Gyroscopic Investing

Simonjester wrote:

Coffee wrote: Not to veer off-topic, but: there's a lot of controversy now about Cooper's/Gun Site's approach being misguided.  Mostly coming from the Suarez/Point-Shooting crowd. 

There arguments are pretty persuasive. It's hard to argue with the Israeli's success with point shooting, too.

from the little i have read the two are not mutually exclusive, and that both techniques have there place in the skill set tool box, i would not hesitate to learn point shooting as well if i get the chance..

That's a good point.  (No pun intended).  And the Suarez courses I took did emphasize that if you were at the range/distance where you had time to line up your sites, there was nothing wrong with doing so.  

Gumby wrote: First of all, the chances are far less than 1 in 10,000 — unless you live in a high crime area.

Not necessarily.  Greater than 1 in 50 people in the United States fall victim to violent crime every year.  If we round down to 2%, that's a 98% chance of not falling victim that year.

Now, what are the chances that 98% odds hold up ten years in a row?  More like 81-82%, giving you a 18-19% chance of falling victim.

How about 30 years of your 98% odds holding up?  About 54-55%, meaning that you're almost in coin flip territory.

These back-of-the-envelope numbers aren't meant to freak anyone out or be alarmist.  Just be aware that while violent crime is a rare thing at any particular moment, over the course of a lifetime it becomes more and more of a likelihood for "rare" events to strike at some point.

The lesson IMO is to get those odds even more favorable through vigilance and good decision-making so that they will hold up throughout the span of your life.  Living places like San Jose, San Antonio, or New York versus places like Detroit or Baltimore helps your dice-rolling as well.  Those who are comfortable with firearms can add a final line of defense, but this is only appropriate for those whom the tool suits.

stone wrote: About California supposedly being screwed up- I've often marveled at how California seems to more or less cary the whole world in terms of technological innovation. They must have done something right in order to do that?

The liberal politics and environment does tend to attract a lot of creative types.  Which is probably why L.A. became the music and film hub, instead of Iowa.  Same with Northern California and Silicone Valley.  

Although I think that is changing slowly, with competing tech markets in N.C., Texas, Boise, etc...

An American woman has a 25 to 26 percent chance of being raped in her lifetime (1 in 4). (Greenberg, Bruess and Haffner, Horowitz, Lips,).

- 1 in 10 rape victims are men. (Rathus, Nevid and Fichner-Rathus)

(U.S. Stats).

TripleB wrote: Step 1: Make eye contact. If you look away, you are giving submissive body language and look like prey. You look weak. An aggressor will use that as a que to attack you. Additionally, you cannot see the attack coming. Ironically 99% of people in America are passive and will not make eye contact with you. Try it. When you walk around outside, try to make eye contact with everyone who walks past. 99% will intentionally avoid it, or be too into their own self (i.e. cell phone/iPod).

I'm guessing you never lived in a big city before.  You learn pretty quickly living in a big city to NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT with every crazy person that comes up to you and starts talking to you.  99% of the time they are trying to ask you for money or will start telling you their crazy life story in an effort to con you out of money or something like that.

In a big city, the best approach when someone comes up to you and says anything at all is just to AVOID EYE CONTACT and keep walking.

Just to illustrate how this works in real life - my brother is from the middle part of the US where there is no coast and not a lot of people.  He went to New Orleans for a conference for the first time in his life.  He got approached by one of these hucksters that is on the street, saying "Hi, how are you doing?" You know, very friendly offering to give a tour of the city because he was obviously a white guy from out of town.  It ended up with my brother at an ATM machine taking out cash to give him money because he pretty much talked him into it.  Partially out of feeling guilty because they guy talked to him for a while, and partially out of fear that the guy might rob him if he didn't give him something.

This whole situation could be avoided by simply ignoring him and keep walking, don't make eye contact.

Different environments call for different reactions, but when you live in a large city you have no personal space, and should generally ignore most people you see on the streets.

Lone Wolf wrote: Not necessarily.  Greater than 1 in 50 people in the United States fall victim to violent crime every year.  If we round down to 2%, that's a 98% chance of not falling victim that year.

Are you sure about those statistics?  That would be 6 million people a year being a victim of a violent crime.  That seems extremely high.

Storm wrote:
I'm guessing you never lived in a big city before.  You learn pretty quickly living in a big city to NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT with every crazy person that comes up to you and starts talking to you.  99% of the time they are trying to ask you for money or will start telling you their crazy life story in an effort to con you out of money or something like that.

In a big city, the best approach when someone comes up to you and says anything at all is just to AVOID EYE CONTACT and keep walking.

