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by pinkmuffinere 1 hour ago
> the ideal number of unsolved crimes is not zero and the ideal number of crimes committed using state apparatus is also not zero

I feel this is an _extremely_ good point, the kind that seems obvious only once you hear it. But i feel there’s an implication that could be made explicit here — we should be looking at the distribution of both apparatus-enabled-crimes and unsolved-crimes when we’re discussing this sort of thing. And if those metrics aren’t tabulated for easy access, they probably should be.

2 comments

> And if those metrics aren’t tabulated for easy access, they probably should be.

I couldn't agree more. They're two different error rates for our society and measuring them accurately would help us go to where we should be on the curve.

Somebody should make a website visualizing the data we do have, perhaps with uncertainty bounds, and a recursive breakdown locale-by-locale… Nose goes!!

Edit: wow I bet this is a project that would be _way_ too difficult to vibe code with AI, with well documented data sources and what not. Sure would be a shame if somebody proved me wrong.

I think there's a bias in public discussion towards idealism, because most discussions will start by the argument that we need to reduce X, or we need to reduce Y. If there is a conflict and there needs to be a trade off, very few discussions and points will be about the tradeoff, but there will be a whole bunch of discussions about just plain reducing X or reducing Y.