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Emile comments on A Rationalist's Account of Objectification? - Less Wrong Discussion

43 Post author: lukeprog 19 March 2011 11:10PM

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Comment author: Skatche 20 March 2011 08:45:46PM *  3 points [-]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears that Mr. Raymond's argument is roughly as follows:

  • Not all rapes are forcible.
  • Incidence of forcible rape among women is lower than 1 in 6.
  • Therefore the incidence of rape among women is lower than 1 in 6.

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to puzzle out the error in that one. Also note that there's no mention of how "over-reporting" and "false allegations" are determined. My guess is that this is based on the conviction rate (I don't know how else you'd do it), in which case you run into precisely the problems I mentioned.

Comment author: Emile 22 March 2011 08:30:04PM 6 points [-]

No, his argument is more than that, I suggest you read it again. You seem to have skipped the part where he says that the "1 in 6" statistic covered both rapes and attempted rapes.

Basically he looks for where the "1 in 6" figure comes from, and finds a figure that are lower. You may criticize his methodology, but recalculating the value yourself seems like a better strategy than repeating a statistic of dubious origin.