this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
222 points (97.4% liked)

Asklemmy

43907 readers
1313 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] -3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

"If a big corporation says something is one way, it must be so. They have a lot of money, after all." Your argument is peak "Argument to Authority." I guess it's a good thing those insurance companies like AIG were able to effectively assess their degree of risk exposure in the housing markets in 2008 and avoid collapsing when the housing market imploded. Oh, wait...

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

OMFG there is no evil conspiracy by USAA and every other insurance company against pitbulls JFC. Pitbulls are just statistically much more dangerous than other animals.

[โ€“] [email protected] -1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They're statistically correlated with incidents of mauling. Nobody is denying the statistical correlation. But there is a difference between observing a statistical correlation between breed and maulings and asserting a causal relationship. My argument is that the assertion that "pit-bulls are innately, biologically predisposed towards violence against people and other animals" is not supported by meaningful evidence. If you are arguing that they are, then you're gonna have to convince me with more than "insurance companies say they are."

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Quick thought experiment - magically replace every pitbull in the world with a chihuahua instead. Do the number of maulings go up or down?

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

The number of maulings would go down even if you replaced every Golden Retriever with a chihuahua. Replacing every member of a particular breed of dog capable of mauling someone with a member of a breed incapable of it would always cause a reduction in instances. Maybe you think we should go around Old Yellering every Golden Retriever in the world, just to be safe?