Why am I no longer an anarchist

[teo123]

also learned not to take hardline positions on things he doesn't know much about?

My friend, if it's not obvious for the gun debate which side is right, for which debate it is obvious? Which theory is better supported by the empirical evidence: the Gary Kleck's theory that there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of defensive gun uses per year in the US, or the brimstone's theory that there are somewhere around 2'000 defensive gun uses per year in the US? You can argue that NCVS'es study is telling the truth and that there are somewhere in the neighbourhood of 100'000 defensive gun uses per year in the US (that Gary-Kleck-like studies suffer from massive telescoping or something like that), but the brimstone's claims are just indefensible.

It's your immense ignorance leading you to absurd conclusions.

I am not "immensely ignorant" about social sciences, I've published a few papers in peer-reviewed journals about them. And the latest one is rather rigorous (with a lot of math), arguing that it follows from the basics of information theory (collision entropy and birthday paradox) that the probability of that k-r pattern in the Croatian river names occurring by chance is somewhere between 1/300 and 1/17.

Hitler not taking over Switzerland mainly had to do with its geography since it was in the mountains

You realize Hitler attacked Russia in winter, right? That's way more geographically stupid than attacking Switzerland.

Unless of course you think we should bring back conscription.

Well, Croatia will bring back military conscription in 2025. I have mixed feelings about that. On a plus side, it's better if people know basics of how to handle firearms. Free market arguably doesn't incentivize people enough to learn the basics of handling firearms by themselves. On a negative side, we might be provoking Serbia (and, to some extent, Bosnia and Herzegovina) with that.

On top of all that, are you really going to say with a straight face that Hitler was intimidated by civilians with guns but didn't have any reservations with taking on the Red Army, the world's largest army at the time?

Well, yes. Armed civilians are more of a threat to a would-be dictator than an army is.

I'm curious what nutjob you heard this nugget from.

Shane Killian.

That sounds like a confounding variable to me.

He claimed not that it's possible that it's so, but that it is so. Without evidence.

Why oh why are you clinging endlessly to this shitty study with godawful controls and methodology that has been criticized by other social scientists?

My friend, to me it seems that that study is about as good as the most rigorous studies in linguistic typology.

Even amongst "experts" the issue is divided along party lines and their positions are motivated by ideological reasoning (both on the left and right).

Er... No. Gary Kleck is rather openly a left-winger.

In order for something to be mainstream science it has to be consensus, one dubious phone-study from a partisan sociologist doesn't qualify.

Gary Kleck is not a right-winger and there seems to be a consensus. There have been dozens of Gary-Kleck-like studies done over the years, each with a slightly different methodology, and every single reaching the conclusion that there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of defensive gun uses per year.

[Red]

My friend, if it's not obvious for the gun debate which side is right, for which debate it is obvious? Which theory is better supported by the empirical evidence: the Gary Kleck's theory that there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of defensive gun uses per year in the US, or the brimstone's theory that there are somewhere around 2'000 defensive gun uses per year in the US? You can argue that NCVS'es study is telling the truth and that there are somewhere in the neighbourhood of 100'000 defensive gun uses per year in the US (that Gary-Kleck-like studies suffer from massive telescoping or something like that), but the brimstone's claims are just indefensible.

brimstone already explained why the study you cited was dog shit, but I guess you just skipped over that part. I'm not gonna explain it.

I'm not sure if brimstone made any hard-line claims here on the topic, but that doesn't mean he can't critique the study.

I am not "immensely ignorant" about social sciences, I've published a few papers in peer-reviewed journals about them. And the latest one is rather rigorous (with a lot of math), arguing that it follows from the basics of information theory (collision entropy and birthday paradox) that the probability of that k-r pattern in the Croatian river names occurring by chance is somewhere between 1/300 and 1/17.

And here we are back at the Teo bragging about publishing research papers on obscure subjects and thinking it makes him an expert on social sciences.

You realize Hitler attacked Russia in winter, right? That's way more geographically stupid than attacking Switzerland.

