If you’re not talking to anyone, you’re already a social outcast. In my mind the risk of saying something wrong is much less than the risk of being omitted through inaction.
I agree. 95% of violence is committed by men aged 15-25. If you wanted to be extra sure, just avoid that very specific group. But in general, minute by minute, nobody wants to be violent.
But then I'd be prejudiced. Stereotypes exist because they have a certain good degree of accuracy, but that doesn't make them right. For the sake of that one person in that group that didn't do anything wrong, I have to try and be fair to the whole group.
This is where you use this stereotype to do a more detailed evaluation of the person to decide if they're safe/worth engaging with, or avoid them entirely if it's not worth it to you. You might bring in other stereotypes at this point and apply this process recursively until you have no more statistical regularities to use to guide your behavior.
Care to share a similar break-down by race, income, and wealth? From what i looked up, the average black income is $56k/yr but for white it is $92k/yr. 20% and 7.5% respectively for percent of the population that's under the poverty line.
Also for the same crime stats 69% for white and 26% for black is what I'm seeing for 2024-2025, with 60% and 30% of the population respectively. so 13% more for black and 9% more for white, we're talking about a 4% difference when looking at overall crime. accounting for reporting issues and requirements is a different story. Just like your other comment, such a deceptive line of thinking you people like to push. The numbers you show are accurate, but the interpretations you interpolate are lies of omission, or at best willful ignorance to support a prejudice.
Even for correlating with age I don't agree with this type of conclusion that lacks the lightest touch of critical thinking.
Yeah, buddy, you're just a good old fashioned racist. Men commit most violent crimes too by the way, I'm sure you knew that. So in short, to follow your logic, everyone should stay way from men, people under 25 and people who're not white or asian. Only white and asian women over 25 are safe?
And of course 99% of crimes (felonies) are committed by people over 15, so they're not safe as well.
You know, the problem with people like you is that you've already decided what result you want to see. So you'll observe evidence, and you'll criticize it, until it fits the narrative you're expecting. Whereas a person looking for truth, will continue to criticize the results even when the results make sense to them, or fit their expectations and prejudices. When the data confirms your prejudice you feel vindicated and cling on to it.
If you look at a heat map overlay of crimes in the US, you'll certainly see areas where black people live and have lived historically with the most crimes. If you did the same with the data representing current and historical poverty rates you'll see the same pattern. Heck, I've even seen maps of the US south that compare all of that data with soil fertility, it turns out the areas where cotton would grow the most is where the slaves were imported into, and then after the civil war ..well you probably know the rest.
Either way, I think you missed what I said originally in this thread about justice and fairness. You wouldn't want to be held responsible for an arbitrary group someone else placed you in, would you now? so why do that to others.
Numbers are also deceptive, would you be concerned more about mass shootings, rape, child abuse, human trafficking, robbery? crimes of poverty, crimes of vice, crimes of psycopathy. If I'm going to school I'd care more about mass shooters, if I'm a woman and jogging, I'd care more about rape, but even then recent trends are more important than generalized long term stats. For some crimes just one incident a year is too much, for others you can have thousands and it might still be normal with a big enough population (e.g.: car break ins).
The thing that pisses me off the most with your kind of thinking is that even following your reasoning, why is race important? You presume some kind of biological connection. Even among racists, some prefer to ask questions and follow the "it's their culture" thinking, which has some merit, as Europeans are finding out from all the recent migrations. But you know the really insidious part of your reasoning? When you see a certain group being convicted of crimes more than others, your assumption is they commit more crimes, instead of asking if the cops are arresting and targeting that group more than other groups.
I mean, it isn't really a big secret, you can be a rich guy on wallstreet and snort coke night and day and you'll be left alone. But people serve decades in prison for possessing weed that's legal in other states. There are cities like portland and SF that have a largely white population that see lots of crimes of poverty and opportunity as well, similar to other cities where those people tend to have more melanin on them. I urge you to visit seattle or portland, with an expensive car, you should follow the local custom of unlocking your car, so they don't break the window when they want to go through your things to see if there's anything worth taking (they still break the window though, most are too lazy to check if the door is open).