Just to illustrate how this works in real life - my brother is from the middle part of the US where there is no coast and not a lot of people.  He went to New Orleans for a conference for the first time in his life.  He got approached by one of these hucksters that is on the street, saying "Hi, how are you doing?" You know, very friendly offering to give a tour of the city because he was obviously a white guy from out of town.  It ended up with my brother at an ATM machine taking out cash to give him money because he pretty much talked him into it.  Partially out of feeling guilty because they guy talked to him for a while, and partially out of fear that the guy might rob him if he didn't give him something.

This whole situation could be avoided by simply ignoring him and keep walking, don't make eye contact.

Different environments call for different reactions, but when you live in a large city you have no personal space, and should generally ignore most people you see on the streets.

well said "don't eyeball the crazies" was one of the first things i learned moving from the country to a city, but the not making eye contact with people on the streets rule shouldn't be confused with looking away and showing fear weakness when you are being confronted by somebody, i cant easily define it, but there is a point where your instinct/the body language/ what is being said by the person confronting you should trigger a confidant/not afraid/not a victim response, that does include eye contact.....  

Storm "In a big city, the best approach when someone comes up to you and says anything at all is just to AVOID EYE CONTACT and keep walking."

I once was very jetlagged and fell asleep on a  london underground train. I woke up leaning all over the smartly dressed man sitting next to me with my head rested on his shoulder. I might even have been dribbling. I was totally mortified and appologized profusely. He looked straight ahead and acknowledged nothing. Everyone else in the crowded train studiously avoided eye contact. I guess they followed the Storm principle

On TV I saw an amazing example of projecting confidence. It was a traditional way of getting food for this tribe in Tanzinia. They walked up to lions and took the meat from the lions. It was all about projecting total confidence. The lions were wary of anyone who clearly wasn't wary of them. It was the scariest thing I've seen on TV.

Coffee "An American woman has a 25 to 26 percent chance of being raped in her lifetime (1 in 4). (Greenberg, Bruess and Haffner, Horowitz, Lips,). - 1 in 10 rape victims are men. (Rathus, Nevid and Fichner-Rathus)"

Aren't the vast majority of those cases by people the victim knows? Doesn't that make it very hard to use a gun to protect against that?

Lone Wolf wrote:

Gumby wrote: First of all, the chances are far less than 1 in 10,000 — unless you live in a high crime area.

Not necessarily.  Greater than 1 in 50 people in the United States fall victim to violent crime every year.

That seems way too high. Where exactly are you getting your numbers from?

Here's what I am seeing from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics:

[align=center]
See: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/[/align]

In 2010 there were 15 victims of violent crime per 100,000 persons in the US.

Violent crime includes murder, rape and sexual assault, robbery, and assault. Information about murder is obtained on a yearly basis from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports. There are two measures for non-fatal violence—the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).  NCVS measures rape/sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated and simple assault.
Source: BJS

...and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program — which includes fatal violence — reports 403.6 Violent Crimes per 100,000 persons in the US for 2010.

[align=center]
Source: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/cr ... 0tbl01.xls[/align]

In the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses which involve force or threat of force.
Source: FBI

That's nowhere near the 1 out of 50 people you cite. 1 out of 50 people would be horrific. Think about it.

Storm wrote:

Lone Wolf wrote: Not necessarily.  Greater than 1 in 50 people in the United States fall victim to violent crime every year.  If we round down to 2%, that's a 98% chance of not falling victim that year.

Are you sure about those statistics?  That would be 6 million people a year being a victim of a violent crime.  That seems extremely high.

"In 2005, 2.7% of African Americans became the victim of a violent crime, compared to 2.0% of Whites."

This is from "Crime Victomology" in the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States, gathered from US Department of Justice statistics.  Also, see Gumby's chart below (and my interpretation of it.)

Gumby wrote: Here's what I am seeing from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics:

In 2010 there were 15 victims of violent crime per 100,000 persons in the US.

I think you've read the chart incorrectly.  Your chart shows rates per 1,000 people not 100,000.  So 15 violent crimes per 1,000 yields a percentage of 1.5%.  2005 was more like 2% (which agrees with my numbers, since they are from the same year) while 1993-1994 was 50 per 1,000, so  more like 5%.

Gumby wrote: That's nowhere near the 1 out of 50 people you cite. 1 out of 50 people would be horrific. Think about it.

No, I'm afraid your numbers are pretty close to mine from 2005 on and are actually worse for the time period before 2005.