Do you realize that Operation Barbarossa was launched in June? And Hitler wanted to launch it earlier but was delayed because he had to bail out Mussolini in Greece and intervene in the coup happening in Yugoslavia?

Hitler was very well aware of the brutal conditions of the Russian winters, which is why he carried out his invasion during the beginning of the summer. Hitler just expected the operation to be successful before the winter started since he thought it would be easy given the Soviet's failure in the Winter War with Finland, and also because he thought he was sort of unstoppable after he took France. Of course, trying to take on the USSR with its massive size, population and pool of resources was arguably a lost cause from the start.

C'mon Teo, how many fucking times do we have to tell you do to some basic fact-checking?

Well, Croatia will bring back military conscription in 2025. I have mixed feelings about that. On a plus side, it's better if people know basics of how to handle firearms. Free market arguably doesn't incentivize people enough to learn the basics of handling firearms by themselves. On a negative side, we might be provoking Serbia (and, to some extent, Bosnia and Herzegovina) with that.

I'm guessing it's because countries are worried about the Russian invasion potentially spilling over into other countries. You could make the argument that it's good to have a trained population that could defend itself (as Switzerland was during WW2), but it's absurd to think civilians alone would be able to take on the Russian army (especially since they don't have the geographic advantages Switzerland has).

On top of all that, are you really going to say with a straight face that Hitler was intimidated by civilians with guns but didn't have any reservations with taking on the Red Army, the world's largest army at the time?

Well, yes. Armed civilians are more of a threat to a would-be dictator than an army is.

Then you're an idiot, Teo. Maybe take some time to educate yourself on the Eastern Front of WW2, particularly after Stalingrad, when it became a defensive war for the Nazis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_F ... inter_1942

In France there were resistance movements, but these were pretty obscure and didn't take more of an effect until the Allies liberated the country, but even before that they were mostly working to sabotage the Nazis instead of fully taking them on.

Shane Killian.

I recall him saying a lot of pretty nutty things so that's par for the course. But come on Teo, I figured you'd at least be somewhat familiar with WW2 history.

He claimed not that it's possible that it's so, but that it is so. Without evidence.

Yeah I'm gonna need you to highlight what in particular you were referring to. No doubt you misunderstood something here.

Why oh why are you clinging endlessly to this shitty study with godawful controls and methodology that has been criticized by other social scientists?

My friend, to me it seems that that study is about as good as the most rigorous studies in linguistic typology.

So barely reliable if at all, gotcha.

Er... No. Gary Kleck is rather openly a left-winger.

Oh yeah so that doesn't mean he can't have biases on partisan issues.

Gary Kleck is not a right-winger and there seems to be a consensus. There have been dozens of Gary-Kleck-like studies done over the years, each with a slightly different methodology, and every single reaching the conclusion that there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of defensive gun uses per year.

I tried finding a professional organization that stated a clear consensus, but what I said earlier: This is a topic that's plagued with political bullshit. I would take whatever I read on it with a massive grain of salt. All in all, it isn't even something I care about that much, veganism and global poverty for example are much more important and pressing.

[brimstoneSalad]

You, on the other hand, talk out of your ass and come to constant wrong conclusions such as believing the Earth is flat, believing bombs don't exist because you don't understand basic thermodynamics, etc.

Sure, but I admit when I get things wrong. You, on the other hand, as far as I know, have never admitted that you got things wrong.

After days and days of arguing to explain things to you, sometimes you admit it, sometimes it still takes months more.
Do you not understand how rude you are being by taking these absurd positions over and over, spamming them, and then expecting others to explain repeatedly why you are wrong and teach you things like basic physics?

It would be fine if that were a one time deal, where I show you how your thinking is flawed and you are more careful and considerate in the future -- but it is not. It is a pattern of disrespectful behavior and a fundamental failure to change your underlying mindset. If I waste time engaging on this matter and eventually convince you that you are wrong in your certitude and confidence in these supposed studies, you will turn around and embrace another absurd belief to bring back here, like a deranged cat catching and killing bird after bird to drop at the feet of a disgusted person. You never learn, and you will never learn. I don't know if this is due to your mental illness, or it's just a really terrible character flaw.

