See, this is useful observation about this particular situation, one that I wish that other guy starting the comment war (i.e. not @NickyG or @anon30760835) would consider before hysterically asserting that * all * situations are 100 percent unmovable and everyone should react the same way to them.
I’d have to agree, judging from the cashier’s nonplussed reaction coupled with the cowboy’s calm, Navy-SEAL-esque reaction to the robber, that 1) they’d seen it before, and 1a) the robber was a inexperienced young punk, too confident in the fact that he’s merely holding a gun, and not knowledgeable that he has to be aware of his surroundings.
The cashier and the cowboy know what’s up.
That guy who started the comment war should realize that each situation, on a case-by-case basis, has its own merits.
I would not criticize the actions of someone who literally had a gun pointed in their face no matter what the result.
Even if I thought it was stupid, I’m going to keep the comment to myself.
ETA: read that as “The actions of someone without formal training.” There are occupations where you are trained in what to do when you have a gun pointed at you and I may hold them to a higher standard.
Am I the only one disappointed that it wasn’t this fellow?:
Do you mean statistically? Because statistics don’t apply to specific cases. The people in this situation may know of local conditions which don’t fit with your model.
We don’t know that - the butchers did carry the robber towards the direction of their section of the shop at the end of the video…
The guy had dropped the gun way before that, you can see one of the butchers grab it.
Sorry, can’t find a suitable ‘whoosh’ gif right now.
"It’s amazing what you can do with a cheap piece of meat if you know how to treat it. "
That’s interesting to me. You are attempting to judge his actions using the criteria of good or wise or smart without seeming to ask the same question of your actions here.
You have been countered by many people here suggesting that your critique of Mr Moustache is unwarranted and perhaps overly and unnecessarily judgemental. Comparisons to Monday morning quarterbacking and the like have been levied. Yet you persist. In you, is something that compels you to act in a manner some people are judging as unwise, lacking good intent, and perhaps even not very smart. Some of these people seem pretty smart themselves and their arguments solid and compelling. Yet you persist.
I put to you that given this display of persistence in the face of such adversity, a more sympathetic view of Mr Moustache might be in order. After all, you both seem to share that need to act out of righteousness even when the smart thing to do would be to step back and do nothing.
That could easily have caused an accidental discharge that might have caused injury or death. In addition, he couldn’t have known before-hand that the gunman wouldn’t move his arm at the last minute or similar – he made an estimation of his competence to handle the situation and he turned out to be right in this case. It’s definitely a very impressive display of physical acumen!
My objection comes from the fact that he gambled the lives of innocents on his estimation of his own competence.
This is pretty funny, but my impression is that the experts recommend doing this in cases of mass shootings where the perpetrator is specifically trying to kill people and you don’t have any better choice than fighting back. An armed robbery is different – since the perpetrator’s goal is not to harm or kill, and they would have a lot of incentive not to do so.
If the mustache gives the guy super future-seeing powers such that he was able to foresee the outcome of his actions, then yes fine. Otherwise, statistics is the best way we have to forecast the outcomes of uncertain events – and it seems to me that the outcome of the event before he acted would have been very uncertain!
In the absence of any direct evidence about local conditions creating exceptions from the statistical model, I think it makes sense to use the statistical model.
Correct – rather than conforming to social pressure and tailoring my opinion to what the people I’m talking to want to hear, I base my opinion on my observations, reasoned judgment, and research into expert opinion. This is because I value independent thought and inquiry far above what random strangers on the internet think about me.
Certainly a number of you have made clear that you disagree with my opinion. But I don’t see why standing fast to beliefs arrived at by independent thought rather than bowing and conforming to social pressure is “unwise, lacking good intent, [or] perhaps even not very smart” – unless you happen to value conformism above independent thought.
While I agree that many of you are very smart, I disagree that the arguments made here are solid and compelling. I’ve rebutted several and only one person has even acknowledged the nature of my counterarguments let alone challenged it. And that was a rather weak challenge, being in effect, “Well, you don’t really know, there could have been some mitigating circumstances.”
In fact, most of the counterarguments made have been, like yours, based on applying moralism or social pressure to try to shame me or goad me into changing my opinion rather than trying to change my mind through evidence or reasoned argument. No one has provided any evidence, and I’m the only one who has cited specific and relevant expert opinions to support his argument.
I’m sorry, but I still don’t see why I should consider it “smart” to change my opinion because a lot of people happen to feel that I’m wrong, even if they can’t provide evidence or reasoned argument to challenge my reasons for believing as I do. Unless, again, you value conformism for its own sake and consider bowing to social pressure and going with the herd to be “smart” by fiat.
Although I disagree that you’ve provided an effective argument, and appeals to celebrity do not move me when I have relevant personal experience, I do applaud your willingness to think for yourself.
You make that sound very bland.
The specialty of the house is the Bland Enchilada!
Damn these neo-westerns are good.
So, given that position, why would you think Mr Moustache should have acted differently just because people happen to feel his actions were wrong?
But more to the point, I wasn’t suggesting you change your opinion, only that you may be better served by saying nothing here instead of telling us why you think Mr Moustache acted stupidly.
I agree. No one has. Of course, one must understand that “expert” opinion is not evidence.
I’m curious what you object to about the probabilistic risk-based argument. Do you think that it’s only as or likely or less for someone to get injured or killed in an armed robbery when someone physically attacks the gunman as when they don’t? Do you have any evidence to that effect?
