14 ms·
This news really highlights the confirmation bias that was in full bloom throughout the "discourse" around the initial reports of Lee's murder (e.g. https://new
by cemerick 3y ago
This news really highlights the confirmation bias that was in full bloom throughout the "discourse" around the initial reports of Lee's murder (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899). Everyone is so quick to jump on negative news about the rare violent crime in e.g. SF thanks to feelings about petty property crime that it's obviously impossible to have any kind of fact-based dialogue about policy.
Worth keeping in mind next time something comes along that might confirm your priors.
(Edit: notable that the thread linked above had _2600+_ comments on it, most of them hysterical about SF crime [of course, completely divorced from actual stats, i.e. that SF has fewer homicides per capita than almost every other American city, including current faves Austin and Miami]. I wonder how likely it is that the same population will comment here to say, "I was wrong"? )
- rubyn00bie 3y agoYeah the exact same thing happens with Portland every time it pops up on here. The HN audience by and large irrationally hates progressive policies and cities with them. It’s weird watching people here parrot the opinions of the corporate overlords.
- BenSahar 3y agoYeah, I get the same thing with Chicago. Anything that allows them dump on their "enemies".
- carrja99 3y agoThe Chicago one gets me. I am not in SF often but we have taken 3-day weekend trips to Chicago since my children were 3. Multiple times walking around downtown, enjoying Navy Pier, even a couple of cases where we were walking to our hotel probably later than we should have after the fireworks. Not once did we ever feel unsafe in the 10 years we have made trips out there. But read the news and you'll think it was a lawless warzone.
- pclmulqdq 3y agoChicago and NYC feel (and are) very safe in the high-income and touristy areas. SF is unique in that the crime "leaks out" into those areas.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- vdnkh 3y agoAny topic on HN which is tangentially related to the Culture Wars (progressive cities/DAs among them) typically has several comments bashing the "woke".
- _ktx2 3y agoI don't think this is a great representation of what's going on. There are many legitimate problems in Portland. If you go on any online discussion you'll see residents showcasing them. Those threads get barraged by liberals and conservatives that don't live here either defending or attacking the issue at hand. None of this is helpful. I wish you could hear the frustration in my voice. Frustration at the Progressive Party for picking ideology over the health of the city, frustration at the right for turning our local issues into national showcases, frustration with the people in the comments who think commenting on the goings on of a city they don't live in is anything but a bad faith take. I am tired. I want Progressives and Republicans gone, and from what I can see I'm part of a growing group in this city. We'll solve our own problems in due time, extremists can get lost.
- Varqu 3y ago[flagged]
- IndoorPatio 3y agoOur research reveals the 100 most dangerous cities in America with 25,000 or more people, based on the number of violent crimes per 1,000 residents. https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/blog/top100dangerous https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/blog/top100dangerous
- positron6000 3y agoThat data is sourced from the FBI's UCR program (https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/more-fbi-services-and-information/ucr https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/more-fbi-services-an...) which relies on _voluntary reporting_ from law enforcement agencies.
- Varqu 3y agoHow does it influence the comparison? EDIT: There is no mention of UCR as data source, where did you get it from? https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/about-the-data/crime-rates https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/about-the-data/crime-rates
- positron6000 3y agoBecause the dataset is incomplete if even a single city doesn't opt into sharing data, or only provides a portion of the real data. From the FBI itself: > Pitfalls of Ranking > UCR data are sometimes used to compile rankings of individual jurisdictions and institutions of higher learning. These incomplete analyses have often created misleading perceptions which adversely affect geographic entities and their residents. For this reason, the FBI has a long-‐ standing policy against ranking participating law enforcement agencies on the basis of crime data alone. Despite repeated warnings against these practices, some data users continue to challenge and misunderstand this position. - https://ucr.fbi.gov/ucr-statistics-their-proper-use https://ucr.fbi.gov/ucr-statistics-their-proper-use
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- argc 3y agoI was definitely guilty of thinking this. Confirmation bias is a helluva drug.
- dabluecaboose 3y agoI remember as a teen going to my dad with some outrage bait news I'd heard on the internet that totally fit into my preconceived notions, and he just said "Now think about that for a second. Does that sound like something that's fully true, or is it something that someone thinks you want to hear?" I try to keep that tidbit in mind.
- baremetal 3y ago[flagged]
- robotbikes 3y agoIf the claim of the former commissioner spraying people with bear mace is true then it is hardly a random attack but an escalation of violence after being attacked by a chemical weapon.
- baremetal 3y agonice deflection but you aren't exactly making the case that SF isn't a violent and lawless place.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dundarious 3y agoYour linked article and the OP indicate that this was a case of an assault leading to another more brutal assault.
- baremetal 3y ago[flagged]
- dundarious 3y agoYes, violence against homeless people is not only an under-reported phenomenon, its link to inciting further violence and crime is also under-reported. Thank you for highlighting it, if a little indirectly.
- baremetal 3y agoI agree with you completely and I am an advocate for the homeless. I am grateful that we achieved middle ground on this.
