komponisto comments on Typical Mind and Politics - Less Wrong

46 Post author: Yvain 12 June 2009 12:28PM

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Comment author: komponisto 14 June 2009 02:56:46AM 1 point [-]

Cities mean a higher density of criminals and targets, in equal proportion, so all else equal the probability of being targeted should remain about the same;

The more people you come across, the more likely you are to run into someone bad; and this doesn't even take into account what can happen when people -- thus in particular bad people -- get together in groups.

It's possible that the nice-ifying effects of large populations on human behavior could cancel out the bad effects. But it's not obvious that they do -- and it's certainly not obvious that the former exceed the latter. The default presumption would be that people who live in ancestral-type environments face a variety of threats, both human and natural; and that as people move into larger population centers, the threats they face become less natural and more human.