very many times at all in others.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
MrSquicky, I was tempted to offer you 500 dollars if you managed to videotape yourself inflicting such a bloody injury on the back of your own head using a *blunt* instrument (or the ground) -- sharp objects wouldn't count (as the medics list it as a blunt injury).
But frankly, you'd most likely kill yourself or inflict permament brain damage in the attempt. So I am NOT making the offer, let me clear about that.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I could use $500...make it a grand and you got a deal.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Oh, and for the record, I'm not serious, that is a horrible idea.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: I thought as much myself, but from me it's not much of a guess-I've banged up my head a few times in my life, but always with hair, and I haven't seen them very many times at all in others.
In my tempestuous youth I gave and received injuries that looked much worse than that that were pretty minor. I could be wrong, but coupled with the really minor broken nose - I've gotten worse than that taking a basketball to the face - it makes me doubt the described life threatening attack. I won't pretend to speak to what actually happened, but those injuries don't seem to me to be consistent with having one's head repeatedly bashed against the curb with deadly force. Were that the case, I'd expect his head to show broken and abraded skin and to be gushing blood. What showed up in the picture (again, assuming that it was taken around 3 minutes after the attack and there wasn't any cleanup) was pretty much a trickle of blood.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I'm not really taking a stance on any of this, but if that really is from 3 minutes after the incident and it wasn't cleaned up at all then that looks like an extremely minor head injury. Head wounds bleed a lot. With that little blood, and no visible break in the skin, I'd be inclined to think that it is basically a scratch.
I got the same sort of injury when I was pulling on a backloading strap and it got loosed too early, I tripped and bunted my head against an ash tree.
It was such a little tiny scratch, too. Hardly anything, but even teensy little head wounds like that just hate to stop bleeding.
At any rate, yeah, you can show the pictures to people who've worked tours of duty as a paramedic or in forensics and the like and they have generally (well, wait a minute, I should say "so far universally") said that those injuries are not really consistent with Zimmerman's story.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
For sure though I could definitely show pictures of what the back of a head looks like when it has actually been violently slammed against concrete multiple times. Just, yanno, pictures of head trauma, family friendly forum, whatever.
hint: it does not look like the back of zimmerman's head did
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Let's assume for the sake of argument that TM (after one or the other started it) punched GZ once, broke his nose, climbed onto his chest and shoved his head down on the ground, hard enough to cause the injuries in the picture.
It is arguable that GZ felt fear for his life from that...whether that fear was founded in any sort of reality or not, i.e. was his life in imminent danger? I tell you if someone where to impact my head against the ground repeatedly I would consider that something more then a "punch you on the chin" fight.
I'm not an expert in law, especially not in Florida law, so I couldn't say if that is enough to make him not guilty. If it is, then he should be culpable for criminal stupidity for everything else.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:I won't pretend to speak to what actually happened, but those injuries don't seem to me to be consistent with having one's head repeatedly bashed against the curb with deadly force.
Since there was no curb in the location, and Zimmerman never spoke about any curb AFAIK -- yeah.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Let's assume for the sake of argument that TM (after one or the other started it) punched GZ once, broke his nose, climbed onto his chest and shoved his head down on the ground, hard enough to cause the injuries in the picture.
It is arguable that GZ felt fear for his life from that...whether that fear was founded in any sort of reality or not, i.e. was his life in imminent danger? I tell you if someone where to impact my head against the ground repeatedly I would consider that something more then a "punch you on the chin" fight.
I'm not an expert in law, especially not in Florida law, so I couldn't say if that is enough to make him not guilty. If it is, then he should be culpable for criminal stupidity for everything else.
Speaking hypothetically, if I were alone, in the dark and the rain and someone I was suspicious of attacked me without provocation, knocked me down, and aggressively climbed on top of me and I had a gun on me, I'd shoot them and I'm pretty sure I'd feel justified in doing so when thinking about it later.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Sure, but the "attacked with provocation" part is pretty much out...we don't know who started the physical altercation, and while I don't think that following someone or even verbally challenging them (assuming for the sake of argument that was all GZ did) warrants a physical attack, one can hardly categorize -if- TM attacked GZ "without provocation".
GZ provoked TM to a certain extent, and how it came to blows is utterly unknown at this point. We have what GZ said, but that currently is "he said" and we haven't heard the what the physical evidence, etc has to offer.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I guess "Witness 9" might be getting back into the trial.
quote:The witness, identified as "Witness 9" in prosecution documents, has not been publicly identified. One of her two statements has been withheld from the public so far, and O'Mara argues it should stay that way.
In her first statement, Witness 9 says that she knows Zimmerman, as well as his family.
"I know George, and I know that he does not like black people," she said, speaking to a Sanford police investigator. "He would start something. He's a very confrontational person. It's in his blood. Let's just say that."
She went on to describe Zimmerman and his family as "just mean and open about it, and I don't know what he's capable of, but I do know things that he's done to me that I would never, I would never talk to him about ever again."
O'Mara writes in his motion that the not-yet-released second statement "is not relevant" to the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, and "would not be admissible" at trial. O'Mara argues that its release would "serve to reignite and potentially enhance the widespread public hostility toward Mr. Zimmerman."
well, yeah.
Witness 9 is an ex-girlfriend of Zimmerman who filed a domestic violence injunction against Zimmerman in 2005, same year he was arrested and charged with battery against a police officer and had to enter an 'alcohol education class.'
Man it is honestly not hard to paint a pretty bad profile of this guy in light of the tapes/shooting/etc. But I am sure plenty will be sure to remind me that trayvon was a criminal too and had thc in his system or whatever!
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
You think it is unacceptable, so would you remove the rights of others, simply because they disagree with you about how likely they are to be attacked?
There will always be accidents, and errors. But we don't stop driving, or fishing, or hunting, or mountain climbing, or skydiving....
People take risks. It's a fact of life.
But if YOU think that someone saying "that's not bad" is the same thing as saying "who cares about those thousands of deaths" then that says more about YOU than the other person.
You are either honestly unaware of what he was discussing....the actual rate of risk from shooting, which is fairly low....or you just like misrepresenting other people's view to score easy points.
If you are callous, fine, but stop accusing other people of being callous and uncaring just because they disagree with you. It is intellectually dishonest, not to mention ineffective.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
2800 people die each year from choking on chicken bones. Should we outlaw the sale of whole chickens? I know that doesn't have the same rate of risk, but still......
.....THOUSANDS of people die! We should stop it!!!
(not a real argument, just poking fun )
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
That the defense would try to exclude that is hardly surprising. Time will tell if there is any corroboration (besides, well, encounters with police and domestic violence injunctions), but this does fit in with one of the things that makes Zimmerman appear worst, in my opinion-Martin was an a**hole who would get away, as a pedestrian who lived nearby walking along a high traffic walking area in that neighborhood-and Zimmerman would almost certainly know that about that path, if we're to credit his NW diligence.
So the most suspicious thing we're left with is that Martin was walking and sometimes standing in the rain.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:You think it is unacceptable, so would you remove the rights of others, simply because they disagree with you about how likely they are to be attacked?
Well, no-that would only-if I had the ability to do so, that is-a far flung late option. Well before that would be a major uptick in safety and regulation authority that people in this thread are saying they want, but that their side of the aisle fanatically inhibits.
In any case, though, again-it's not unreasonable for me or anyone else to take an interest in how much everyone has access to lethal tools, because sometimes they will accidentally kill me. It's very straightforward-like violent crime, accidental gun death or injury happens to people who didn't own the gun in the first place, too.
Bear that in mind, please. Bullets travel farther than the island no man is unto himself in the first place, so to speak.
quote:There will always be accidents, and errors. But we don't stop driving, or fishing, or hunting, or mountain climbing, or skydiving....
Even including driving, these are a bunch of nonsense examples. It really *won't* involve me, ever, how much fishing or skydiving you do-presumably you won't land on me or accidentally hook me. So we can just throw these right out as bunk, Kwea. As for hunting and driving, the fact that smart hunters wear bright reflective vests shows they are, in fact, concerned with the behavior of other hunters-and driving, I would love to see guns regulated as much as driving.
quote:But if YOU think that someone saying "that's not bad" is the same thing as saying "who cares about those thousands of deaths" then that says more about YOU than the other person.
I didn't say that, and I actually don't even think it. What I did was point out a straightforward pair of contradictory statements. They were at odds with each other, in letter and spirit. Labeling hundreds of unnecessary, preventable accidental gun deaths as 'not bad!' and then solemnly saying that even one is too many-these things don't fit together, Kwea. It's not about him being so callous, because actually I suspect the second was the more heartfelt statement whereas the first was more casually tossed off.
quote:If you are callous, fine, but stop accusing other people of being callous and uncaring just because they disagree with you. It is intellectually dishonest, not to mention ineffective.
I'm still mystified at how the people saying 'that is far too many!' are the ones to be called, if anyone is, callous.
quote:2800 people die each year from choking on chicken bones. Should we outlaw the sale of whole chickens? I know that doesn't have the same rate of risk, but still......
.....THOUSANDS of people die! We should stop it!!!
(not a real argument, just poking fun )
Not for nothing, but this is actually a very similar argument to the one you advanced about skydiving and fishing.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Am I reading this right...that four times more people die of choking on a chicken bone per year then by accidental shooting?
According to MADD, in 2010 10,228 people died from drunk drivers in the US, or 17 times more people then from a shooting accident.
According to the CDC just under 4,000 people die of drowning per year on average in America, or about 6.5 times more people then from a shooting accident.
According to this site there are 146 deaths due to animal attack/riding accidents on average per year in this country, or over 4 times more likely to be killed by a gun accident.
According to this tottaly unreliable source 17,000 people die each year in the US of a slip and fall, or 28 times more likely to die from an untied shoe lace then a firearm accident.
What's my point? Just putting things in perspective is all.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I'm still not sure why on Earth only accidents count, and not even a proportion of suicides and murders. Yes, the old saw goes, but they'll get a hatchet or something, but with a gun it's easier-that is the original point of guns, after all.
A hell of a lot more people drive or ride in automobiles than own firearms in this country, so that 'perspective' there is a bit lacking. It's not as though we handle DUI appropriately in this country in the first place anyway.
That's basically the problem with all of this 'perspective' being offered-it's a fundamentally flawed comparison. A whole lot of slip and fall deaths are more or less inevitable. An incredibly overwhelming majority of people use their legs to move around the world-and in any event, no amount of your walking conceivably poses any sort of risk to *me*. Likewise with swimming, owning an animal in your home, or eating chicken.
They're bad comparisons for one or both of two reasons: they're unavoidable (slips and falls, choking, automobile death) to some extent, in some cases quite a lot; or they involve activities that point the risk inwards, towards the participant; or both.
-----
Kwea, I am still interested to hear if you would say that hypothetical woman's judgment was sound and reasonable.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
No, I get it Rakeesh, if I bring up any stat is it irrelevant, but you complain bitterly that I won't answer you about which stat would convince me...even though I did answer that.
The most interesting stat to me was that you are 19 times more likely to die from choking on a chicken bone then by animal attack. Animals: more dangerous to humans dead and being eaten then alive and kicking.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Oh, and suicides? Please! "If only this person had taken pills, jumped off a bridge/cliff, slit their wrists, given themselves an air embolism, breathed in oven/car fumes, suffocated themselves, jumped/drove in front of a train...then they wouldn't be dead. Clearly this gun is to blame and not the person willfully trying to end their lives. Damn these guns!"
I'll give you this, you have been making me laugh lately.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:No, I get it Rakeesh, if I bring up any stat is it irrelevant, but you complain bitterly that I won't answer you about which stat would convince me...even though I did answer that.
First of all, no, you didn't.
Second, I explained in detail why those statistics weren't applicable in the way you claimed. They ARE relevant to the point that we're all very unlikely to die from accidental gunshot, yes. But that wasn't the point you were making, at least not with actual words in a post. It may have been what you intended, I couldn't say.
You're welcome to explain, at any time, which of the responses to your statistics was invalid or wrongly made at your leisure, of course, instead of crying foul and simply hitting the reply button.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Oh, and suicides? Please! "If only this person had taken pills, jumped off a bridge/cliff, slit their wrists, given themselves an air embolism, breathed in oven/car fumes, suffocated themselves, jumped/drove in front of a train...then they wouldn't be dead. Clearly this gun is to blame and not the person willfully trying to end their lives. Damn these guns!"
I'll give you this, you have been making me laugh lately.
Clearly you either missed or ignored the part where I said 'some proportion', and seem to have totally ignored the idea of including murders, as well as conveniently ignoring the problem that a suicide attempt with a firearm is significantly more likely to be successful than, say, pills (hence the idea of including a portion of them). Yes, there's something laughable here, to be sure. But-as usual when you begin to crusade on behavior and tone around Hatrack-it's not what you think it is.
Anyway, look, *whatever* you do, don't address the specific points I made. You don't have to because, I don't know, I' mean or something. Actually your reluctance is understandable-I might exert some of that mind control I've got on you and make you flip out again. I'm trying now, but there must be some storms in the way or something.
Cmon, you know you wanna. It'll be at least the third time in two weeks. It's a good distraction from not actually replying to what I said, perhaps.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
quote:...what sort of statistics *would* be persuasive?
None that come to mind, as statistics are just numbers, they must be interrupted, and given context. They should be taken into consideration, and I have considered the one you seem to answer all questions with...and it clearly speaks to me that we need to make safety a bigger part of our gun culture.
Owned.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Nobody here finds your passive-aggression charming.
Just for the record, I am -not- passive aggressive when it comes to Rakeesh. I am aggressive aggressive. I don't like him, with reason, he is dishonest. But he did prove a point. When he said that giving the benefit of the doubt can be detrimental, he was right, because if I gave him the benefit of the doubt, he would abuse it...when I have given him the benefit of the doubt he has abused it.
So, is it hypocritical of me to be less than courteous to Rakeesh after all the speachafying I did about politeness. Yes. But I'd rather be a little bit hypocritical then a victim of his overly aggressive, dishonest and all around dickish behavior. So, he is the exception. And I am a bit of a hypocrite. I can live with that.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
That's at least the third time you've called me a dishonest dick in perhaps as many days. Of course for some reason, that's only a 'bit hypocritical' coming from you and not a flagrant display of hypocrisy or even dishonesty given your supposed ideals, but whatcha gonna do. You are again, even without using the word, claiming to be a victim.
So, if the request made in the whistle are followed, you won't be posting to me or anything I say indefinitely. To make that more enticing for out illustrious Janitor, I'll start us off. Hopefully you'll be able to restrain yourself better than the last time.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I will, as always, listen to and respect the wishes of our friendly neighborhood Janitor...as for my enmity, you have put a lot of effort into earning it and richly deserve it. There was a time when I asked you to leave me alone, but you refused. Eventually JB -did- ask you to stop talking to me, but forgot to mention his request to me. So it was not restraint which failed, but communication. If indeed he wants us to not communicate I'm game. You are not valued by me. I dislike you rather strongly, and have no plans to stop sharing my distaste until such time as your own poisons are equally quieted.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Or to put it in plainer language, there is no need for intervention of authority on your behalf...Want me to leave you alone? Just ask...only the one condition: You do the same.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
If the *only* allegations of racial hostility against Zimmerman come from a person who already has different reasons to be hostile against him and hasn't met him in 7 years, that's actually some evidence AGAINST Zimmerman truly ever showing racial hostility -- because in a world where he actually tended to show racial hostility there'd be more and more objective (and more recent) witnesses to the same.
We also know that just a year ago Zimmerman publicly testified against the Sanford police department in defense of a homeless black man.
We also know that he had tutored black kids, and he had black relatives and friends. If the prosecution brings such a character witness against Zimmerman, the defense will probably bring about a dozen black people who'll defend him against such character assassination.
I wonder if Trayvon Martin had any white or Hispanic friends on the other hand.
As for "charged with battery of police officer", accounts indicate that he just *shoved* a non-uniformed officer in a bar, who he hadn't realized was a police office and who he thought was harassing a friend of his. I leave it up to individual judgment how significant evidence that is.