I don't care to discuss the gun issue, because it's not a big issue in terms of harm footprint in the world, and because you're just obnoxious to have any kind of conversation with. Anybody who spends any time conversing with you mourns the loss of his or her time doing so when he or she could be doing something more pleasurable like prying out his or her own fingernails with a rusty spoon.

This repeated behavior has made people not like you Teo. And I don't mean the "good" kind of not liking somebody as in that person ruffles feathers and asks difficult questions, I mean profound annoyance. You need to reflect on that and consider if you want to start doing some of your own legwork in figuring out why bad beliefs are bad -- leg work that MOST of us do ahead of time before we adopt a belief and start proselytizing on it.

There are plenty of things I have initially believed, only to be convinced otherwise with a cursory Google search without having to waste somebody else's time.
When I was younger, I probably did waste people's time with some bad beliefs, but then I learned to stop doing that.

If I am less wrong, it's because I put in the work Teo, not because I don't admit when I'm wrong.
Like I have told you many times, I'm also much more careful about talking on topics I don't know much about.

OK, I've sent this e-mail to my economics professor:

Pozdrav, profesorice Crnjac-Milić!
Ovdje Teo Samaržija, bivši student FERIT-a. Ne znam sjećate li me se, pretpostavljam da ne. Dobio sam dvojku iz Ekonomike poduzeća.
Jedna stvar u vezi ekonomije nejasna mi je, i volio bih da mi je netko pojasni. Ako se cijena stočne hrane poveća, hoće li se i cijena mesa povećati? U marksističkoj ekonomiji i Adam Smithovoj ekonomiji, odgovor je očit: povećat će se. Te ekonomske teorije bazirane su na labour theory of value. Ali moderne ekonomske teorije kažu da je labour theory of value kriva. Pa što onda one kažu po tom pitanju? Meni to nije očito. Očito, na povećanje cijene proizvodnje u svom poduzeću ne smiješ odgovarati tako da povećaš cijenu proizvoda: ako staviš cijenu veću od tržišne (cijene koju određuje odnos ponude i potražnje), dodatno ćeš si smanjiti profite. Ali što se događa makroekonomski kada se svima koji nešto proizvode poveća cijena proizvodnje? Što se dogodi kad cijena proizvodnje nekog proizvoda skoči iznad tržišne cijene tog istog proizvoda? Prestaje li onda taj proizvod biti dostupan na tržištu? Ili ostaje dostupan, samo po većoj cijeni?
Meni se čini da to ima velike implikacije. Primjerice, imaju li smisla poljoprivredni poticaji kao pokušaj da se smanji cijena hrane (nauštrb, naravno, većih poreza)? Isto tako, ima li smisla za porast cijena kriviti porast minimalne plaće?
Unaprijed zahvaljujem na odgovoru!

Well done. Now just go back in time and do that before you asserted your position here.
At minimum, do that next time.

You can also find a lot of this information just on the web. The initial results I linked you do indicate clearly (by industry sources) that it does. So if reality is in disagreement with your theory, then you should at least re-evaluate and stop being so sure of yourself here before implying conspiracy theories like mainstream industry sources are lying about something so objectively verifiable.

In the least you need to do a better job of looking for concordance between different lines of evidence on things.

Find a new conspiracy theory.

OK, what do you think about the conspiracy theory that Rosetta 2 doesn't exist?

I don't know anything about the topic.

The softness of science isn't just about what you assume the P value of things to be, it's in the underlying assumptions and the methodology.

Now it seems to me that you are shifting the goals post-hoc.

Your seeming is incorrect. You should re-read what I've said on soft sciences in the past.

Cognitive or political biases of the people answering, lying in the responses because people want to represent guns favorably or feel pressure to answer with a story of their own, Incompetence or fraud on the part of the surveyors. Maybe all of these.

That's not an explanation of any kind. That's somewhere between not-even-wrong and word salad.

