> A firearm in the home significantly increases the risk of suicide,
I am definitely preaching to the crowd with this, but, I have to say it every time it comes up.
This is a very very archetypal example of a thing I notice all the time, that doesn't have a good name. The best I have is a folksy saying I heard growing up: "The average American has one breast and one testicle".
Our benevolent social planners do their social science and come up with their highly abstract, aggregated statistics. Then, everybody acts as if those averages and aggregates apply to individual cases. Averages _cannot_ apply to individual cases.
In the case of firearms suicides, and apologies in advance to all the Bayesians in the audience for oversimplifying statistics, but, firearms in the home may increase the _aggregate_ suicide risk. But for any given individual, their suicide risk is either 0 or 100%. And, most people know themselves well enough to know which category they fall into. The people whose risk is 0, it doesn't matter if they own guns, owning a gun won't change that risk. And the people whose risk is 100%, they probably know that about themselves, and so the study telling them it increases the risk is not useful, because they already know-or-should-know their own proclivities, and self-select out of owning a gun.
Like, social science aggregate statistics are good as starting points when you have no other data, but, people have extra information _about themselves_ which completely supersedes any social science data. Like, is there really someone out there who's like "yeah, life is pretty good, but I read a study that says that owning guns increased the suicide rate, so now I want to kill myself.". I don't believe that such a person exists on this specific subject, but I have personally encountered people who are like this for lower-stakes issues, and I fundamentally don't understand it.
> A firearm in the home significantly increases the risk of suicide,
I am definitely preaching to the crowd with this, but, I have to say it every time it comes up.
This is a very very archetypal example of a thing I notice all the time, that doesn't have a good name. The best I have is a folksy saying I heard growing up: "The average American has one breast and one testicle".
Our benevolent social planners do their social science and come up with their highly abstract, aggregated statistics. Then, everybody acts as if those averages and aggregates apply to individual cases. Averages _cannot_ apply to individual cases.
In the case of firearms suicides, and apologies in advance to all the Bayesians in the audience for oversimplifying statistics, but, firearms in the home may increase the _aggregate_ suicide risk. But for any given individual, their suicide risk is either 0 or 100%. And, most people know themselves well enough to know which category they fall into. The people whose risk is 0, it doesn't matter if they own guns, owning a gun won't change that risk. And the people whose risk is 100%, they probably know that about themselves, and so the study telling them it increases the risk is not useful, because they already know-or-should-know their own proclivities, and self-select out of owning a gun.
Like, social science aggregate statistics are good as starting points when you have no other data, but, people have extra information _about themselves_ which completely supersedes any social science data. Like, is there really someone out there who's like "yeah, life is pretty good, but I read a study that says that owning guns increased the suicide rate, so now I want to kill myself.". I don't believe that such a person exists on this specific subject, but I have personally encountered people who are like this for lower-stakes issues, and I fundamentally don't understand it.
Something Something Seeing Like A State
> From “OSD 241: Violence is like getting into Harvard”:
I bet you if I check the comments there, I left a similar comment there
LOL I DID https://opensourcedefense.substack.com/p/osd-241-violence-is-like-getting/comment/41168367
Ha
the risk of Americans dying due to a failed parachute is small but non-zero.
But it is actually zero if you never go skydiving.
You are wrong
How's that?
I presume a failed jumper may land on your head?
I’d rather them have six of these posters up in the six affected gun stores than have them shove another piece of paper in the box of every gun sold.