Also: to find such evidence against Zimmerman you have to go back 7 years, and compare them against just the timespan of Martin *walking* just before the confrontation with Zimmerman -- because if one just decides to look at Martin's character in the last couple weeks or months, you'll find allegations of possible violence, participation in a fight club, possible burglary, drug use, multiple suspensions from school.
So, yeah, if we compare guilts between Trayvon in a selectively few minutes where he was only walking, and go all the way back 7 years for Zimmerman, we'll find Zimmerman having been accused of more things than Trayvon. Big surprise.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Also: to find such evidence against Zimmerman you have to go back 7 years, and compare them against just the timespan of Martin *walking* just before the confrontation with Zimmerman -- because if one just decides to look at Martin's character in the last couple weeks or months, you'll find allegations of possible violence, participation in a fight club, possible burglary, drug use, multiple suspensions from school.
Oh, this stuff again. Unsurprising that you rear it up again as though it was compelling-what's particularly interesting is the pointed way you phrase it-or is it sly? Slight traces of THC become 'drug use'-because as everyone knows, pot smokers are violent. A cousin's twitter posting about a rumor becomes 'allegations of possible violence', an interesting phrase. Refereeing in a fight club becomes 'participating'.
I think I understand why you empathize so strongly with Zimmerman: like him, you feel Martin is someone who will 'get away'.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
As a sidenote: People can't have it both ways. If Trayvon Martin was the one shouting for help, 20 times for about 30 seconds -- then that would make Zimmerman a cold-blooded murderer. Not just reckless or dumb or hotheaded or with tendencies to violence: but a cold-blooded murderer.
Again I'll have to leave it up to individual judgment whether the background of Zimmerman makes it likely that he wouldn't just be "violent" or "confrontational" but that he would be likely to shoot someone who was shouting 30 seconds for help.
And frankly I don't think that such cold-blooded murder generally fits with committing such in public, while being the one to summon the police, and making no attempts to hide participation in said killing.
But frankly, I think that even the prosecution may be slowly backing away from the pretense that it was Martin who was shouting. They didn't summon either Martin's parents nor any "experts" to testify it was their son's voice in audio during the bail hearing, though the defense summoned Zimmerman's father to testify it was *his* son's voice.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Slight traces of THC become 'drug use'-
It is drug use. He did do drugs. He was suspended for a bag with drug traces.
The claim that I implied that such drug use made him violent is a falsehood. I think Trayvon Martin was violent without any need for drugs to make him so.
quote:like him, you feel Martin is someone who will 'get away'.
No, Martin was someone who did *not* get away with beating the shit out of a man who was crying out for help. He met immediate and lethal consequences for his violence.
The difference is that I'm *glad* he didn't get away with it. I'd have of course strongly preferred if Martin had just gone to jail for the rest of his life, instead of getting killed.
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
Stone Wolf/Rakeesh: I feel like communication between both of you has completely broken down. Failure to communicate would be understating it. I don't think either of you wish to continue doing so, so for now I think you should both stop.
If you want to continue this song and dance somewhere else rather than on these forums, be my guest. But there isn't a thread where it's permissible for posters go on and on about how they don't like each other. If you are both honest in that sentiment, then act on it and leave each other alone.
edit: I haven't decided how long this injunction should persist, for now I'm going to say indefinitely. Or until such a time as both of you feel comfortable politely engaging the other.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:If you want to continue this song and dance somewhere else rather than on these forums, be my guest. But there isn't a thread where it's permissible for posters go on and on about how they don't like each other. If you are both honest in that sentiment, then act on it and leave each other alone.
One of us has shown the ability to *actually* stop, and with your injunction I'm happy to do so again. Thank you.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:It is drug use. He did do drugs. He was suspended for a bag with drug traces.
The claim that I implied that such drug use made him violent is a falsehood. I think Trayvon Martin was violent without any need for drugs to make him so.
Yeah, you suggested in a straightforward way that signs of marijuana use should be seen as a reason to think it likely that Martin just decided to try and beat a man to death that night.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
I've not been exactly *shy* in saying exactly what I want to say. As my purpose is communication, I don't do the "suggest" or "imply" things -- I "say" instead.
So, if anyone is ever in doubt about what I mean to "suggest", I suggest that they simply ask me for a clarification.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: One of us has shown the ability to *actually* stop...
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Slight traces of THC become 'drug use'-because as everyone knows, pot smokers are violent.
"slight traces" doesn't even do it justice.
1.5 ng/mL of THC. 7.3 ng/mL of THC-COOH
1. It is impossible to have those levels and have smoked anytime recently. Had Martin actually been a drug user anytime in the past few weeks, the active THC number would have been a multiple.
2. I probably (scratch that; sources say definitely) have much higher levels of THC and carboxy in my body right now. I never smoke pot. Ever. Environmental exposure from other smokers is well more than enough. You can get more just from having a pot smoking roomate.
3. This level of THC and caboxy decay proves something, and it's not something beneficial for Zimmerman; that amount of THC isn't even remotely high. There isn't enough there to cause any measurable amount of intoxication or drug influenced behavior. So it's fun to watch Zimmerman defenders having lept to the conclusion that indeed Zimmerman WAS right and Martin was obviously high.
By that standard, I'm just baked. High as a kite. It gives me the munchies. And also makes me aggressively violent, apparently? We all know THC does that.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:By that standard, I'm just baked. High as a kite. It gives me the munchies. And also makes me aggressively violent, apparently? We all know THC does that.
To be fair, Aris didn't say anything that straightforward. What he seems to have said, though, is that Martin was a 'drug user' and that we should therefore consider it more likely he would've been violent.
Which is, to my mind, very very similar without quite being the same thing, since it still links pot smoking to violence, but it remains not *quite* what was said.
-------
quote:No, Martin was someone who did *not* get away with beating the shit out of a man who was crying out for help. He met immediate and lethal consequences for his violence.
The difference is that I'm *glad* he didn't get away with it. I'd have of course strongly preferred if Martin had just gone to jail for the rest of his life, instead of getting killed.
Assuming your theory is true and Martin abruptly snapped into psychotic, murderous rage, it doesn't change the fact that Zimmerman had decided Martin was an 'asshole who would get away' on the basis of seeing him walk in a highly traveled area at night in the rain. Martin was going to 'get away' before he had, so far as Zimmerman knew, done anything wrong whatsoever, so your wordplay while clever rather misses the point.
quote:As a sidenote: People can't have it both ways. If Trayvon Martin was the one shouting for help, 20 times for about 30 seconds -- then that would make Zimmerman a cold-blooded murderer. Not just reckless or dumb or hotheaded or with tendencies to violence: but a cold-blooded murderer.
First of all, so far as evidence shows thus far-though the trial will determine it-it wasn't Zimmerman shouting. You disagree, bad mad, phony experts, so on and so forth, yes, I know. Anyway, to shoot someone calling for help if they're still struggling and fighting doesn't necessarily strike me as cold-blooded. It would fit in with Zimmerman's provably awful judgment, not cold blooded murder.
quote:But frankly, I think that even the prosecution may be slowly backing away from the pretense that it was Martin who was shouting. They didn't summon either Martin's parents nor any "experts" to testify it was their son's voice in audio during the bail hearing, though the defense summoned Zimmerman's father to testify it was *his* son's voice.
I don't know how such hearings operate well enough to speculate whether that amounts to the prosecution backing off it or not. Do you, or is it just what seems sensible? Serious question, not a shot.
I wonder if the prosecution was aware at the hearing that Zimmerman was hiding money. I mean it couldn't have been a difficult thing to sniff out, since it was publicly gathered. I don't say that's what happened, just wondering.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Anyway, to shoot someone calling for help if they're still struggling and fighting doesn't necessarily strike me as cold-blooded. It would fit in with Zimmerman's provably awful judgment, not cold blooded murder.
No, someone shouting for help completely changes the moral equation.
Someone shouting for help isn't trying to prolong the confrontation, they're trying to resolve it as peacefully as possible by bringing more members of the community into it. Unless the whole community is hostile (and neither Martin nor Zimmerman have a reason to believe so), the person shouting for help IS TRYING TO STOP THE VIOLENCE, whether they're struggling or not.
Sure, we can imagine outlandish scenarios where someone is shouting for help as a *pretense*, but that goes back to imagining the participants of this incident to be criminal masterminds.
If Trayvon Martin was the one shouting for help, for 30 whole seconds, Zimmerman killing him would be murder that I can only describe as viciously cold-blooded. The most vicious early presentations effectively trying to depict him as deliberately "hunting down" Martin with the intent to murder him would be so close to the truth as to make no difference.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:What he seems to have said, though, is that Martin was a 'drug user' and that we should therefore consider it more likely he would've been violent.
Yes. Not via causation, but via correlation. If someone wanted me to explain this in further detail, then they could have asked, and I'd have told them something like the following points:
- First, I remind people that if the "bad judgment" of Zimmerman can be argued about given evidence as flimsy as some unnecessary 911 calls six years ago, then Martin's own terrible judgment can certainly also be discussed using evidence much bigger and much more recent -- such as getting suspended because of marijuana use.
- Second, I remind people that getting *punished* because of a victimless crime such as marijuana use doesn't endear people to authority figures. It might even make them *hostile* towards such.
- Third, I'd guess that people with even trace amounts of drugs in their systems, are loathe to bring police into situations and perhaps have to submit to alcohol/drug tests.
But of course people instead have to pretend I said something I didn't, like "marijuana causes violence".
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Someone shouting for help isn't trying to prolong the confrontation, they're trying to resolve it as peacefully as possible by bringing more members of the community into it. Unless the whole community is hostile (and neither Martin nor Zimmerman have a reason to believe so), the person shouting for help IS TRYING TO STOP THE VIOLENCE, whether they're struggling or not.
This seems an unwarranted conclusion to me. I can easily imagine someone shouting for help while also not intending to run away or stop the violence. It doesn't seem like an ironclad declaration as you suggest.
In any event, now we're left with Martin as the cold-blooded murderer. Some pot and a cousin's Twitter post and refereeing are such a far cry from selling that notion that it makes clear how biased your perspective is here.
quote:- First, I remind people that if the "bad judgment" of Zimmerman can be argued about given evidence as flimsy as some unnecessary 911 calls six years ago, then Martin's own terrible judgment can certainly also be discussed using evidence much bigger and much more recent -- such as getting suspended because of marijuana use.
Oh, certainly, because after all his 911 calls are the bedrock of claims of his bad judgment, and we saw signs of Martin's bad judgment in the events leading up to his death-bad judgment such as walking on a heavily trafficked place in his own neighborhood, for example, and we see no signs of bad judgment on the part of Zimmerman leading up to things, such as targeting him as a burglar, exiting his car, following on foot, not waiting for police...
Yeah. The evidence that Zimmerman has terrible judgment as to what to do in an emergency isn't flimsy, it's overwhelming, and pointing to past events-even distant ones-that directly corroborate that isn't flimsy.
And it's certainly not the same thing as saying 'we should conclude he was more likely to have been violent because we know he smoked a tiny amount of pot'.
Bad judgment? Well, yes, obviously, no doubt. But it's also a very common kind of bad judgment, and the kind of bad judgment doesnt directly link to events the way Zimmerman's history does.
quote:- Second, I remind people that getting *punished* because of a victimless crime such as marijuana use doesn't endear people to authority figures. It might even make them *hostile* towards such.
Oh, here's another might: having a girlfriend file a domestic violence injunction against you 'might' make one bitter and hostile to the world in general for a long time. If we're talking these sorts of 'mights'.
quote:- Third, I'd guess that people with even trace amounts of drugs in their systems, are loathe to bring police into situations and perhaps have to submit to alcohol/drug tests.
Except Zimmerman wasn't the cops, and if we're positing this brink-of-violence criminal Martin, he would've known that given events. Or I should say as much as Zimmerman wished he were, he wasn't the cops. Martin would be alive if he was, most likely, given that cops actually are trained by more than cop movies and driving around their own neighborhoods in the pursuit of 'suspects'.
quote:But of course people instead have to pretend I said something I didn't, like "marijuana causes violence".
Hop on down off the cross, Aris. You said 'Martin smoked some weed and got in trouble for it, therefore it is more likely he was a near-psychotic would be thug and murderer'. There's not a whole lot of difference there, and it was scorned because it's almost as laughable a notion as 'marijuana causes violence'.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:having a girlfriend file a domestic violence injunction against you 'might' make one bitter and hostile to the world in general for a long time.
Yeah, and you didn't see me complain long and bitter about *you* guys keep mentioning said domestic violence injuction, did you? I didn't ever argue it wasn't evidence against Zimmerman, did I?
NOR WILL I EVER. Because it *is* evidence against Zimmerman.
Because unlike you guys, I don't need to claim that evidence isn't evidence. Logical evidence has a very simple mathematical definition: Evidence 'E' for a conclusion 'C' is when P(C|E)>P(C|~E)
quote:You said 'Martin smoked some weed and got in trouble for it, therefore it is more likely he was a near-psychotic would be thug and murderer'.
No, I didn't. When you use quotes, I suggest you actually quote what I actually said. Or else it's just a lie.
quote:Or I should say as much as Zimmerman wished he were, he wasn't the cops. Martin would be alive if he was, most likely, given that cops actually are trained by more than cop movies and driving around their own neighborhoods in the pursuit of 'suspects'.
And now you're just grandstanding. Which I find rather dull -- feel free to support a future law that outlaws neighborhood watch, if you like, or that demands that neighborhood watch member must never be armed, or that demands that neighborhood watch members must never ever leave their vehicles, nor are they allowed to follow people they consider suspects -- or whatever other provision you want to make.
But until such a law is made, there's nothing illegal that you can show Zimmerman to have done.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:No, I didn't. When you use quotes, I suggest you actually quote what I actually said. Or else it's just a lie.
You've said, more than once, that Martin was a violent thug that night. You've also said, repeatedly, that his pot troubles ought to make us think he was more likely to be such that night.
Yeah, you said it. If it's troubling to hear, perhaps you should choose your words more carefully in the future. It's not a lie to point out in uncomfortable ways that you're saying something silly.
quote:Yeah, and you didn't see me complain long and bitter about *you* guys keep mentioning said domestic violence injuction, did you? I didn't ever argue it wasn't evidence against Zimmerman, did I?
___
If the *only* allegations of racial hostility against Zimmerman come from a person who already has different reasons to be hostile against him and hasn't met him in 7 years, that's actually some evidence AGAINST Zimmerman truly ever showing racial hostility -- because in a world where he actually tended to show racial hostility there'd be more and more objective (and more recent) witnesses to the same.
Yeah, you kinda did, actually. Long time ago, reason to be hostile, we can dismiss what she says on those and other grounds.
Now, do you want to continue throwing around the word 'lying', or shall I just burn in hell again?
quote:And now you're just grandstanding. Which I find rather dull -- feel free to support a future law that outlaws neighborhood watch, if you like, or that demands that neighborhood watch member must never be armed, or that demands that neighborhood watch members must never ever leave their vehicles, nor are they allowed to follow people they consider suspects -- or whatever other provision you want to make.
It's strange that you accuse me of grandstanding and in so doing put three suggestions I never said or even implied into my mouth. I also didn't say it was illegal, of course-it was a question of his judgment.
But, yknow, grandstanding and the thread hasn't improved in your absence, oh woe woe.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Yeah, you said it. If it's troubling to hear, perhaps you should choose your words more carefully in the future.
I never used the words "near-psychotic". I never put those sentences together the way you pretend I did. If you use the 'quote' characters, or the "double-quotes" character be sure to copy-paste my words. It's easy enough to do in modern computers (select, CTRL+C, CTRL+V), therefore if you don't do that, you're going out of your way to lie.
And the fact of your lie is itself logical evidence that you know how weak your position is, or you wouldn't feel the need to go out of your way to quote me *wrongly*.
quote:Yeah, you kinda did, actually
No, I kinda didn't, actually. I didn't complain about people mentioning the domestic violence injuction (like you complained about my mention of Martin's drug use), I never said it wasn't evidence against Zimmerman.
You are now just trying to find something else I did, and pretend it's the same thing 'kinda'. FAIL.
quote:s strange that you accuse me of grandstanding and in so doing put three suggestions I never said or even implied into my mouth.
