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> > From: Gar Lipow <the.typo.boy at gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] German school gunman 'kills 16'
> > To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> > Date: Thursday, March 12, 2009, 10:53 PM
> > One type of killing, school killings are actually lower
> > today than
> > they were in the 60's. (Of course the 60's and
> > early 70's had
> > especially higher levels of internal U.S. violence than the
> > present -
> > at least the present through 2007. Don't know figures
> > for 2008, or the
> > past few months, yet.) So I'd want to see statistics
> > before I was
> > convinced that this kind of "spree" killing is
> > higher today than at
> > other times in recent history.
> >
>
>
> [WS:] I do not think we should apply one-size-fits-all statistical
> approach here. I think there is a difference between central tendencies in
> a population and individual cases that, while being "outliers" in the
> statistical sense, are nonetheless highly indicative. For example, to study
> religion in some remote village, you may take a "statistical" approach and
> interview a number of villagers and then tally their responses to compose a
> picture of the religion in question. Or you may interview the village
> priest, and get a very different picture that way. What is more, the latter
> may be a more accurate picture even though it is based on a sample of one
> (an anathema in statistical inference.)
>
> So bringing this to the discussion of school violence, we need to
> distinguish between propensity toward violence in general population, and
> seemingly isolated "high profile" cases, such as shooting sprees.
>
Sorry, I sort of agree, but this is a very different type of violence... We've got to recognise this... This is violence without purpose, this is pure destruction. And it seems to be spreading. In all honesty, you're the one who brought it up; you're the one who was shocked by it.