[bryanrasmussen]

if the number of police rise does the ratio of police being killed on the job stay the same?

what if 5% of the workers at big corporations are willing to kill activists for activism, those 5% are busy killing activists, if the activists increase unless the corporations increase the number of people they have willing to kill activists it follows that there are not going to be a significant increase in the number of murdered activists.

In short there can be all sorts of reasons why the percentage of activists killed for activism would not remain constant.

[TeMPOraL]

All you wrote is exactly why you want to know the base rate (or several, against different possible hypothesis). Otherwise, it's not possible to even speculate about these things productively.

[bryanrasmussen]

as you'll notice in my first reply to you I never said I did not want to know the base rate - what I said was - first quoting you

>whereas usually the denominator - which they neglect to mention - has rose proportionally, meaning there's nothing newsworthy there.

then in my reply to you

>there is not necessarily a reason to assume that the percentage of murder of activists is going to stay the same if you increase the number of activists, although it may be the case.

again, nothing about not needing to know the base rate, just noting that there might reasons for the rate of murders to not rise proportionally.

After writing something so straightforward that it might as well be observing that water is wet I've gotten a number of responses from people whom, just as straightforward, seem to want to inform me that the sun is out today and are intent on hammering it into my thick skull despite my never having said otherwise.