Those were suggestions I am making to *you*, not suggestions I claimed *you* made. If you were to make those suggestion, you'd be more consistent. Unfortunately you're not making them.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
And btw, *yes*, I believe that people that do drugs are statistically more likely to be violent thugs than people who don't do drugs, all other things being equal.
Are you prepared to claim that they're statistically *equally* likely? Statistically *less* likely?
If they're statistically less likely, I'll reverse my position regarding this piece of evidence, and henceforth claim his drug use as evidence in favour of Martin and against Zimmerman.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:I never used the words "near-psychotic". I never put those sentences together the way you pretend I did. If you use the 'quote' characters, or the "double-quotes" character be sure to copy-paste my words. It's easy enough to do in modern computers (select, CTRL+C, CTRL+V), therefore if you don't do that, you're going out of your way to lie.
The behavior you attribute to Martin fits such a definition. Are you seriously going to claim that the *only* way someone can reply to what you said is to use only the verbatim text? Because that's nonsense. According to you, Martin just decided to brutally and visciously, even lethally, attack someone who had done nothing to him.
I'm sure you're proud of your message board technique sarcasm, though.
quote:No, I kinda didn't, actually. I didn't complain about people mentioning the domestic violence injuction (like you complained about my mention of Martin's drug use), I never said it wasn't evidence against Zimmerman.
You are now just trying to find something else I did, and pretend it's the same thing 'kinda'. FAIL.
What, is this a thing now? CAPS MAKES IT TRUE? Who knew? Anyway, if what you did wasn't complaining, then neither is what you describe others as having done-that is pointing out why your reasoning re: pot and likelihood of violence is stupid. Carefully now, follow along, if that counts as 'complaining' then so did your remarks about the ex-girlfriend.
Now you can either continue to accuse me of lying, and have it demonstrated to be nonsense a post or two later, or you can get back to the more ordinary level of antagonism of two people who strongly disagree. It seems a difficult feat for fans of the Hero of the Neighborhood Watch.
quote:Those were suggestions I am making to *you*, not suggestions I claimed *you* made. If you were to make those suggestion, you'd be more consistent. Unfortunately you're not making them.
You put those sorts of things out there as though they were ideas I supported, or would support. That I seem to think NW ought to be banned-nothing I've said has even hinted at that, or anything except the armed part.
But hey, Aris, while you're so repeatedly accusing me of lying, could you do me a favor? Could you point to where I said those things ought to be illegal, or that Zimmerman doing them prior to the shooting was illegal?
If you know I was lying, you can certainly point to me saying so. I *seem* to remember saying it was a sign of bad judgment, but maybe I'm just crazy.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:If they're statistically less likely, I'll reverse my position regarding this piece of evidence, and henceforth claim his drug use as evidence in favour of Martin and against Zimmerman.
That's not the only option. There are basically three options, one of which his 'drug use' (in apparently very small amounts) clearly fits: undecided. Unknown-not enough evidence to conclude one way or another, therefore the fact ought to be remembered in case more is learned later, but not weighted.
Are you prepared to substantiate your claim-I'll skip the part where I ask if you actually claim it, having done so repeatedly-that the amount of THC we're talking about makes it statistically more likely Martin would be aggressively violent?
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: The behavior you attribute to Martin fits such a definition. Are you seriously going to claim that the *only* way someone can reply to what you said is to use only the verbatim text? Because that's nonsense.
Rakeesh, in fairness, I would say that the only way one ought to attribute something to someone else using quotes is if they are, in fact, using the verbatim text. That's kinda what quotes indicate, neh?
I don't think you were lying or whatever else Aris accused you of. In fact, your interpretation of what he said seemed fairly accurate to me.
But if he has a different conception of what he said, then the best unambiguous way to reference it is to quote it verbatim. It's fine for you to also say "I think you're essentially saying X" and put it in other words, but I don't think it's a good idea to put your interpretation of what he said in quotes.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:I don't think you were lying or whatever else Aris accused you of. In fact, your interpretation of what he said seemed fairly accurate to me.
But if he has a different conception of what he said, then the best unambiguous way to reference it is to quote it verbatim. It's fine for you to also say "I think you're essentially saying X" and put it in other words, but I don't think it's a good idea to put your interpretation of what he said in quotes.
If I thought for a moment anyone would actually take that to mean 'I am saying he literally said', perhaps his outrage would be more reasonable. I don't think anyone would-you didn't, for example-and I doubt he did, either. It was a convenient way to divert from the topic, though, while taking a shot.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Are you prepared to substantiate your claim-I'll skip the part where I ask if you actually claim it, having done so repeatedly-that the amount of THC we're talking about makes it statistically more likely Martin would be aggressively violent?
I've never made any such claim about any amounts of THC found in Martin's bloodstream. So certainly I'm not prepared to substantiate a claim I've never made.
Try to find an actual claim of mine next time.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:I've never made any such claim about any amounts of THC found in Martin's bloodstream. So certainly I'm not prepared to substantiate a claim I've never made.
Try to find an actual claim of mine next time.
Ugh. Nice weaseling. Are you prepared, then, to substantiate your claim that people who have smoked pot-which absolutely was your claim-are more likely to be violent thugs than those who don't?
God, on such slender means as any such statistic would certainly be, how much we could condemn anyone for.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Rakeesh, I don't think that they are the same at all. At least guns serve multiple purposes, some of which are invaluable.
I don't oppose stricter gun laws, or licencing guns. Depends on what you mean by gun control, I suppose.
As far as why only accidents should count, not suicies....as a nurse who works with this population on a daily basis, I knwo that most of the people who attempt suicide do it with whatever is at hand. If tehy didn't have a gun, they would take pills, or jump off a bridge, or slit their wrists.
How many serious injuries and deaths occur using a knife each year?
To me, guns are a tool, They are more dangerous than some tools, and need specific instruction to lean how to use them properly, but they are only a tool.
Last point for this post.....why is it that years of bad judgement on Zimmerman's part are OK to repeat, years after the fact.....but years worth of poor judgement on Martin's part should be off limits? I am not saying he was high, or that the trace amounts of THC impaired his judgement. But he was not a person known for making good judgement either, and if Zimmerman's judgement is allowed to be questioned because of his past, Martin's should be under question as well.
(I am on vacation, spending time with my family. If I don't post quite as often for the next week or so, please don't assume I am not interested. I just have a limited time to spend with my nieces and nephew, so I am making the most of it. )
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Are you prepared, then, to substantiate your claim that people who have smoked pot-which absolutely was your claim-are more likely to be violent thugs than those who don't?
"The report, "Teens, Drugs, and Violence," released by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) today in Philadelphia, shows that teens who use drugs are twice as likely to commit violent acts than those who do not. "
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:One in four teens (27%) who used illicit drugs in the past year report attacking others with the intent to harm;
Nearly one in six teens (17%) who got into serious fights at school or work in the past year report using drugs
That was some nice cherry picking there, Aris. Except even a brief glance at that study would reveal some apparently contradictory findings, suggesting that there is more to it than simple drive use--->likelier to he violent.
Such as, among other things, the statistic that marijuana use is apparently up 25%, a very large sum-and yet youth violence doesn't show a proportionate uptick. These are the sorts of things which should suggest, to someone whose mind isn't made up already, that if there really *is* a correlation, it's very, very small-possibly to small to judge effectively on am individual level.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:suggesting that there is more to it than simple drive use--->likelier to he violent.
Such as, among other things, the statistic that marijuana use is apparently up 25%, a very large sum-and yet youth violence doesn't show a proportionate uptick
If I thought that marijuana *caused* violence, I wouldn't be in favor of its complete legalization (as I currently am).
The causation goes the other way around. The lawbreakers are more likely to be violent *and* more likely to do marijuana.
But if marijuana was legalized, that would just increase its usage among the law-abiders, it wouldn't increase violence.
Because correlation isn't causation.
Thankfully I never said that drug use *caused* Martin to be a violent thug. I said it was evidence for it. And evidence is all about correlation, not about causation.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Rakeesh, I don't think that they are the same at all. At least guns serve multiple purposes, some of which are invaluable.
I'm not sure which things you're saying aren't the same. As for guns, though, they really only serve one purpose: to offer lethal force to their wielder at the squeeze of a trigger. Sometimes that is a good thing, sure. Sometimes. Plenty of other times it is also just much bad as it ever was good. And while the good things they can do will only ever impact you and your family, the bad things they can do stand a chance to impact me and mine-hence, my business as a fellow primate whose flesh isn't impervious to gunfire.
quote:As far as why only accidents should count, not suicies....as a nurse who works with this population on a daily basis, I knwo that most of the people who attempt suicide do it with whatever is at hand. If tehy didn't have a gun, they would take pills, or jump off a bridge, or slit their wrists.
How many serious injuries and deaths occur using a knife each year?
Does your experience as a nurse speak to no variation in suicide attempts, and which ones are successful? We can't simply write them off if we're actually attempting to look at the pros and cons-the fact that most gun deaths are suicides is probably relevant, yes?
As to the second, plenty, no doubt. But what this well intended example and other absurd ones continue to miss is this: your knife accident is very unlikely to maim *me*, or whoever happens to be wandering by.
quote:Last point for this post.....why is it that years of bad judgement on Zimmerman's part are OK to repeat, years after the fact.....but years worth of poor judgement on Martin's part should be off limits? I am not saying he was high, or that the trace amounts of THC impaired his judgement. But he was not a person known for making good judgement either, and if Zimmerman's judgement is allowed to be questioned because of his past, Martin's should be under question as well.
A few things. One, Martin wasn't doing anything fundamentally stupid or unwise when it started-meaning one of the parties involved wasn't starting off from a bad or dangerous decision. Zimmerman was-following him, deeming him a suspect for walking where lots of people walk, carrying a gun while acting on his NW 'authority', getting out of his vehicle, pursuing on foot (wait, I'm sorry, 'looking for an address', of course). Zimmerman *starts off* in the hole. Second, while things in Martin's background may well point to bad judgment or even violence, the only thing he's been gotten cold on, so to speak, was a laughable amount of pot and the suspensions. Everything else is either second or even third hand, or of simply unknown relevance. Cmon, Kwea, the 'report' of a cousin's Twitter account? The rest of it is supposed to seriously lend weight to the claim he just attacked a total stranger? Isn't that the sort of thing, were he in the habit of doing, we'd see substantially more evidence for that a cousin's tweet?
Whereas if we meander on down to Zimmermantown, well, we start to see a slew of things that lend weight to the idea that he started the confrontation with a grab or a shove, and things descended out of control from there. The history of bad judgment, not just generally but bad judgment of emergencies. The strong whiff of domestic violence. The deeply stupid (though yes, even though I've never said or suggested otherwise, legal) pursuit of Martin. The tagging of Martin as a suspect in the first place.
It's not that Martin's background doesn't get a look, it's that they both have, and so far Zimmerman looks-and makes himself look-quite bad. A trial will hopefully sort much of this out, time will tell.
Let me ask you this, Kwea. Suppose you're a hot dog vendor on a street corner, and you see a local kid walk by. He's something of a punk, but aside from some not uncommon teenage dumbassery he doesn't stand condemned in your books. He cuts into an alley as a shortcut home, that people in the area routinely use-you know he has a right to be there. You then see someone unmistakably following him, for some reason, and only one of them comes out alive-and it turns out to be the man with a gun who didn't actually have a good reason to be there, who went in armed on bad reasoning. Would you *really* stand there at your stand and think, "The kid probably attacked the guy and got shot for it,." I'm not asking this because it would prove anything, but only to hear your gut reaction.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
Rak, I hate to agree with Aris, but if you use "" signs, the quotes need to be exact. Otherwise its cheating.
Aris, when you say that someone who uses marijuana is more likely to be a violent thug than someone who isn't it leaves an implication I would like to clear up.
When some one uses pot are they more likely to be a violent thug or a normal person? The obvious answer is "a normal person". The big question is what percentage of pot users are violent thugs versus what percentage of non-pot users are violent thugs. If its 10% vs 2% we may have a correlation. Still 90% of the people who do pot are now being wrongly accused of being Thug-like. If its 1.5% vs 1% we do not have a correlation and being scared of their violent potential is a waste of energy.
Note: the question isn't "What % of thugs are pot users." If 100% of all thugs were pot users, but still only 0.5% of pot users were thugs, evidence of their drug use is not strong evidence of their guilt.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:"When some one uses pot are they more likely to be a violent thug or a normal person? The obvious answer is "a normal person". The big question is what percentage of pot users are violent thugs versus what percentage of non-pot users are violent thugs. "
Yes, the relationship between P(C|E) and P(C|~E) where E (Evidence) is use of pot, and C (Conclusion) is the violent thuggery.
quote:Note: the question isn't "What % of thugs are pot users."
Indeed, that would be the P(E|C) and it's not the important question.
quote:and being scared of their violent potential is a waste of energy.
As opposed to being scared of the murder in the 2nd degree/manslaughter potential of people who make undue 911 calls, which has repeatedly been treated as evidence towards the same against Zimmerman in this thread? Oh, to be more precise it has been treated as evidence towards *bad decisionmaking*, which is in turn evidence towards him initiating violence towards Treyvon then shooting him while he was shouting for help -- and yet somehow drug use isn't allowed to be treated as evidence towards bad decisionmaking by Treyvon and in turn be treated as evidence that *he* initiated violence, and that *he* kept exerting violence on a man who was shouting for help.
I'm not the one who keeps emphasizing the drug use. When I mentioned the drug use at the beginning of this specific argument, I mentioned it in a list of other such minor evidence about Treyvon Martin's character: "if one just decides to look at Martin's character in the last couple weeks or months, you'll find allegations of possible violence, participation in a fight club, possible burglary, drug use, multiple suspensions from school."
"Drug use" is like two words out of thirty five in the above quote. I'm not the one focusing on the drug use. I treat it as the *minor* logical evidence that it is. If I knew that e.g. Trayvon Martin was foul-mouthed, I'd have also mentioned his foul-mouthedness as well for such minor evidence -- and why not? other people keep mentioning that Zimmerman tagged Trayvon as an 'asshole' on the phone, so each person's usage of language is obviously treated as allowable evidence towards their character.
That Rakeesh and others jump on my mention of drug use, is pretty much the definition of a strawman: they think they'll attack a weak point, and so they magnify its relative significance in my argument far beyond what I myself make it.
quote:Still 90% of the people who do pot are now being wrongly accused of being Thug-like
Not by me. They might not like being assigned a greater statistical likelihood of being thug-like, but that's not the same as being "accused" of being thug-like.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Rak, I hate to agree with Aris, but if you use "" signs, the quotes need to be exact. Otherwise its cheating.
When I mean to directly quote someone-to say that this is exactly what they were saying, and reply-I use the quote box instead of quotation marks. In this particular case I think it was pretty clear I wasn't saying, "Aris, you said exactly these words," but rather restating them into a very similar meaning to point something out-something that's far from uncommon, and that no one who has been discussing this at length is innocent of in this thread anyway. 'Innocent of', not as though it were a big deal.
Anyway, if Aris really did think I was accusing him of using those exact words, then I apologize. I would be surprised, but tone is tough online. If, on the other hand, he merely objected to some very close and obvious associations with his words, that's a different story.
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quote:The causation goes the other way around. The lawbreakers are more likely to be violent *and* more likely to do marijuana.
I would be fine with a statement that said 'lawbreakers are more likely to be violent than those who follow the law', if it was only being used with that exact meaning-more likely, that is all-and nothing else. But you're not using that increased likelihood in that fashion. Speeding is breaking the law, for example. People who speed or don't buckle up are thus lawbreakers. They are therefore more likely to break other laws than someone who scrupulously abides by every law as best they can.
Well, that's all well and good and perfectly true as far as it goes. It even goes, to an extremely limited extent, to the notion of violence. Someone who speeds, who disregards authority and the law to speed, is probably more likely to be violent than someone who doesn't. Because there are of course lots of laws against violence, which would thus stop someone who abides all laws diligently from being violent.
