>> ^shinyblurry:

Someone mentioned that the deterrence didn't work, because people still sinned. To which I ask, how do you know how much worse it could have been? Take a look at this study to see why its a valid theory:
http://www.inquisitr.com/262882/believing-in-hell-equals-lower
-crime-rate-study/


Here is the original article which you are referring to in its entirety:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0039048

Did you read it? I question their methodology because they claim that their study found that poverty does not affect the crime rate of a country (which, considering the wealth of other studies which DO show a substantial effect should be enough to make one question the results of this particular study), yet the only measure of poverty they seem to have used is a country's GDP per capita.

I quote from their conclusion:

First and foremost, these findings are correlational, and thus reverse-causation and third variable explanations need to be discounted before causal claims can be firmly endorsed.

In other words, they didn't show that believing in divine punishment causes lower crime rates, only that there was a correlation. But even leaving the correlation/causation issue aside, the authors came to the conclusion that belief in hell independently correlates with the crime rate from belief in heaven. In other words, countries in which more people believe in hell than believe in heaven have less crime than other countries... which begs the questions of who are all these poor people who only believe in hell but not heaven?

But even leaving that aside, this study in no way shows that killing people for picking up sticks is an effective deterrent to the rest of society for committing future crimes of any kind. What it shows is that you can get really wonky results when--instead of doing actual reasearch--you take a bunch of unrelated numbers (i.e. number of people who believe in God, number of people who believe in heaven/hell, crime rates, per capita GDP, etc.) and try to run linear regressions on them.

>> ^bmacs27:

That a correlation is valid does not make it interesting.
I'm also a bit confused by your claim. Places with extremely high density, e.g. NY, CA, and MA, have lower ADHD figures than places like AK.
>> ^grinter:
>> ^residue:
I think you're drawing conclusions with too little evidence. Cases of ADHD would also increase with density because there are simply more people. You would need to compare percentages by normalizing cases to the population before you could make any real conclusions. (But I agree with your conclusion in that it makes sense)
>> ^grinter:
Anyone find it interesting that the prevalence of ADHD correlates with population density? (and yes the map showed per capita values.. I looked it up)
It's like if you live with too many people around you and not enough free space, you find it hard to focus.


No conclusion, just speculation.
But, my defensive side needs to point out that:
1) the correlation is valid, regardless of what is driving it.
2) as I pointed out, the ADHD prevalence figure he showed already controls for population size.


Ok, fine.. I'll take a quick and sloppy look at the data:


The relationship doesn't hold for the super dense states, but if you look at states with under 200 people/m^2, then population density does strongly predict ADHD rate (linear regression: r^2 = 0.271, d.f. = 34, p = 0.001)
I'm not saying that I think density per se is really driving this relationship.. but still think it is worth considering.