- 0zemp1c 3y ago[flagged]
- f38zf5vdt 3y agoAs soon as I saw the reported murder I figured it was a business partner who felt scorned, but then HN narrative continued for a full week about the lack of safety in SF. While things might be bad, random murders by strangers are still a rarity compared to targeted killings.
- vimax 3y agoI find it strange that nobody is mentioning the Hindenburg Research report against Square that came out a week before the stabbing, and the fact that there’s likely a fraud investigation underway. https://hindenburgresearch.com/block/ https://hindenburgresearch.com/block/
- f38zf5vdt 3y agoThank you. There are so many sketchy things going on with Square/Block that some bad actors might be involved was never surprising to me.
- IndoorPatio 3y ago+1
- etc-hosts 3y agoDidn't Lee leave Square a long time ago?
- weston 3y agoAgreed! It was really disgusting how everyone immediately turned the news of his passing into political posts designed to trash the entire city of San Francisco, when it was obviously too soon for anyone to know the full story behind his unfortunate death. I hope this news brings his family and friends some closure.
- hhgf5yhbd 3y agoSF looks worse if it was a deranged tech bro, there are a lot more of those there than homeless people. Harder to avoid.
- tomstockmail 3y agoTech Bros take more in government handouts too.
- aaomidi 3y agoI honestly thought the perp was gonna be someone who was hurt by this CEO on a personal level.
- edgyquant 3y agoMaybe because people like you constantly make underhanded comments about how “rare” violent crime is and so the crime problem is now partisan. It’s not rare https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime
- cemerick 3y ago"People like me." Nice. The subject is violent crime. Don't cite a page that lumps property crimes in. Might want to look at some relevant data; https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-crime-rate-bob-lee-sf-violent-map/13091172/ https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-crime-rate-bob-lee-sf-vio... has a handy chart halfway down, if you're not interested in reading.
- dang 3y agoI understand (believe me, it's in my bones) how hard it is not to lash back at people who resort to snark and swipes when they don't like what you're arguing on the internet—and how it's a thousand times harder when an impromptu mob is ganging up on you (or it feels like one is). But please don't cross the line yourself. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- rootusrootus 3y agoThis says 37th on the list, ordered by total violent crime. That's fairly low, considering how big a city SF is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
- dang 3y agoCrossing into personal attack is not ok and we ban accounts that do it repeatedly, so please don't. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Note this one: "Edit out swipes."
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- beepbooptheory 3y agoI get sick to my stomach reading that thread. It was close to the last straw for me with regards to leaving this community completely, or at least trying to fight my HN habit. I get a lot out of the things shared here and the discourse, but sometimes we get those threads and I just can't believe so many otherwise smart, intelligent people would believe and say such horrible things.
- 5040 3y agoEmpathy gets displaced when victimization becomes commonplace.
- realworldperson 3y ago[dead]
- qup 3y agoI haven't been to SF and therefore don't have an opinion. How is one story really highlighting something? This is just one anecdote where it wasn't what people expected, it's not proof they're wrong. (I have no idea if they are, it's just a bad argument)
- cemerick 3y agoThe story contradicts what so many here took as a given, that Lee was a victim of stochastic violence in SF. The highlighting is in revealing that so many were wrong in applying their biases to the original news, and then using that to leverage into e.g. condemnations of the city in general.
- brookst 3y agoI mean we all know the reality was that people who don’t like the very liberal politics of SF were reasoning backwards to get to the “liberal politics causes murder” confirmation they crave. I don’t think anyone even pretended that condemnation of the city was a new conclusion for them.
- hhgf5yhbd 3y agoSaying stochastic instead of random doesn't make you seem smart, just pretentious
- dang 3y agoPlease don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- qup 3y agoSure. From my point of view, that means you can say "can't use Bob Lee as evidence of the rampant violence". It doesn't mean you can say "You're wrong, there isn't rampant violence because this incident had a back-story" Again, I haven't visited.
- pc86 3y ago[flagged]
- Aloha 3y agoHigh Property Crime is not the same as lots of violent crime. SF does seem to have a problem with property crimes - but not violent ones.
- interactivecode 3y agoPerhaps in SF the victims of violent crime are in a higher social bracket than in other cities? Aka more rich people are the target in SF compared to other cities where mostly lower class people are effected?
- dsfyu404ed 3y agoThat's exactly what it is. White collar upper middle class types are more exposed to it relatively (not necessarily absolutely) in SF than in other cities. Even if the actual odds of being victim of a violent crime are lower overall they're still higher per crime and people still feel more exposed because the market shares of the various things that make up the crime pie are very different in SF than in other cities. In Chicago, Baltimore, all those other cities techies turn up their nose at for their crime rates you might get shot in a convenience store robbery, you might get knifed by a mugger but the overwhelming majority of the violence is drug dealers and users and distributors settling scores amongst themselves (because they can't use the courts to do it for them). Contrast with SF where the overall amount (overall or per capita) of violent crime is lower but it is much, much more concentrated toward the randomly targeted crime affecting people not already involved in activity beyond the law types of creimes meaning that your odds of getting shot in a convenience store robbery or knifed by a mugger are higher in SF than a city of equivalent violent crime rates per capita that has a more normal looking crime pie chart.