The question is, how much more likely are they to be violent? Likewise with marijuana. For argument's sake, let's just say that the figure you quoted is the absolute, complete truth of the matter and that there is nothing further to be said. Teens who use marijuana are twice as likely to be violent as those who don't. Well, alright-suppose that original non-smoking likelihood is only, say, 0.05% (For fun's sake, though, I should note that juvenile crime is roughly 5% lower as of 2011 than it was in 2006 http://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/offenders/qa03202.asp?qaDate=19990930 , and this decline has been going on for about a generation but is matched by an upswing in marijuana use. Anyway, let's say it's 0.05% chance that a random juvenile will commit a violent crime. Smoking marijuana, if by chance this random juvenile didn't smoke already, will indeed double that to a staggering likelihood of less than half of a percent chance.
I have no doubt you see the problem here. It is not, as you say, evidence for Martin being a violent thug that night. You're simply not using that word properly-it is reason to look and see if we can find evidence, but that is all. It's a reason to prefer Martin if there were another juvenile involved who didn't smoke pot, and also had no other warning signs. But without some idea how great or small the initial, unmultiplied likelihood is of him having been a violent thug that night, his smoking pot is somewhere well north of him being a habitual speeder, but potentially not very far.
Things are a bit different for Zimmerman. He took several distinct steps that actually make him worth looking twice at, and these steps were at times or in places where they cannot be questioned. He deemed Martin a suspect without having a reason to, and was angry that he might 'get away'-signs of looking for a confrontation. He exited his truck and actually followed this supposedly suspicious person at night-actually a very compelling sign of looking for a confrontation.
If someone said to you, "Man, that asshole, he always gets away," and then followed him out of your sight, and then a fight broke out, you wouldn't be able to say with certainty who started the fight, but who would you think probably started that fight?
He assures you earnestly he didn't. Alright, he hasn't given you reason to believe he'd lie before now-and we can't ask the other guy. So you believe him. Not long after it turns out he shows a willingness to lie on a very important matter when there are steep penalties involved. Suddenly his word starts to carry less weight. Much of what Zimmerman did that makes him look bad is quite legal, of course. That's not the point. The difference between the two is that the things that make Martin look bad do so in different directions or maybe-similar directions to the way events would've needed to go for him to be guilty. With Zimmerman, we don't simply have factors that increase his likelihood to be dishonest or use bad judgment, we have actual straightforward examples of bad judgment and dishonesty! Of course, if it actually turns out Martin did swing on a bus driver, that will be pretty strong stuff. If it turns out he was an actual thief, that's not as strong but definitely noteworthy.
Of course we have to take a very careful at the physical evidence, but much of it is quite a lot less damning or exonerating than you claim. The injuries-well, quite a lot of different types of violence from self- to Martin-inflicted could've caused them, so far as we on the sidelines can tell so far. The shouting for help-Zimmerman's father says it was his voice (but seriously, what else would he say? If it were my son, I might very well say that in a heartbeat if I thought it would help. Don't know. Never been tested like that), but others say it couldn't have been his voice. So on and so forth.
Anyway, I look forward to the trial, to have many of these questions actually resolved.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:"Drug use" is like two words out of thirty five in the above quote. I'm not the one focusing on the drug use. I treat it as the *minor* logical evidence that it is. If I knew that e.g. Trayvon Martin was foul-mouthed, I'd have also mentioned his foul-mouthedness as well for such minor evidence -- and why not? other people keep mentioning that Zimmerman tagged Trayvon as an 'asshole' on the phone, so each person's usage of language is obviously treated as allowable evidence towards their character.
That Rakeesh and others jump on my mention of drug use, is pretty much the definition of a strawman: they think they'll attack a weak point, and so they magnify its relative significance in my argument far beyond what I myself make it.
Or, you know, you're communicating badly. Couldn't be that, though, master of the written word, prediction, statistics, etc. etc.
quote:Not by me. They might not like being assigned a greater statistical likelihood of being thug-like, but that's not the same as being "accused" of being thug-like.
When you go on to claim it is clear Martin was a thug that night, and that's part of your reasoning, it's at least a kissing cousin's worth of similarity.
quote:"Drug use" is like two words out of thirty five in the above quote. I'm not the one focusing on the drug use. I treat it as the *minor* logical evidence that it is. If I knew that e.g. Trayvon Martin was foul-mouthed, I'd have also mentioned his foul-mouthedness as well for such minor evidence -- and why not? other people keep mentioning that Zimmerman tagged Trayvon as an 'asshole' on the phone, so each person's usage of language is obviously treated as allowable evidence towards their character.
Dude, it's not the language that serves to point a finger at Zimmerman there. Please don't tell me you actually believed 'Zimmerman used profanity!' is what anyone was saying. It was that he labeled Martin a suspect, someone who would 'get away', with at best the flimsiest of pretexts. At best.
quote: As opposed to being scared of the murder in the 2nd degree/manslaughter potential of people who make undue 911 calls, which has repeatedly been treated as evidence towards the same against Zimmerman in this thread? Oh, to be more precise it has been treated as evidence towards *bad decisionmaking*, which is in turn evidence towards him initiating violence towards Treyvon then shooting him while he was shouting for help -- and yet somehow drug use isn't allowed to be treated as evidence towards bad decisionmaking by Treyvon and in turn be treated as evidence that *he* initiated violence, and that *he* kept exerting violence on a man who was shouting for help.
It is evidence of bad decisionmaking. No need for scare quotes, or in this case scare-asterisks. Of course, that's not the only evidence of bad judgment. It's one of a group of things, and the others were done minutes before the shooting. The 911 calls are, by themselves, not worth much-I would be surprised if you could find someone say they were damning or even well on their way to such. Except unlike the pot smoking (as opposed to 'drug use', a more serious sounding term) that points to bad decision making in an area directly related to the events that were happening that night.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Zimmerman got a new bail at $1m
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:Rak, I hate to agree with Aris, but if you use "" signs, the quotes need to be exact. Otherwise its cheating.
When I mean to directly quote someone-to say that this is exactly what they were saying, and reply-I use the quote box instead of quotation marks. In this particular case I think it was pretty clear I wasn't saying, "Aris, you said exactly these words," but rather restating them into a very similar meaning to point something out-something that's far from uncommon, and that no one who has been discussing this at length is innocent of in this thread anyway. 'Innocent of', not as though it were a big deal.
Anyway, if Aris really did think I was accusing him of using those exact words, then I apologize. I would be surprised, but tone is tough online. If, on the other hand, he merely objected to some very close and obvious associations with his words, that's a different story.
Good point about the quote-blocking. I spend enough times in discussion formats without quoteblocks that this distinction didn't occur to me.
I agree with you that in this case it wasn't an egregious screwup or anything. It was pretty clear from context that you thought he had said effectively that.
It's just one of those best practices. Quotes should be reserved for actual quoting, whenever possible. I criticize because I care. Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:By that standard, I'm just baked. High as a kite. It gives me the munchies. And also makes me aggressively violent, apparently? We all know THC does that.
To be fair, Aris didn't say anything that straightforward. What he seems to have said, though, is that Martin was a 'drug user' and that we should therefore consider it more likely he would've been violent.
Hmm? Not speaking to that. Not allowed to. This is a line which I have frequently encountered, however; the THC report has been quite frantically used as proof that Zimmerman wasn't profiling, Trayvon was high and acting high and Zimmerman's analysis from the car was correct.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:"Anyway, if Aris really did think I was accusing him of using those exact words, then I apologize"
What I really did think was that you were likely to be deliberately attempting to mislead other readers here (any readers who don't have the time to individually check all my posts) into thinking that I had used those exact words, and I most certainly thought that you weren't paying enough appropriate attention into NOT misleading them about what I had said -- which is required common courtesy to make conversation possible.
And if I hadn't bothered to dispute them as I did, most certainly *some* people would have been so mislead. Because not everyone has the time to read every single post in a thread, and they'd have treated my non-disputing them as acceptance.
That even after I asked you not to do this thing, you kept claiming "Yeah, you said it. If it's troubling to hear, perhaps you should choose your words more carefully in the future." put insult on top of injury: Because you had just *shown* that it doesn't matter to you what words I'll actually choose, you'll be choosing some *different* words on my behalf and present them as if I had said them.
I thank Dan Frank and Darth Mauve for backing me up with my objection to such bad practice. They've shown themselves to be honest people.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Man, if I have insulted you with a personal attack, it's been quite some time. You've done so about half a dozen times in the past half week. Would you mind cutting it out, or is that simply too much of a stretch? Since, you know, others aren't allowed to address you directly on lower ranks of violation.
quote:What I really did think was that you were likely to be deliberately attempting to mislead other readers here (any readers who don't have the time to individually check all my posts) into thinking that I had used those exact words, and I most certainly thought that you weren't paying enough appropriate attention into NOT misleading them about what I had said -- which is required common courtesy to make conversation possible.
Is this more of your clever analytical ability? That I wasn't engaging in a not uncommon way of replying to people on message boards, addressing tone and associations as well as the exact literal meaning, but rather that it was part of a clever scheme to turn other people in this thread against you? Do I need to shoot a kid to turn off that kind of bizarre mistrust, or what? Because...wow.
Now in the unlikely event anyone was actually turned against your words by reading what I've said about them, even though we've been going tit for tat, to my legions of followers! Aris's words are posted here. Read them, and choose for yourself.
Whew! I had forgotten how much control I've got over other people here. My mistake.
quote:That even after I asked you not to do this thing, you kept claiming "Yeah, you said it. If it's troubling to hear, perhaps you should choose your words more carefully in the future." put insult on top of injury: Because you had just *shown* that it doesn't matter to you what words I'll actually choose, you'll be choosing some *different* words on my behalf and present them as if I had said them.
That's one way to view things, with yourself as the blameless victim. I can see why that would be appealing. But perhaps I you didn't have to be pinned down on why your claims that we should believe Martin was a violent thug were likely to be literally true as you said them but nonetheless stupid because of huge uncertainties and the likelihood that the kinds of increases you were talking about would be tiny...yeah. If it didn't have to be dragged out of you that the pot smoking is only likely a tiny increase, for example, perhaps the conversation would've gone differently.
But when you hide behind your words being literally accurate and use them to insist people accept an absurd conclusion, yeah, I'll respond to what you're actually saying. When I said 'near psychotic', for example, you complained that you didn't use those exact words, and that I was thus a liar for saying so-never mind that I didn't intend to, I understand why you would've thought so, but not the bizarre crowd control feared intent you attributed to me. Anyway, when I explained that the way you were describing what Martin's behavior 'obviously' was that night, on almost entirely laughable correlations, that that behavior would be considered nearly psychotic...
A nice blanket of silence. Reiterations that you didn't say that. Well, you'll have to pardon me for being aware that people can say something in a roundabout, indirect way without ever using the direct literal words. And if you feel inclined to object, that no, you don't do that, you're straightforward-well, you did just accuse me of engaging in an elaborate attempt at group think.
quote:I thank Dan Frank and Darth Mauve for backing me up with my objection to such bad practice. They've shown themselves to be honest people.
Holy crap, you didn't read what Dan said at all, did you?
------
Speaking of which, thanks Dan, from you I appreciate the criticism, even if sometimes I'm too irritated (this time i just forgot to reply) at the moment to remember it.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Speaking of which, thanks Dan, from you I appreciate the criticism, even if sometimes I'm too irritated (this time i just forgot to reply) at the moment to remember it.
No worries. Glad to hear it, though. Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Man, if I have insulted you with a personal attack, it's been quite some time
Cute, but just a couple posts ago you accused me of "weaselling" because I refused to accept you AGAIN putting a false claim in my mouth.
And that's not even counting all the various indirect insults you lay pretty much every comment you make (like accusing me of feeling that Martin will get away with it, accusing me of lying, accusing me of diverting/distracting, accusing me of hypocrisy, etc, etc).
But all that frankly pales before your constant lying about me.
quote:And if you feel inclined to object, that no, you don't do that, you're straightforward-well, you did just accuse me of engaging in an elaborate attempt at group think.
Yes, I did plainly accuse you of straightforwards deception and lying, because you've repeatedly lied about me and everything I've said, pretty much constantly. This practice of yours now is so consistent for several weeks now that I can no longer believe it mere carelessness. It must be deliberate and quite conscious.
Most recently you keep lying about what whether I complained about mentions of the domestic violence in junction for example. And it's quite blatant lying again -- anyone can see it if they read the posts in question. You can see it too, I don't believe your reading comprehension can honestly be that bad.
You became so shameless about the lying that you actually attempted to put it into quotes -- though you were forced to back down from that practice when even other people objected to such *blatant* untruth that it could no longer even theoretically be considered a mere misinterpretation of my words.
You kept lying about things I supposedly attributed to you, or that I supposedly put in your mouth -- so very ironic, when you blatantly and shamelessly misquoted me.
You kept lying about claims I supposedly made. The claims you ask me to defend are always something different than what I actually say.
Then you accused *me* of lying. You accused me of lying a week ago, then when I asked you to quote where the lie was, you failed to find evidence of such.
You're a liar, and a deceiver, deliberately and blatantly so. I'll stand by my belief in this accusation, even if it gets me permanently banned from the thread or even the forum.
quote:Holy crap, you didn't read what Dan said at all, did you?
Yes, he said "Rakeesh, in fairness, I would say that the only way one ought to attribute something to someone else using quotes is if they are, in fact, using the verbatim text. "
See, I can quote properly. And I repeat my thanks to Dan Frank as an honest and honorable individual.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Btw, apologies about all of the above to JanitorBlade -- I really thought I'd be able to ignore Rakeesh. But in the last two pages of comments he keeps trying to just push buttons with insults and accusations and mockery:
"Nice weaseling" "Now, do you want to continue throwing around the word 'lying', or shall I just burn in hell again?" "Now you can either continue to accuse me of lying, and have it demonstrated to be nonsense a post or two later, " "But when you hide behind your words"
Rakeesh is a man who has repeatedly lied about what I said, then has repeatedly accused *me* of lying about what *he* said, and then has failed to substantiate any of his claims about how I lied, while I keep substantiating my own claims about his lies.
JanitorBlade, it's obvious that this can't keep going.
Please check the thread. If I'm lying about what Rakeesh is doing, then ban me. If he's lying about what I do, then ban him.
Or if you don't want to go to the trouble to check it, then just ban me. Even that's vastly preferable to me from letting both of us continuing in a thread, where he just keeps lying about me.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Aris, if you think that you being banned is preferable to continuing a conversation, I think that's a really strong indicator that you are no longer getting anything valuable from that conversation.
If that's the case, then that is a strong indicator that you should end your involvement in the conversation till you think you'll get some value out of it.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Aris, if you think that you being banned is preferable to continuing a conversation, I think that's a really strong indicator that you are no longer getting anything valuable from that conversation.
If that's the case, then that is a strong indicator that you should end your involvement in the conversation till you think you'll get some value out of it.
Yes, of course. But frankly doing the utilitarian calculation "will I gain something from further involvement" works badly as a barrier, because some sleepier or angrier or otherwise stupider future-version-of-me will eventually make a bad benefit-cost calculation and reenter to his (my) detriment.
That's how I reentered *this* time after all. Stupidly thought I would be able to ignore Rakeesh's tactics. In retrospect I would have been better off if I had been banned outright a week or two ago.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Cute, but just a couple posts ago you accused me of "weaselling" because I refused to accept you AGAIN putting a false claim in my mouth.
I accused you of weaseling after you refused to address a claim that having THC in his blood means Martin was more likely to have been a violent thug, only to have you a short while later substantiate (attempt to, anyway) a claim that Martin's smoking pot means he was statistically more likely to have been a violent thug.
Pretty straightforward. Scornfully stated, yes, but also probably accurate.
quote:And that's not even counting all the various indirect insults you lay pretty much every comment you make (like accusing me of feeling that Martin will get away with it, accusing me of lying, accusing me of diverting/distracting, accusing me of hypocrisy, etc, etc).
Wait a second, I thought we were only supposed to deal with what was exactly and precisely said, remember? So, just to illustrate what you've been doing and why it's so exasperating: you can't take issue with things I've said 'indirectly'. If I didn't use open plain language, I cannot be attacked for having said it.
quote:Most recently you keep lying about what whether I complained about mentions of the domestic violence in junction for example. And it's quite blatant lying again -- anyone can see it if they read the posts in question. You can see it too, I don't believe your reading comprehension can honestly be that bad.
