Gabriel has often accused me of claiming I'm right and he's wrong because I say so. Nothing could be further from the truth.Gabe: "Explain why dominantly white countries are prosperous and dominantly black countries are poor!"
Logical fallacy #1: Shifting the burden of proof.
I don't have a worked-out theory about why specific nations rise and fall. I don't need one. I merely claim the null hypothesis: That race has nothing to do with it. It's up to Gabe as the advocate of his racial hypothesis to explain this observation.
Logical fallacy #2: Non-sequitur, subtype: Argument from ignorance.
I've given some fairly generalized answers (forces of geography and history), but even if I didn't know, this is not a victory for Gabe. A lack of knowledge on my part cannot be construed as evidence in favor of Gabriel's racial hypothesis.
Logical fallacy #3: Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc: "Correlation Implies Causation"
Just because two things are correlated doesn't mean that one causes the other. They could have an outside cause. For example, geography has an effect on economic prosperity. It also creates different selective pressures for skin coloration.
Gabe: "You haven't traveled!"
Logical fallacy: Non-sequitur, Red Herring, subtype: Ad hominem
I have absolutely nothing to do with the data. My travel experience is completely immaterial to the debate. If I were to hop in an airplane on a tour of all the continents, that will not change a nation's per capita income, nor will it alter the principles of genetics. My personal life is quite irrelevant in any question of science.
Gabe: "You're a geek!"
Logical fallacy: Non-sequitur, Red Herring, subtype: Ad hominem
...So what?
Gabe: "It's up to you to prove everyone's equal!"
Logical fallacy #1: Shifting the burden of proof.
In every statistical analysis class I've ever taken, one of the first tests you do is try to DISprove that groups are equal. Equality is a negative claim: It's the absence of a difference. It's a null hypothesis to be assumed until disproven with evidence.
Logical fallacy #2: Straw Man
I don't believe everyone's equal. There are many variations. Some people are genetically weaker or stronger, but I generally don't believe there's any great deal of importance to most such differences. I also see no reason to believe that "race" as commonly defined has any correlation with the sorts of differences Gabe alleges.
Gabe: "World of Warcraft! Wikipedia! Stay-at-home moms!"
Logical Fallacy: Red Herring.
Like his verbal assault on my allegedly TV stereotype-like life and family members, this is just plain idiotic. Whatever Gabe can say about me, my friends, or my family, well, that obviously isn't going to alter the results of a genetic study or conjure up controls or blinding for Gabriel's anecdotes. Why doesn't he just get on with it, instead of wasting his time on irrelevancies. Naturally, this sort of behavior is a big, fat red flag telling us that he's unarmed in this battle of wits and data.
I think that's enough for now. I'll add more if I remember.
Important questions you should bother to answer, sometime, Gabe:
1. What do you mean by "race," "white," "black," etcetera?
2. Is "race" genetic or not?
3. How does "race" cause anything? Without a causal mechanism, it might as well be magic.
12 comments:
Logical fallacy #3: Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc: "Correlation Implies Causation"
Just because two things are correlated doesn't mean that one causes the other. They could have an outside cause. For example, geography has an effect on economic prosperity. It also creates different selective pressures for skin coloration.
I see this a lot from people untrained in social sciences who express opinions about social science topics. I'm sorry to say that physical scientists seem to be particularly bad in this area, treating international comparisons (or inter-temporal comparisons) as if they were experiments controlled for whatever variables they think is important.
I have absolutely nothing to do with the data. My travel experience is completely immaterial to the debate. If I were to hop in an airplane on a tour of all the continents, that will not change a nation's per capita income, nor will it alter the principles of genetics. My personal life is quite irrelevant in any question of science.
Bronze, Will come back to you about the rest, just read through it now and wanted to comment on an important part you do not understand, which I assume is linked to the fact that you have not travelled (no insult meant, seriously).
Note above quote and italic part, per capita income is not related to prosperity Bronze. There is nations that have far less Per Capita then we Americans do and have a impressive quality of Life (better then ours), so these numbers can only give an indication if it is really love of possible poverty, but other then that, it really means nothing.
But you wouldn't know if you are reading the "stats" of a nation/people, you would need to have visited and understood that "Ah, X nation has Z in income, which is much much less then I have, and yet they live a far better life and seem to have more money then me".
A note you should give into concidiration.
Happy Solstice and more to come.
Since my stock question for Gabe has been covered, I'll ask a slightly more personal one:
Gabe, do you have a relative who goes by the name Psy online and who is a full-blown rabid Marxist? Because he shares with you a tendency to go off on smokescreen digressions and he also rapidly forgets things he was told in a discussion.
(The name switch is because I'm doing stuff with my gmail account, and don't want to keep logging in back and forth to keep my RL name on things.)
Well, if the stats are irrelevant, we should find relevant stats.
But anyway, a note about the post: using eleventy-billion logical fallacies does not make one wrong. It makes one rhetorically handicapped, and incapable of honestly proving one's position.
Just to note: Per capita income was just one example of a measurement. If you'd like to bring up other quantitative measures, please do.
I can argue that macroevolution is plausible because Christopher Hitchens says so, because I can't think of another way it happened and because my opponents are all pedophiles. I would still be right - macroevolution is plausible - but not because of my arguments.
