• Mossy Feathers (She/They)@pawb.social
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    1 year ago

    You don’t really understand how statistics work do you? Per capita can still get artificially skewed in favor of one breed or another. For an example, let’s say we have red Legos and blue Legos and statistics say that murderers are more likely to pick red Legos. As a result, more people pick blue Legos because they don’t want to be perceived as murderers, leaving the red Legos for murderers and people who are skeptical or ignorant of the statistics. The result will be that there’s a much higher number of murderers per-captia with red Legos than with blue Legos.

    The same can be applied to pitbulls. Create the story that pitbulls are man-killers, and the stats will get skewed as people looking for man-killers buy more pitbulls and people looking for companions intentionally avoid them. The result will be that there are more man-killer pitbulls per capita because that’s what they’re being trained for. It’s called a self-fullfilling prophecy. Maybe pitbulls truly do have a disposition for being man-killers, however their reputation means that the stats will be skewed in favor of the man-killers trait, as more people will buy them to make them man-killers.

    • LilB0kChoy@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      Maybe pitbulls truly do have a disposition for being man-killers

      Loved your comment, just wanted to chime in that what you’re referring to in the quoted portion above is commonly called gameness. Generally speaking it’s not that pit bulls are more prone to attack by default but their attacks are more unrelenting.

    • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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      1 year ago

      Nice story… except is misses a bunch of things…

      1. They were literally bred to fight and be murderers… So it’s not really a “story” in the fictional sense is it?
      2. None of this has stopped pit bulls from showing up everywhere (virtually every dog in shelters) even people who are just normal every day lives have this problem… (https://old.reddit.com/r/BanPitBulls/comments/18vhb4c/pitbull_runs_up_and_attacks_mother_and_her_dog/ as one example, you can scroll the subreddit and seen thousands more at your leisure.)
      3. Rottweilers ALSO have this “man killer” representation… yet doesn’t have this same problem per capita. As a matter of fact, many other dog breeds have equal or WORSE reputations DO NOT have this problem.

      So you can about some statistical story of legos… but that isn’t the reality we’re living in here. If anything you’ve provided more evidence that they should be destroyed (and I’m not in favor of actual destruction, but mandatory spay/nueter and make it illegal to breed them is more in line with my idea of an answer).

      • Mossy Feathers (She/They)@pawb.social
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        1 year ago

        You’re missing the fact that I’m specifically addressing your decision to present “per captia” as being definitive proof of pitbulls being man-killers. I even stated that it’s entirely possible that they could, in fact, truly be man-killers, however the stats could be skewed so “per captia” can’t be the definitive proof.

        If you want a real-world example of “per captia” being falsely skewed, look up stats on crime or IQ per race. You’ll find they’re heavily skewed against black people. However, if you continue to dig, you’ll find there are plenty of reasons to question the validity of those stats.

        • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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          1 year ago

          If you want a real-world example of “per captia” being falsely skewed, look up stats on crime or IQ per race. You’ll find they’re heavily skewed against black people. However, if you continue to dig, you’ll find there are plenty of reasons to question the validity of those stats.

          Yes this would imply that there’s only one body conducting these sorts of stats under just one metric. Except this is universal. Which is why I, in other comments, have pointed out crowdsourced lists as well… Showing that it’s not just the stats from the USA coming to this conclusion.

          The reason measuring IQ by race is an issue is because IQ isn’t even a good metric to measure intelligence anyway. Thus people who say that black people are less intelligent by measurement of IQ are morons from the get-go. And I never made “per capita” as my only proof. You’re just focused on that and have read other threads.

          • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Crowdsourcing info from people that aren’t experts and can’t tell the difference between a Pitbull and an American bulldog or a boxer, truly we’ve reached the peak of the scientific method!