You didn't say, "This is my complaint about Zimmerman's link to domestic violence being mentioned..." that's true. What you did do, however, was brush it off by saying it was a long time ago and that she had reason to be hostile.
Sounds like a 'complaint' to me. Even without saying, quote, "complaint."
quote:You became so shameless about the lying that you actually attempted to put it into quotes -- though you were forced to back down from that practice when even other people objected to such *blatant* untruth that it could no longer even theoretically be considered a mere misinterpretation of my words.
You reallu need to read what Dan has said on the subject again, if that is what your interpretation of what 'other people' (there being two of them, may as well use their names) have said. He even said he *agreed* with my interpretation. Is he also a shameless liar?
quote:You're a liar, and a deceiver, deliberately and blatantly so. I'll stand by my belief in this accusation, even if it gets me permanently banned from the thread or even the forum.
Goodness, a liar AND a deceiver. Also, I'd like to note for fun how strange it is that you call it a personal attack when I referenced burning in hell.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:I accused you of weaseling after you refused to address a claim that having THC in his blood means Martin was more likely to have been a violent thug, only to have you a short while later substantiate (attempt to, anyway) a claim that Martin's smoking pot means he was statistically more likely to have been a violent thug.
If Martin had more marijuana present in his stream he might actually be more sedated and calm, and that would well be evidence *against* his being violent at that particular time.
That's the difference between an assertion of a correlation between being a "drug user" and being violent, and an assertion of correlation between having pot in your blood steam at the precise moment and being violent.
It's a rather crucial difference, and different statistics are needed to back up each.
That's why precision in what claim is made is crucial.
quote:Also, I'd like to note for fun how strange it is that you call it a personal attack when I referenced burning in hell.
Really? Where exactly did I call it that? Oh wait, I didn't. Another lie.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:He even said he *agreed* with my interpretation.
People are allowed to agree or disagree with interpretations as much as they like. What they're not allowed to do is claim "You said 'X'" or "You claimed 'X'", when they know I didn't say 'X' and I didn't claim 'X'.
And you knew full well I didn't, because after all this wasn't your first lie against me in the thread, nor was it the second -- and it wasn't even the last. You're probably in the double digits by now. Nobody makes *that* many "misinterpretations" by accident.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:What you did do, however, was brush it off by saying it was a long time ago and that she had reason to be hostile.
One more of your lies, this one a repeated one. What I (so-called) "brushed off" wasn't the domestic violence injuction, I (so called) "brushed off" the later allegations of racism by that same person against Zimmerman. And I gave my precise reasoning for that.
That was quite unambiguously clear in everything I wrote about this issue -- no room for misintepretation whatsover.
Therefore it's quite certainly yet another one of your deliberate lies against me, this time a quite often repeated one.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Really? Where exactly did I call it that? Oh wait, I didn't. Another lie.
Another inaccurate but literal truth. You called that an insult, accusation, or mockery. I don't know why I would think of those things as being synonymous with a personal attack in this context. Big ups for your ability to hide behind, "I didn't say that." And just in case it's not obvious (though it is), I'm not suggesting you used these exact words with that particular emphasis.
quote:That's the difference between an assertion of a correlation between being a "drug user" and being violent, and an assertion of correlation between having pot in your blood steam at the precise moment and being violent.
I understand the difference, and man did it take a lot to drag it out of you. But it's something of a wash anyway, since after all we know he was a drug user at the time of the shooting because of the THC, so...
quote:People are allowed to agree or disagree with interpretations as much as they like. What they're not allowed to do is claim "You said 'X'" or "You claimed 'X'", when they know I didn't say 'X' and I didn't claim 'X'.
I don't know if you missed it or ignored it where he recognized that wasn't actually what was going on. But you don't actually have to do things like take full account what he said about this, because I'm so mean. Or something.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Ok, so just to be clear: is there even a slight hope that if I agree not to speak to you or your arguments, you'll be able to restrain yourself to the same without moderator involvement? Or is someone being so mean and dishonest enough to strip away all self control for you?
I ask with my tongue only slightly in cheek, since Samprimary is (apparently?)still restrained from speaking to you for violations in a thread where you aren't.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:I understand the difference
If you understand the difference, and if you understood it from the beginning, then you just admitted that you lied when you pretended that the claims were effectively the same -- that you lied again when you pretended "I was weaselling" when I did NOT treat them as effectively the same -- that you lied a third time when you claimed I was "hiding behind words" afterwards.
If you didn't understood it from the beginning, but you understand it *now*, then you still just admitted that your accusations of "weaselling" and "hiding behind words" were unjustified and unwarranted insults, and I require an apology.
quote:and man did it take a lot to drag it out of you.
It doesn't take "a lot". If you think that two claims are the same, and I say they're different, all you need to do is ask "In what way do you consider them different?" instead of accusing me of 'weaselling' 'hiding behind words' or doing any of these other things.
Better yet, only ask me to defend the claims I actually make in the first place, rather than your interpretive dance version of them.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:One more of your lies, this one a repeated one. What I (so-called) "brushed off" wasn't the domestic violence injuction, I (so called) "brushed off" the later allegations of racism by that same person against Zimmerman. And I gave my precise reasoning for that.
Oh-this is accurate, you didn't brush it off in that fashion. I went back and re-read, and I was mistaken in my memory about that. Sorry for that.
That said, you *have* brushed off the domestic violence injunction. Not directly. You've never made a brushing gesture on your shoulder when the topic was mentioned. But when you say we should think Martin was violent for reasons that include smoking pot, refereeing a fight club, and his cousin's twitter posting and *don't* ever mention how much more highly an actual domestic violence injunction would weigh than those...that is a brush off. An indirect one.
Nevertheless, the paragraph you quoted above was rooted in a mistake of mine. I should've gone back and reread. The rest, though, the litany of supposedly proven lies and the idea that I'm orchestrating a PR campaign, is bizarre, paranoid nonsense.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Ok, so just to be clear: is there even a slight hope that if I agree not to speak to you or your arguments, you'll be able to restrain yourself to the same without moderator involvement?
Only if you also honestly and non-sarcastically apologize without condition for saying I was "weaselling" and "hiding behind words", and retract your continued false claim that I was supposedly "brushing off" the domestic violence injuction (when I was in reality brushing off the racism allegations)
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:If you didn't understood it from the beginning, but you understand it *now*, then you still just admitted that your accusations of "weaselling" and "hiding behind words" were unjustified and unwarranted insults, and I require an apology.
Or what? Pistols at dawn? Setting aside the careful way, again, you hide behind literal meanings while your words convey a different message, you told me to, and here I will do it, "Burn in hell." That's just the most striking example. Don't recall hearing an apology from you. Neither of us is in any position to 'require' apologies from the other.
But anyway, I was serious about my question re: moderator involvement.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Thank you for retracting the false claim about the domestic violence injuction. Now please also retract that I was "weaselling" and "hiding behind words".
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
You can either demand and require, or say please. Can't really do both.
Am I correct in assuming you won't apologize or retract your 'burn in hell' and your claim that I was orchestrating an elaborate attempt at propaganda?
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: Btw, apologies about all of the above to JanitorBlade -- I really thought I'd be able to ignore Rakeesh. But in the last two pages of comments he keeps trying to just push buttons with insults and accusations and mockery:
"Nice weaseling" "Now, do you want to continue throwing around the word 'lying', or shall I just burn in hell again?" "Now you can either continue to accuse me of lying, and have it demonstrated to be nonsense a post or two later, " "But when you hide behind your words"
Rakeesh is a man who has repeatedly lied about what I said, then has repeatedly accused *me* of lying about what *he* said, and then has failed to substantiate any of his claims about how I lied, while I keep substantiating my own claims about his lies.
JanitorBlade, it's obvious that this can't keep going.
Please check the thread. If I'm lying about what Rakeesh is doing, then ban me. If he's lying about what I do, then ban him.
Or if you don't want to go to the trouble to check it, then just ban me. Even that's vastly preferable to me from letting both of us continuing in a thread, where he just keeps lying about me.
Aris: It's obvious to even you you can't handle participating in this thread. There's just way too much personal fighting, and as you said, you can't be expected to stay away. I'm asking you to leave the thread alone for now. Do not continue to post in the thread. I hope that is the only thing I'll need to do on this matter today.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
For what it's worth, I won't speak to or address anything you've said, or even that I've said in reply, Aris, while you're prohibited from replying.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
*rolls back on in, dusts the carbon scorching off his thread*
So yeah anyway Zimmerman got a new bail at $1m
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Heh. At first, when reading the headline, I was frankly baffled. Both the prosecution and even the judge made it clear they thought Zimmerman was just about to skip town, so why on Earth permit even a much higher bail a second time? But as it turns out, apparently that is the law (which is just weird to me, if your 'flauning the system' indicates you're prepping to skip bail, disallowing further bail seems straightforward), and the judge followed it in spite of his own concerns, as is proper. Seems a bit similar to the hearing about publicity in that respect. Sometimes he can't just say no, even when it's clearly the more prudent course of action.
Legal commentator take on things (in this case, the NPR report from yesterday, or was it the day before) suggests that Zimmerman's deception may prove a lot more harmful than just much higher bail. Given Florida law and how physical evidence so far seems inconclusive overall, Zimmerman may well have to testify at his SYG hearing, and he's dinged up his credibility-and in this case, much of that hearing may hinge on it.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:The judge overseeing George Zimmerman’s murder trial wrote a stern eight-page order Thursday that set bail at $1 million and said the former neighborhood watch volunteer thumbed his nose at the judicial system as he plotted a life on the run.
Seminole County Circuit Judge Kenneth R. Lester ordered Zimmerman to remain in Seminole County, doing away with the special perk that had allowed Zimmerman to await trial in hiding out of state before his initial bail was revoked. Lester said nothing in the defense team’s presentation in a three-hour hearing last week explained why someone would stash a second passport and $135,000 if it wasn’t to jump bail.
“Notably, together with the passport, the money only had to be hidden for a short time for him to leave the country if the defendant made a quick decision to flee,” Lester wrote. “It is entirely reasonable for this court to find that, but for the requirement that he be placed on electronic monitoring, the defendant and his wife would have fled the United States with at least $130,000 of other people’s money.”
He rejected the defense argument that Zimmerman, 28, was young and confused when he instructed his wife, in jailhouse phone conversations, to transfer all the funds he raised online out of his name and allowed her to lie about it under oath at his initial bond hearing.
“Trayvon Martin is the only male whose youth is relevant to this case,” Lester wrote.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: Nobody makes *that* many "misinterpretations" by accident.
Yes they do.
Communication is hard. Clear communication is even harder. Misunderstandings and miscommunication to some degree or another is the norm. There are a few things you can do to try and help communication go more smoothly:
- Try to be as clear and precise as possible. Try not to assume that other people will always understand what you mean or share your background knowledge. Sometimes this is unavoidable: for example, I'm assuming you'll understand all the words I write in this post. But be reasonable and try to minimize these assumptions.
- When you're not sure of something, don't be afraid to ask clarifying questions. It helps if these questions aren't hostile; the person you're talking to wasn't being confusing on purpose. It made sense to them.
- When someone else misunderstands you, don't get mad. Just clarify what you meant so that they understand and can respond to what you were trying to say.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Dan: Aris is not currently permitted to participate in the thread. I'd rather you PM Aris than respond to his posts.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Dan: Aris is not currently permitted to participate in the thread. I'd rather you PM Aris than respond to his posts.
Sorry about that. My post sat on my computer for a while as I ran an errand, and I didn't realize that all that stuff happened in the interim.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
The Honorable Judge needs to regain control of his emotions. I understand he's pissed because Zimmerman misled the court but to call him a flight risk and only offer some sloppy reasoning to support such speculation is just unprofessional. Maybe the judge thinks that everyone intending to jump bail pays off their American Express and Sam's Club credit cards because, you know, after you flee the country you may wanna come back in a few decades and it would be a shame if your credit score was ruined...
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Talking in code, misleading the court, a second (in itself highly unusual, if Rabbit was correct) and unmentioned passport...
Cmon, Capax, please tell me that does add up to valid concerns about a flight risk for you. Maybe you don't think that with the credit card stuff he wasn't overall a flight risk, that's a pretty bizarre conclusion but I can follow how you would think that, but seriously. The man got in his court and conspired with his wife to lie to them and to the judge. Regain control of his emotions? He followed the law. Seems pretty in control to me.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
The Honorable Judge needs to regain control of his emotions. I understand he's pissed because Zimmerman misled the court but to call him a flight risk and only offer some sloppy reasoning to support such speculation is just unprofessional. Maybe the judge thinks that everyone intending to jump bail pays off their American Express and Sam's Club credit cards because, you know, after you flee the country you may wanna come back in a few decades and it would be a shame if your credit score was ruined...
I'd be happy to hear an explanation for why somebody would take out a second passport after surrendering their first one, that does not involve, you know, leaving.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Talking in code, misleading the court, a second (in itself highly unusual, if Rabbit was correct) and unmentioned passport...
Cmon, Capax, please tell me that does add up to valid concerns about a flight risk for you. Maybe you don't think that with the credit card stuff he wasn't overall a flight risk, that's a pretty bizarre conclusion but I can follow how you would think that, but seriously. The man got in his court and conspired with his wife to lie to them and to the judge. Regain control of his emotions? He followed the law. Seems pretty in control to me.
He can administer the law without presenting - not just as reasonable speculation, but as a likelihood of little doubt - the most criminal and unlikely possible scenario.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:He can administer the law without presenting - not just as reasonable speculation, but as a likelihood of little doubt - the most criminal and unlikely possible scenario.
I just want to be clear as to precisely what you're saying: that the evidence involving this matter doesn't point in very strong terms towards the Zimmermans making ready in secret and against the law to flee at short notice if they decided they wished to?
If this is what you're saying, it seems very much of a reach. How do you explain the code, the passport, the lying about the funds? Was the purpose merely to pay off some credit card bills, effectively pocketing the difference between legal fees and money given? Why then the elaborate (but also foolish) deception, and the passport ?
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I'd be happy to hear an explanation for why somebody would take out a second passport after surrendering their first one, that does not involve, you know, leaving.
Did he obtain the second passport after surrendering the first one? According to what I've read, he believed the passport was lost and he obtained a new one, all before the incident with Trayvon.
I don't disagree that there are some peculiarities about this situation but I don't believe the judge is totally reasonable in his interpretation of the details:
quote:“Notably, together with the passport, the money only had to be hidden for a short time for him to leave the country if the defendant made a quick decision to flee,” Lester wrote. “It is entirely reasonable for this court to find that, but for the requirement that he be placed on electronic monitoring, the defendant and his wife would have fled the United States with at least $130,000 of other people’s money.”
No, it's entirely reasonable that Zimmerman (and it's possible that is wasn't Zimmerman himself that collected and surrender the passport) was initially unaware that the court hadn't obtained his valid passport. It's also entirely reasonable that Zimmerman wanted his debts and bills payed so this ordeal wouldn't leave him and his wife bankrupt, destitute, and/or harmed, hence his interest in transferring at least some of the money to pay bills, pay legal fees, and ensure their security. The donated money does no good sitting in a paypal account. The bit about calling it "other people's money" really illustrates what the judge could have left out instead of (further) emotionally charging the issue.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Did people donate it to him with the intent of paying his credit card bills? I suspect that will come as a surprise to them. When Zimmerman lied about the amount and spent it elsewhere, it was 'other people's money'.
This guy just can't catch a break. He follows the law to an unpleasant conclusion re: the media, and he's a screwup. He points out what is plainly likely to just about anybody-that passport, hidden money, code talk amounts to serious flight risk, and he's unreasonable.
Why are you willing to trust Zimmerman's word on his intentions with that money given that concealed it from the court and spoke about it in code? Was there just a series of deeply inept actions by his counsel, all of which are someone else's doing for which he shouldn't be criticized?
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti:
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I'd be happy to hear an explanation for why somebody would take out a second passport after surrendering their first one, that does not involve, you know, leaving.
Did he obtain the second passport after surrendering the first one? According to what I've read, he believed the passport was lost and he obtained a new one, all before the incident with Trayvon.
