Schrodinger's Rapist: When is uncritical thought ok?

[SpuriusMaximus]

I didn't see either part of that in the article. Multiple rapes against the same woman don't change the ratio of one in six because that's not ever referred to as "number of rapes" but of "nuber of people who have been raped" unless I missed something. As for the second part, she never says that each rapist raped one person. She assumes that each rapist rapes multiple people, an assumption that is both logically sound and is in favor of men in general. She picks ten arbitrarily and doesn't claim otherwise.

Actually, to be pedantic, for the first part, she does seem to confuse incidence with prevalence. Because she first uses the 1 in 6 number which is raped women, not rapes, but then applies a factor of 10 rapes per rapist. It only works out to 1 in 60 if she actually assumes 1 rape per raped woman.

Not that it would matter all that much, I would think, since it's still IMHO quite clear what she means anyway. And given that the real numbers are scarier than her generous estimate anyway, it doesn't work against her point anyway. I mean, sure, it's not exact numbers but the risk is just as real.

 

[AvalonXQ]

And given that the real numbers are scarier than her generous estimate anyway,

Except they're really not. The real numbers are much less scary than her estimate; it is much less likely than 1 in 60 that the stranger on the train who speaks to her will rape her. UY has explained some of the reasons why.

 

[bookitty]

Yes, if pursuasion was her intent she radically underestimated male sensitivity. I'm surprised at how easily feelings were hurt.

Of course the article was more of a venting of frustration than anything. The complaint about tone and civility strikes me as quite similar in construction to theist whining over the mean, nasty New Atheists. Sometimes it's necessary to just call ******** ********.

Which is why I took no offense. That article wasn't directed at me. It was directed at the endless dirtballs, scumbags, douche-knozzles, and, at worst, sexual assailants that women have to deal with on a dialy basis in a way that few, if any, hetero-sexual men ever encounter.

If you read that article and come away thinking you're being called a rapist, you're either insecure on an astonishing level or really bad at reading.

Thank you. This is exactly it.

To sum up the article - Most men are not going to sexually assault a women. But, because a large percentage of women have been sexually assaulted, women can be sensitive to certain behaviors/clues from strangers. Here are some of those clues/behaviors

• . These behaviors make women uncomfortable. If you don't want to make women uncomfortable, please don't do this. And while we're at it, don't sexually assault women in any way.
  
  There is nothing in the article that needs super-duper maths to prove. Even if her math is way off, enough women have been assaulted that it is a problem. People (male and female) tend to rationalize/excuse their own behavior when there is something they want. This includes men approaching an unknown woman because they are attracted to her.

 

[Furcifer]

Dude, seriously... your inability to understand elementary arithmetic even after several people explained it, doesn't make me a liar, it just makes you innumerate.
.

No, you're lying and you know it or you wouldn't keep bringing it up. The statement of fact she is making is 1 in 6 men are rapists. The conditional statement is IF they each do 10 rapes THEN it's 1 in 60. There's no other way to make the connection between the 2 stats. It's amusing that you want to return to your own failure and havewave. It's quite the dance

Don't think I didn't notice your lack of correcting everyone else that's said the same thing. It's quite shameless on your part, and very dishonest.

 

[SOdhner]

Actually, to be pedantic, for the first part, she does seem to confuse incidence with prevalence. Because she first uses the 1 in 6 number which is raped women, not rapes, but then applies a factor of 10 rapes per rapist. It only works out to 1 in 60 if she actually assumes 1 rape per raped woman.

So if I'm understanding your point, she could have said 10 unique woment per rapist and it would have been fine. That's how I *read* it, though I understand that technically that's not how it was worded.

 

[Furcifer]

Yes, if pursuasion was her intent she radically underestimated male sensitivity. I'm surprised at how easily feelings were hurt.

Now Hans are you paying attention? This is a strawman.

Nobody said their feelings are hurt. And yet Tranewreck is employing an argument from incredulity based on his own strawman.

You'll find his posts are chalk full of fallacies.

