Edit: "populations" -> "groups of people"
Precisely the same mentality is present in many of the most crime ridden neighborhoods in the US.[1]
Are you able to think objectively for a moment, and see how your reaction to police doing that, is similar the police's reaction to criminals doing that?
EDIT: The commented post was edited after I wrote my original above comment. Now it’s more like victim-blaming.
When you generalize about a population of people, you're unfairly attributing characteristics to them which weren't decided upon by them (and likely doesn't apply to all of them).
When you generalize about police, you're fairly generalizing about a group of people who have decided to be a part of that institution, have decided to behave in such a way that would not get them kicked out of the institution (ie. they haven't agitated for any significant change in almost every case), and have decided not to leave it with full knowledge and in spite of its abuses.
If these people were really "just bad apples", this wouldn't be a problem anymore, as there have been literal decades to solve this.
See how that's different from a group defined by things you cannot control, like skin color?
I can't blame one person of a certain hue for the actions of a person of that same hue, because they don't share anything in common other than the hue.
Whereas police departments are 100% accountable for the actions of their members.
Today you learned, huh?
You dont think communities of people have the ability to enforce or influence behavior of the people in their community? If you watched the video I posted, or knew anything about psychology, you'd know that to be plainly false.
Often times in intense situations, maintaining objective emotional detachment rather than being overwhelmed by emotional knee jerk reactions can mean the difference between life and death, or a positive outcome and a negative one.
Cheering on indiscriminate hacking/doxxing of any/all police as an attempt to solve the problem is infantile, though, and demonstrates a naive ignorance of the root causes.
By only pointing a finger to the other side, you strongly hinted that the behavior of citizens was not only the cause of the behavior of police, you implied that it was also the solution to the problem of the behavior of police. This causal link may or may not be partially true, but nobody really cares about the cause, unless it helps with providing a solution to the problem. By only pointing to the cause, you imply that the solution to the problem lies there too, which, in this case, is both very questionable, and classic victim-blaming.
"A problem adequately stated is a problem solved theoretically and immediately, and therefore subsequently to be solved, realistically." -Buckminster Fuller
Anyone with any programming experience knows this.
You must have missed the very first thing I said in this comment chain: "I too dislike hyper aggressive militarized police who act above the law"
>nobody really cares about the cause, unless it helps with providing a solution to the problem. By only pointing to the cause, you imply that the solution to the problem lies there too, which, in this case, is both very questionable, and classic victim-blaming.
I'm startled to see so many people on a technical forum such as HN speaking as if they have no technical problem solving experience.
Imagine there was a critical bug in some software you are responsible for, causing massive distress for millions of users, even killing some. The first step in debugging an issue is to identify the cause(s), right? Imagine if your non technical boss had the gall to scold you for trying to identify the cause(s), saying "nobody really cares about the cause..by only pointing to the cause, you imply that the solution to the problem lies there too".
In this specific case, the problem of police behavior can partially be said to be caused by people behaving inappropriately towards police. Should therefore the solution be that people behave better towards police? How would you go about making that happen? This “solution” is impractical.
The solution to a problem is sometimes unrelated to its cause.
And, yes, nobody cares about any cause of a problem unless it helps coming up with a solution. If a system is complex enough, it is not logical to insist on analyzing it exhaustively to find all the root causes; it is more expedient to fix the problem some other way. And this is not even what you were doing; you pointed out one external factor and highlighted it, implying that the blame and the problem must be fixed there.
If this is the best example you can come up with to support your point, it's now safe to say your argument does not hold up to even basic scrutiny.
It seems like your argument boils down to this: dumb ideologues aren't good at analyzing the nuances of causes and effects because they are blinded by their doctrines, so we shouldn't bother doing it ourselves.
Only religious fundamentalists believe that the solution to unwanted pregnancies is abstinence. Intelligent scientists realized the world is nuanced, and complex, and thus created birth control pills, which has helped prevent untold amounts of human suffering.
>In this specific case, the problem of police behavior can partially be said to be caused by people behaving inappropriately towards police. Should therefore the solution be that people behave better towards police? How would you go about making that happen? This “solution” is impractical.
Learning how to get arrested peacefully and without struggle can obviously help decrease your chances of being harmed while be arrested. As you said, it's only at best a minor partial cause, so you're jumping to silly conclusions by suggesting that anyone is asserting that should be the singular solution to police brutality and militarization.
>The solution to a problem is sometimes unrelated to its cause.
Still waiting on a good example from you to support this seemingly facile hypothesis.
> Still waiting on a good example from you to support this seemingly facile hypothesis.
If your home is burglarized, the source of the problem is the burglar, but the solution might be better social policy. If you break a bone, the cause might be you being careless, but the solution is to see a doctor, who will fix the bone regardless of the cause. If there is a wide-spread narcotics addict problem, the problem is ultimately caused by addicts not having willpower to abstain, but the solution cannot be fixed by making them have more willpower, since we don’t know how to do that; the solution must be sought elsewhere.
Likewise, the problem of police behavior might or might not be entirely caused by citizens, but we can’t affect the behavior of citizens, and therefore we must fix the problem some other way.
There’s an expression which summarizes it: “Fix the problem, not the blame.” Expounded upon, for instance, here:
http://www.holliseaster.com/p/fix-the-problem-not-the-blame/
> anti-scientific ideologue, or just an idiot
Since you have now proceeded to name-calling, I think I will refrain from engaging further.