[Macros]

Dystopia JPK, he clearly meant Dystopia

[JPK]

One man's trash?

[Abyss]

DISARMINATORS FTW!!!!!!

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

JPK, on 17 December 2025 - 07:06 PM, said:

It's just like Macros was saying above you, one bloody step. You're jumping away ahead to a forced disarming, when we haven't got common sense gun laws on the books. How about we start by looking at repealing the Dickey and Tiahrt amendments so that we can actually gather research on guns. I understand that both of these were put into place under the guise of privacy, but those two amendments have hampered actual useful data for decades.

Finally, even if we do move into your disarming robot utopia, who controls the machines? I don't see it going over well if it's State run, but what corporation do you trust with this? Cause last I looked, almost all of the likely contenders are arm in arm with the current administration. Which isn't exactly promising in regards to moving towards a theoretical utopia.

Unfortunately the only "baby steps" we'll likely get on this in the red areas for the foreseeable future are crying, sleeping, temper tantrums, and making terrible grotesque bodily messes while keeping the adults over in the blue states up at night...

Macros, on 17 December 2025 - 07:21 PM, said:

Dystopia JPK, he clearly meant Dystopia

It's the MAGA version that I'd consider truly dystopian. Not what I'd call the progressive version of it. But I understand why most people would view it as "dystopian" and invasive.

In general I do honestly think that many of the dystopian scenarios science fiction has taught us to reflexively abhor can be adjusted to make them more likely to be on the utopian side. Thought experiments about what could go horribly wrong are good, but they should be tempered by considering how to avert the issues being raised (perhaps each such dystopian story could present multiple possible futures, in which civilizations try various ways to avert or largely ameliorate the risks---if well-researched and based on empirical evidence, that would be much better and more useful) and also by philosophical consideration about whether our current, modern knee-jerk reactions may be wrong (in part because it was through such questioning of older knee-jerk reactionary impulses that modern civilizations arrived at many of our current reflexive ethical assumptions and emotional reactions).

And I'd be reluctant to use the term "utopia", though we can certainly make progress.

On robots in particular: police are already using robots to help deal with explosives and mass shooters, and as better robots are developed, in those cases where a court order has been obtained to legally confiscate fire-arms, I do think that bullet-proof robots equipped with nonlethal weapons may be a better option---once they can be designed to be practical, which might take a long time I acknowledge. One additional reason I forgot to mention, though it's a very important one: police in the US will insist on going in armed with live ammunition, and will end up shooting people. Robots also carry risks that might be difficult to avert or mitigate---falling over onto people, malfunctioning---but they seem significantly less likely to kill people than modern American police are.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 17 December 2025 - 07:50 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Quote

Social scientists have recently conducted extensive experiments that confirm that US gun violence can actually be drastically reduced without banning guns. Take this remarkable study from the University of Pennsylvania. They tried something almost absurdly simple. Working with the city of Philadelphia, they mapped tens of thousands of vacant lots scattered across its neighborhoods. Then they randomly selected around 550 lots and cleaned them up, trimming the grass, removing the trash, and clearing the broken bottles and needles. These spaces went from abandoned wastelands to usable open community space. This simple change turned out to be a gamechanger.

[...] When someone intervenes early, whether it's a neighbor, a passer by, or a security guard, violence is not simply postponed. It's prevented because the moment of escalation has passed and therefore a snap decision of violence that would turn a life around is never made. The second behavioral solution that actually works focuses on self interruptions, helping individuals manage those tense, emotionally charged 10-minute windows themselves. This approach closely mirrors what psychologists describe as cognitive behavioral techniques[... and] social cognitive skills designed to help participants slow down, evaluate situations more clearly, and make wiser decisions in moments when their impulses might otherwise take over.

Not a substitute for banning guns of course, but it's progress. Would also be interesting to see how effective technological variations on these interventions might be (in rigorous peer-reviewed studies).