He's conflating the objection to the improper use of a term applied to a group of people, with emotion. It's an argument from ignorance because he chooses to ignore all of the evidence given thus far as to why the author is wrong to do so, and instead suppose it's all due to emotion.

Textbook case of fallacy in use.

 

[TraneWreck]

Now Hans are you paying attention? This is a strawman.

Nobody said their feelings are hurt. And yet Tranewreck is employing an argument from incredulity based on his own strawman.

You'll find his posts are chalk full of fallacies.

He's conflating the objection to the improper use of a term applied to a group of people, with emotion. It's an argument from ignorance because he chooses to ignore all of the evidence given thus far as to why the author is wrong to do so, and instead suppose it's all due to emotion.

Textbook case of fallacy in use.

Haha, I didn't realize people had to say their feelings were hurt in order to interpret such.

Again, the term isn't being improperly used. Calling someone a "potential rapist" will almost always be true. You're so confused on this, from the basic numbers to the use of allusions to general comprehension, that you cannot spit out even a barely cogent argument.

You also don't know what a "fallacy" is. You use it each time you want to say "bad argument," which would be wrong on the merits, but at least the appropriate phrase.

And what, praytell, is the evidence provided to show that she was wrong for calling someone a "potential rapist?"

The reason I am able to see how badly your feelings have been hurt on this is that you CANNOT get beyond your first emotional reaction to the word "rapist" despite your consistent misunderstanding of how it was used. The entire basis of your "criticism" is that the word is too inflamatory. What does that mean? It means it inflames emotions, ie, hurts people's feelings.

Anyone acting on rationality would be able to criticize the article without these random tantrums.

 

[Uncayimmy]

It's a sloppy, quick number and very much wrong, but all assumptions are made in favor of the contrary position: that a smaller percentage of men are sexual assailants.

I have no idea why the three of your were arguing over that number. I read some of those posts several times and still don't know what some of them were saying.

That aside, even if we could get a handle on the number of rapists, knowing that percentage of the male population isn't all that useful. The author seems keen on identifying rapists when the goal, and I know this sounds pedantic, is to avoid getting raped, not simply identifying rapists. Now, before anybody jumps my ass about this, hear me out.

About 78% of women are raped by one person in their lifetime, 14% two rapists, and 8% person three or more rapists (they don't break out multiple simultaneous rapists versus consecutive rapists). In NVAWS the women 18 and older were raped on average 2.9 times in the preceding 12 months.

So, the minimum number of rapes for the first two groups is as follows assuming the lifetime number of rapists holds true for the 12 month period:
78 + (2 * 14) = 106

We're told that the average victim is raped 2.9 times, so a group of 100 women will have 290 rapes; Subtract from that the minimum number of rapes by the first two groups:
290 - 106 = 184

This means our 8% (three or more) group would have to have been raped by 23 (184/8) rapists on average. Not likely, right? What's far more likely is that all three groups are suffering multiple rapes by the same person. They have the *********** rapist identified with 100% accuracy, yet they are still getting raped. And based on other stats, it's very likely that this person is their intimate partner.

This woman talks about the fear of strangers on the street like it's the major problem. It's like she's oblivious to the dangers of intimate partners. She writes:

When you approach me in public, you are Schrödinger’s Rapist. You may or may not be a man who would commit rape. I won’t know for sure unless you start sexually assaulting me. I can’t see inside your head, and I don’t know your intentions. If you expect me to trust you—to accept you at face value as a nice sort of guy—you are not only failing to respect my reasonable caution, you are being cavalier about my personal safety.

The reality is that her boyfriend or husband is far, far more dangerous to her statistically than Schrodinger's Rapist. Given no other factors, an intoxicated man is twice the risk of a sober one. A private setting is about 6X as dangerous as a public one. An intimate partner is 3.5X as likely as a stranger to commit the rape, and the pool of strangers is probably 100X bigger than the pool of intimate partners.