- lisasays 3y agoBased on what? It's murder rate is well below the median among cities larger than 200k.
- 3y ago
- Swizec 3y agoThe argument I made to all my friends in this debate (but not publicly) was along the lines of “tech exec found dead at 2:30am near his home in an upscale neighborhood with zero night-time activity … that doesn’t sound random” My guess was drug deal gone wrong. But tech deal gone wrong makes sense too, I guess. edit: my drug guess was before the person was named, not implying anything, just know drugs are a popular hobby in SF
- pclmulqdq 3y agoIt could still have been a drug deal - some companies have a guy who is the "hookup." The problem with the discourse was that everyone forgot that people basically never get randomly murdered. There's almost always a reason for a murder - number 1 is domestic disputes, number 2 is gang-related, and the list goes on, but almost nobody gets murdered randomly. Assaults and thefts are a different story, and SF's problem with those crimes got conflated with a murder (which is a rare crime in SF).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- peter422 3y agoIt’s an upscale building but I wouldn’t call it an upscale neighborhood, especially at night. It’s only a couple blocks from the bay bridge overpass and the overpass attracted some non-upscale activity. At the same time though I’ve spent many late nights in the area and never had any negative encounters.
- rconti 3y agoOh I'd absolutely cop to that. My first thought upon reading the article was "holy crap, we were all wrong".
- IndoorPatio 3y agoThis could be an opportunity for people to evaluate the accuracy of their mental models.
- robocat 3y agoOff-topic: That particular HN discussion contains many users creating a political narrative, and even at the time it was obvious there were many bad comments. I wish we had a way to downrank users that derail conversions with crap. Are there forums with better user moderation systems that boost ranking of quality comments and decrease ranking of comment noise? Something where I can systematically increase the ranking of comments of users I respect (or I transitively respect), and decrease the ranking of comments for users that I see write crap. Ideally tagged (e.g. I want to uprank a particular users opinions on programming languages, but I want to strongly downrank their economic opinions)
- humanistbot 3y ago> are there forums with better user moderation systems that boost ranking of quality comments and decrease ranking of comment noise? Something where I can systematically increase the ranking of comments of users I respect (or I transitively respect), and decrease the ranking of comments for users that I see write crap It seems like you want a personalized filter bubble to confirm your pre-existing views and hide comments from anyone who even votes the same way as someone who contradicts your views. This is generally considered an anti-feature in public discussions, especially on HN. Calling all posts that you disagree with "crap" and ignoring them does a disservice to the conversation and to yourself. The actual "crap" does get filtered out pretty well: the spam, slurs, trolling, low-effort jokes, and other things that derail the conversation. What you are calling "crap" are people's genuinely-held beliefs, some more coherently expressed than others, but which resonated with many others here. It is much better to engage than to ignore. I see that you didn't comment in that thread, which is a shame. Substantive disagreements are what move us all forward. You might want to try Facebook, they do a really good job at keeping you in your preferred group's information cocoon.
- beepbooptheory 3y agoYou are right that it's not the content of the views here that are really the problem, or principally shouldnt be. But the overriding, horrendous issue is how threads and discussions are hijacked for the sake of every other guy's soapbox, and this thread in question is particularly exemplary here. I have certainly accepted at this point that, e.g., some people see homeless people or drug addicted people as essentially subhuman. And the mechanics of free speech and discourse dictate that I see such views as having a place in some discussions (especially on this particular website it seems), however much it contradicts what I see as fundamental humanity or whatever. But, to me, it didn't really feel like the right time or context in that thread. But I maybe I am wrong! Like, I definitely accept that I personally have to stomach a lot if I want to see the discourse on this site in general, and I agree I don't necessarily want the bubble. And indeed, this is just what "living in a society" is all about. But so much in that particular thread just really felt misplaced and fundamentally insensitive, however essentially valid they were themselves as views. And I think that thread is just a good example not a one off thing.
- Proven 3y ago[dead]
- draw_down 3y ago[dead]
- jjulius 3y agoIt was really surreal, reading through that thread and watching everyone assume they knew exactly what happened when there had literally been no public information given out about the suspect.
- nemo44x 3y agoMy wife asked me "how do we know the killer was a homeless guy?". I could only reply - "good point". I think a part of it is people are fed up with how the city has deteriorated and no amount of gaslighting will change that fact. So, when he was killed it seemed like just another thing in the decline of the city.
- pclmulqdq 3y agoI thought the reason was that someone had looked at CCTV footage of the event, and saw someone who looked homeless. Of course, most of us software engineers proudly go for the "clean homeless" look.
- refurb 3y agoIs this your first time on HN? Post any story - tech, biotech, engineering, finance, war - and half the comments are people confident they know “the real story” and how everyone is wrong. Why would this story be any different?
- jjulius 3y ago
- nemo44x 3y ago> I wonder how likely it is that the same population will comment here to say, "I was wrong"? Sure, people were wrong in their assumption that the murder was random. At least that's how it looks now. We haven't heard the suspects side, but.... But wrong that SF has become a dangerous and mismanaged city? Murder isn't the only violent crime and a lot of crime goes unreported. People don't feel safe walking around and you can't just dismiss that. It's their "lived experience". The fact that everyone assumed that Bob Lee was murdered randomly says something about the state of the city. SF has a lot of issues and it has a lot of crime and other issues. It has been mismanaged for years now and things need to change.
