Trump Disrespects Military... again

[_Jersey Girl]

You people need to get your crap together.

EA's claim was correct. He said that military was over represented (actually he said severely--not sure I agree) in the mass killer population. Whatever.

I made the same mistake everyone else here is making, that's how I know. I tend to follow stories about serial killers. I look at their personal histories for details about their childhoods and other circumstances of their lives leading up to the onset of their killings. Call it an interest area. Military is not over represented in serial killers.

That's not what EA was talking about. He was talking about mass killers.

Other's have repeated the same mistake throughout the exchanges. I'm pretty sure that EA himself repeated the same mistake but I haven't read the entirety of the paper that Cam posted. It does appear that the paper was about serial killers.

Mass killers and serial killers are two different types of murderers.

EA what the hell are you talking about?

[_Jersey Girl]

No. He referred to mass killers.

Well. The first goalpost he aimed for was this:

I wasn't addressing that at all. I addressed the issue of mass vs serial killers. because I felt like sticking my nose into this. People continued to refer to serial killers and if I am not mistaken, the paper you posted was about serial killers.

EA is quoted as making a claim about mass killers.

I know what his claims have been. I've followed the thread since it started because military.

[_Jersey Girl]

Are you not able to read what this means? The conclusion you are quoting concerns whether military serial murderers are better at killing than their non-military counterparts. The paper was interested in whether military training makes for more efficient murderers. It finds that there's no difference how much they kill. This is not addressing the question of whether military affiliated people are more likely to be mass murderers. It looks at about 2000 cases and finds a higher % of them than there are military affiliated people in the general population are mass murderers.

This is you literally unable to process your own source and calling people liars because they don't misread it like you do.

Okay you didn't repeat the same mistake that others were making. You were correct in your original claim, though I wouldn't cast it as severely.

[_Kevin Graham]

You do know how ratios work, right?

Yes, do you?

Surprised no one has mentioned this yet, but you don't account for the fact that this study was published 2001 when the percentage of veterans was greater than 7%. It was 18% in 1980, and roughly 7% in 2016.

But you seem to think you hit a bulls-eye by correlating 7% from a 2001 study about serial killers and an article from 538 saying 7.3% of the population were veterans 13 years later!

You also don't control for the number of veterans who were drafted, which is a huge oversight because obviously drafted are exempt from what EA said about people choosing to enlist. In 2016 45% of all Veterans served during the draft period, in which 2.2 million were drafted.

538 also refers to veterans only and doesn't include the roughly 2 million active military personnel + reservists.

But please, tell us more about ratios.

[Guest]

I talked about mass murderers, not serial killers. Spree killers are mass murderers, but not serial killers. Helpfully, the paper goes into detail about mass murders of which serial killers are one subset. This paper finds in the group it analyzes about 10% of the population of mass murderers are military affiliated against 7% of the population. It's not too far off the 1.5x number I ballparked from memory.

You did, but then you moved in the direction of the paper which I helpfully quoted because context. Kevin seems to have missed a page in the discussion or something.

When the paper cites the data from the dive into the mass killer data base, it identifies the following (pg 37, Results):

Of the 2,052 cases in Dr. Aamodt’s Serial Killer Database (2012), the majority of the killers were male (88.1%). The average victim count was 10 with a killing career average of 4 years. The average killer started when they were 29 and stopped when they were 33. The majority of the cases didn’t rape or torture their victims. After death, the majority of the killers did not mutilate, eat or have sex with the body. Of the records that indicate nationality, 60.6% (1,243) of the cases were from the US. The U.S. sample had 147 cases (11.8%) that served in the military. Worldwide, only 12.8% (190 cases) of the serial murderers had served in some form of military (See Figure 1) and all were males.

Based on those numbers, it puts the ratio of mass killers who served v. those who didn't above base population ratio about where you stated. Fair enough on that point. If this is you backing off of the initial comment about severe over-representation to "for every one person who has killed multiple people in a criminal event there is one-and-a-half persons who had military backgrounds of some kind who killed multiple people in a criminal event", then cool.

The paper is interesting in that it also identifies the same pool as serving an average of four years and leaving service with an average rank of E-3. I'm sure the ability to rise in the ranks ebbs and flows over time, but leaving service after a four year enlistment as an E-3 today would indicate problems rather than effectiveness if looking at the larger question of whether or not such persons are finding a successful home in the Armed Services.

