Astral Codex Ten

Michael Brown

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Michael Brown

Article

Michael Brown is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between May 18, 2021 and June 29, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “Then Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown were killed”; “George Floyd (and Trayvon Martin, and Michael Brown, and…) got victimized”; “the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO in August 2014”. It most often appears alongside George Floyd, The Atlantic, The New York Times.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: May 18, 2021
  • Last seen: June 29, 2022

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Highlights From The Comments On Culture Wars
May 18, 2021 · Original source
Rodney King was just beaten up on camera, not killed. And he was beaten up at a time when #BLM wasn't a thing, when the internet was barely a thing. But *sixty-three people died* in the resulting riots. I don't think all the violence in all the #BLM protests/riots/whatever adds up to even half that. Then Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown were killed, and there was some protesting and rioting but nothing like Rodney King, then we got a dozen or two more incidents that were all over the map in terms of both video quality and egregiousness of injustice and we got levels of protest/rioting that were all over the map but uncorrelated with the cause, then we got George Floyd and for some reason we got more rioting that we'd seen since Rodney King (but not even close to that).
On Hreha On Behavioral Economics
August 30, 2021 · Original source
But also: there are several giant murals of George Floyd within walking distance of my house. It sure seems people cared a lot when George Floyd (and Trayvon Martin, and Michael Brown, and…) got victimized. There are lots of statistics, like “US police kill about 1000 people a year, and about 10 of those are black, unarmed, and not in the process of doing anything unsympathetic like charging at the cops”. But somehow those statistics don’t start riots, and George Floyd does. You can publish 100 studies showing how “the Identifiable Victim Effect fails to replicate”, but I will still be convinced that George Floyd’s death affected America more than aggregate statistics about police shootings.
What Caused The 2020 Homicide Spike?
June 29, 2022 · Original source
Although the George Floyd protests in May 2020 were the largest round of Black Lives Matters protests, there had been several previous rounds. Most notable were the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO in August 2014, and the death of Freddie Gray in police custody in Baltimore in April 2015. If Black Lives Matters protests can cause homicide spikes, we would expect to see one around this time also.