Self-driving cars still take up space on the road. Even more than human-driven cars, because now there will also be cars transporting 0 people. It's going to make congestion worse. Public transit is the solution to congestion. Well, one of the solutions, because bikes are probably a better solution for most people: they do start in front of your home, can park anywhere, and don't cause congestion the way cars do.
We're talking about cities, of course; in rural areas, nothing beats cars.
> Self-driving cars still take up space on the road
This is a false argument. Think about this: a bus every 10 minutes is effectively 500-900 meters long! It easily "takes" as much space as 100+ cars. In other words, nothing would change from the traffic perspective if instead of 1 bus every 5 minutes, you had 100 individual cars.
The "people in the shape of a bus" argument makes sense only when you're talking about the performance in a very narrow case of transporting people in a steady, uninterrupted stream of buses. Or if you need to size your traffic bottlenecks.
Moreover, a bus route necessarily is unoptimal for at least some people on a bus. They are effectively "thicker" than other people because they take up more "effective space". But wait, there's more! Buses also necessarily move slower due to stops, so the "effective length" of a bus becomes even longer because cars will clear the road faster.
But wait, there's even more! A single bus needs about 3 drivers to be effective. So with the average daily busload of around 15 people, you have almost 20% of the bus taken by the drivers on average. This makes bus trips pretty expensive. Not quite to the level of Uber/Lyft, but surprisingly close.
And these problems are fundamental. That's why urbanists like NJB don't like to talk about that.
Nothing about this addresses NJB's argument that self-driving cars take up more space than regular cars, because there will now be cars with 0 people in them.
Ultimately the thing you want to transport is not cars, it's people. Walking fits the most people in a limited amount of space, then bikes, buses and other forms of public transport, then cars with 4 people in them, then cars with 3 people in them, then cars with 2 people in them, then cars with only 1 person in them, and finally empty cars. More cars will never reduce congestion.
But to address your point: A bus in a dedicated lane takes up more space than a bus that's stuck in car traffic, you are right about that. On the other hand, when congestion is so bad that cars simply don't move, no matter how many lanes they have, getting people out of cars into more efficient forms of transport, will also help cars. And a bus that actually goes, can do that. If you look in cities with good public transport, more people go by public transport than by car. In cities with good bicycle infrastructure, more people go by bike than by car. That means even cars are less likely to get stuck in traffic in those cities. Even if you take away a car lane.
I don't know where you got the idea that a bus needs 3 drivers.
> Nothing about this addresses NJB's argument that self-driving cars take up more space than regular cars, because there will now be cars with 0 people in them.
And? There are also buses that trundle around with nobody but the driver in it. Or unused bikes and e-scooters that litter the sidewalks.
> Ultimately the thing you want to transport is not cars, it's people.
Yeah. And let's make it efficient. Put these people into 3-level bunk beds. This way they can travel all together in just 1 bus to their assigned workplace. And you don't need to run buses until they're allowed to clock off their shift.
Efficiency!
> On the other hand, when congestion is so bad that cars simply don't move
In this case you close the downtown offices and force them to work on alternate days, like they do in India with cars. Remote work already can replace 70% of all work, and with AI this number will grow.
Apart from that, mild carpooling will decrease the number of cars by 2x. Small vans with 6 seats can _easily_ remove all congestion.
> no matter how many lanes they have, getting people out of cars into more efficient forms of transport, will also help cars.
Just one ask for urbanists. Can you just stop lying, please? Just one thing. Don't say that "transit help cars". It doesn't. There is a lot of research from _you_ (e.g. https://archive.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/1/7/does-buildi... ) that proves this. Transit does NOT decrease the travel time for cars ("traffic") it _increases_ it by increasing congestion due to increased housing density that transit forces.
You want to pack people into 3x3 jails ("microapartments")? Fine. But be honest about it.
> a bus every 10 minutes is effectively 500-900 meters long!
uhhhhhh what. What does every 10 minutes have to do with this at all
> It easily "takes" as much space as 100+ cars.
are you ok??? have you seen a bus before??