This strikes me as curious, since the argument you made previously was essentially an attempt to shame me into agreeing by citing Mr. Mustache’s Tough He-Man Macho Hero credentials:
I see that I’ve missed some responses:
- It’s interesting to me that several people have called me on “armchair quarterbacking” or similar, but no one calls you out on your armchair psychologizing of me.
- In fact, I am not frustrated, thought if I was it probably would have more to do with the fact that people have ignored the content of my arguments and opted instead for applying social pressure to try to change my opinion rather than reason.
- In fact, I do not believe I have especially strong mental fortitude or ability to resist emotional impulses. The only concessions anyone has made in this discussion from their starting points are my concessions that the man’s actions should be excused on account of the emotionally-charged nature of the situation and that I don’t know that I would react any better in such a situation (but that I hope I would)!
- I think the fact that I haven’t bowed to social pressure and changed my mind testifies to the fact that rather than being irked by the lack of praise for me, I don’t really care what any of you think of me.
I did address that argument. As I said before, the motivation of the drunk driver vs. Mr. Mustache is not especially relevant to determining which course of action creates more or less risk, which is purely a matter of probability.
But moreover, this line of argument is simply fighting the hypothesis – it’s easy to construct a hypothetical where the drunk driver engages in drunk driving precisely to obviate danger or similarly altruistic outcomes. But in almost any such situation, the drunk driver probably has a better, less-risky alternative choice of actions, which I argue is exactly analogical to the situation under dicsussion.
I think using experience to determine the best course of action is not a strange criterion at all! I think that in most cases it is the best tool we have since crystal balls are not known to be especially reliable but by-and-large, past experience is.
I disagree that consistently reacting to aggressors by attacking them consistently leads to better results for society, and you have not even begun to make an argument for such a premise.
I don’t. I think that the wisdom of specific courses of action should be decided on the basis of reason, not popular opinion – with the caveat that (as I’ve mentioned many times now), Mr Mustache’s actions are excusable because they were made in the midst of an emotional situation where there was not time or clarity to apply the faculty of reason.
What would I gain by staying quiet? I don’t really mind if people disagree with my opinion, and I relish the opportunity to challenge my judgments and to be proven wrong if anyone has any good evidence or arguments against them. I think that on the contrary, I’m very well-served by stating and defending my position rather than allowing social pressure to either sway my opinion or convince me to keep quiet. And I contend that all of you are well-served by exposing yourself to alternative points of view and seriously considering them.
I never claimed it was. However, in the absence of any evidence, I believe that expert opinion is the best reference we have, as it is usually based on evidence and/or experience (hence use of the term “expert” in the first place). In addition, I have provided what I believe to be sound reasoning about the fact that the outcome of a physical altercation with a gunman is very much less certain than the most likely scenario if the gunman is allowed to proceed with the robbery.
I do enjoy the consistent use of scare-quotes around “expert” throughout this discussion. Of course, none of you would hesitate to deploy expert opinion in defense of your own premises without the use of scare quotes if it happened to concord with your own. My impression is that the only reason that expert opinion becomes “expert” opinion in this case is because it cuts against your personal opinions on the matter.
For my part, if any of you can find even one example of a credible expert suggesting that attacking the gunman during an armed robbery is a better idea than the alternative, then I will happily concede that the matter is not as cut-and-dried as it seems to be (even though you would be weighing only one expert opinion against many that suggest that not attacking the gunman is preferable).
Well, I hear you, but your argument is formally invalid. Motivation has absolutely nothing to do with the error. You are claiming that forcing a situation to become extremely hazardous is logically equivalent to taking action in a situation that is already extremely hazardous. This is a false equivalency and fallacious reasoning, therefore your analogy is no good.
This alone does not mean your conclusion cannot be correct, of course. It just means your analogy does not provide any support for your conclusion.
If you are going to go formal on logic, you need to either have an inhuman level of academic rigor or be prepared to occasionally accept correction; there are lots of logicians on the Internet.
Perhaps I am too subtle. Research honeybees.
I could do a frame by frame critique of the gentleman’s actions; his use of mass, the moment when the robbers’ turn shifts the available point of leverage on his arm (making the disarm more dangerous to the bystander) and &etc., but I think we’ve already spent enough time on this…
I’ve already offered Mr Moustache as my expert. He has years of experience in shopping in Monterey, clearly had experience having a gun pointed at him, and the result of his actions are unimpeachably clear evidence that his plan of action provided the best of all possible outcomes.
In an earlier post you mentioned you have some training in self defense. I submit that training has caused you to consider one type of opinion to have greater weight than another kind of opinion. Since I gather your experts don’t have actual numbers to back up their claims (or we might have seen them by now) we must conclude that these experts of yours are basing their recommendations upon their anecdotal experience and their best guesses as to what course of action is best. That being the case, Mr Moustache certainly qualifies as an expert on the subject as much as those who work in the self defense training industry in to which you have invested your own time and efforts.
I think it may be possible that you have a bias towards the expert opinions of an industry you are invested in and against those who act counter to the collective wisdom of that industry. So, I feel like I kind of have to ask which of your experts have thwarted an armed robbery with their bare hands because my expert, Mr Moustache, has done so already making him a more credible expert than most.
