Killing people is the best solution.

That is no answer at all. You ignore that the criminal in question either acts from passion, and is therefore giving no thought to consequences; or acts with criminal intent, and believes that he or she will not be apprehended.

You write:

Quote:

It seems logical that people are less likely to commit an act when they stand a good chance of being punished than when they do not, and that the more severe and probably the punishment, the more of a deterrent it is.

I am pointing out that logic does not govern crimes of passion. Further, i am pointing out that those who willfully act with criminal intent do not believe they will be apprehended--it would illogical to commit a criminal act in the belief that one will surely be apprehended.

If there is a lack of logic here, it is yours in not thinking this through sufficiently.

Brandon9000 wrote:

Can you show a causal link? Without that, your graphs are meaningless.

Had I been trying to show a causal link, you would be correct. How's that shoe leather taste, dumbass?

However, if one believes the logic you enunciated in refusing to accept OB's graph, since there may be many factors in the mix affecting the murder rate, not just the death penalty, you have failed to show either correlation or lack of correlation with that single factor.

The correlation is obvious simply by looking at the graph, or you wouldn't be aware of it.

Because the correlation implies causation, you dolt.

Research reported in Homicide Studies, Vol. 1, No.2, May 1997, indicates that executions may actually increase the number of murders, rather than deter murders. Prof. Ernie Thomson at Arizona State University reported a brutalizing effect from an execution in Arizona, consistent with the results of a similar study in Oklahoma.

I'm sorry O'Bill, but it is you who is missing the point here. The whole purpose of the temperature/pirate graph (part of the original letter sent to the Kansas School Board on the first day of the FSMs universe) was to demonstrate that such "obvious correlations" are ridiculous without proven causation (as has been pointed out several times).

I don't believe for a second you are unaware of that, rather you seem to hoping to get your point through by force.

If you have honest scientific proof that the death penalty prevents serious crime, let's see it and discuss it like grown-ups.

Brandon9000 wrote:

However, if one believes the logic you enunciated in refusing to accept OB's graph, since there may be many factors in the mix affecting the murder rate, not just the death penalty, you have failed to show either correlation or lack of correlation with that single factor.

That's precisely my point. There is not the clear correlation that O'Bill attempted to postulate.

OCCOM BILL wrote:

The correlation is obvious simply by looking at the graph, or you wouldn't be aware of it.

The correlation between temperature and pirates is obvious, too.

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Because the correlation implies causation, you dolt.

No, Bill. Correlation does not imply causation. That's what it means when people say "correlation is not causation."

(Bill, using a bunch of smilies does not constitute an argument.)

Think about this again: You used the national murder rate, which includes murders in states that don't have the death penalty. You then graphed it next to the total number of executions, which only includes executions in states with the death penalty.

You seem to think you can bluster your way through this, but the fact is that your graph is absolute crap.

Because the correlation implies causation, you dolt.

Correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation

Sez you. PROVE IT. "Sez me" isn't proof... though it seems to be satisfactory to your choir.

Bill, I can only conclude that you are hopelessly confused.

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Because the correlation implies causation, you dolt.

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation

You cannot simply announce "this correlation implies causation because I say it does."

The burden is on you to show show relevance. Which you have failed to do. You want to say "the numbers speak for themselves" but the fact is, your numbers are flawed, your reasoning is flawed, and your argument is DOA.

In an article in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Dr. Jeffrey Fagan of Columbia University describes numerous serious errors in recent deterrence studies, including improper statistical analyses and missing data and variables that are necessary to give a full picture of the criminal justice system. Fagan writes, “There is no reliable, scientifically sound evidence that [shows that executions] can exert a deterrent effect…. These flaws and omissions in a body of scientific evidence render it unreliable as a basis for law or policy that generate life-and-death decisions. To accept it uncritically invites errors that have the most severe human costs.” Since the landmark Supreme Court decision in Furman v. Georgia in 1972, dozens of studies have been performed to determine whether future murderers are deterred by the death penalty. In the past five years, Fagan writes, a “new wave” of studies has emerged, claiming that each execution prevents 3-32 murders, depending on the study. Some of these studies tie pardons, commutations, exonerations, and even irrational murders of passion to increases in murder rates. While many of these studies have appeared in academic journals, they have been given an uncritical and favorable reception in leading newspapers. Fagan takes issue with this lack of serious and adequate peer review by fellow researchers. He analyzed this research and found that "this work fails the tests of rigorous replication and robustness analysis that are the hallmarks of good science."(4 Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 255 (2006))

John Donnohue and Justin Wolfers examined recent statistical studies that claimed to show a deterrent effect from the death penalty. The authors conclude that the estimates claiming that the death penalty saves numerous lives "are simply not credible." In fact, the authors state that using the same data and proper methodology could lead to the exact opposite conclusion: that is, that the death penalty actually increases the number of murders. The authors state: "We show that with the most minor tweaking of the [research] instruments, one can get estimates ranging from 429 lives saved per execution to 86 lives lost. These numbers are outside the bounds of credibility." (The Economists' Voice, April 2006).

Abstract:
Does the death penalty save lives? A surge of recent interest in this question has yielded a series of papers purporting to show robust and precise estimates of a substantial deterrent effect of capital punishment. We assess the various approaches that have been used in this literature, testing the robustness of these inferences. Specifically, we start by assessing the time series evidence, comparing the history of executions and homicides in the United States and Canada, and within the United States, between executing and non-executing states. We analyse the effects of the judicial experiments provided by the Furman and Gregg decisions and assess the relationship between execution and homicide rates in state panel data since 1934. We then revisit the existing instrumental variables approaches and assess two recent state-specific execution moratoria. In each case we find that previous inferences of large deterrent effects based upon specific samples, functional forms, control variables, comparison groups, or IV strategies are extremely fragile and even small changes in specifications yield dramatically different results. The fundamental difficulty is that the death penalty - at least as it has been implemented in the United States - is applied so rarely that the number of homicides that it can plausibly have caused or deterred cannot be reliably disentangled from the large year-to-year changes in the homicide rate caused by other factors. As such, short samples and particular specifications may yield large but spurious correlations. We conclude that existing estimates appear to reflect a small and unrepresentative sample of the estimates that arise from alternative approaches. Sampling from the broader universe of plausible approaches suggests not just 'reasonable doubt' about whether there is any deterrent effect of the death penalty, but profound uncertainty - even about its sign.

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Sez you. PROVE IT. "Sez me" isn't proof... though it seems to be satisfactory to your choir.

Bill, "sez me" is the entire extent of your argument. You have not, despite your bluster, proven anything.

If you want to say, "I believe this" then no one can argue with that. If you want to say "this proves me right" then you need to provide hard evidence. You have not done so. Belief in your own infallibility does not constitute winning an argument.