Talking to a sober stranger on a bus, even an obnoxious one, is far, far less dangerous than being at home with your drunk boyfriend.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

No, you're lying and you know it or you wouldn't keep bringing it up. The statement of fact she is making is 1 in 6 men are rapists. The conditional statement is IF they each do 10 rapes THEN it's 1 in 60. There's no other way to make the connection between the 2 stats. It's amusing that you want to return to your own failure and havewave. It's quite the dance

Dude, seriously, if 1/6 or 1/60 of group X have property Y, then that's that. Regardless of what they do. Try it with anything else. If it's one percentage or another, that's that. It can't be simultaneously two different percentages for the same property.

You can't believe simultaneously that both 1/6 are rapists _and_ 1/60 are rapists, much less that one is a condition for the other. It's that simple. If, by any given definition, X% of group Y have property Z, then that's that, it's X%.

Furthermore, even the way you multiply it is wrong. 1/6 of men doing 10 rapes each, would mean 10/6 rapes per male population, not 1/60. There's a reason I told you it's a division not a multiplication, but even that seems to have sailed right above your head.

Don't think I didn't notice your lack of correcting everyone else that's said the same thing. It's quite shameless on your part, and very dishonest.

Actually, nope, the thing is, I haven't seen anybody else actually came even close to saying that she needs to believe two different probabilities for the same property at the same time. All the others were conditional upon something else being different. Only yours is flat out that she needs to believe 1/6 men are rapist to believe that 1/60 men are rapists.

Honestly, if you weren't keeping at it, I wouldn't even imagine that it's possible for someone to be that illogical.

And if you're trying me you genuinely you read those messages and didn't even understand that... well, now _that's_ a record.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Now Hans are you paying attention?

All ears, guv'nor.

This is a strawman.

Nobody said their feelings are hurt. And yet Tranewreck is employing an argument from incredulity based on his own strawman.

You'll find his posts are chalk full of fallacies.

He's conflating the objection to the improper use of a term applied to a group of people, with emotion. It's an argument from ignorance because he chooses to ignore all of the evidence given thus far as to why the author is wrong to do so, and instead suppose it's all due to emotion.

Textbook case of fallacy in use.

Nope, it's you not knowing logic. And projecting again

 

[Uncayimmy]

I'm trying to say that she never names a maximum. Sure, it's clear to you or me what would happen if that coefficient were any other number than 10, a value of 1 included. But she doesn't say it. And that's IMHO an important distinction.

What is your point? I never said she said what the maximum was just like I never said she said it was one per rapist. I quoted her exact words, Hans. It was right there in my post for you and everyone else to see. Her exact words. I then proceeded to say that she "seemed" to be saying something and gave a lengthy explanation. To be clear:

Seem to appear to be.

Seriously, how much more clear can I be beyond quoting her exact words and then using the word "seem" to describe what I thought she was saying? Why are you coming back telling me that she didn't say something that I never said she said? What is your point?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

The reality is that her boyfriend or husband is far, far more dangerous to her statistically than Schrodinger's Rapist. Given no other factors, an intoxicated man is twice the risk of a sober one. A private setting is about 6X as dangerous as a public one. An intimate partner is 3.5X as likely as a stranger to commit the rape, and the pool of strangers is probably 100X bigger than the pool of intimate partners.

Talking to a sober stranger on a bus, even an obnoxious one, is far, far less dangerous than being at home with your drunk boyfriend.

Actually, that is a very true and insightful observation, but we've dealt with it before. (Mind you, I can't blame anyone for missing something buried in 15 pages of bickering.)

That's actually the whole point and context of her risk estimations. In the very first paragraph of her article, it says, "In fact, you would really like to have a mutually respectful and loving sexual relationship with a woman. Unfortunately, you don’t yet know that woman—she isn’t working with you, nor have you been introduced through mutual friends or drawn to the same activities. So you must look further afield to encounter her."

The whole point and context is that she's not talking about being raped right there on the bus, but as advice for someone looking to pick her up and end up in a "loving sexual relationship" with her.

It seems to me that you would agree that if a rapist got promoted to that, it would be a much greater risk to her than if it remained at the stage of a stranger on a bus. Right?