That you choose not to understand what I'm saying is not indication of it not being reasonable. You are executing your patterns of bed behavior here.

rules based international order that helps dissuade aggressor states from trying to conquer others by force

Well, maybe guns can help with that. There is a reason why Hitler didn't even try to conquer Switzerland: he was afraid of armed civilians.

I have no problem considering there may be benefits to gun ownership. I have a problem with the "studies" you're promoting.

And I have a strong opinion on not promoting garbage that indirectly supports bad actors in politics who support dictators.

If the implication here is that I support Donald Trump, then... You don't even deserve a response.

Well you're sure helping conservatives when you echo bad science that supports their world views.

My point is confounding variables and the lack of evidence by expressing alternative explanations so stop misrepresenting me.

Umm... Re-read what you wrote 6 months ago. You literally claimed that mass shooters tend to have sociopathic and suicidal tendencies.

I don't think most of them are suicidal, but most are indicating sociopathic behavior pretty much by definition. If you shoot up a school, you are not empathizing very well are you?
The populations are obviously too small, and being mostly dead, it's hard to fulfill diagnostic criteria for anything.

I don't know what this has to do with anything, and I don't care. I'm not interested in discussing this with you. It's stupid and you have no good evidence, you're just promoting conservative bullshit.
Liberals are frequently wrong or overstate evidence against guns, but you're not helping by doing it from the other side.

Spending more time on it won't fix that.

Sorry, but, in order to refute a scientific theory, you need to have a deep understanding of it.

Only really to the extent it's scientific. This is very soft science if at all.
But if you think that, then you do that. Read the study, and make an argument against it. You'll find that once you try to it will be very easy.
Self defense arguments are very weak. National defense arguments much more plausible, but are best supported by organized militias.

Your interest in defending guns seems to stem from the same place as your interest in believing the Earth was flat, and it's accompanied by a similar effort to make claims of science.

Sorry, I don't see the connection. Being pro-gun is the mainstream social science, after all, Gary Kleck is one of the most influential sociologists of the late 20th century. Flat-Earthism hasn't been mainstream science for 2 millennia. Pro-gun position appears to be supported by mathematics: Gary-Kleck-like studies, the evidence that telescoping is unlikely to have a significant effect on them... Flat-Earthism is pretty much the rejection of mathematics.

It's a soft science area that's highly politicized: your conclusion from such a domain should have approximately no confidence whatsoever. There's no reason either side should assume to have good numbers on these things. You've stumbled into this position with the utmost confidence taking to heart a transparently absurd conclusion to anybody without an incredibly strong political bias.
Anti-gun-control is not a populist position, it's a core conservative position which has been made stronger by opposition from liberals.
The only thing that makes sense practically is to avoid the issue until the political tensions cool enough to allow for good science.

[Red]

After days and days of arguing to explain things to you, sometimes you admit it, sometimes it still takes months more.
Do you not understand how rude you are being by taking these absurd positions over and over, spamming them, and then expecting others to explain repeatedly why you are wrong and teach you things like basic physics?

It would be fine if that were a one time deal, where I show you how your thinking is flawed and you are more careful and considerate in the future -- but it is not. It is a pattern of disrespectful behavior and a fundamental failure to change your underlying mindset. If I waste time engaging on this matter and eventually convince you that you are wrong in your certitude and confidence in these supposed studies, you will turn around and embrace another absurd belief to bring back here, like a deranged cat catching and killing bird after bird to drop at the feet of a disgusted person. You never learn, and you will never learn. I don't know if this is due to your mental illness, or it's just a really terrible character flaw.

I think Teo just wants attention since he's bored and lonely and has poor social skills (if he did have proper social skills he'd know that wasting peoples time with idiotic debates is bad form). It almost seems intentional sometimes where he'll say something so egregiously wrong that people can't help but correct him.

I'm not sure if I'm gonna keep responding to him here.

