zlacker

What precisely did I say that makes you think I'm trying to excuse, rather than explain? Is it merely the fact that I am not completely overwhelmed with rage against everyone who has the same job as the people who killed George Floyd and others?

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.

>>banads+(OP)
> What precisely did I say that makes you think I'm trying to excuse, rather than explain?

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.

>>teddyh+d42
>By only pointing a finger to the other side

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".

>>banads+Zh6
The causes in this case are myriad and complex. I should have said “By only pointing to the external cause…”. By ignoring the non-external causal factors, you appear to be trying to shift blame from failure of police themselves to some external factor. Which is victim-blaming.

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.

>>teddyh+iR7
Nope, analyzing various social dynamics between two interrelated parties is not "victim blaming", its basic social science. Anyone trying to use a univariate analysis to explain human social relationships is an anti-scientific ideologue, or just an idiot.

>>banads+t3d
The original post, which is what we are discussing, did not do any “analyzing [of] various social dynamics”. On the contrary, it pointed the finger squarely at one external factor – the behavior of victims of police – and left it at that. If that’s not victim-blaming, I don’t know what is.

> anti-scientific ideologue, or just an idiot

Since you have now proceeded to name-calling, I think I will refrain from engaging further.