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Has America Become the Scariest Country in the World to Visit? I Went Looking, and Part of Me Wishes I Hadn't. (thearchitectautopsy.com)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/longreads@sh.itjust.works
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Five years of your social media just to visit the US on an ESTA, and 50,922 phone searches at the border in a single year with no suspicion needed. Part 1 of my Five Eyes series: who else gets to see it?

Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20261006003252/https://thearchitectautopsy.com/p/has-america-become-the-scariest-country

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[–] 15 points 1 day ago (6 children)

It absolutely is not...

Like, it sucks and people should absolutely not visit. But there's a shit ton of countries that are worse.

People measure dangerousness not "scariest" but I'd be surprised if there's a lot of difference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Peace_Index#Global_Peace_Index_ranking

Russia would be way scarier than America, but so would most of the ~30 countries more dangerous

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  • [–] 1 point 8 hours ago*

    If you wanted a lot of human effort, you might be barking up the wrong tree.

    The article says “I went looking;” but what is “I”? The author posts anonymously, doesn’t disclose their use of AI, and the obvious use of AI (the article image) is bad use of AI. The author barely appears human. Why would I care what “The Architect” says??

    I doubt many of the people who upvoted the article even read it, but I expect each of the next breathless installments to be equally celebrated despite having no human readers.

    This community will upvote anything if it agrees with their biases, including articles fueled by sycophantic AI.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 day ago (4 children)

    Well that's comparing apples with oranges. Global peace index is whether you're likely to become part of a warzone.

    "Scariest" in this context (ie the article) is whether your personal liberty, safety and privacy are at risk.

    Very different thing.

    Having said that your broad point that there are countries that are far worse for randomly incarcarating foreigners, general corruption and violence. However there are fewer than there used to be as the US tumbles down the ratings.

    TL;DR I've lived there and I definitely won't return while the current regime is in power. It is scary for a foreign national. Not as scary as Afghanistan or Colombia but a helluva lot more worrying than say, Canada.

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  • [–] 3 points 15 hours ago

    I dont think it can simply be whether or not youre likely to be in a literal warzone if Haiti and the US are like 9 spots apart. It must be odds of being a victim of violence in general. Haiti has a lot of gang violence and basically no effective policing. The US has policing that may ultimately result in you being a victim of violence, plus more guns per capita than anywhere else in the world. I can see those things balancing out to being close on the list, but in the US you would not be likely to end up “in a warzone”. Youd be likely to get killed in other ways though

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  • [–] 3 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

    Well that’s comparing apples with oranges

    Yeah...

    People measure dangerousness not “scariest” but I’d be surprised if there’s a lot of difference.

    I mean, even your example:

    Not as scary as Afghanistan or Colombia but a helluva lot more worrying than say, Canada

    That lines up with the GPI: Canada is 14, US 134, Colombia 141, Afghanistan 157

    Obviously Canada is less scary as well...

    Like, your tone is disagreement, but you seem to be agreeing with me exactly?

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  • [–] 1 point 15 hours ago (1 child)

    Yessss? That was exactly my point. You had a logic flaw in your argument, even if you reached an apparently reasonable conclusion.

    Your broad point is (probably) valid (there are scarier places than the US) but your comparator table is poorly chosen as it is not measuring what you are describing. It's like saying your point is proved because apples and oranges are the same size.

    And the important reason why an incorrect comparator matters is because it gives you a false sense of understanding the relationship/ranking.

    I intuit that I should be more scared of Afghanistan than the US, but that is subjective not objective.

    By using an incorrect comparator you purport to convert a subjective impression into an objective one.: I.e "it is factually the case that the US is less scary than these countries lower down the list", but we don't know that as it hasn't been measured by the list.

    There is a particular political group who don't care about facts & truth, I don't like them, and I don't think we collectively should fall into the trap of " it feels truthy"

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  • [–] 2 points 12 hours ago

    You had a logic flaw in your argument,

    ...

    No...

    You're just ignoring an entire sentence:

    People measure dangerousness not “scariest” but I’d be surprised if there’s a lot of difference.

    I'm sorry I can't put this in a way you can understand, but I'm sure as shit never trying to explain anything to you again, have a nice life bud.

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