> A single bus needs about 3 drivers to be effective
I have never ever seen a bus with 3 drivers in it. If you're talking about 3 drivers over the course of 24h, those drivers are not in the bus at the same time, and therefore don't make up 20% of the passengers on the bus. If you're saying the average bus route serves 15 people per day, you are certainly mistaken.
> uhhhhhh what. What does every 10 minutes have to do with this at all
See the word "effective". Think about the road space that a bus requires but doesn't use if it is just once per 10 minutes.
> I have never ever seen a bus with 3 drivers in it. If you're talking about 3 drivers over the course of 24h, those drivers are not in the bus at the same time, and therefore don't make up 20% of the passengers on the bus.
Yes, I'm talking about the drivers that are needed for a reasonable 16-hour bus service. And the typical ratio is actually a bit more than 3 drivers per 1 bus.
> If you're saying the average bus route serves 15 people per day, you are certainly mistaken.
No. I'm saying that on _average_ there are 15 people in a bus. More during the rush hour, fewer during the off-hours.
> See the word "effective". Think about the road space that a bus requires but doesn't use if it is just once per 10 minutes.
Excepting the case of a dedicated bus lane, the amount of road space a bus is preventing other cars from taking up at a given time is equal to the size of the bus. Technically, it's less than that in the case of bus stops littered amongst parking. In the case of a dedicated lane, it reduces the maximum throughput of the thoroughfare, but it's not a simple thing to model as there are other effects that the bus can have to reduce the number of cars when the rate limit of thoroughfare would be pertinent (i.e. usually rush hour). Just saying "think about it" when saying a bus takes up the space of 100+ cars doesn't really substantiate such a bold claim.
> Yes, I'm talking about the drivers that are needed for a reasonable 16-hour bus service. And the typical ratio is actually a bit more than 3 drivers per 1 bus.
> No. I'm saying that on _average_ there are 15 people in a bus. More during the rush hour, fewer during the off-hours.
If there is an average of 15 passengers on the bus during the operations of the bus and there is an average of 1 driver on the bus during the operations of the bus, then it is 1/16th occupied by driver(s). For it to be taken 20% by driver occupancy, then it would require there to be an average of 4 passengers on the bus during operations.
I actually am citing the traffic engineering handbook, the section about computing the efficacy of bus lanes. And I'm using deliberately conservative estimates.
> If there is an average of 15 passengers on the bus during the operations of the bus and there is an average of 1 driver on the bus during the operations of the bus, then it is 1/16th occupied by driver(s)
No. For the bus to be viable, all 3 drivers have to be "virtually present" there. A bus _has_ to be available at all times with a reasonable interval, otherwise it might as well not exist.
Or in other words, a passenger needs to be paying the salary for even the missing drivers.
> the section about computing the efficacy of bus lanes
> Excepting the case of a dedicated bus lane
Not all buses require a bus lane. A bus lane is a deliberate choice that doesn't make sense in all areas and for all bus routes. It is disingenuous to reference the reduction in throughput due to a bus lane as a blanket claim that an individual bus takes away the room of 100+ cars on the road.
> you have almost 20% of the bus taken by the drivers on average
> No. For the bus to be viable, all 3 drivers have to be "virtually present" there.
Your claim is about how much of the bus is taken by drivers, which while having some correlation to cost, really doesn't have anything to do with the cost of operating the bus. An oversimplification of this is to posit a magic bus that runs 24 hours a day with 8 hours shifts by 3 drivers. That means that the drivers take up 24 person-hours of capacity on the bus. If we say they have 15 passengers on average, then the passengers take 360 person-hours of capacity on the bus. Thus, drivers take up 24 / 384 or 6.25% of the capacity.
Honestly, I never really cared enough to convince you that transit is a good thing because that feels like a fool's errand. But these weird claims and fallacies bother me. If you want to claim that a bus isn't cost effective, then great. Just cite an actually relevant metric and actually calculate it correctly.
> We're talking about cities, of course; in rural areas, nothing beats cars.
Where I grew up in NW Scotland, it's a five hour round trip to go to the supermarket. You pretty much need a car for that.
Where I live right now it's a five minute walk to the supermarket, but I still need a car because the things I work on are a long way from where I live, often up steep muddy mountain tracks.