[teo123]

brimstone already explained why the study you cited was dog shit

The most plausible objection to the Gary Kleck's study is that it is suffering from massive telescoping. That the NCVS study is telling the true that there are around 100'000 defensive gun uses per year in the US, and that people who claim to have used a gun defensively in the past year are describing real events, but which occurred a few years ago. But that's an ad-hoc hypothesis: studies on telescoping generally show it increases the apparent frequency of events by around 20%, not a few times. Maybe some future study on telescoping will show that telescoping of stressful events such as DGUs is about 800%, but, until then, it's reasonable to believe the Gary Kleck's study is telling the truth.

And here we are back at the Teo bragging about publishing research papers on obscure subjects and thinking it makes him an expert on social sciences.

You are misunderstanding how social sciences work to a degree that I think it's pointless to talk about politics with you.
The vast majority of scientists publish papers about obscure topics. This is especially true in social sciences. Look, there was a time 100 years ago when a mathematician in one field could understand a paper in a distant field of mathematics. That time ended around 100 years ago. For social sciences, that time ended a lot longer ago, if it has even existed in the first place.
Should it be that way? Most likely, yes. If every social scientist was spending all of his time reading papers about topics distantly related to his work, there would likely be no advancements in social science. That has its drawbacks, of course. For example, social scientists who study Croatian toponyms tend to know zilch about the field that's touching information theory and linguistics, and vice versa. Which is unfortunate, as it seems to me that information theory has something to say about Croatian toponyms. Namely, that any interpretation of the Croatian toponyms that supposes that the k-r pattern in the Croatian river names is a coincidence is unlikely to be correct, because it follows from the basic information theory (Birthday Paradox and collision entropy) that the probability of such a pattern occurring by chance is between 1/300 and 1/17. You can argue that basic information theory should be common knowledge. Maybe even basic cybernetics.
But if you think good social scientists only publish papers about topics which aren't obscure, that discredits you completely.

But come on Teo, I figured you'd at least be somewhat familiar with WW2 history.

Look, I am not really interested in history. I think history is so complicated that nothing can be learnt from it. I am interested in historical phonology because it can give us relatively simple laws describing what happened and you can hope it will one day collect enough data to start making predictions about the evolution of languages. For example, will English soon be affected by a sound change described by the Havlik's Law, considering that in it the schwa-like sound is the most common vowel sound (like the two schwa-like sounds were by far the most common vowel sounds in Slavic before the sound change described by the Havlik's Law occurred)? But expecting to be able to predict geopolitics from the conflicting anecdotes we have in history is just ridiculous.

Yeah I'm gonna need you to highlight what in particular you were referring to. No doubt you misunderstood something here.

Accuse me of straw-man here:

Mass shootings are products of mental illness, these people are normally already suicidal with sociopathic impulses.

So barely reliable if at all, gotcha.

No, no, linguistic typology is a harder science than historical linguistics.

Oh yeah so that doesn't mean he can't have biases on partisan issues.

If he had a political bias, we'd expect him to be anti-gun, rather than pro-gun.

[teo123]

Do you not understand how rude you are being by taking these absurd positions over and over, spamming them, and then expecting others to explain repeatedly why you are wrong and teach you things like basic physics?

I must admit that I don't understand how rude I am being. I understand why it's rude to be a Flat-Earther and use not-even-wrong arguments such as the one with the horizon rising with you as you climb or the ships not appearing to lean as they disappear over the horizon (How does the Flat-Earth Theory explain that? It doesn't.). But I don't understand why it's rude to be a Flat-Earther and use wrong (not not-even-wrong) arguments such as the one with converging sunrays.

In the least you need to do a better job of looking for concordance between different lines of evidence on things.

What do you mean?

That you choose not to understand what I'm saying is not indication of it not being reasonable.

No, what you are saying is the sociological equivalent of the word-salad about optics that Flat-Earthers use to explain ships disappearing bottom first.

Self defense arguments are very weak. National defense arguments much more plausible, but are best supported by organized militias.

I think the self-defense arguments are much stronger than the arguments about militias. The arguments about militias are conflicting historical anecdotes, much less rigorous than the Gary Kleck's study.

[brimstoneSalad]

Do you not understand how rude you are being by taking these absurd positions over and over, spamming them, and then expecting others to explain repeatedly why you are wrong and teach you things like basic physics?