It's Martin. We don't know him, and it bothers me, although perhaps it bothers only me, that people are using this level of familiarity with someone they did not know. I find this disrespectful- and I would feel the same of calling Zimmerman by his given name. -pet peeve ended-
On the note of the passport: it is of course possible that Zimmerman suddenly found a supposedly lost passport and returned it, but it is also possible that he had found it earlier, and in violation of federal law, hung onto it for some reason. A passport is not personal property, so failing to surrender an invalid one is theft, among other things. Ignorance of the law is no defense- if you find out you have two passports, you have to surrender one immediately.
If he did surrender the first one *knowing* that he was in possession of the second, which is not an unreasonable supposition, then this does suggest a serious flight risk. In addition to lying about his finances, this makes flight a credible scenario. The judge does not need irrefutable proof of risk to assume that there is a risk- he has broad latitude, and he is using it appropriately in this case. Zimmerman has a right to due process of law, and he's getting it.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
The Honorable Judge needs to regain control of his emotions. I understand he's pissed because Zimmerman misled the court but to call him a flight risk and only offer some sloppy reasoning to support such speculation is just unprofessional.
There's no sloppy reasoning. You have an extremely weird interpretation about what the judge is allowed to be angry about, considering that Zimmerman did indeed baldly conspire to commit perjury and game the court along with his wife, hid money from the court while trying to move it around in sub-10k reporting denominations, and talk in code about a planned destination while in possession of a second passport. Unless you're completely gullible, there's no misinterpreting what Zimmerman was trying to do to the court. They conspired, acted massively suspicious, lied, snuck money around, and perjured. They got caught. Judge cannot be meek in the face of this. He is doing this by the book and fighting for the integrity of his court. To think his statements are out of line requires casting a straightforwardly blind eye to what Zimmerman got caught doing. Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Aside from the straightforward illegality of all of that, I'm still struggling to imagine any intent for that behavior that doesn't amount quite plainly to 'taking steps to be ready to flee the law at a moment's notice in the future, if we decide to'. Is Zimmerman a frequent (and I mean very frequent) international traveler that he might conceivably lose track of how many passports he had? If he did, as unlikely as it seems, totally forget about that passport as something anyone needed to know about because he thought it was void (though according to Rabbit's experience, which I'm inclined to trust because I think she's been to more countries than I have zip codes, it seems strange he would think that), if he mentally took it off the table because it was invalid in his head, why was it in a safety deposit box? And his counsel just forgot to cover that too in talks with him?
The presence of the passport means that there have to be at least two strange and even very strange failures of memory and/or professionalism either on the part of Zimmerman and his counsel or both. Given his carefully though stupidly planned dishonesty elsewhere in this matter, I just can't see how he gets rated as trustworthy here.
If the passport weren't involved, I'd be more likely to view this as still illegal, still stupid but otherwise more ordinary money shenanigans-perhaps even with some decent motives, even though when used that way it was stolen.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:t's Martin. We don't know him, and it bothers me, although perhaps it bothers only me, that people are using this level of familiarity with someone they did not know. I find this disrespectful- and I would feel the same of calling Zimmerman by his given name. -pet peeve ended-
Treyvon Martin was a minor. It's ridiculous enough for you to take offense because Americans don't follow central European cultural norms of respectful address but even in Central Europe, minor children are normally addressed by their first names, even by strangers and the media.
By calling Treyvon Martin "Treyvon" and George Zimmerman "Zimmerman", we emphasize the substantial legal difference between them. Treyvon was legally a child. Zimmerman was 11 years his senior and legally and adult. Perhaps you think that distinction is inappropriate, I do not.
[ July 10, 2012, 12:41 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
I do. He was a minor, but not a little boy. The legal distinction is one thing, but the term of address is another. I'm not European, I'm from California; that doesn't have anything to do with this.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Yeah. I'm from the US too, and while I know Martin was a minor, there is a huge difference between a minor and a child, particularly when assigning responsibility for their own actions.
A 17 year old and a 4 year old are both minors, but only one is a child.
I use Martin and Zimmerman for ease, not because of respect or fear of being overly familiar. I think his parents gave up the right to be offended about the use of his first name when they made a media circus out of his death. They may have felt they had no other recourse, because they disagreed with the DA about the outcome, but after posting misleading pictured and lying about what an angel he was, they opened the door for discussions about his character, as well as discussions about their manipulation of facts in the media....so using his first name is fine with me, of course.
Mind you....I'm not saying that he deserved to die, or that we know for sure that he was the aggressor. All I am saying is that if we are allowed to question Zimmerman's past decisions and behaviors (which we HAVE to do) then Martin's lack of judgement, drug involvement, and possible aggressive behaviors are fair game as well.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander...
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Is Zimmerman a frequent (and I mean very frequent) international traveler that he might conceivably lose track of how many passports he had? If he did, as unlikely as it seems, totally forget about that passport as something anyone needed to know about because he thought it was void (though according to Rabbit's experience, which I'm inclined to trust because I think she's been to more countries than I have zip codes, it seems strange he would think that), if he mentally took it off the table because it was invalid in his head, why was it in a safety deposit box? And his counsel just forgot to cover that too in talks with him?
I just thought I'd throw in some facts on the 2nd passport. During the past year I have had to obtain a replacement passport for one that was stolen and I recently obtained a valid second passport so I've become fairly familiar with passport regulations. Here is the direct excerpt from the top of the form you must submit to obtain a report a lost or stolen passport.
quote:A U.S. citizen may not normally bear more than one valid or potentially valid U.S. passport book and one valid passport card at a time. It therefore is necessary to submit a statement with an application for a new U.S. passport when a previously issued valid or potentially valid U.S. passport book/card cannot be presented. Your statement must detail why the previous U.S. passport book/card cannot be presented. The information you provide on the DS-64, Statement Regarding a Lost of Stolen Passport Book and/or Card will be placed into our Consular Lost and Stolen Passport System. This system is designed to prevent the misuse of a your lost or stolen U.S. passport book/card. Anyone using a passport book/card reported on the DS-64, including your self, may be detained upon entry into the United States. Should you locate the passport reported lost or stolen at a later time, you should report it as found and submit it for cancellation. It has been invalidated. You may not use that passport for travel
Then at the end of the form you have to sign a statement under penalty of perjury which includes the follow.
quote:I understand that the passport(s) I report as missing will be invalidated and cannot be used. If I subsequently find and recover it, I will immediately return it to Passport Services at the address on the back of this form or to the nearest U.S. passport agency, U.S. embassy, or U.S. consulate abroad.
As I indicated above, I am now in possession of two valid U.S. passports. I had to get a second passport because I needed to travel while my first passport was being held by the British Embassy for processing my VISA application. This was non-trivial to accomplish as it requires individual approval from the state department and such requests are only considered under a limited set of circumstances. I also had to provide proof that my passport was being held for processing a VISA, proof of my need to travel, and sign several statements under penalty of perjury about misuse of the passport (which include warnings of severe fines and imprisonment). It took several weeks and a lot of phone calls to the embassy and the state department to get it approved. It also cost a bundle.
Some news sources reported that Zimmerman had obtained the second passport after his arrest. This is incorrect. I suppose its not impossible that the U.S. state department might approve a second passport for someone who was under arrest for murder, but I sincerely hope they aren't that incompetent or corrupt.
So how did Zimmerman get 2 passports? In 2004, George Zimmerman reported that his passport had been lost and he obtained a replacement passport. When he later found the original passport, he was legally bound to return it to the passport agency for cancellation but he did not. The passport that Zimmerman originally turned over to the court was not the valid replacement passport, it was the invalid lost passport. This was really a stupid move. When I got my replacement passport, they made it quite clear that once I officially reported my passport as lost or stolen -- it was irrevocably cancelled. Trying to use it for anything after that could mean jail time.
Zimmerman doesn't seem to be the sharpest tool in the shed so I can believe that he didn't understand that the lost passport was invalid or that he was legally obligated to turn it in when he found it, even though he had to sign a statement saying he understood those things.
It is, however, quite a stretch for me to believe that he didn't understand why the court required him to surrender his passport and why keeping a second valid passport hidden from the court could cause him serious troubles. The fact is that he chose to keep the valid passport and turn in an invalid one. It seems highly improbable that this was just a simple mistake -- particularly since he was recorded discussing the issue with his wife.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: I do. He was a minor, but not a little boy. The legal distinction is one thing, but the term of address is another. I'm not European, I'm from California; that doesn't have anything to do with this.
Pfff!! Are you really expecting me to believe that in California teenagers are normally addressed by their last names rather than their first names? Are you really telling me that in California, 17 year olds are commonly addressed as "Mr. Martin" rather than by their first names?
Honestly, did you object when your high school teachers called you by your first name? Did you demand that your University professors in California call you Mr. Orincoro?
If you are expecting me to believe this was a pet-peeve of yours before you moved to Prague, you've got a lot of work to do. Perhaps you could connect me to one of your peers in California to confirm that even as a teenager in the US you considered it disrespectful to be called by your first name.
I don't know how Czechs do it, but in Germany people are addressed by their first names by all adults including teachers, police, courts, and media until their reach legal age and then they are addressed by their surnames unless you are on familiar terms. In Germany the legal age is 14 not 18 like it is in the US. You seem to be asking us to adhere not lonely to an idea of "respect" that is foreign to U.S. culture but to an idea of adulthood that's also alien to U.S. culture.
Get off your high horse. Respectful language is not an absolute. What constitutes disrespectful language varies from culture to culture and in American culture calling people by their first name is not generally understood as disrespectful.
[ July 10, 2012, 02:13 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Wow, relax, please. Your confrontational tone isn't warranted. Nor are your wild assertions about my cultural preferences, of which you know less thn you think, clearly.
I'm talking about referring to people we don't know, in print. I'm not talking about how we do in gain person. I object, for example, to actors being called by their first names online and in print. I just don't find that it projects the appropriate distance that a stranger warrants. It makes relationships clear: first names for people we know and re familiar with, last names for others.
Whether I found it disrespectful of others to call me by my firt name, in person, when they knew me, is immaterial to this. It so happens that I went to a private school where last names *were* used routinely except among friends. So please, back off and take what I said in context. We're talking bout someone we do not know, who was not some little boy when he died. This it. If you can't muster a little bit of civility ith me, I won't respond.
quote: Get off your high horse. Respectful language is not an absolute. What constitutes disrespectful language varies from culture to culture and in American culture calling people by their first name is not generally understood as disrespectful.]
get the hell off of your high horse, and stop assuming you know why my motivations are. Rarely have I seen you be so unaccountably rude as you are being now. We have a difference of opinion, nd you're making it all about me and what a terrible elitist cultural chauvinist I am. What the hell is with you?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Orincoro, I find your intolerance of American cultural norms of address to be pretentious and rather ridiculous.
I gather that you grew up in some isolated private school conclave with its own sub-culture. That's fine as long as you recognize that culture isn't right or wrong. Being able to adapt to different cultural norms is an important social skill. When you try to enforce the norms of your culture on others you come off as an elitist snob.
Treyvon Martin wasn't a little boy, but he was a minor. In America, people in their teens and early twenties are very rarely called by anything but their first names. This isn't a sign of disrespect -- its our culture.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
it's a little bit ridiculous to care that much about whether or not we call him trayvon or martin or whatever, but it is also a little bit ridiculous to care about that someone cares that much about whether or not we call him trayvon or martin or whatever.
in other words, this is all ridiculous, let's fight about it forever
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:get the hell off of your high horse, and stop assuming you know why my motivations are.
I don't think I've said anything about your motivations. On several occasions you have expressed that you find the American cultural norm of calling strangers by their first name offensive. As a general rule, I think being offended by something that is a cultural norm is silly and intolerant. I think that taking offense at something that is a cultural norm among the majority in your home country, is pretty pretentious.
quote:Rarely have I seen you be so unaccountably rude as you are being now. We have a difference of opinion, nd you're making it all about me and what a terrible elitist cultural chauvinist I am. What the hell is with you?
Your memory must be quite short. You find me unconscionably rude a great deal of the time.
You've said that calling strangers by their first name is one of your pet-peeves. Intolerance of different cultural norms is one of mine.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Rabbit, your gathering skills suck. I've been posting here for 7 years, and my circumstances are no secret. I went to public school until 9th grade, when I switched to a Catholic school that was solidly middle class. The convention was to use last names (no Mr) when speaking to others with whom you were not friends. That's all. At that school, I had an English teacher who had strong opinions about how to refer to others in print- opinions that were echoed in Writers Inc, and which I still follow and find best. That's it.
Clearly you have some issues with me bout my background, because you've projected a lot of crap here. This feeling that I have expressed has nothing to do with my thread last year about Starbucks. Nothing. In fact, I've posted about this pet peeve for years without you apparently noticing- longer then I've been living out of the US.
Don't lecture me on our culture. You have no more domain over it than I do. That is all I will have to say to you about this.
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
I wonder if there's a tendency to refer to people by whichever of their names is more unique and recognizable. I can think of several people named Martin, but I've never heard the name Trayvon before. A Google search for Martin has 1,960,000,000 hits, and none of the first page results are related to Trayvon Martin. Searching for Trayvon returns just 27,000,000 hits, and all of the first page results are about this case. I'll grant that the Google results could be skewed by the way he's referred to in the media, but I think the overall point is valid -- "Trayvon" is a much more specific reference than "Martin." I bet if his name was Martin Trayvon, they'd still refer to him as Trayvon.
On the other hand, it's possible that we're more likely to do this sort of thing to children (and women, too -- Clinton and Rice being good examples). "Johnson" isn't unique -- even "President Johnson" refers to more than one person -- and yet I don't think I've ever seen him called "Lyndon." Then again, checking pretty much all the privileged-demographic boxes, we have Newt. So obviously, referring to powerful white men by their first names isn't completely anathema.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
It's a different dynamic at play with ""Ike," "Newt," and "W," etc. or the manning brothers, as another example. Theyre public figures, as opposed to private citizens elevated by their circumstances of death. This does seem connected, at least to me, to the fact that Martin had a typically African-American name. Many black parents choose distinctively black names for children, and the tendency to prefer them over a surname speaks to deeper cultural attitudes and biases. "Treyvon" is distinctively black, and "Martin" is Anglo. Zimmerman is generically central European, but if his first name had been, say, Jesus or something distinctively Latino, I think you'd find people using his full name or given name more often.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Kwea,
quote:They may have felt they had no other recourse, because they disagreed with the DA about the outcome, but after posting misleading pictured and lying about what an angel he was, they opened the door for discussions about his character, as well as discussions about their manipulation of facts in the media....so using his first name is fine with me, of course.
This seems to me strange reasoning, and I'll explain why. First of all, Martin's family had pretty good reason to think they had to make a media stink about things-their son was shot to death on the way home with candy and tea in his hand! That is certainly how it would've seemed to them. For the sake of argument, let us say Martin *did* abruptly make an extremely violent, even murderous attack on Zimmerman-it's perfectly natural his family wouldn't take to that explanation. Even with truly damning, incontrovertible evidence families don't always accept their dead as a criminal.
So the weeks pass, and the man who shot their son to death with candy and tea in hand still walks free. That is the reality his family was living with, and in a town known to have let's just say irregularities with respect to its law enforcement handling of minorities. I don't think it's unreasonable to imagine they must've felt they *had* to invoke the media. So they release-or was it even from them? I don't know-pictures of their child. Maybe they really did think it was an effort to lend support to their cause. They claim him as a good boy-do you know of no parents who would claim their child as good even with suspensions and pot, even while they were *alive*?
When I said above that your reasoning seemed strange to me, this is why: it appears as though you are suggesting Martin's family had some sort of obligation to present their dead son, warts and all, to the public's eye-and if they don't, then they've invited people to think the worst, or to dig in, as though that wouldn't have happened anyway. I'm trying to imagine a parent, faced with their own dead child's face in their mind, who would go before the public and the media and have in their mind, "Alright, I need to make sure my press releases are fair to the man who shot my child." I'm coming up blank.