When I lived in the middle of Glasgow people used to come up and have a go at me about driving a massive V8 4x4 in the middle of a city. What am I supposed to do with it? Bike to the suburbs and then go and drive up a mountain?
"But why not get a job where you don't need to drive hundreds of miles in a massive 4x4?"
Because then the things on the tops of mountains don't get fixed when they break, and the radios don't work properly, and then people like you die in a fire.
Sometimes it's hard for people to grasp that just because their not-really-a-job tapping numbers into an Excel spreadsheet all day can be done from home or from an easily walkable city centre location, it doesn't mean that everyone's job looks like that.
I do wish I could usefully use a cargo bike. Those things are awesome.
What people really misunderstand in these discussions is that no one is talking about completely killing off driving as an option, and no one says that public transportation works in literally 100% of circumstances.
We just want there to be viable public transportation options for situations where it makes sense. This even makes it easier for the people who do have to drive, like you, as there will be less congestion because a single bus can replace literally dozens of cars, combine that with a single tram and a single metro car and you're replacing literally hundreds of cars that would otherwise be on the roads instead.
Exactly. It would be awesome if we had viable public transport options in rural areas too, although necessarily they would not be as frequent of flexible as in cities. There wouldn't be the requirement for them so much, because of the lower population density and the different patterns of vehicle use.
But growing up in a rural area where there are two buses a day none of which are useful for anything other than high school pupils (although they're not school buses) it does tend to limit everyone's options.
> What people really misunderstand in these discussions is that no one is talking about completely killing off driving as an option
I find this statement utterly hypocritical. Sure, we're not killing off driving. We are just choking off the roads with bike lanes, forcing extra-high density ("just build more"), removing parking, forcing the drivers to pay for transit that they don't use, and just to pay in general.
But no, we're not preventing driving. Not at all.
Urbanists want to stop people from using cars as much as they can force that.
If you actually had to pay a proper price for your parking space, which is currently heavily subsidized, you would suddenly consider taking public transit instead, even if that were priced at actual cost.
Well, you're parking it in other places as well, I assume, unless you're only making pleasure rides with no stops at all. I am speaking more generally than just about your particular situation, which I obviously don't know. But in case you live in an American suburb: their entire financial setup is unsound, which arguably means even your own ground is subsidized. I find the arguments of Strong Towns and Not Just Bikes quite compelling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI .
Suburbs are _cheaper_ than dense cities. In fact, they generate most of the wealth of the country. It's easily proven by checking the amount of personal income taxes from suburbs versus cities.
People who claim that "suburbs are subsidized" typically check the _corporate_ taxes that are paid (surprise!) usually at their headquarters' locations. Usually in downtowns. But _people_ who create wealth overwhelmingly prefer suburbs.
And yeah, if your goal is to maximize the profit that you're extracting from companies by exploiting people, then dense cities are perfect.
I'm half a planet away from America, and I (mostly) don't live in a town.
Consider that the "one size fits all" approach into forcing people out of cars breaks down very rapidly once you get out of sight of the sickly LED glow of streetlights.
You call it "choking off" roads; I call it basic geometry. Reallocating a lane of traffic to bikes or transit moves exponentially more human beings through the exact same amount of physical space. But sure, pretend that a single occupant dragging around a 4 ton metal box to buy groceries is the absolute pinnacle of spatial efficiency.
And the fact that you're complaining about "removing parking" is hilarious. Street parking is objectively the most useless, wasteful allocation of already limited public space imaginable. You expect cities to dedicate premium real estate to act as a subsidized storage locker for your private, empty vehicle for the 95% of the day you aren't even using it. Then you complain about non-drivers "forcing" you to pay for transit, while everyone else's taxes are literally subsidizing the free public storage of your personal property.
Let's also talk about your entitlement to those roads. When you complain about "choking off" streets, what you're really whining about is that cities are finally prioritizing actual residents over commuters who are just driving through. Most car traffic in urban centers is just people transiting. Why should a neighborhood sacrifice its safety, noise pollution levels, air quality, and public space just to act as a high-speed shortcut for people who don't even live there?