Like I said, nobody needs to freak about this since we are people, not statistics.  Simply realize that even comparatively rare events become not at all unusual things when you extend your chance to encounter them over the course of a lifetime.  It's just the "black swan" principle reapplied.

Drive safely, keep your wits about you, and treat you and yours with the utmost care.  Just pick the smartest choice you can at every opportunity and you'll certainly do better than these "average" odds.

Ah. Ok. I did read the chart incorrectly. Got it.

But, I think it's wrong to say that "greater than 1 in 50 people in the United States fall victim to violent crime every year." It's been years since that was true, and it overstates today's reality.

Lone Wolf, are a lot of the numbers altercations between family members, neighbours etc?

Gumby wrote: Ah. Ok. I did read the chart incorrectly. Got it.

But, I think it's wrong to say that "greater than 1 in 50 people in the United States fall victim to violent crime every year." It's been many years since that was true, and its overstating today's reality.

That's a fair point.  Saying it makes me feel old, but 2005 doesn't seem so very long ago. 

Do remember, though, that 2010 was the safest year in the last 40 years.  My 2% appears to be well below the long-term mean crime rate.  If crime rates continue to fall, chances of negative outcomes will diminish as well.  If there's a "reversion to mean", though, my 2% numbers will be too rosy.

If we use 2010's rate of 1.5%, your chance of falling victim within a decade is more like 14%.  Over the course of 30 years, 36.5%.  Certainly high enough to be on anyone's radar.

stone wrote: Lone Wolf, are a lot of the numbers altercations between family members, neighbours etc?

I'd certainly imagine so.  Like I said earlier, we're people, not statistics.

The choices we make every day determine where we fall on these probability charts.  You just make the best choices you can so that when your "dice rolls" come up you've got much greater chance of positive outcomes.

Lone Wolf wrote:If we use 2010's rate of 1.5%, your chance of falling victim within a decade is more like 14%.  Over the course of 30 years, 36.5%.  Certainly high enough to be on anyone's radar.

I see your point, but African Americans are exposed to much more crime than whites are — skewing these total numbers. As you say, we are not these statistics. It really depends on where in the US you live. For instance, most whites in the US who live in middle to upper-class neighborhoods have a crime rate that's well below 1.5%.

By extension, CCW should be allowed for all African Americans, nation-wide since their lives are more dangerous. 

stone wrote: Lone Wolf, are a lot of the numbers altercations between family members, neighbours etc?

Here's what I found...

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I'm not clear about whether public legal gun ownership is neccessary or sufficient for the population to avoid a tyranical goverment. If you think about examples of governments being over thrown in the past century or of tyrany, then to me the picture isn't clear. Thinking about Indian independence, Mubarak getting deposed, the Shah getting deposed- it seems to me that what matters is that the population is willing to be shot in order to get freedom. Being willing to be shot is a much more powerful position against a government than being able to shoot. Obviously if you are a persecuted minority despised by the government then the situation is entirely different than being an entire oppressed population and an oppressed minority can't neccessarily use unarmed people power in that way. But the American justification for public defense against the government is for the magority to defend itself from tyrany. To my mind protection from tyrany comes from public attitude rather than  gun ownership. Lets imagine everyone in the USA (or where ever) has lots of guns but they sleep walk into a tyranical political set up. You'd have to hope that all your fellow citizens all together came to their senses and agreed with you about the government being bad. Otherwise your gun protection would just make you a terrorist not someone upholding freedom. I guess racial segregation was unconstitutional in the USA. There was no practical way that a black person in the 1960s could use a gun to overcome that tyrany.

I've wondered whether the phenomenal technological inovation from California might have something to do with it being so far away from a major financial centre such as NewYork, London or Tokyo. Boston has amazing universities that are a match for those in California but the technology industries seem to be in California. Near NewYork or London, might the finance industry get the personel and financial backing that in California would form tech start ups?
Perhaps I'm just ignorant about how mobile people are. I'd be curious to know what proportion of Stanford etc graduates go into finance versus Harvard etc graduates (or for that matter UK university graduates).

Stone wrote:I've wondered whether the phenomenal technological inovation from California might have something to do with it being so far away from a major financial centre such as NewYork, London or Tokyo.

I'm no historian, but my impression is that the California phenomenon (gold rush notwithstanding) was kicked off, in large part, as a WWII and aftermath thing.

In 1900 California, Kansas, Arkansas, Nebraska, Oregon, etc. all had about the same population (around 1.5 million or so).  It was about 20th or so among the states for population.  By 1950 it was second only to New York state in population (California went from about 1.5 million to 10.5 million).