There are people to condemn for the (aside from the call editing) somewhat serious media side-taking in the initial coverage. I say *initial* with this qualifier: it wasn't actually initial, there WAS no initial coverage. But these people certainly aren't, I think you will agree, the family themselves. Martin's character was going to be picked apart by skeptical eyes anyway, as is proper. That would happen to many, but a young black male will *certainly* experience that, posthumously. I fail to see why his family ought to be criticized for being firmly on his side.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: ... This isn't a sign of disrespect -- its our culture.
Not really mutually exclusive. I would have thought that it's both, a side-effect of a culture where disrespect is often lauded.
(And I say this as a fan of such cultures)
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
I find that response to be far better than my own. Yes, the two are not mutually exclusive.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I don't....and didn't expect them to bare all his warts. Once they started claiming he was always an innocent, and began mentioning his character in public though, then it becomes a little less clear. They went on TV and said he was never in trouble, never suspended, and that anyone who knew him knew thins......but once we looked at his history, this wasn't true.
As I said, I don't want to demonize him, but I also don't think we should ignore his history of poor decisions either.
Just because a kid messes around with pot, or gets suspended, doesn't mean that he is a bard kid, or violent.....but it does mean he wasn't the perfect little boy on the picture any more.
And since his family made misleading claims about him, I don't blame anyone for digging deeper.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:I don't....and didn't expect them to bare all his warts. Once they started claiming he was always an innocent, and began mentioning his character in public though, then it becomes a little less clear. They went on TV and said he was never in trouble, never suspended, and that anyone who knew him knew thins......but once we looked at his history, this wasn't true.
Did they? I'm not saying they didn't, but what I've found them quoted as saying is that he was a good kid who didn't start fights who hadn't been in trouble *with the law*, which so far as I can tell is true. They even acknowledged the suspension, though I haven't found if that was an unprompted admission or not. Anyway, his father says he grounded his son for it.
I simply don't understand your point, still. You say you don't expect them to expose all of their son's skeletons, but when they don't, it seems they are to be blamed for people thinking he was a violent thug? As if he was ever going to be taken simply at his word (rather like Zimmerman, at first), and things not delved into? We look into the lives of people involved in murders-it's not the parents fault, which is what you've plainly indicated now more than once, whether you meant to or not.
In fact, I haven't been able to find where they said he was an angel, except a possible reference to him being an angel when at home-not entirely clear who said that. Having just reread some of the press they put out, it seems like they were careful to say Martin wasn't ever in trouble *with the law*, which if that's all they said on the subject seems calculated...but Kwea, what on Earth do you want? Why is his family expected to release statements not intended to mourn and stir support for their dead son?
quote:As I said, I don't want to demonize him, but I also don't think we should ignore his history of poor decisions either.
Pointing out how Zimmerman's history of bad judgment is more worrying and likely more related to the events of that night isn't the same thing as ignoring Martin's pretty paltry skeletons. Vandalism (painting WTF on a school locker), a pipe and some pot, tardiness and skipping, and a screw driver and some jewelry. This is the utter limit of Martin's skeletons that are known, and aren't totally laughable (at this point, though may in the end be shown to be true) such as his cousin's Tweet. And of those, one involved our nation's lovely zero tolerance laws on pot (this very minute, how many adolescents do you think would be suspended this week of spot checked for pot under such policies?, and the other, the the jewelry, remains unclear-that is to say the value, how it was discovered, who was involved, etc.
None of that indicates, contrary to what anyone has said, that any skeptical person ought to think it likely Martin would've simply attacked a complete stranger. It would even seem, in some lights, to argue against it-clearly Martin was no criminal mastermind or gifted with above average restraint, so had he been aggressively violent, I think it can be argued we would've seen better evidence for it than a cousin's tweet of an event we don't even know happened.
But, yes, bad judgment. Fine. The thing is, no one has said 'Zimmerman did it because he had bad judgment, case closed'. What people have said is that the *type* of bad judgment Zimmerman showed is quite bad for him in ways Martin's isn't. Actual, on the record links to two kinds of violence well above a cousin's say-so. Getting out of his car, pursuing this 'suspicious character' into the night. Labeling him an 'asshole who always gets away' on the basis of being a pedestrian in a high traffic spot in the rain. Carrying a gun on NW which, despite being legal, is according to police and NW organizations nationwide bad judgment.
The types and degrees of bad judgment are different, and just because there's bad judgment on both sides doesn't mean the truth is right exactly in the middle.
quote:And since his family made misleading claims about him, I don't blame anyone for digging deeper.
Calling some of their statements *misleading* is actually more accurate, but again-what else did you expect and why do you expect it? Martin as a young black dude would need to have been shot repeatedly on video while trying to get Zimmerman to donate blood for his background NOT to be dug into in the media.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
it's interesting how values are so different in different places. In the UK, you have to be not only a cop, but a specially trained and specially authorized cop to even strap on a weapon. And in Florida the likes of Zimmerman can carry one around his neighborhood with zero training. Odd that.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: I don't....and didn't expect them to bare all his warts. Once they started claiming he was always an innocent, and began mentioning his character in public though, then it becomes a little less clear. They went on TV and said he was never in trouble, never suspended, and that anyone who knew him knew thins......but once we looked at his history, this wasn't true.
I don't find this very compelling. You are skeptical enough as a consumer of media to know that the parents of a homicide victim aren't going to jump out and say anything negative, or even admit to anything negative, about their kid. Really, what can we expect from these people? They were in shock over his death, and the circumstances of that death. Parents pretty nearly always do this.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Which is why I don't usually listen to them. They aren't impartial, nor were they present when this happened.
But they were very misleading, at best, in their portrayal of their son.
As I said, I don't have a problem talking about his past. I also don't make the mistake of thinking that because he had issues he was at fault here.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:But they were very misleading, at best, in their portrayal of their son.
In what way, specifically, was his family 'very misleading' in their portrayal of their dead son? It's a serious question, because much of what you listed above doesn't seem to make your case-I was unable to find (but may have missed it) where the his family called him an 'angel', or said he had never been suspended or in trouble at school. I've seen reports where they state he wasn't ever in trouble with the law, which is true so far as we know. But...that's really about it.
That and the picture, but you have to ask yourself, Kwea, exactly who made the decision that that would be the picture shown nationwide? The parents? They didn't sit in newsrooms, you know. If the media had wanted to, they could have in the most simple of ways gotten other images to use, more recent ones. Should his family have raised an uproar? "Our son didn't look like that when he was shot to death-we don't want Zimmerman to be viewed too harshly, so here's a less endearing image."
I don't see how you can claim not to be saying you're critical of them, that they don't have some sort of obligation to make fair and balanced statements in the press...and then criticize them for being 'misleading' because they didn't do so. It's not their *job* to do so-that's the territory of the media-and in any event you haven't shown that they, his family themselves, were as 'misleading' as you claim as it is. Why does the family have some sort of duty to help the public get a scary image of their victim?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Defense moves to have judge removed from case.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
They don't, but if they start bringing up his past, how he was wonderful, and then things come out that put that into question I don't think anyone questioning their story are racists, or demonizing their kid.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Zimmerman has no case to get this judge thrown out, IMO. The judge has a right to call bullshit when someone lies in his court, and pointing out an attempt at manipulation isn't misleading or prejudicial.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
They're just building a case for appeal. Gotta do the groundwork.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: Zimmerman has no case to get this judge thrown out, IMO. The judge has a right to call bullshit when someone lies in his court, and pointing out an attempt at manipulation isn't misleading or prejudicial.
Best comment on it so far: "The Judge's baseless accusations that George "flouted" and "manipulated" the system damaged his thin skin almost as much as being slammed into concrete."
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: They're just building a case for appeal. Gotta do the groundwork.
Yeah, that's the first thing I thought when I read the blurb...
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Hey! Zimmerman was on the front page of my paper this morning.
The transcript is from March 20 and there is a known record of the family confrontation. So uh
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
meh.
It doesn't impact the case at all, as far as I can tell.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Well can we at least say he's no angel, and that if his family didn't release this, they only have themselves to blame if folks begin to disparage his character? Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
This is going to instantaneously never have been about Zimmerman *per se*, but about everyone's right to defend himself. Child-molesting psychopath or no.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
This article makes some interesting arguments about why the accusations of molestation are relevant.
I'm not sure whether or not I agree with all her arguments, but I do think this is one more stroke on a painting that makes Zimmerman look more and more like the classic bully.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Child molestation is classic bullying? I'd have pegged it as slightly more exotic.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Child molestation is classic bullying? I'd have pegged it as slightly more exotic.
Since he was only two years older than the victim it's wasn't "child molestation".
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Really? What would you call it?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Orincoro, I don't know what the technical term would be when an 18 year old molests a 16 year old or an 8 year old molests a 6 year old, but it's not child molestation.
From the online dictionary
quote:Child molestation is a crime involving a range of indecent or sexual activities between an adult and a child, usually under the age of 14.
The acts of which Zimmerman has been accused do not fit this definition since he was not an adult when she was under the age of 14.
[ July 18, 2012, 10:02 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
OK, I found the proper term, it's "Child on Child sexual abuse."
I have no idea how common sexual abuse and harassment is among the prepubescent bullies but it's extremely common behavior among teenage bullies.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Child on child sexual abuse.
Kinda boggles my mind.
I mean, yes, if one child is actually aggressive, or threatening...
It was just called it "playing doctor"...kids figuring out that there are more differences between boys and girls then dresses/pants and hair length.
Shoot, some activities I was a part of could easily be classified in this category. Now that I think about it, I sure hope that no one was traumatized, or felt taken advantage of. I had always thought of it as rather innocent and normal.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
S_W, having worked many years in child care, I can tell you there's a world of difference between kids undressing each other in the bushes (it happens), and one child abusing another. Age and power differences are key. Also, it is rather more common for the abuser to have themselves been abused by an elder. Hyper sexuality among children is a sign of abuse.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
O'Mara.
quote:In the roughly 37 hours George Zimmerman spent talking on the phone during his first stint in jail, there are several minutes that could land his defense attorney in hot water.
One call suggests defense lawyer Mark O’Mara knew from the start that tens of thousands of dollars in donations had begun pouring in to help Zimmerman.
In a phone call recorded April 14 between Zimmerman and brother-in-law Scott Wilson, the two discuss the new defense lawyer and the attorney’s vision for an upcoming bond hearing. Zimmerman twice said that he told O’Mara that he tried to transfer $37,000 from his online legal defense fund site, but could not complete the transaction because PayPal rules prevent transfers larger than $10,000.
But in court later at Zimmerman’s bond hearing, O’Mara told the judge his client was broke.
O’Mara told The Herald that he does not recall the conversation Zimmerman referred to and would not risk his law license lying to the court.
“He said he’s going to have me declared indigent,” Zimmerman told Wilson on the call. “I told him I didn’t think that would be possible, because there was one sizable transfer I tried to make. It got stopped. You know, $37. He said: ‘Well that doesn’t matter. Right now you’re not working. You’re not providing an income for your family. You’re probably not going to be employable for the rest of your life.’”
Wilson, the man O’Mara identified as the person who administered Zimmerman’s online fund-raising drive, at one point asks Zimmerman whether the lawyer knows “the volume” of the donations that came in from the public. Zimmerman said O’Mara knew about the attempted transfer of $37,000, but not any more than that.
They agreed to keep it that way.
In April, O’Mara filed a motion saying Zimmerman had no job and no “significant financial assets or savings.” Zimmerman’s wife testified the couple had no income at all that she knew of.
The judge granted a $150,000 bond. Days later, O’Mara declared to the court that Zimmerman had actually amassed a small fortune in donations.
At the time, O’Mara said he had failed to press his client about how much money he had raised, and said he learned about the money in a conversation discussing how Zimmerman needed to take down his Internet sites.
That’s when prosecutors reviewed Zimmerman’s jailhouse calls and bank records and found that he, his wife and sister had worked with Wilson to transfer all the donations of out Zimmerman’s name into cash.
Zimmerman and his wife were recorded talking in a simple code to refer to large amounts of money. “Eight dollars” meant $80,000.
Furious, Seminole County Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester sent Zimmerman back to jail. A new bail hearing was held in June, and Zimmerman was released on a $1 million bond. His wife, Shellie, was charged with perjury.
“I recall now some conversation of a transfer, but I don’t recall a specific amount,” O’Mara told The Miami Herald. “If it was $10,000 or $100,000 or $30,000, I would have remembered. It’s not the type of thing you would risk your license to practice law over.”
He stressed that the jailhouse recording shows that Zimmerman was keeping him “at arm’s length” regarding the money he had raised. O’Mara said he does not think the recording is clear-cut about whether Zimmerman told him about the money.
man, down the rabbit hole. 'it's okay guys it was in CODE!'
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Cue people saying this proves O'Mara is to blame, and that it's somehow unfair to look at Zimmerman as a liar.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I don't even know what the cues are anymore. I mean he even called pastor terry jones. And these logs are insane.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Well can we at least say he's no angel, and that if his family didn't release this, they only have themselves to blame if folks begin to disparage his character?
Not really. His family hasn't gone on TV and talked about what a saint he was, or how great he is as far as I have seen. They haven't released pictures of him as a teenager as his current picture, called Martin a racist for beating a Hispanic male up, or claimed Martin made racial slurs to the police.
I figured he was a douche. If the rest of this is true they should press charges. If they don't.....well, they had their 15 min of fame....
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
It's certainly possible GZ mistakenly told his brother O'Mara knew about the transfer when in fact he hadn't gotten around to it.
Still I think that statement about being unemployable in perpetuity is probably a big motivating factor in GZ wanting to just run away from it all. Still illegal stuff and he may have buried himself before standing trial for murder.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
If you haven't seen his family talking about what a great guy he is, you haven't been paying attention, I'm afraid.
But since you put it like this, if we have license to antagonistically question Zimmerman's character and they *didn't* claim he was a great guy (they did), why are the parents of Martin to be blamed for having invited it when they supposedly did (even though much of what you attributed to them wasn't actually said, as I described above)? Seems a bit of a double-standard, really.
It's still frankly baffling that you insist his parents should have released a better picture of their dead son, as though they were the ones who determined which image would be used in national coverage. I'm really confused, how do you think the major newsrooms operate? When all over the country, having meetings frequently about how to cover this story, did these producers and news directors and consultants say to themselves, "Alright, we need an image of Martin to go with this story. We'll use this one they put out, because it's the only one that could possibly be used, and our hands are tied."
I mean, of course not. Martin's parents weren't the ones who decided how the media would portray their son, and from what I've seen, and I looked, they made some statements that were true but incomplete, which is exactly what would be expected of parents grieving a dead child (or, I don't know, hulking scary man).
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Yeah, that's the thing. I wouldn't indict O'Mara based on Zimmerman's account, because ... it's Zimmerman talking. It could be BS. Or he could just legitimately have no idea what his idiot mouth is running on about.
or it could be a code hurr hurr hurr
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I don't think it would be possible to indict O'Mara based only a recording of Zimmerman saying he had told O'Mara. At a very minimum, GZ would have to be willing to testify against O'Mara in court and then it would be just a matter of GZ's word against O'Mara's.
Overall, I'm thoroughly unimpressed with O'Mara's handling of the case. Either he's given GZ a lot of very poor legal advice or Zimmerman is refusing to follow his advice or some of both.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
O'Mara's just showboating as usual. Really it is pretty much entirely that Zimmerman is just a really extremely bad client who has made extremely bizarre and questionable decisions right from the beginning, and slowly amped that up to criminally stupid.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Welp it's about 4 minutes into the interview and Hannity, of all - people, kinda called him out on an inconsistency already. To paraphrase :
Hannity : You said he was running...
GZ : It wasn't a run, more like a skipping.
Hannity : The 911 tape has you saying he was running.
GZ : Well I don't know if I really meant that.
Even with the softball s---, he's still floundering.
quote:It's official. He's the world's stupidest human being.
Keep commenting though. I don't have tv access.
quote:Skipping? Jesus christ, Zimmerman.
quote:He just said Trayvon punched him in the head over a dozen times after slamming his head into the ground. Trayvon Martin : Master of Hokuto Shinken.