I must admit that I don't understand how rude I am being. I understand why it's rude to be a Flat-Earther and use not-even-wrong arguments such as the one with the horizon rising with you as you climb or the ships not appearing to lean as they disappear over the horizon (How does the Flat-Earth Theory explain that? It doesn't.). But I don't understand why it's rude to be a Flat-Earther and use wrong (not not-even-wrong) arguments such as the one with converging sunrays.

Both are rude, particularly if they represent repeated behavior.
Being ignorant once is not a crime, but doing it habitually with no apparent effort to stop being so is very inconsiderate to the people you expose to your ignorance.

In the least you need to do a better job of looking for concordance between different lines of evidence on things.

What do you mean?

Concordance, in science reaching the same conclusion using multiple different methodologies.

That you choose not to understand what I'm saying is not indication of it not being reasonable.

No, what you are saying is the sociological equivalent of the word-salad about optics that Flat-Earthers use to explain ships disappearing bottom first.

You aren't a sociologist Teo. Keep calling arguments word salad instead of considering them if you want to be banned again. You're in violation of forum rules, you're the one who brought up this stuff. What I said is clearly not word salad. Your English is clearly good enough to understand it.

Surveys, particularly on political issues with huge innate sampling biases (not a lot of anti-gun people own guns), are terrible evidence.

I think the self-defense arguments are much stronger than the arguments about militias. The arguments about militias are conflicting historical anecdotes, much less rigorous than the Gary Kleck's study.

You're completely missing the point, and it's not worth explaining it to you as I said.
A different category of historical anecdotes > bad studies based on politically charged surveys that conflict with estimate numbers arrived at by other means.

[teo123]

Both are rude

Really? I remember you told me when we were discussing the Moon Landing that it's the nature of my arguments that are insulting. That, had I actually done the math and got the result that the rockets on Earth for some reason can't reach the second cosmic speed, that wouldn't be insulting.

Concordance, in science reaching the same conclusion using multiple different methodologies.

You mean, like all the different Gary-Kleck-like studies?

Keep calling arguments word salad instead of considering them if you want to be banned again.

The reason why the explanation that the Flat-Earthers give for ships disappearing bottom first is a word salad is because you cannot derive a formula for how distant ships have to be for that to start happening from that explanation. So too is your explanation for the Gary-Kleck-like studies. As you often say, give me the numbers! To measurements and calculations you respond with measurements and calculations, not with speculation. Like I've said, what would count as a good explain-away of the Gary-Kleck-like studies would be the evidence that telescoping of stressful events (such as DGUs) approaches 800%.
Similarly, if you want to claim that my calculations showing that the k-r pattern in the Croatian river names is statistically significant (that the probability of such a pattern occurring by chance is between 1/300 and 1/17) are misleading, give me some numbers to argue for that. What would count as a good explain-away of that k-r pattern in the Croatian river names would be evidence that nouns in the Croatian language (river names being nouns) have a much lower collision entropy than the rest of the words in the Aspell word-list. Or something like that.

A different category of historical anecdotes > bad studies based on politically charged surveys that conflict with estimate numbers arrived at by other means.

I thought that we agree that history is a much softer science than sociology. And historical anecdotes are contradictory on whether armed populace prevents tyranny. Consider the Great Chinese Famine. Guns made it worse. If fewer people had guns, fewer sparrows would be killed and the invasion of grasshoppers wouldn't be as bad.

[brimstoneSalad]

Both are rude

Really? I remember you told me when we were discussing the Moon Landing that it's the nature of my arguments that are insulting. That, had I actually done the math and got the result that the rockets on Earth for some reason can't reach the second cosmic speed, that wouldn't be insulting.

That would have indicated some work. You have not done any math here Teo.

Concordance, in science reaching the same conclusion using multiple different methodologies.

You mean, like all the different Gary-Kleck-like studies?

No, don't make me repeat myself.

