Monday, August 17, 2020

Why "re-sets" are necessary

Occam's Razor is often paraphrased as "The simplest explanation that fits the evidence is usually the correct one."

It should be obvious that Occam's Razor looks backwards in time.

A forward-looking corollary to Occam's Razor could be that given enough time, any finite set of starting assumptions will inevitably paint itself into a corner from which it cannot escape. 

Take the proposition that being an effective Law Enforcement Officer is totally independent of physical stature or ability.

In support of that contention, most people can point to a tiny wisp of a woman who is a great cop. If not a great cop, then some analog of a cop...perhaps a coach or phys-ed teacher.

If you take three steps back and look at the proposition: "Being an effective Law Enforcement Officer is totally independent of physical stature or ability" then certain logical difficulties pop up. Can a blind person be a great cop? How about a quadriplegic? 

I am not trying to be difficult. I am just pointing out that some parts of policing require the equivalent of a pick-ax and the blade of a Swiss Army knife will not suffice. While a blind cop or a quadriplegic cop can be great cops some of the time and under some circumstances, can they be great cops ALL the time?

But that observation, that parts of being an LEO are physical and 5th percentile woman (110 pounds) are not interchangeable with a 80th percentile man (230 pounds) is heresy to Progressives.

That leads to strange places and one of those places was the corner of 38th-and-Chicago in Minneapolis.

The same thinking that denies that there are any differences between petite women and husky men cannot turn around and declare that some methods of restraint are only permissible when used by women. That would be a de facto admission of what the Progressives consider an anathema: That the rules of engagement must be modified to make the job "doable" by women.

So a Progressive police force may find itself forced to allow riskier submission holds and methods based on the capabilities of a small portion of its force. They might train the cops to NOT USE THESE HOLDS unless absolutely necessary, but they cannot restrict them to a specific gender.

Thus, the politicians in Minnesota find themselves painted into a corner. While most people judge that what the cops did to George Floyd was excessive, the police can honestly state that they did exactly their department trained them to do.

They called for EMS. The subject refused to enter the squad car for transport. Policy undoubtedly had some form of weasel wording that recalcitrant subject were to be kept subdued for the safety of the public, the police and the subject himself.

Not only are the former-police likely to "walk", they are likely to counter-sue and get hefty settlements based on termination-without-cause and defamation-of-character.

It seems unlikely that the Progressives will have enough presence of mind to realize that they painted themselves into a corner and they need a "reset".

5 comments:

  1. I must make a confession here. About 15 years ago, I inadvertantly bounced a check for $28.50 . On my bank statement, there was a small box with an "x" in it, meaning that the check had not been paid, but I failed to notice that. Months later, two cops came to my house and arrested me. They handcuffed my hands behind my back, and took me to jail. I had to be bailed out and went to court and paid a fine of $100 . Later at work a co-worker told me about the petite female officer who cuffed me. He said that she came across a car-deer collision where the deer was not killed and was laying in the ditch. She was trying to put the deer out of his misery but MISSED with her first three shots from three feet away. I said jokingly
    that I should have run away instead of letting her cuff me.

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  2. Women should not be cops. Period.

    When I went through Marine Corp OCS in 1979, there was one platoon of female OCS candidates. (This was before women were allowed in the combat arms. These women were destined for mostly white collar MOS's in the Marines.) They were considered 'the best of the best' female candidates at that time.

    They simply could not cut the mustard. On six mile jogs with light gear, they would drop like flies. They kept our Navy corpsmen very busy. They could not perform at all on any task involving upper body strength. They were allowed to cheat on all exercises, such as sit-ups and pull-ups. Male officer candidates were washed out at the six week mark who were more physically capable than any of these women. And yet all of these women were graduated and commissioned as second lieutenants in the Marine Corps.

    Forty years later, nothing has changed. In a study completed last year at Twenty-Nine Palms, female Marines in the combat arms were shown to be FAR less capable and FAR more injury prone than the WEAKEST male Marines. When the day ever comes that US Marine forces go up against a peer adversary, to the extent that they have women in the ranks, they are going to get their asses handed to them.

    In a way, police officers are a para-military force operating on a sort of urban battlefield. There is no way that a 110 lb woman can effectively subdue a suspect like a 180 or 200 lb male officer. The woman officer will almost always require assistance. And because of their weakness, female officers are often much quicker to pull their service weapon and simply kill a suspect. Women do not belong in this occupation.

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    Replies
    1. This is all "If I Recall Correctly": There was an incident, probably in the early nineties in Florida, where a 110-lb female officer was assigned to escort a suspect double her size to some destination. The suspect got out of her control (surprise!), committed some mayhem, and took her hostage in a house. This made the national news.
      Overnight, she talked the suspect into surrendering, bringing the incident to a close without further bloodshed. It was quite a performance on her part. Not a performance, I wager, that many officers could duplicate.
      And yet, police departments have continued to assign female officers to dangerous duties. SMDH

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  3. -- Occam's Razor is often paraphrased as "The simplest explanation that fits the evidence is usually the correct one." --

    I shall say it -- nay, scream it -- until I turn blue: That is not the meaning of Occam's Razor! Indeed, it's almost the inverse of its meaning!

    Occam's Razor is a heuristic guideline. The simplest explanations -- i.e., the ones with the fewest parts -- are the ones that are easiest to test. Experimental design is simplest when there are the fewest "moving parts." That makes them the hypotheses to be tested first. But it does not make the simplest explanations any more likely to be correct than the other, more complex ones. Indeed, they may be less likely to be correct, given the tendency of the universe to favor multicausality!

    Please, take this to heart.

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  4. Murphy's law- everything that CAN go wrong will go wrong.
    Coles Law- a salad made with shredded cabbage and dressing.
    BTW- where I come from it is SLAW not cole slaw.

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