Regarding statistics and laws, and Freeeedom

Only 1 hundredth of 1 percent have extremist ideation.....but nearly 90 percent of laws are based around that tiny fraction. After all, just one person can conduct mass killings. Whether it's by shooting semi-automatic military-grade guns into civilian crowds, or detonating a bomb concocted in a pressure cooker at home, or a single plane flying into a building.....those are all tiny fractions of the greater populace.

But modern society, and its laws, have to consider these long-tail probabilities. And weigh them against constitutional rights, in a constantly changing world.

I know it sounds simplistic, but I think seat-belt laws might be a good comparison. When laws start out as "good" protections for consumers, but turn into liabilities for manufacturers....and the only (or main) reason car makers changed their manufacturing process to adapt 3-point seat belts was in response to these law suits.....shame on them.

Maybe I made the OP title wrong, and should have asked who/how decides what to do about the fraction of people that commit most crimes, but fuck it up for everyone else. :noob:

Nitpick: extremism in thought and extremism in action are different things. Extremists in thought make up far more than 0.01% of the population. We're easily talking several percent, more so among some groups. Interestingly enough, there are also people who don't have extreme thoughts but take extreme actions nevertheless (think psychopaths).

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Originally Posted by Loki

Nitpick: extremism in thought and extremism in action are different things. Extremists in thought make up far more than 0.01% of the population. We're easily talking several percent, more so among some groups. Interestingly enough, there are also people who don't have extreme thoughts but take extreme actions nevertheless (think psychopaths).

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Extremists in thought are probably the same groups that are deemed mentally ill. Both are small percentages of total populations.....but that doesn't mean they can't do GREAT harm to everyone else.

So how do we protect constitutional rights when those rights are contested?

What exactly is new about this? This is what we have prisons for.

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Originally Posted by Loki

Nitpick: extremism in thought and extremism in action are different things. Extremists in thought make up far more than 0.01% of the population. We're easily talking several percent, more so among some groups. Interestingly enough, there are also people who don't have extreme thoughts but take extreme actions nevertheless (think psychopaths).

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I'd think extremist action would take up at least close to a percent and extremist thought on some topic(s) or other would frequently veer far closer to 10 percent than just a couple points.

I was offering conservative estimates there. I don't disagree on the thought part. But we don't have 3 million Americans willing to use extreme measures to achieve their goals. In any given year, 0.2% of the population gets arrested for violent crimes, and probably half of those are crimes of passion. For the other 0.1%, most probably have pretty big limitations as to how far they're willing to take their violence.

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Originally Posted by Loki

I was offering conservative estimates there. I don't disagree on the thought part. But we don't have 3 million Americans willing to use extreme measures to achieve their goals. Look at the prison population. It's about half that, and a large chunk of those people aren't there for terrible crimes.

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Violence isn't the only form of extremist action. Passing extreme legislation (or public initiatives) would be a legal form, as one example. So would, say, many communities efforts to just kick out their homeless.

I was referring to violence, but sure. What's interesting about the thought/action distinction is the recent wave of lone-wolf terrorists, many of whom are actually not that extreme thought-wise. Which means worrying about radicalization misses the point. We effectively have nationalists carrying out murder on behalf of their "nations". Their nationalism isn't even particularly extreme.

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Originally Posted by Loki

I was referring to violence, but sure. What's interesting about the thought/action distinction is the recent wave of lone-wolf terrorists, many of whom are actually not that extreme thought-wise. Which means worrying about radicalization misses the point. We effectively have nationalists carrying out murder on behalf of their "nations". Their nationalism isn't even particularly extreme.

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My rule of thumb is that out of any aggregated population subset, you can expect ~15% to either be extremist in some fashion or so ignorant or myopic as to amount to the same thing. And people in that 15% will be comparatively unpredictable because they could believe almost anything.

Like the 2/3 of Trump supporters who believe Obama is Muslim or the 2/5 of Trump supporters who think Obama might have had something to do with the Orlando attack? :o We're seeing record crazy, promoted by the establishment for its own short-term electoral goals. And soon we'll all pay the price. If not in 2016, then in 2020 or 2024.

Found a PowerPoint summarizing the article where I got the thought/action distinction from: https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START...Terrorists.pdf

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Originally Posted by GGT

Only 1 hundredth of 1 percent have extremist ideation.....but nearly 90 percent of laws are based around that tiny fraction. After all, just one person can conduct mass killings. Whether it's by shooting semi-automatic military-grade guns into civilian crowds, or detonating a bomb concocted in a pressure cooker at home, or a single plane flying into a building.....those are all tiny fractions of the greater populace.

But modern society, and its laws, have to consider these long-tail probabilities. And weigh them against constitutional rights, in a constantly changing world.

I know it sounds simplistic, but I think seat-belt laws might be a good comparison. When laws start out as "good" protections for consumers, but turn into liabilities for manufacturers....and the only (or main) reason car makers changed their manufacturing process to adapt 3-point seat belts was in response to these law suits.....shame on them.

Maybe I made the OP title wrong, and should have asked who/how decides what to do about the fraction of people that commit most crimes, but fuck it up for everyone else. :noob:

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I think you might want to take into consideration two things:

1. Although only an extremely tiny fraction actually end up engaging in the most severe kinds of extremely violent behavior (whether by that you restrict yourself to actual terrorism or include other things like murder in general), a much larger group is at risk of doing so, and the impact of their actions also has an outsize effect on society at large, influencing the behavior--either through increased risk and uncertainty or more directly through the loss of friends and loved ones, orphaned children, lost knowledge, lost business etc--of tens of millions of other people. This is in reference to laws that have to do with extremely violent crimes. The prevalence of other forms of crime can be much higher of course.

2. Laws can be restrictive and repressive from the individual's perspective, but they can also be designed in other ways, eg. laws that serve to help people remain integrated in society, get access to mental health services etc.