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Salemicus comments on The Argument from Crisis and Pessimism Bias - Less Wrong Discussion

13 Post author: Stefan_Schubert 11 November 2014 08:25PM

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Comment author: Salemicus 12 November 2014 10:07:12AM *  4 points [-]

For instance, this survey shows that the British public think that the crime rate has gone up, even though it has gone down.

OK, but note that the most reliable crime statistics also come from a survey. In fact, the same survey! So rather than saying that this is because people are too negative, you have to tell a more subtle story.

What we really have is a seeming inconsistency in the way people are answering the survey - in effect, they are saying that they personally have suffered less crime, but that crime overall is up. That can't be true for the country as a whole, but it can be true for the Crime Survey. Leading candidates:

  • The Crime Survey deliberately ignores certain categories of crime, such as drug offences. These are (1) very common, (2) don't have a direct victim, (3) have been de-prioritised by the police. So if I see increasing drug dealing around my area, I can say there is increasing crime, yet at the same time it won't show up on how much crime I've suffered.
  • Biased sampling.
  • Respondents are measuring crime changes over a different (presumably longer) period than mere comparison of the Survey statistics would suggest.

On the other hand, perhaps there genuinely is a gap in perception. But it's far from clear that this should be chalked up as people being "too pessimistic." On the contrary, you are implicitly conceding that their model of their immediate community is accurate.

The standard view is of course that [radicals] want radical change because they believe that the world has got worse, but I think that to some extent, the causality is reversed: they believe that the world has got worse because they want radical change.

This, however, is very insightful.

Comment author: Stefan_Schubert 12 November 2014 03:11:14PM 1 point [-]

Thanks - I should have checked the link more carefully. The links were more for illustration anyway.

Lots of people have claimed that we have a pessimism bias, and my post obviously assumes they are right, but it would be nice to see some proper empirical work on the issue.

"The standard view is of course that [radicals] want radical change because they believe that the world has got worse, but I think that to some extent, the causality is reversed: they believe that the world has got worse because they want radical change."

This, however, is very insightful.

Thanks!

Comment author: philh 12 November 2014 02:21:08PM 1 point [-]

in effect, they are saying that they personally have suffered less crime, but that crime overall is up.

I personally suffer approximately zero crime. I was pickpocketed (I think) about a year ago, and nonviolently assaulted the other day, and I don't remember any other instances in two years in London.

If the crime rate is falling, I'm not going to notice that as an effect on me personally. I'm also not likely to notice the effect on me personally if it rises. My opinions about crime overall aren't going to be strongly correlated with my own experiences of it.

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