- throw4736495 3y ago> People don't feel safe walking around and you can't just dismiss that. It's their "lived experience". When I first visited Shanghai I was surprised how safe it felt. Walking around at 3 AM and I didn't feel nervous at all.
- cemerick 3y agoPeople see homelessness and open drug use and petty property crime, filter it through their ideological lens, and amplify that into feeling that they are themselves somehow less safe. You can assert that that is rational, but it's as connected to reality as someone feeling afraid when e.g. a black person is walking behind them. Saying stuff like "a lot of [violent] crime goes unreported" is straight up fanciful thinking, and leads one to make claims that aren't falsifiable. People aren't reporting assaults? Sounds completely absurd.
- scarmig 3y ago> People aren't reporting assaults? Sounds completely absurd. One reason this explanation falls flat is that reported and recorded property crimes have risen more. If the city were exceptionally underreporting crimes compared to the past or other cities, you'd see those disappear from the statistics more than e.g. homicides; it's much easier to ignore a stolen phone than it is a dead body.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rootusrootus 3y agoThanks for that. I admit to buying the narrative. Part of that is because my nearest city of any substance is Portland, and it's not especially violent. SF does look more violent compared to Portland, but objectively SF is actually just average or less. Lots of big cities are more violent[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
- TigeriusKirk 3y agoSo sorting by Violent Crime (Total), we see San Francisco is 37th out of the 100 listed.
- pclmulqdq 3y agoCiting murder rates (and ignoring other crimes) is one of the preferred tactics of people who want to say that big cities have low crime rates. Police in big cities go after big crimes like murders, but tend to ignore "lesser" crimes, so as a result, gangsters and other career criminals stick to those lesser crimes, and generally do a lot more of them.
- piva00 3y ago> Citing murder rates (and ignoring other crimes) is one of the preferred tactics of people who want to say that big cities have low crime rates. People in this thread are specifically talking about violent crimes, not all crimes, which murder rate seems to be one of the good metrics to use, no?
- pclmulqdq 3y agoNo, because they don't correlate with violent crime rates, which are also tracked. Murder is actually a really weird crime: if basically never happens between people who don't know each other.
- jascii 3y ago
- photochemsyn 3y agoIt's certainly true that people should never jump on a story to promote their own ideological concerns (e.g. San Francisco is pretty unsafe at night in many places), when the details of the story are unknown. However, homicide stats don't tell the whole story about a city. There are many areas in SF where a resident would never go at night (or often during the day) because of the large numbers of drug addicts and homeless people. This means businesses in those areas have a hard time surviving. In terms of property crimes (in which violent assault is not involved) SF is leading the pack, at least in the top five. The lower rate of homicide is probably also linked to California's stricter gun laws compared to Texas and Florida, and also, many homicide victims are homeless, see LA: https://xtown.la/2022/06/08/murders-people-experiencing-homelessness/ https://xtown.la/2022/06/08/murders-people-experiencing-home... The only plausible long-term solution is improved housing, more jobs, public health care, better education etc. This would require expenditure of public funds on a national scale (you can't fix this city by city, or state by state, because people migrate), i.e. increased taxes on the wealthy and a redistribution of military-industrial spending to domestic infrastructure of various sorts.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- basisword 3y agoThe number of high profile tech bros on Twitter using the death to further their own views was disgraceful. SF may have big issues but using someone’s murder to further your political beliefs is horrible. I’m sure we won’t hear any retraction though.
- ajross 3y agoWatching from outside, the whole "Tech Bros vs. Woke Hippies" framing is just nuts. It's at most a local politics dispute over control over the SF city government. And yet it's spilled over into all kinds of radicalized global thinking. People like pg and Garry are out there on twitter acting like the nutjobs trying to deny their startup workers housing and teach their kids about colonialism as a history paradigm are the Greatest Threat To Free Speech Worldwide. Is it time now to maybe take a deep breath and think about maybe calling a truce? The hippies can be rough to live with but really they aren't so bad. I know a bunch.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jeffbee 3y agoGarry Tan used this murder to flog his political action committee on Twitter. Absolutely disgusting.
- ajross 3y agoI guess, if viewed cynically. It seems more likely to me that he was sincere, just wrong. That's the "radicalized" bit I was talking about. The SF tech scene has a smell right now that seems to me a lot like what we saw with the Gamergate incels a decade ago. And that... didn't lead to good places. Radicalization happens to everyone, even the rationalists. Maybe it's just time to cool off.
- simplotek 3y ago> SF may have big issues but using someone’s murder to further your political beliefs is horrible. What political beliefs are you referring to? The one about SF's crime wave sounds precisely on topic, for example. Edit: those downvotes were very quick.
- IndoorPatio 3y agoAgreed. To those of us with mental models constructed from data, this case is proceeding as expected. If Momeni is guilty I hope he admits his guilt.