Philadelphia has had the fewest murders this year (so far) since 1966.

Though if Trump tries to send the military here that might change... (nah, probably not---well, not very soon...)

Other promising band-aids (to pad the gaping gory hole where good government ought to be, and instead we have a howling (and tweeting) vacuum of insanity):

Quote

scientists have now developed a new composite material that is stronger, tougher and better at stopping bullets than Kevlar even though it is much thinner. Their study is published in the journal Matter. [...] its ability to absorb energy more than doubled the previous record[...] When woven into a fabric, this new super-fiber showed superior anti-ballistic performance compared to current protective fabrics.

https://phys.org/new...r-stronger.html

[Tsundoku]

Azath Vitr (D, on 26 December 2025 - 05:41 PM, said:

Social scientists have recently conducted extensive experiments that confirm that US gun violence can actually be drastically reduced without banning guns. Take this remarkable study from the University of Pennsylvania. They tried something almost absurdly simple. Working with the city of Philadelphia, they mapped tens of thousands of vacant lots scattered across its neighborhoods. Then they randomly selected around 550 lots and cleaned them up, trimming the grass, removing the trash, and clearing the broken bottles and needles. These spaces went from abandoned wastelands to usable open community space. This simple change turned out to be a gamechanger.

[...] When someone intervenes early, whether it's a neighbor, a passer by, or a security guard, violence is not simply postponed. It's prevented because the moment of escalation has passed and therefore a snap decision of violence that would turn a life around is never made. The second behavioral solution that actually works focuses on self interruptions, helping individuals manage those tense, emotionally charged 10-minute windows themselves. This approach closely mirrors what psychologists describe as cognitive behavioral techniques[... and] social cognitive skills designed to help participants slow down, evaluate situations more clearly, and make wiser decisions in moments when their impulses might otherwise take over.
[size="2"][b]

Isn't that pretty much the "Broken Windows" theory?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Tsundoku, on 27 December 2025 - 12:09 AM, said:

Azath Vitr (D, on 26 December 2025 - 05:41 PM, said:

Social scientists have recently conducted extensive experiments that confirm that US gun violence can actually be drastically reduced without banning guns. Take this remarkable study from the University of Pennsylvania. They tried something almost absurdly simple. Working with the city of Philadelphia, they mapped tens of thousands of vacant lots scattered across its neighborhoods. Then they randomly selected around 550 lots and cleaned them up, trimming the grass, removing the trash, and clearing the broken bottles and needles. These spaces went from abandoned wastelands to usable open community space. This simple change turned out to be a gamechanger.

[...] When someone intervenes early, whether it's a neighbor, a passer by, or a security guard, violence is not simply postponed. It's prevented because the moment of escalation has passed and therefore a snap decision of violence that would turn a life around is never made. The second behavioral solution that actually works focuses on self interruptions, helping individuals manage those tense, emotionally charged 10-minute windows themselves. This approach closely mirrors what psychologists describe as cognitive behavioral techniques[... and] social cognitive skills designed to help participants slow down, evaluate situations more clearly, and make wiser decisions in moments when their impulses might otherwise take over.
[size="2"][b]

Isn't that pretty much the "Broken Windows" theory?

No---they may seem superficially similar but for the most part they're very different.

The main dispositive causal factor seems to be that there are more people around who are likely to intervene when an argument appears to be getting excessively heated.

Granted, there may also be a general calming effect from more green space, actual grass/trees/flowers, and from things looking "nicer". An environment that suggests the government or the neighbors actually care about taking care of the neighborhood. So there could be some overlap with an aspect of "broken windows" there---but the real focus of the "broken windows" theory is on law enforcement's response to minor infractions by terrorizing the neighborhood in an attempt to find and in many cases arrest, jail, and fine the perpetrators of every minor infraction, not on actually repairing the damn broken windows.

And that "broken windows" theory has been extensively debunked by the actual data on its effectiveness.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 27 December 2025 - 12:29 AM