And please, spare me the inevitable "but what about rural areas" argument. We are talking about dense cities. Nobody is coming for your car in bumfuck nowhere; you can keep driving there all you want. (Though honestly, here in the Netherlands, you don't even have to drive in the countryside because you can usually just grab a train or get anywhere by bike, but that's beside the point.) Urban planning applies to urban areas.
I live in the Netherlands. Millions of people here take transit and ride bikes every single day. And guess what? Nobody banned cars. In fact, it's widely considered one of the best places in the world to drive specifically because everyone who doesn't want or need to drive isn't forced to be on the road getting in your way. We just realized that sacrificing huge swaths of our cities so commuters can treat our neighborhoods as a shortcut is incredibly stupid, and there are infinitely better ways of using the limited space in cities than to let drivers park their cars there.
Giving people viable choices isn't a totalitarian conspiracy to oppress drivers, it's just good urban design. It's wild that you are so used to forced car dependency that simply offering people an alternative feels like a personal attack.
P.S., I'm also a driver, I just don't need to do it 90% of the time because I live in a sane country where I can just bike to the other side of the city in 20 minutes.
> Reallocating a lane of traffic to bikes or transit moves exponentially more human beings through the exact same amount of physical space.
Except that bike lanes in the US, on average, carry fewer people than car lanes that they replaced. So yes, it's indeed "choking off". It's done to force the density increases. After all, if you can't commute anymore (roads are sabotaged and transit is slooooowwww), you'll have an option to live closer to the workplace. In a new expensive apartment in a high-rise.
Bike lanes also kill businesses. There were studies showing otherwise, so I replicated them, and they now show the opposite. Places in Seattle and Portland with bike lanes that displaced traffic lanes are declining faster than areas around them. The previous positive results were caused by spurious correlations during the general upswing in the urban economy after the 2008 crisis.
> Then you complain about non-drivers "forcing" you to pay for transit, while everyone else's taxes are literally subsidizing the free public storage of your personal property.
There is no free parking around me anywhere. And I'm also paying around $2000 a year in car tab and property taxes for transit that I don't use. And before you ask, in my state user fees pay for 90%+ of the total road maintenance expenses.
> We are talking about dense cities.
Yeah. They need to be _de_-densified in the longer term. But even dense cities will benefit from removing bike lanes and adding self-driving taxis.
> I live in the Netherlands. Millions of people here take transit and ride bikes every single day. And guess what? Nobody banned cars.
I got my driving license at the age of almost 30, and I lived in several large cities. And I _also_ lived in Amsterdam. People ride bikes in Amsterdam because there usually are no other comparable options. Transit typically takes ages longer, and car parking is non-existant. Of course, people justify that by telling themselves how they love to ride bikes even in cold wind and rain.
Sure you can. You can not post political things on social networks. They're not doing any good anyway. They're not changing anyone's mind. They're not providing depth or width to the discussion. I don't say this to be insulting, but rather a realist.
My point is that I just want to be able to discuss any topic with my followers without self-policing lest a bunch of anonymous accounts butts into the conversation and completely derails it.
What you're probably looking for is closer to a closed discussion group or mailing list than "social media", which is presently universally-readable, algorithmically-targeted, feed-based, advertising-supported, and increasingly, saturated with AI slop (which itself has replace clickbait and ragebait).
Which reminds me of Kitman's Law: Pure drivel tend to drive off the TV screen ordinary drivel.
I want my posts universally-readable and universally-interactable (that's why I don't like the idea of locking my accounts). I also want to be able to explore the social graph — looking at who follows who, what that friend of a friend posts, etc. It all forms an integral part of what social networks are.
What I absolutely do not want is the platform having any of its own agency. I want a social network that ideally works as a dumb pipe. I especially don't want my content surfaced in front of the kinds of people who would've never found it through their own exploration.
It should come as no surprise, then, that I have a lot of faith in the fediverse.
My evolved view is that there's a time and place for various types of interactions. That's after being a long-time fan of universal readability.