Doing as I did and looking at justifiable firearm homicides due to self defense (or whatever I did) is one way, you can find ways to compare data from other countries. You can look at non-gun owners and rate of crime victimization and assume it's probably similar to gun owners (except the gun owners scared them away and didn't report it), improve that number by breaking the crimes down by location and looking at gun access during those crimes (would a gun owner even be able to get a gun to use it like that) comparing to habitual gun carrying only for those cases where that would be necessary. Doing a survey of *criminals* would be another approach, find out how many have been frightened off from victimizing somebody because the person had a gun. From there you can extrapolate from a different source of evidence.

If the vast majority of those numbers get you to a similar place, and you can find plausible explanations for those that do not (such as the unreliable nature of politically charged recall surveys), then that number is probably more reliable.

You probably won't find studies on those. Conservatives have their study that they agree with, they're not looking to contradict that. Liberals don't like to test things because they don't measure the magnitude of harm pragmatically: there are school shootings, there was a victim, guns must be restricted.
Most of the data will be hard to find if you're doing it yourself. You could visit your local prison and talk to the warden, see if the inmates will be willing to participate in a survey.
You would have to also complete a Gary-Kleck-like study to compare the numbers with gun owners there since it's a very different place.
You might be able to reach statistical significance in determining the degree of survey error between those two perspectives.

This would add one methodology. If you want something reliable, you'll need more data than that, but it's better than nothing.

So too is your explanation for the Gary-Kleck-like studies. As you often say, give me the numbers!

I don't need to, I'm pointing out known unknowns that amount to confounding variables that introduce an unknown amount of unreliability to the numbers in the study. This is fundamentally different from what you're talking about.
Obviously it is speculative, but it still needs to be controlled for to make the numbers reliable. You're talking about very soft science here, and the effort to get reliable numbers in such a soft science requires a monumental undertaking in controls. This is why concordance is easier.

To measurements and calculations you respond with measurements and calculations, not with speculation. Like I've said, what would count as a good explain-away of the Gary-Kleck-like studies would be the evidence that telescoping of stressful events (such as DGUs) approaches 800%.

Telescoping is not necessary to explain those deviations. Plenty of criticism of studies is simply pointing out something was not controlled for, it doesn't require a counter-study of any kind or numbers for proof -- a simple lack of control in a potential confounding variable is a valid criticism. This is much more of an issue in social sciences and surveys especially.

The degree of your wrongness every time Teo, the extent to which you don't understand even basics like what amounts to sound criticism... how do you not get this by now? Is science just anathema to your brain?

I thought that we agree that history is a much softer science than sociology.

That doesn't mean that every study, even the worst ones, in sociology are more reliable as evidence and rigorous than every historical anecdote.
It's hard to quantify the probability of history repeating, but it's compelling and demands attention regardless.

And historical anecdotes are contradictory on whether armed populace prevents tyranny. Consider the Great Chinese Famine. Guns made it worse. If fewer people had guns, fewer sparrows would be killed and the invasion of grasshoppers wouldn't be as bad.

I was speaking specifically to invasions IIRC, not unintended consequences of ill conceived social policies. Guns probably do make the latter worse.
I don't know where history would lie on the issue, but it's a better hope for a decent argument if you favor guns.

[teo123]

a simple lack of control in a potential confounding variable is a valid criticism

So, do you think that, to the argument I presented in my paper Etimologija Karašica, the neuralbeans'es response "You are ignoring the possibility that the nouns (river names being nouns) in the Croatian language have a significantly lower collision entropy than the rest of the words in the Aspell word-list for the Croatian language." is a proper response? To me it seems like a blatant ad-hoc hypothesis. To measurements and calculations you respond with measurements and calculations, not with speculation. Maybe if the Croatian language had a Swahili-like grammar (where nouns can only start with 18 prefixes, while verbs can start with whatever sounds the phonotactics allows), that would be a proper response, but the way things are it isn't.
Do you think that, to the Eratosthenes'es experiment to measure the curvature of the Earth, the typical Flat-Earther response ("You are ignoring the possibility that the Sun is tiny and close.") is a proper response?