- turtleyacht 3y ago> While Lee is one of a dozen homicide victims in San Francisco this year, his is the only killing that has garnered national coverage — or, in most cases, even cursory local coverage. > San Francisco’s other homicide victims in 2023 are Gavin Boston, 40; Irving Sanchez-Morales, 28; Carlos Romero Flores, 29; Maxwell Maltzman, 18; Demario Lockett, 44; Maxwell Mason, 29; Humberto Avila, 46; Gregory McFarland Jr, 36; Kareem Sims, 43; Debra Lynn Hord, 57; and Jermaine Reeves, 52.
- kemayo 3y agoMaybe this speaks to me being in a worse location, but I'm sitting here thinking "it's April and this major city has only had twelve homicides? That's pretty great!"
- graderjs 3y agoI didn't: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35463321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35463321 My first instinct was it was related to tech. When i heard about it at first i thought maybe it had something to do with MobileCoin… maybe someone lost a lot of money or was afraid to lose market share. Then when I commented I was really trying to figure out the mechanics of how it went down if it really were a robbery.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoThe thing that's so weird about that confirmation bias is that some folks held these inconsistent views even within a single HN comment. There was a comment that was on that initial thread where the commenter said that they heard from "very well placed sources in the US Intelligence community this is probably a hit", and the commenter still went on to blame San Francisco for being a "crime ridden shithole". I responded with this, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35456746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35456746 , it was just bizarre to me.
- rajup 3y agoI don’t understand, is it that hard for both to be true?
- tedunangst 3y agoIf it was a hit, it would have happened anywhere, so why are they blaming SF specifically?
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoThat's not what the comment I was replying to was saying. It's possible for both to be true, but it's definitely cognitive dissonance to on one hand think "it was a hit" and then at the same time blame the general crime problems of San Francisco for Bob Lee's death. That's what a lot of the replies here seem to be missing. Sure, I think SF has a pretty bad crime problem that needs to be addressed. What deserves opprobrium is all the tech elite who immediately spouted on Twitter and elsewhere that the government of SF had "blood on their hands", again specifically blaming SF government and SF's overall crime environment for Bob Lee's death.
- Jackpillar 3y agoThe guy in his comment responded that murder is a regular occurrence in SF. This is just a lie.
- jbullock35 3y ago> _2600+_ comments on it, most of them hysterical about SF crime [of course, completely divorced from actual stats, i.e. SF has fewer homicides per capita than almost every other American city, including current faves Austin and Miami] On this list of homicides per capita [1], San Francisco ranks far higher than Austin in incidents per capita of "Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter": 2.57 per 100,000 people in Austin, vs. 6.35 per 100,000 in SF. It also ranks higher than New York, Portland, San Diego, San Jose, and Seattle. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
- ozfive 3y agoThat's also from 2019. It's possible the OP looked at more recent information? Without knowing their source we won't know.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- p_j_w 3y ago2021 numbers show Austin having a higher murder rate with 7.7 per 100k. SF was 6.9. https://www.kxan.com/investigations/homicides-on-the-rise-how-austin-compares-to-other-big-cities/ https://www.kxan.com/investigations/homicides-on-the-rise-ho...
- kortilla 3y ago>hysterical about SF crime [of course, completely divorced from actual stats, i.e. that SF has fewer homicides per capita than almost every other American city, You’re doing the same thing in this thread, where the very article we are discussing shows that murders have been on the rise in the past 5 years. Your comment was good, then you used the edit to spew your confirmation bias.
- Vervious 3y agoA ton of people care about property crime and I don't think you should look down on them. SF has 3-5x the property crime of most major cities in the United States. I imagine most violent crime is targeted (i.e. the victim is not a random person walking down the street), but property crime is scary because it can happen to the best of us, our friends and our family, in even the "safest" neighborhoods. We all know friends whose cars have been broken into. And it's easy to imagine --- what if my kids were at home during one of these home break-ins? (Note that burglaries are not classified as violent crime in SF)
- vkou 3y agoYou're performing a sleight of hand. No city census or national crime analysis categorizes burglary as a violent crime, and I'm not sure why you called SF out on it. I don't look down on people complaining about property crime, I'd just like them to be honest about what they are complaining about. SF is 55 out of the biggest 100 cities on burglary rates, by the way. (It's interesting how all this is apparently a controversial take.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- LawTalkingGuy 3y ago> No city census or national crime analysis categorizes burglary as a violent crime, and I'm not sure why you called SF out on it. Most other cities aren't wallowing in it the same way, and aren't holier than thou despite their polices clearly having caused the issue. But you're right, it's not just SF. LA and Seattle are pretty much right there too. The crime cities like SF are worth calling out in a way that other violent cities aren't though because there's a giant epidemic of what we're pressured to call "non-violent crime" like shoplifting and car theft that gets violent instantly whenever the criminal doesn't get their way. I've personally seen people get shoved out of the way of a fleeing thief, and videos of people being attacked when they come back at the wrong time and discover their car being robbed. To say SF isn't violent ignores that the residents are on the edge of violence constantly. > SF is 55 out of the biggest 100 cities on burglary rates, by the way. These crime rates are what's reported by the police and they refuse to take reports of anything that hasn't escalated so they ignore most of what the everyday person suffers. These statistics should be seen more as evidence of collusion in the SFPD, not used to prove the safety of the city.