The defense industry during WWII, particularly in southern California, was huge.  Northrup, Grumman, Hughes, McDonnell Douglas, Todd Shipyards, et al.  Lots of engineers!  Lots of military bases, too, and many of the WWII sailors, soldiers, and Marines simply stayed on (or returned to California) after the war.

The film industry located there, in part, because there were almost 365 days a year suitable for shooting outdoor movies, and there is an inordinate amount of varied terrain (mountains, oceans, deserts) near Hollywood or in California that could masquerade as just about anywhere else on earth.  If you watch older westerns you see the same set of giant boulders over and over again.  In the 1939 version of Robin Hood, Sherwood Forest is in California.

Paul Graham has written a bunch of articles about Silicon Valley, and possible reasons why there is only ONE Silicon Valley.  Here's one that discusses New York, Silicon Valley, Paris:

http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html

Another similar question is why is there only one Hollywood?  Hollywood dominates the global movie industry just as thoroughly as Silicon Valley dominates the global technology industry.  Both are in California, which is interesting...  I'm not sure what it means.

WildAboutHarry wrote:

Stone wrote:I've wondered whether the phenomenal technological inovation from California might have something to do with it being so far away from a major financial centre such as NewYork, London or Tokyo.

I'm no historian, but my impression is that the California phenomenon (gold rush notwithstanding) was kicked off, in large part, as a WWII and aftermath thing.

In 1900 California, Kansas, Arkansas, Nebraska, Oregon, etc. all had about the same population (around 1.5 million or so).  It was about 20th or so among the states for population.  By 1950 it was second only to New York state in population (California went from about 1.5 million to 10.5 million).

The defense industry during WWII, particularly in southern California, was huge.  Northrup, Grumman, Hughes, McDonnell Douglas, Todd Shipyards, et al.  Lots of engineers!  Lots of military bases, too, and many of the WWII sailors, soldiers, and Marines simply stayed on (or returned to California) after the war.

The film industry located there, in part, because there were almost 365 days a year suitable for shooting outdoor movies, and there is an inordinate amount of varied terrain (mountains, oceans, deserts) near Hollywood or in California that could masquerade as just about anywhere else on earth.  If you watch older westerns you see the same set of giant boulders over and over again.  In the 1939 version of Robin Hood, Sherwood Forest is in California.

Interesting thread. As usual, the idea of the anti-gun posts is that they are not comfortable with guns and don't want to own or use them. But the real message of their posts is that since they are uncomfortable with guns, they don't want YOU or ME to own or use them.

We live in CA, but will soon be moving out of state. We own a small business that does 2-3M a year in sales and has 8 employees. The taxes and regulation are insane. The gun laws here (if you are not familiar with the specifics) are also insane, and have been a big factor in our decision to move. My favorite example is the Barrett .50 caliber rifle. This gun is legal in 49 other states, it has never been used in a single crime in CA, ever, by anyone. The legislature publicly declared it as a "public safety hazard" and it is permanently banned. Just weeks ago, the gov passed a bill for full gov't registration of ALL firearms by Jan 1st, 2014. As the rest of the country moves toward more reasonable and less restrictive gun laws, CA goes in the exact opposite direction.

I have several friends who do very well (7 figure incomes) and nearly everyone is making plans to get out of here. The vast majority of people left here will be either those who crave the nanny state or those who make their living by gov't benefits. There will be very few producers who will stay here.

I did notice one comment earlier, where someone wished they lived in a country where all guns were banned. My question is, why don't you move to one, then?

Freedom-Found, if people do move out of California en-mass, do you believe the creative energy of Silicon Valley etc will get lost or will it reform somewhere else?

stone wrote: Freedom-Found, if people do move out of California en-mass, do you believe the creative energy of Silicon Valley etc will get lost or will it reform somewhere else?

Well, technology itself has made so much progress over the last few years that people no longer need to be physically clustered in a single area to work together. I think in the future, people will go to the area that suits them best, and their criteria for selection will be more than just where a good job is available. We may see an exodus not just to other states, but perhaps to other countries as well. People as a whole enjoy their freedom and will flock to free areas, just look at the history of our country for the first 150 years, before the "progressives" started their "fundamental transformation" in the early to mid 20th century.

I have a friend who is a screenwriter, he has always felt he needed to be in or around Hollywood/LA area. Less than a year ago, he bought and moved to a lake house in North Idaho. He loves it and says he will never move back to CA, and career wise, he has been doing just as well as he was here. Of course, not every job can be done remotely, but many can, esp. in technology.