Martin also tried to suffocate him now. O'Mara is just sitting there like he's about to flip.
quote:Imagining how this interview must have gone before editing it leads me to believe that the next high profile murder case in Florida is gonna come after O'Mara strangles the life out of Zimmerman.
quote:I feel terrible for laughing, since the whole incident was so tragic and infuriating, but... skipping?! My lord. I can only picture O'Mara's face during this whole trainwreck.
quote:Skipping? Was he actively looking for the word that made Treyvon's behavior sound least threatening?
quote:I just watched a clip of this, and Hannity questions him repeatedly whether he regrets anything that happened that night. Zimmerman says no, then says it was all part of god's plan.
Oooooo. I know this is very uncharitable, but when he said he prays for Martin's parents everyday, I had a very bad taste in my mouth.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
It's okay man, it was god's plan that he shoot trayvon anyway so
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Uncharitable? Well, I am quite a bit more ready to take offense than you are, BB, but that is to my mind understated. Praying for his parents. Jesus. No pun intended.
How many absurdly stupid or dishonest things does Zimmerman have to say or do before we can begin doubting something BECAUSE he said it?
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
From the WP.
quote:Whether Zimmerman was the aggressor plays a major role in his self-defense claim.
“I hadn’t given them a correct address. I was going to give them the actual address,” he said.
“I meant that I was going in the same direction as him. I didn’t mean that I was actually pursuing him.”
(emphasis mine) I can hear the Daily Show segment now.
Also, he gets out of the car and suddenly Martin is there? Chalk up "ninjitsu" as just one more of Martin's martial art related skills.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
He was just, y'know, walking a few dozen then a few dozen more in the dark not because he was looking for him, but because he...wanted an address. Well I mean that's what I do if I want an address at night, I walk dozens or hundreds of feet between rows of houses to see where I am. Errr...was. Whatever.
I certainly don't use the cell phone I'm talking on and press a couple of buttons, though...
(Actually, I have no idea what sort of phone he was using, so that was a joke. But I think it's pretty uncommon for most smart phones not to come installed with a mapping app. Someone can correct me on that.)
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
As to why Zimmerman's remarks about God and planning and prayer for his parents are so objectionable...according to Zimmerman, Martin literally ambushed him out of nowhere. (Somehow. He was just 'there', or something.) After doing this, with Zimmerman having done nothing but followed him in his truck, he then proceeds to violently attack Zimmerman. Following through, he got on top of his grounded victim and started to beat him to death, because he told him he was going to kill him and then began smashing his head into the ground. Zimmerman then shot him.
That means it was, according to Zimmerman, 'God's plan' that their son not just appear to be but actually BE a violently aggressive would be murderer. Aside from it being a profoundly stupid plan of God's, this goes further and says to his parents, "God wanted your son dead."
Kind of one of the hazards of invoking God, really, and the risk sharply increases when the invoker is a stupid man needing to defend himself against accusations.
----
Kwea, I am still curious if you've found or can recall a time when Martin's parents said he was an angel (the closest I remember reading was his mother saying something about the kids getting along like angels at home or some such) or anything about how which picture they released governed which picture the media would use.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Rakeesh, I have an app on my phone, but it would be a lot faster, and more accurate, to just get an address than start the app and wait for it to come up. If GPS was even turned on....I frequently turn mine off unless using it as it saps the battery life horribly.
Also....it shows streets, but not addresses, unless I type an address in. It will show a general area, but not the street addresses as I walk or run past them.
Not saying a thing about the interview, as I haven't seen it yet, or defending anything at this point because of that. Just a simple fact about GPS and mapping functions. Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Actually, that picture was put on shirts, on flyers, used by Al Sharpton and his followers, and was hand selected by his parents as the first image of Martin that was released.
And I personally saw 2-3 interviews as this first began picking up steam where they claimed he was an angel, a perfect kid, and specifically stated he had never been in any trouble. I live down near where it happened, and it was a while ago, but I don't remember when it aired. I'll see if I can find it later, maybe.
I have no issue with Zimmerman's character being questioned. I just think that Martin's should be too.....and just because you question it doesn't make you a racist.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Actually, that picture was put on shirts, on flyers, used by Al Sharpton and his followers, and was hand selected by his parents as the first image of Martin that was released.
Sounds like a beef with Al Sharpton and his 'followers', not the parents. And has nothing to do with which image mainstream media used.
quote:And I personally saw 2-3 interviews as this first began picking up steam where they claimed he was an angel, a perfect kid, and specifically stated he had never been in any trouble. I live down near where it happened, and it was a while ago, but I don't remember when it aired. I'll see if I can find it later, maybe.
Well, Google hasn't turned up anything like that on all sorts of variations on Trayvon Martin parents angel call him etc.
quote:I have no issue with Zimmerman's character being questioned. I just think that Martin's should be too.....and just because you question it doesn't make you a racist.
Not only did I not say it did, but this has nothing to do with why his parents ought to be considered as having invited that consideration.
quote:Rakeesh, I have an app on my phone, but it would be a lot faster, and more accurate, to just get an address than start the app and wait for it to come up. If GPS was even turned on....I frequently turn mine off unless using it as it saps the battery life horribly.
Also....it shows streets, but not addresses, unless I type an address in. It will show a general area, but not the street addresses as I walk or run past them.
It took less than five seconds for it to come up on 3G for me just now, and in any event the question wasn't between finding an address with your eyes easily and possible use of a smart phone, but that and heading out after (sorry, not after, just a big coincidence that's where Zimmerman was heading) in the direction of this suspicious pedestrian at night between houses, and *not* just up the street to a corner to see a sign.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
I think we could expand this defense to cover lots of new ground. The Americans didn't invade Iraq, they were hedging in the direction of Bagdahd, when the Repubkican guard ambushed them.
I didn't rob the bank. I walked into the bank, and towards the vault, and the security guard came out of nowhere, so I defended myself, and safeguarded the bank's money.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
A simply glance at a map of the crime seem shows you just how preposterous Zimmerman's explanation that he was just looking for the address is. He left his car a few yards from an intersection (where one would general expect to find a sign with the street name). The site where he shot Martin is a 100 yards in the opposite direction on a walk way that goes behind two rows of houses.
In the crime scene photos, house numbers are clearly visible from the street. As would normally be expected, no house numbers are visible from the sidewalk behind the houses where the fight took place.
I'd love to hear Zimmerman's explanation of why he was going through people's back yards looking for the address. If he ever takes the witness stand (which I suspect his lawyer will go to great lengths to avoid), the cross examination is going to be pure gold for the prosecution.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Zimmerman's statement that he left the car to be able to see a road sign / know which street he was on (in his complex which has all of three streets or so, that he knows by heart) is the least believable of all of his statements, and that's saying a lot.
quote:One of the biggest inconsistencies was Zimmerman’s change in explanation about why he got out of his Honda Ridgeline.
He told a police dispatcher moments before the confrontation that he was following Trayvon but in later interviews with police, he said something else.
“I walked to find the street name, to find a street sign,” Zimmerman said.
Asked Serino: “How do you not know the three streets in your neighborhood [where] you've been living for three years?”
Zimmerman said he has a bad memory and suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
It doesn't bother me a bit that he didn't know the name of the street. Lots of people don't know the names of the street in their own neighborhoods. I know people who've lived in a small towns their entire life who know every person in town and where they live but don't know the names of any of the streets.
My parent have lived in the same house since 1970. The street they live on makes a right angle turn next to my parents house and the name changes. I know the name of my parents street, I have no idea what the name is on the other street. I've walked down that street thousands of times. I can tell you who lived in each of the houses back in the 70s. I have no idea what the name of the street is.
What I find absolutely unbelievable is that a person looking for a street name would head down a foot path behind peoples houses rather than toward a very close by intersection where street signs are usually found.
That coupled with the fact that he got out of the car right when he'd told the operator that Martin had started running and that the direction he went was the same direction Martin went make the lie so bald faced obvious, I doubt even his mother would believe it.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
He claims he never went more than 100 ft from his car. The spot where he shot Martin was over 300 feet from his car via the shortest path.
It seems down right ridiculous to make that kind of easily falsifiable claim.
Maybe Martin's a poor judge of distance, most people are, but why would he make the claim that he stayed close to his car at all since the distance from his car to the site of the shooting could be easily measured and no one's accused him of going further than that.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
Using Street View it appears that all of the intersections have street names posted on them.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
To be fair, if I remember correctly there was a sidewalk in the area, at least I'd say five or six yards wide, between the rows of houses, so at that point I don't think he could be said to be going through back yards.
Of course, the problem with taking things like that into account is that it begs the question of just how it was Martin came to be considered suspicious, given that even by Zimmerman's own...fluctuating...account, he was walking on a high traffic area known in the neighborhood.
As for the street name, I could easily grant that someone who lived in a neighborhood wouldn't remember the names even of a few streets. A member of the neighborhood watch, less so. A 'captain' of same still less. That he would travel that way, in the same direction as Martin but not following him, that he wouldn't use his phone if he could have (which is likely), that he went all of that distance so he could know where he had been instead of just up a lit street...well.
In someone I trusted and knew to have good or even average judgment, I would think it a peculiar series of coincidences, but wouldn't be prepared to think they were lying. Zimmerman is not someone I trust or whose judgment I think is good-and even for people who believe Martin DID abruptly snap into lethal, even psychotic violence, Zimmerman isn't someone whose word and judgment should be trusted.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
according to zimmerman's re-enactment and testimony, his suspicion was from when he was following martin in his car and martin was walking on lawns by the street up in the top left corner of the map, where he had probably come in from between residences from outside the neighborhood, where he had just been purchasing the drink and candy.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:To be fair, if I remember correctly there was a sidewalk in the area, at least I'd say five or six yards wide, between the rows of houses, so at that point I don't think he could be said to be going through back yards.
My point was that one would not normally look for addresses on the back of houses not that he wasn't on a public thoroughfare. This is not a route he would have chosen if he were looking for addresses.
The crime scene photos confirm that the addresses are clearly visible on the side of the houses facing the road and that there are no addresses on the back side of the houses that face the side walk.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Well, it depends.....during a fight a lot of ground can be covered.
Looking forward to the trial.
Rakeesh, as I said, not everyone keeps GPS enabled on their phones. I takes me about 4 min (I just timed it) on Sprint's 3G network, and once I call it up it didn't provide a lot of detail.
I see a lot of issues with several of his statements, but this one isn't an issue with me.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: Well, it depends.....during a fight a lot of ground can be covered..
Have you heard his testimony? He says he was instantly knocked down, pinned to the ground and straddled and that he was barely able to squirm his way a few feet off the sidewalk onto the grass.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Rakeesh, as I said, not everyone keeps GPS enabled on their phones. I takes me about 4 min (I just timed it) on Sprint's 3G network, and once I call it up it didn't provide a lot of detail.
A lot of people don't have a smart phone with GPS capability. I don't. Zimmerman didn't even have a job, so its unlikely he had all the latest toys.
But I don't see that that matters. He drove passed the street sign at the intersection while he was on the phone to 911. He parked his car a few yards from the street sign and then headed the opposite direction around behind the row of houses where there are (and would not normally be) any street signs or house numbers.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: Well, it depends.....during a fight a lot of ground can be covered..
Have you heard his testimony? He says he was instantly knocked down, pinned to the ground and straddled and that he was barely able to squirm his way a few feet off the sidewalk onto the grass.
No, I was working and haven't heard it yet. Plenty of questions raised, to be sure.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:My point was that one would not normally look for addresses on the back of houses not that he wasn't on a public thoroughfare. This is not a route he would have chosen if he were looking for addresses.
Sorry, I didn't mean to say you were inaccurate, just to clarify was all. I agree it is pretty odd he would go that way if he were looking for a street name, to say the least.
------
quote:Rakeesh, as I said, not everyone keeps GPS enabled on their phones. I takes me about 4 min (I just timed it) on Sprint's 3G network, and once I call it up it didn't provide a lot of detail.
Well like I've said at least twice now, I don't insist on it as damning or proof of untruth, only as another coincidence that's necessary to make Zimmerman's account true. So far we're up to, let's see...
That Zimmerman legitimately deemed Martin suspicious, in spite of his presence as a pedestrian on a known high traffic path, his inability to see Martin anywhere nearby (but who was close enough to ambush him so thoroughly), his ignorance of what street he was on in spite of there being so few and in light of his neighborhood watch captaincy and frequent activity in that role, the peculiarity of his decision to travel that route to find a street name while *not* also intending to follow Martin, and how strange it is for Martin to have simply snapped into this sort of violence for what Zimmerman described as no real reason at all, in spite of having no known history of such that we've seen yet.
For Zimmerman's accounting of himself to be both true and accurate, all of those oddities need to swing his way, whereas any one of them point towards him not just being a NW captain trying to do his duty but rather seeking a confrontation, and if some of them are not the way he says, are outright damning.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
A three-judge panel from the Court of Appeal has granted George Zimmerman a new judge, according to a CBS/AP report. The Olando Sentinel reports that the new judge is Debra S. Nelson.
Now that Judge Lester has been removed, Zimmerman is slightly closer to getting a fair trial.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
If you say so. I suspect any fair trial will always result in a conviction.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
A close vote yes on one count, a vote no on another count, just to put it in perspective. Also that the appeal ruling doesn't validate Zimmerman's account of convenient negligence and stupidity with respect to money, either.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Hmm....not sure that was bright on their part. Whatever.
I bet they challenge all of it, and lose. Including if they try for a new trial venue.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
The consensus prior to the appeal ruling I read from various legal pundits seems to match the split of the vote-that there might conceivably be a case for changing the judge, but that it was far from cut and dried and may just as well have been not enough.
Anyone who tells you that the judge being removed was the only reasonable, fair outcome to the appeal is thus selling something.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
or they always agreed with the judges who rules in favor.
I am not buying anything about this case. I just want to see it go to trial. Of course, if the SYG defense does apply, that won't even happen.
I bet it sees trial.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Yeah, I don't care how you come down on Zimmerman and Martin's encounter. This is just in very poor taste.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
The act of auctioning the gun starts out at 'very poor taste'. The way Zimmerman is characterizing it takes it well into 'obscene'. (Not that I think you would disagree. It's just goddamn, the way he talks about the auction. Though there is some satisfaction in the way he has apparently been reduced to groveling for money and making a spectacle of himself. I wonder when the book will come out.)
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
For a normal human being, killing someone - even if necessary - will be the worst thing they ever do. In Zimmerman's twisted mind, killing a boy was the high point of his life
[ May 12, 2016, 05:57 PM: Message edited by: kmbboots ]
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
It shouldn't be surprising. It was probably some desperate need for attention and validation that led him to become a self-appointed neighborhood watchman in the first place.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
He's the human equivalent of the product of an enima, no doubt, but as far as I remember, he was official neighborhood watch & not self appointed.
Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
It looks like that depends on who you talk to. Google turns up hundreds of hits of articles who refer to him as "self-appointed".
The Daily best says this:
"Whether or not Zimmerman was an official neighborhood watchman or was self-appointed is now a matter of dispute. The National Sheriffs’ Association, which runs the Neighborhood Watch Program, said it has “no information indicating the community where the incident occurred has ever even registered with the NSA Neighborhood Watch program,” NSA executive director Aaron D. Kennard said in a statement."
Other hits say that neighborhood meeting chose him (the only volunteer, and I wonder if the entire thing was his idea).
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
hell yeah everyone I just self appointed myself neighborhood watch
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
According to his statement at trial, the president of the homeowners' association did not think there was a need for a neighborhood watch.
Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
Not surprised. I've served on a governing board for my grad student apartments and there is a large tendency to vest the person who comes in demanding a program with the responsibility of making it happen. Partly because the people in charge don't feel like it or want, but if someone does and is willing to do the work, then whatever, go ahead.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
It would be interesting to have been a fly on the wall for that meeting and heard him say, "Ok, and I'll carry a gun and confront people even when explicitly advised not to by 911, that's cool, right?"
At least Zimmerman himself has largely shut up his own past supporters by being such a reliable scumbag post-trial.
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Please. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
For that matter, I don't think anybody does. Most of the wealthy/elderly/powerful people in this country don't care enough about non-violent offenders to protect them. It's also those same wealthy/elderly/powerful people who could actually change our prison system.
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You guys are funny. The militant compassionate. "WE CARE ABOUT PEOPLE! AGREE OR ELSE!"