- stickfigure 3y agoIt feels a bit like you're championing a narrative of "See, it's not so bad! You'll just get your stuff stolen and your car vandalized!" I wouldn't feel so smug about that. I lived in SF for ~15 years, experienced multiple car breakins (when I had a car) and one weird guy who walked up to me on the street and said "I have a gun and I'm going to shoot you" (which I somehow calmly ignored). For the record, I didn't comment in that thread and I generally don't feel the need to bash SF in public - I just simply moved out.
- ipqk 3y agoYou just extrapolated that narrative up in your head. The OP said nothing that remotely hinted at that.
- idopmstuff 3y agoThe problem with saying that SF has relatively low violent crime is that it ignores the constant, extremely aggressive verbal assault that people are just accustomed to. In the years I lived there, I had people scream at me that they were going to kill/stab/etc. me at least a couple of dozen times (I would describe this as violent crime). Of course, if you call SFPD, they'll just tell you it's not an issue and ignore you, so those don't go into any statistics.
- cemerick 3y agoYou're right, "violent crime" is a term of art that involves the commission of a…crime. "Verbal assault" is not assault. I guess if you don't like the vibes in a place, you can go somewhere else, but trying to use such things to influence how people talk about or perceive actual, no, for real crime is intellectual malpractice.
- Consultant32452 3y agoWe should convince the SF tourism board to use this motto. Come to San Francisco, where our vibe is constant threats of murder but you probably won't actually get murdered!
- sidibe 3y agoAlso we are all so proud of being rational and data driven while ignoring the actual murder rate in SF, which is well below average in America. Now you can say that it's high relative to the rest of the world but most people here want to shit on SF relative to the USA too.
- txsoftwaredev 3y agoLiterally.
- reddog 3y ago> including current faves Austin and Miami Austin has 2.57 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters per 100K. Same year, SF has 6.35 per 100K. So SF is twice as bad as Austin. Your right about Miami though. But 6.35 isn't bad. The murder rate in St Louis (for comparision to the US city with the worst) is 66.07 per 100K. And Colima Mexico (worst in the world maybe) is 182 murders per 100K. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rat...
- grogenaut 3y agoI grew up in St Louis. We didn't worry so much about murder for cause as someone had to specifically dislike you (cheating on/with spouse for example). We just watched the street crime rates. That said moving to the west coast people freak out all the time about yearly murder rates that are a weekend in STL.
- somenameforme 3y agoA lot depends a lot on distribution, which surface level stats don't reveal. I've lived in very high crime rates that were perfectly safe because it was a mixture of 'don't go to these areas' and basic interpersonal stuff. I've also lived in areas that were far safer on paper, but were substantially more dangerous for me because crime was far more 'equal opportunity.' I've no idea of the situation in San Francisco but this could easily explain the perception : stats relationship.
- nverno 3y agoExactly, murder stats aren't necessarily a good measure of how safe a city feels to a typical dweller. Many city homicides are gang-related, and if the gangs only operate in specific areas, killing eachother, the city can still feel totally safe to other people. Constant theft really weighs on the psyche- needing to worry about everywhere you leave your bike locked or park your car is a burden. To your point, Ulaanbaatar felt like one of the more dangerous cities I've been in because people would rob foreigners in broad daylight on crowded streets, but I don't think there was much homicide at all.
- NotYourLawyer 3y ago[flagged]
- azinman2 3y agoShithole city is a bit extreme, don’t you think? I’d reserve that for very, very different places in the world.
- foooorsyth 3y agoIt’s not extreme when you compare it to most other Western cities. If you want to get into undeveloped nations and dilapidated ghost cities, you’re just entering a different arena. The endless tent encampments, open drug use, human feces on the street, glass/needles/trash everywhere, and rampant vehicle theft make the place unbearable. It is a shithole.
- azinman2 3y agoWestern cities like Portland, LA, Eugene, or Seattle? Or is that just west coast and you also mean to include Baltimore, Detroit or St Louis? Many of those are worst. Or I could go to Miami or Austin where their states are trying to legislate me out of existence. I don’t disagree things have gotten worse, but a wide variety of factors are contributing to this beyond politics. They’re also mainly occur in certain areas - I don’t come across all the things very often living in SF because I’m not in SoMA/civic center/mission where it’s all the most acute.
