Monday, May 21, 2007

You don't say

For those of you who might be unconvinced, up to this morning, posts on this very blog provide credence to these assertions.

9 comments:

Mr roT said...

Are you saying you should have joined up?

Arelcao Akleos said...

Try this, berks statistico. Instead of looking at the percentage of vets in prison who are in prison for sex offenses, how about looking at the percentage of sex offenders in prison who are vets and then compare that to the percentage of vets in population of adult males.
In fact, the article as a whole admits that the rate of incarceration for vets is half that of the population. Which means that as a whole respect for law, and the moral within, is substantially higher among vets than non vets.
To the extent that the vagaries of the sexual impulse is a natural distribution, and so more resistant to cultural pressures, the more you would expect it to be able to resist the however otherwise effective acculturation of the american military.
That is, you would EXPECT the proportion of vets incarcerated for sexual offenses to be higher precisely because as a whole the moral conscience must strive much harder against the sexual drive than need do against narcissism, lying,cheating, cowardice, avarice, and other Versaillsims.
To paraphrase an old childrens' ditty "Send the Pepe to Angola"

Mr roT said...

you make perversion sound like a virtue...

Arelcao Akleos said...

?

Mr roT said...

seems you're saying that military types beat the crap out of girls because they aren't narcissistic

Arelcao Akleos said...

?

reread, Tejas. Heck, let's make it pseudo-aristotelian.

As a group yank vets maintain a higher moral discipline than non vets. Let's assume (big assuumption) this has to do with the acculturation of life in the military.
[note vets have half, only half, of the incarceration rate of nonvets. This in total. This from the article].
The sexual drive, in all its variations, is more resistant to the moral discipline than most aspects of human conduct.
Combining a lower overall rate of nasty behavior, with a smaller reduction in the rate of nasty sexual behavior, we get a higher percentage of such crimes among vets even as the rate of such crimes among vets is lower than that of the general population.
So we expect a higher rate of such crime, among INCARCERATED vets, even as the rates of incarceration among vets are far lower than the general population.
Which is why I pointed out to Le Pew that the article doesn't address how the percentage of vets among sexual criminals compares to the percentage of vets in the population. My bet is that it is lower than it is for the general population, but not as much lower as for overall criminality
As for Narcissim, Avarice, Lying, Cheating, Cowardice, and other fine Versaillian traits, the moral self discipline, let us call this a live conscience, is simply better at these at bay [they do seem far more dependent on culture than biology, at least in comparison to sexuality].
Conscience is a hindrance Versailles would rather do without. Much better for kneeling down and letting those sins of omission pile up

Mr roT said...

Sounds reasonableish.

Arelcao Akleos said...

Just looking at the numbers in the article there is something that leaps out. In raw number, assuming the data in this article, there are roughly 140 cases for 100,000 vets versus 125 for 100,000 general population.
Men are roughly 90% of vets, and roughly 50% of general population.
As sex crime cases are here negligible [ roughly 1%] that means that the percentage rate for incarceration for sex crimes among nonvet MEN is substantially higher than for vet men.
Unless the actual study has data far different than has been quoted in the article [and the media can certainly get it all arglebargled to Pepe's satisfaction], PPs conclusion is perversely wrong.
As the researcher himself said, according to the article, what one can take away from this study is that rates of incarceration for vets are substantially lower than for the general population [without even factoring for gender], not that rates of sexual deviancy are higher among vets.
But now we know the sort of careful analysis of data one picks up from the high technical towers of Berkeley

Arelcao Akleos said...

note " As sex crime cases are here negligible "
should have read "As sex crime case among women are here negligible".