Well, that's actually what she says. That someone giving the wrong signals on the bus, won't get promoted to that category which is a much higher risk to her.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

What is your point? I never said she said what the maximum was just like I never said she said it was one per rapist. I quoted her exact words, Hans. It was right there in my post for you and everyone else to see. Her exact words. I then proceeded to say that she "seemed" to be saying something and gave a lengthy explanation. To be clear:

Seem to appear to be.

Seriously, how much more clear can I be beyond quoting her exact words and then using the word "seem" to describe what I thought she was saying? Why are you coming back telling me that she didn't say something that I never said she said? What is your point?

Yes, I got the "seems" part, but I just don't know where you get that impression. Everyone seems to have no problem with directly dividing or multiplying by 10.

I mean, look at my example with the hens and the roosters. Nobody really needs to first estimate a maximum number of roosters before just dividing the number of hens by 10.

Hmm, well, ok, then again maybe not everyone. Since you seemed to be explaining that to 3body, maybe you do need to break it into easier bites after all

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

So if I'm understanding your point, she could have said 10 unique woment per rapist and it would have been fine. That's how I *read* it, though I understand that technically that's not how it was worded.

Well, at least then it would have been free of one thing that people can nitpick. As I was saying, I understood what she's trying to say too.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

What is your point? I never said she said what the maximum was just like I never said she said it was one per rapist. I quoted her exact words, Hans. It was right there in my post for you and everyone else to see. Her exact words. I then proceeded to say that she "seemed" to be saying something and gave a lengthy explanation. To be clear:

Seem to appear to be.

Seriously, how much more clear can I be beyond quoting her exact words and then using the word "seem" to describe what I thought she was saying? Why are you coming back telling me that she didn't say something that I never said she said? What is your point?

He's just reiterating for 3bodyproblem who seems to be having enormous difficulty in understanding.

 

[Uncayimmy]

I didn't see either part of that in the article. Multiple rapes against the same woman don't change the ratio of one in six because that's not ever referred to as "number of rapes" but of "nuber of people who have been raped" unless I missed something. As for the second part, she never says that each rapist raped one person. She assumes that each rapist rapes multiple people, an assumption that is both logically sound and is in favor of men in general. She picks ten arbitrarily and doesn't claim otherwise.

Sigh.

I quoted exactly what she said in my post, so any comments about me claiming she said something else are, well, just silly. Why would I quote her and then in the same post claim she said something different? I'm not an idiot. I used the word "seems" which, last I looked, indicates one is making an interpretation. I also said that I "think" she "assumes" certain things.

One can only speculate what her thought process was because what she did was wrong. Period. There is absolutely no way in the world for her to go from number of women raped to number of rapists in the population. It's just not possible. The best we can do is speculate, and that's what I did: I speculated about a set of assumptions that if followed would logically lead to the number she presented.

If you want to present your own theory as to how she arrived at the number 1 in 60, go right ahead. I presented mine in order to get people to shut up about it. That part of her article was just wrong and demonstrated a lack of understanding some basic statistics. It was unnecessary. She could have jsut said, "If one in six women has been the victim of rape and 82% go unreported to the police, that means there are probably a lot of rapists out there."

 

[Uncayimmy]

Well, that's actually what she says. That someone giving the wrong signals on the bus, won't get promoted to that category which is a much higher risk to her.

The problem here is that we're trying to interpret a poorly written article. It's not self-consistent. Did you not see what I quoted? Here it is again:

When you approach me in public, you are Schrödinger’s Rapist. You may or may not be a man who would commit rape. I won’t know for sure unless you start sexually assaulting me. I can’t see inside your head, and I don’t know your intentions. If you expect me to trust you—to accept you at face value as a nice sort of guy—you are not only failing to respect my reasonable caution, you are being cavalier about my personal safety.

