[izacus]

You're making the exact same mistake as the poster you're answering to warns about - you're mixing the objective reality ("absolute crime numbers") to percieved reality of population.

If the population percieves themselves unsafe and unhappy, your numbers don't really mean much to them because to restore happy society you need to look at *perception* and fix the reasoning behind it. Making the crime stats number go down won't do that by itself.

[estebank]

> you need to look at perception and fix the reasoning behind it.

Many times that perception is shaped by the media we consume, which has no obligation to have any connection to the reality on the ground. At that point whatever is done to improve the reality doesn't have to have any impact on people's perception.

[izacus]

Which means that the fix is to change the media not the metrics. That's the gist of the argument - if your improvements of "reality" aren't making people happier, you're changing the wrong metric. In this case you need to change the media, not crime stats.

[estebank]

Changing the underlying reality without improving the perception leads to a political disconnect. Improving the perception without improving the underlying reality just makes people happier, but not better off. You have to do both if your objective is to improve people's lifes.

[eszed]

I agree. So, which one do you prioritize? Currently, it seems to me as if people's (mis)perceptions are leading them to vote against policies that will make them better off, so we need to correct perceptions first.

[izacus]

Indeed, which is why I ended up my original post with "by itself". Changing the state is a necessary, but not sufficient action.

[pixl97]

I don't really watch any broadcast/cable news these days. Was at a restaurant that had it going on their TV and my goodness all it was saying is "FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR". Absolute mind rotting garbage.

[Forgeties79]

I was at an airport the other day and I was struck by how I saw four different new stations all covering one tornado in a town half way across the country from me. This was top line national news for like 20min with reporters standing by downed trees and going on and on about the “utter devastation.” It seemed pretty small potatoes tbh but maybe I was missing context?

You would think there is some sort of tornado epidemic nationwide based on the way they were acting. Tornadoes happen all of the time, and they are very tragic for those involved, but y’all aren’t hearing about every house that burns down in my city lol

[Forgeties79]

In a different response I actually remarked on how I would never talk down to people who feel unsafe because we can cite all the stats we want in the world, but their feeling secure is very important as well.