[Guest]

Notice from this database that the number of ex-military who are murderers far outnumber 25.

You do know how ratios work, right?

You do know how ratios work, right?

Yes, do you?

Surprised no one has mentioned this yet, but you don't account for the fact that this study was published 2001 when the percentage of veterans was greater than 7%. It was 18% in 1980, and roughly 7% in 2016.

But you seem to think you hit a bulls-eye by correlating 7% from a 2001 study about serial killers and an article from 538 saying 7.3% of the population were veterans 13 years later!

You also don't control for the number of veterans who were drafted, which is a huge oversight because obviously drafted are exempt from what EA said about people choosing to enlist. In 2016 45% of all Veterans served during the draft period, in which 2.2 million were drafted.

538 also refers to veterans only and doesn't include the roughly 2 million active military personnel + reservists.

But please, tell us more about ratios.

25 had a denominator. In fact, EA made a point to want to change that number...you know. Math.

ETA: The study numbers in the paper go back to WWI. We're not talking about a snap shot of the population, we're making big, dick-swinging BS claims based on some random dude's comment about how conservatives would be upset if you told them they think baby-killers are heroes because obviously. It's the kind of funny comment I expect from super liberal types and put it in that box as about as credible as afterhours chitchat should considered. Now we're playing the confabulation game because..., well because. "Subtract draftees out of here, but not the otherside...EA said this then but this subtopic was actually about something other than psychopaths...yeah!"

Anyway. Ratios.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

No. He referred to mass killers.

Well. The first goalpost he aimed for was this:

I wasn't addressing that at all. I addressed the issue of mass vs serial killers. because I felt like sticking my nose into this. People continued to refer to serial killers and if I am not mistaken, the paper you posted was about serial killers.

EA is quoted as making a claim about mass killers.

I know what his claims have been. I've followed the thread since it started because military.

The point I was making he's been shifting the argument around because his original assertion is BS. That said,

The investigator researched serial killers, spree killers and mass murderers to determine a list of subjects with military backgrounds.

The researcher concluded there wasn't really a statistical difference between the military and civilian murderers, mass or serial.

It's a tough row to hoe when you're talking about identifying and tracking psychopaths anywhere, so perhaps that's why the conversation shifted to something quantifiable like murdering. That's my best guess, anyway.

-Doc

[_Jersey Girl]

I see what you're saying. Thanks for explaining.

[_Jersey Girl]

Well. The first goalpost he aimed for was this:

The US military attracts psychopaths who get off on authority and hurting people... This is objectively true.

He then subsequently doubled down on his statement above followed by:

It's such a harmless truism that it shouldn't be a problem to acknowledge,

His position has since bounced around with no sourcing, tripling down, and then reframing reality which I find utterly bizarre because he thinks everyone is so daft they don't notice when he does it.

- Doc

I didn't completely acknowledge what you said here. Apologies.

What you're saying is that his claim regarding psychopaths/military/objectively true was non-proveable so he shifted to the military as severely over-represented in terms of mass killers as a form of misdirection.

There seems to be some stereotypical thinking at play. But I can't say for sure.

[_EAllusion]

The military and non-military population had no statistically significant difference in kill count, active killing career or total killing career.

Weird how EAllusion can literally look reality in the face and be like, "The paper one hundred percent proved that the military population kills at 30 times the rate of the non-military population."

It's just ____ ing bizarre.

eta: What we're going to see is more goalpost shifting, claims that we're incapable of reading, and then EAllusion will set about claiming something objectively r____ is, in fact, brilliant and the truth.

- Doc

Either you didn't read the paper that you tried to throw in my face or you don't understand it. The paper takes a look at a pool of people who are military-affiliated mass murderers and those who are non-military affiliated mass murderers. It wants to know if the ones who were in the military killed differently than those who were not because it wants to know if military training impacts that. It finds no significant difference. That's the part you are quoting. This is a separate question from whether military mass murderers are over-represented relative to the total population. For that question, it finds that yes, they are over-represented. And you take your inability to understand your own source as a basis to go on unhinged attacks.