Sounds very much to me like she's talking about imminent danger. Notice that she's only talking about strangers and not all the other people she encounters. She's not talking about acquaintances or friends of friends. She's not talking about guys she approaches. The whole thing is centered around strangers approaching her, and her writing, which is poor, seems to imply imminent danger rather entering into long-term relationships. After all, she says very little about how to handle ongoing relationships except for the e-mail guy.

We're trying to pick half-digested corn out of a turd and arguing if it came straight off the cob or not.

 

[Furcifer]

The math is sound, but the assumptions are not. You can't get to the number of rapists by looking the unique count of rape victims. Period.

I've been saying this for 10 pages. The math is fine, it's simple multiplication, it's her logic that's faulty.

They really want to hold onto the fallacy because they don't want to admit the author is wrong in any way.

Due to the nature of the topic a self righteous few seem to think by casting aspersions onto your motivation for pointing out this error they can bully you into accepting it. It's a sad thing to see in what's supposed to be a skeptical forum.

 

[TraneWreck]

That aside, even if we could get a handle on the number of rapists, knowing that percentage of the male population isn't all that useful. The author seems keen on identifying rapists when the goal, and I know this sounds pedantic, is to avoid getting raped, not simply identifying rapists. Now, before anybody jumps my ass about this, hear me out.

Obviously if the article was about the odds of being raped by a stranger on the bus, she would be really wrong.

The reality is that her boyfriend or husband is far, far more dangerous to her statistically than Schrodinger's Rapist. Given no other factors, an intoxicated man is twice the risk of a sober one. A private setting is about 6X as dangerous as a public one. An intimate partner is 3.5X as likely as a stranger to commit the rape, and the pool of strangers is probably 100X bigger than the pool of intimate partners.

Talking to a sober stranger on a bus, even an obnoxious one, is far, far less dangerous than being at home with your drunk boyfriend.

No one has argued otherwise. A few points:

1) The odds of a random man on the bus raping a woman is very low, but she's not talking about all men. She's discussing a subset of men who first try to talk to women, then ignore women's wishes to be left alone, then follow them home or wait for them at bus stops.

What percentage of men who behave thusly will commit sexual crimes? I'm not aware of any stats that give us an indication, but surely you can see why a woman would be afraid of such a person.

The reluctance to engage strange men on the bus is part "they might be rapists," part, "they might follow me around and really scare me," and part, "I just don't want to tell this obnoxious ass to leave me alone over and over." The "Schrodinger's Rapist" allusion was meant to illustrate the worst case scenario. Because there are no reliable stats for that (riding the same bus for 6 months and following a woman home might be sufficient to say that the woman "knew" her assailant for the purposes of the stats) she just went for a broad number that is deeply flawed, but actually conservative. It's not conservative with respect to "strangers on a bus" but it is very much so with respect to men in general.

2) Even if the odds are very low, women should not be placed in a position of having to guess, "is this my worst fear coming true?" Much of the article explains what behavior terrifies them.

Not that many people get killed by bears, but if I'm hiking in the woods and see a grizzly 30ft away, my reaction won't be, "likely he won't devour me." I'll be scared until I'm safe.

If men can avoid causing that reaction in women, they should. She's explaining how to do so.

3) People are consistently failing to consider the severity of the prescribed action when guaging the reasonableness of the article.

By analogy: Person A lives on the 40th floor of a high-rise apartment building. She has a balcony. Her odds of falling to her death are very, very low. Nevertheless, she requested that guard rail be built and that maintenance people test its quality twice a year.

Is this an irrational stance? Her odds of death are very low.

Similarly, if the OP was demanding that women hire body guards or never leave home alone, it would be an irrational stance. She's merely asking that men respect her desire to be left alone, this is very reasonable and proportional to the threat involved.

 

[Furcifer]

You also don't know what a "fallacy" is. You use it each time you want to say "bad argument," which would be wrong on the merits, but at least the appropriate phrase.

No,you generally have bad arguments because your reasoning is flawed. That's what fallacy is, bad arguments from poor reasoning.

Here: "a fallacy is a misconception resulting from incorrect reasoning in argumentation"

Nice try though.