- carapace 3y agoNot really, SF is a shithole for a wealthy North American city. And I say that as someone who grew up here and still loves this place. Story time. We literally had squatters break into and occupy a house two doors down from us, on Sunday (Easter). I was gardening in the front yard and seven people came and went over the course of the day. The police came in the afternoon but missed them, and they came back that night. It took until Tuesday to get them out and lock down the building so they couldn't get back in. A similar incident happened across the street a few months ago, the squatters even changed the lock on the front door. I've lived here nearly half a century and I've never seen anything like this. Oh, also, last month, a guy came through and busted into several cars one morning. He got five or six of us. - - - - The thing is, SF has always been a crazy shitty town. It's also beautiful and fun, but this is the town that grew from the Gold Rush. It was built by 49ers and the folks who sold them shovels and booze and women. It's always been crazy here. So when people point to SF as the paragon of Left-wing politics, they are ignoring that it's not really a functional city and never has been. The port is in the East Bay where the train tracks run, eh? No trains on the Golden Gate Bridge, eh? There's no economic center here (except the artifical banking nexus, but that doesn't need to stay here, SV bank was in SV.) And the weather never gets better. The entire rest of the state has better weather. The people who think SF has nice weather typically stay in one of the tiny microclimates that avoid the worst of the wind and fog. Seriously, go look at the trees in Mission Rock. They are all at 45 degree angles because the damn wind never stops. They should have put wind turbines on the roofs of those nifty new condos (the ones with the sidewalks breaking away from the buildings.) Oh man, I could go on and on about this town. All I'm really getting at is that, if you know the history of San Francisco, you know that it's not really a left-wing exemplar, it's just a nuthouse, and always has been since the USA kicked out the Spanish. (What the Spanish did is the stuff of nightmares. Before that it was the Ohlone people here, and I don't know what they were like. There are still a few Ohlone people around but everybody is real careful not to mention them except in the past tense because it breaks the illusion of inclusive progressive politics. We still want to e.g. build apartment buildings on their old cemeteries and such.)
- Waterluvian 3y agoIt's all relative. The safest parts of the U.S. still feel like too much for me. And I'm sure where I grew up in Canada would seem like a post-apocalyptic hellscape to some others around the world.
- rajup 3y agoThat goes both ways. I wonder if you would come back to this comment when one of your held beliefs are disproven. I won’t derail this thread into what it might be, but I won’t hold my breath…
- lopkeny12ko 3y agoDoubly so because all comments raising suspicious about the event were immediately dismissed as bad faith arguments without any consideration. 1. Why was he out by himself? At 2 AM? 2. It didn't seem "random" at all, and in fact seemed like a targeted homicide. Turns out both of these suspicions were valid. /shrug
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bnralt 3y agoIt’s interesting. The initial post that mentioned that Rob Lee was murdered got mass flagged and stayed at the bottom of the page. There’s discussion about his murder and crime in general, but the top comment is asking people not to be political and to post their memories of Rob Lee. The only submission about Rob Lee’s death that stayed at the top of the page was one that didn’t mention that he was murdered in the headline, and where dang came in and told everyone to keep politics out of it and avoid flamewar stuff. People said it was reasonable that people mass flagged any submission that mentioned the murder in its headline, because it was flamewar stuff. But now we have this submission. I looked through all of the top comments, and they’re _all_ using this to talk about the larger “is San Francisco safe?” debate. About half of them are specifically complaining about other people’s views, including complaining about other Hacker News comments.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoThat's absolutely not what happened. This, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899, was the original post that got a lot of traction about Bob Lee's death. I was one of the people who flagged it pretty early on, not because I thought it wasn't newsworthy, but because it was one of the biggest collection of dumpster fire comments I've ever seen on HN - hardly anyone was interested in anything but spouting their own preconceived notions, particularly since at that point very few details were actually known about the crime. But as you can see from that link and the vote counts, it was definitely (pretty quickly) unflagged, and then you can see in the top comments that dang just split the threads into 2 separate posts, one for rememberances of Bob Lee and the other one remained for political discussion.
- Kiro 3y agoYou're doing the same thing now. We don't even know if this is actually the perpetrator yet, and even if it is it doesn't matter. Anything bad (or good) that was written about SF can still be true.
- refurb 3y agoI don't exactly blame people, who live in SF and have seen crime get worse, from latching onto a high profile murder as more evidence of crime out of control. So this particular murder was a personal thing, ok. But that doesnt change the fact crime has gotten worse in SF.
- JoshTko 3y agoI was wrong about violent crime, but was right about robbery, theft, burglary, and property crime significantly above averages (~50%).
- hinkley 3y agoThere was a woman in Portland I believe who poisoned her husband and made it look like a drug tampering serial killer situation. They caught her because they found traces of fish tank algaecide in the pill bottles. She reused the same mortar and pestle to do both. The local fish supply store had records of her buying the same algaecide.
- david38 3y agoYou must think you’re quite clever with that slight of hand comparing homicides in SF with other cities when people are talking about crime in general.
- suzzer99 3y agoFirst thing I thought of was HackerNews.
- matt-attack 3y ago[flagged]
- robertoandred 3y agoWhy wouldn't a homeless guy take his wallet?
- matt-attack 3y agoYour comment indicates you do not understand the mental state of many homeless people. I have a good friend, who has beaten by a homeless man in Los Angeles. None of his wallet, phone, or cash was taken. It was not a robbery. It was a senseless beating.
- Apocryphon 3y agoThat neighborhood isn't really known for homelessness unlike other areas of SF.
- confidantlake 3y agoSeems far more likely that it was someone he knew rather than a stranger. Turns out that was in fact the case.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago> of course, completely divorced from actual stats, i.e. that SF has fewer homicides per capita than almost every other American city, including current faves Austin and Miami Many of us mentioned this (I did in my comment), which is why we are so surprised about this murder. Now it makes more sense, although still tragic. We still get to gripe about property crime, which has been higher than average for awhile now and only seems to be getting worse.