Truth though is that today's Internet is vastly different from that experienced in the 1980s (when I first came online), '90s, aughts, or even the teens. Scale is a huge piece of this, though broadband, mobile devices, advertising, attention merchants, clickbait, and AI have all had their impacts. The Internet (or proto-Internet) of the 1990s and earlier was very limited in access, with soft-but-imposing barriers to entry (selective research universities, some government agencies, some tech firms), which made the experience both "open" and closed. Yes, there was exposure to a large audience, particularly as contrasted to immediate physical space or mass media of the time (print, including early small-scale copiers, amplified audio, radio, television, and telephones). But the total online population would be considered a minuscule social network by current standards --- a few thousands to a few millions of souls in the 1980s and 1990s.
I continue to use some smaller networks today (HN, Mastodon, Diaspora*), and find that they tend to retain at least some of the feel of the forums I was familiar with in the 1980s and 1990s: small, intentional, generally motivated. Ironically, their limited size and the fact that those who are there want to be there is something of a feature. A significant problem isn't so much people leaving as dying, which seems to happen with regularity. (An older population amplifies this, though I've noted previously that mortality at FB/Google scale is likely on the order of tens of thousands of accounts daily.)
The platforms I mention also largely lack agency, which as you note is quite refreshing. I'll note that HN is somewhat an exception, but it's mediated mostly by humans (member flags, moderator actions), as well as some automated rules, though those are largely guided by HN's mission of "intellectual curiosity" rather than attention-mongering.
Factors other than scale alone include broadband (enabling graphics, audio, video, and interactive content, all of which have considerable downsides), mobile devices (making for more distracted and far less nuanced discussion, as well as quite brief responses contrasted with physical keyboards), and the pernicious first and higher-order effects of advertising, manipulation, algorithms, AI, and the like.
I've toyed with the notion of a set of interrelated scopes, some limited and personal, some more widely open, though arranging that formally and as part of a designed system has yet to emerge. I have hopes for that though.
There's also the distinction between a pure social graph and a highly-curated specific discussion or forum. I've tried the latter from time to time with stunningly good results, especially at modest size (< 50 participants generally).
(This comment, as most of mine, was composed at a keyboard, and edited several times.)
Politics is a complex topic. If you want to learn more, social media is not the way to do it. Well reasoned books and essays are. If you want to convince others of your positions, social media is not the way to do it. Personal relationships in real life are.
Again, you seem to insist on an ulterior motive, completely discounting the value or pleasure of conversation. In contrast, reading is a solitary activity. Have you heard of book clubs? People read books, and then they get together to discuss the books.
Hacker News itself is all about reading articles, and then discussing the articles with others. "If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
This is the fundamental problem. You know what you know, but the maintainer does not, and cannot possibly take the time to find out what every single PR authors knows before they accept it. AI breaks every part of the Web of trust that is foundational to knowing anything.
I find my trust in anything I see on the Internet quickly eroding. I suspect/hope that in the near future, no one will be able to be blacklisted or cancelled, because trust in the Internet has gone to zero.
I've been trying to hire a web dev for the last few months, and repeatedly encounter candidates just reading responses from Chat GPT. I am beginning to trust online interviews 0% and am starting, more and more, to crawl my personal connections for candidates. I suspect I'm not the only one.
Unfortunately it seems like no one does their due diligence any more. I recall a journalism class I took 10 years ago in undergrad that emphasized sources need to be vetted, have sufficient age, credentials, and any bias be identified.
Nowadays it's all about social media BS and brigading (i.e. how many accounts can scream the loudest).
I actually think the longer people stay online, the less trust the real society will have too. Online = Zero Trust. Real Life in America = Pretty Incredibly High Trust in 1990, 2025 = Crashing Trust in America
And desertification has destroyed many existing biomes. I think, in the grand scheme of things, more forest is better than more desert, so this is a net positive.
An insufficiently nuanced perspective. In the grand scheme of things, when you destroy a biome it's gone forever. Note that China has a recent history of blockheaded moves like this, eg. mobilizing the entire human population to kill all the birds simultaneously across the country during the cultural revolution. India's discussing re-routing the Ganges. Humans never learn.
This often confuses me as well. If no one has a job, no one can buy any goods or services. Then who will these companies that replaced all jobs with AI sell to? The AIs?
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