- wnevets 3y agoI remember rolling my eyes alot while reading the comments in that thread. I would expect many of those people will double down rather than offer any mea culpa.
- whack 3y agoI agree with you that we shouldn't be using anecdotal evidence to drive outrage and public policy. There are a whole host of biases and errors that pop up when using anecdotal evidence as you pointed out. The flip side is that people have zero interest in statistics-based discussions. Even supposedly data-driven engineers. If you find that property-crime has increased by X%, of which Y% can be attributed to specific public policy decisions, you will get zero traction if you frame this as a data-driven discussion. People grok stories. They may somewhat understand statistics and numbers, but they don't grok it. Hence why almost all discussions revolve around anecdotes with some statistics provided as supporting evidence. Ironically, for-profit companies are far better at having data-driven discussions and decisions. I have little hope that this will ever be the case in public discourse.
- hindsightbias 3y agoExhibit A in how irrational a “rationalist” community is.
- cpufry 3y agoyep, went right to poverty and crime panic
- pookha 3y agoI'm not a Maoist so I can admit when I was wrong. Looks like it was a personal beef. But that in no way changes the point that SF is a toxic environment. Here's the SF fire commissioner being brained by a violent homeless man this past week... https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/video-shows-ex-sf-fire-commissioner-assaulted-with-pipe-in-marina-district/ https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/video-shows-ex-sf-fire-c...
- giantrobot 3y agoI was wrong, but let me justify jumping to my previous preconceived notions! Amazing humility.
- beepbooptheory 3y agoOn the contrary, I think Mao would be quite impressed with your staunch commitment to a cause! Here is another article, just so everyone stays informed. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/fire-commissioner-assault-arraignment-17888401.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/fire-commissioner-ass...
- dahfizz 3y agoSF still has above average violent crime[1]. Its top 7 in terms of overall crime, so being "just" above average for violent crime seems not so bad in comparison. But the objective reality is that BOTH property crime and violent crime is worse in SF than in most other cities. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
- donohoe 3y agoMaybe. That data is 4 years old (from 2019)
- dahfizz 3y agoThe violent crime rate hasn't changed much. The total number of incidents[1] and population[2] have both decreased around 10% since 2019. Do you have evidence to the contrary? You can't just claim everything is fine and discard all evidence you disagree with. [1] https://sfgov.org/scorecards/public-safety/violent-crime-rate-and-property-crime-rate https://sfgov.org/scorecards/public-safety/violent-crime-rat... [2] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sanfranciscocountycalifornia https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sanfranciscocountycaliforn...
- gadders 3y ago[flagged]
- nsxwolf 3y agoViolent crime is rare everywhere, for some definition of rare. I can walk through the most dangerous part of Chicago tonight and I will almost certainly survive. However, if I do that every night for my entire life, the cumulative risk will be unacceptably high. It would be wrong to insist Chicago doesn't have a problem with violence just because I have much better than Vegas odds of not dying today. SF has different parameter inputs than Chicago, but my point applies.
- FanaHOVA 3y ago> I can walk through the most dangerous part of Chicago tonight and I will almost certainly survive. Go walk through O Block / West Garfield tonight and report back.
- dmix 3y ago[flagged]
- nilespotter 3y ago[dead]
- tempsy 3y agoWhat was more incredible was being accused of being a conspiracy theorist because I had commented in the SF subreddit and on twitter that I personally didn’t think it was random.
- cashsterling 3y agoThere is some relief in learning that a homeless person didn't commit this crime. However, the overall crime situation in SF, and other parts of the Bay, is still crazy... and I think that is the genesis of the 2600+ comment thread on the crime and homeless situation. SF crime IS A PROBLEM that is not being adequately addressed. So much so that folks assumed Bob was probably killed by a crazy drug addict or something. While wrong in this case, it was a reasonable first guess. And the conversation and flood of comment on the topic of crime flooded in from there.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoThe Internet has made it virtually impossible for people to say "I just don't know yet." Everyone feels like if they don't immediately come to a conclusion they're like left out or something. I saw this most extremely during COVID, and I usually hate "both side-ing" things, but I did see this pretty extremely on both sides. "MASKS DON'T WORK!!", "YES THEY DO!!", "IT WAS A LAB LEAK!!", "IT WAS ANIMALS FROM THE WET MARKET!!", "KIDS ARE FINE!!", "KIDS ARE AT SERIOUS RISK!!". It's like at some point I just wanted to scream "Maybe we just don't know yet."
- tzs 3y agoThat thread had me checking a couple times to make sure I had not accidentally somehow ended up on NextDoor.
- mustacheemperor 3y ago>I wonder how likely it is that the same population will comment here to say, "I was wrong"? From the looks of your replies, more than a few are back to comment here to say "Actually I am still right." Which, frankly, seems to me more evidence I should just not bother to browse threads about this kind of inflammatory subject. Even on HN where discussion quality tends to be better, there's plenty of people who just show up to shout, and not listen.