Also, "quality of life," statistically, is something rather apart from happiness in life.
Again, Gabe's arguing from personal experience. It's certainly possible that nations with less per capita income could be more prosperous than the United States. What's also possible is that Gabe's subjective judgment of quality of life is based on the small segments of those nations which he has actually experienced, while other parts of those nations are impoverished. Without any kind of controls, objective standards, or systematic method of examining a nation's population, we have no way of knowing if Gabe's assessment is accurate.
To put Tom's comment in another way: Personal anecdote is to scientific data as "reality" TV is to a good documentary. Only the gap between personal experience and good scientific data is even wider than the gap between "reality television" and documentaries that maintain journalistic integrity.
Reality television shows typically select and edit footage to color people's perceptions of the contestants. The nature of the human mind does that for anecdotes often does that automatically with ego-preserving defense mechanisms.
Science is about avoiding that sort of thing by recording all the data and being very, very careful not to just cherry pick.
Ooh, ooh, has anyone referenced "guns, germs and steel" yet? It's a 500-page attempt to explain why Europeans came out on top.
Australia: Too recently colonised
Pacific: Too many itty-bitty islands, not enough resources
Africa: Too many different climates, making North-South transport of crops/animals/people difficult
Americas: Recently colonised and North-South - not a chance
So the only real contender for Europe was Asia, which also produced some fairly impressive civilisations. I don't have the book with me, but I think the author's conclusion was that being plugged into Africa gave Europe an advantage (e.g. due to a scarier range of germs to wipe out native populations with).
If the continents had been arranged differently, the race doing the colonising would have had a different colour scheme.
I notice Gabe hasn't responded to anything. So far, all he's done is nitpick about PCI.
Bronze Dog, just admit you are wrong and know less. I Travelled the world, I seen things you could only dream of and will never see.
Is it just jealolusy or stupidity? Why deny the fact of my knowledge?
I pointed out how wrong you are, PER CAPITA INCOME IS IRRELEVANT to the fact of a Nations People living in a good society or not. But you do not understand, you never travelled, you never SEEN different nations and cultures, you do not understand, you watch some stallone movie and think its real.
Bronze, just educate yourself okay, it is important if you want intelligence. Now listen, I make one simple example for you, a really easy one that even you understand: A Nation Per Capita Income have 150 Billion Dollar.
According to you, that means they are the best and most prosperous in the world. NO, because you know nothing about it, it turns out that our fictional example has to pay 99% of that to buy a piece opf loaf and the rest goes to rent....
UNDERSTAND?
Of course not. Money is not relevant if you do not know the system you live in and the cost of that life, to say X has Y amount of money therefore they live better or worse then Me" is incredible stupid. It could turn out that the money "needed" for something that You consider important (say education) is not needed as Education is free and the best the planet ever seen, at the same time they may live Safer and more cultural superior lives to us americans.
You need ALL THE DATA to be able to get the point. You checking hte "stats" for X nation means nothing, you may get a general idea if it is very poor, but culture and other aspècts are highly important especially if you look on AVERAGE as there is huge difference ebtween nations with equal per capita income because of different cultures and systems.
There is a REASON we that are older are more intelligent Bronze, WE SEEN MORE and DONE MORE in our lifes and we are not afraid to question ourself, as you are. Maybe you grow up in a couple of years, I hope so, but look yourself in a mirror Now, and Try.
Gabe: Bronze Dog, just admit you are wrong and know less. I Travelled the world, I seen things you could only dream of and will never see.
The issue isn't about what I personally know, and it has never been. That's just a convenient lie you tell yourself to stroke your ego. This is about scientific consensus versus you. I just happen to know what science says about genetics, and I'll trust millions of scientists over some braindead postmodernist hippie who thinks he has supernatural senses. Your supernatural race theory contradicts the most basics principles of genetics. The problem I have with you is that you're claiming to be smarter than all the world's biologists put together.
So stop changing the subject to me. I'm irrelevant to the argument, and such ad hominems serve only to show how weak your position is.
Is it just jealolusy or stupidity? Why deny the fact of my knowledge?
If your "facts" contradict millions of independent observations by trained scientists with competing interests, often with no stake in race. The bottom line about your efforts to dismantle biology is that you want me to believe that scientists working on fruit flies falsified their experiments just to make you look foolish.
I pointed out how wrong you are, PER CAPITA INCOME IS IRRELEVANT to the fact of a Nations People living in a good society or not. But you do not understand, you never travelled, you never SEEN different nations and cultures, you do not understand, you watch some stallone movie and think its real.
Are you seriously suggesting that my economics and statistics classes are Silvester Stallone movies designed to indoctrinate me into some false equality that I don't believe in, and didn't believe in at the start of all this?
Bronze, just educate yourself okay, it is important if you want intelligence. Now listen, I make one simple example for you, a really easy one that even you understand: A Nation Per Capita Income have 150 Billion Dollar.
According to you, that means they are the best and most prosperous in the world. NO, because you know nothing about it, it turns out that our fictional example has to pay 99% of that to buy a piece opf loaf and the rest goes to rent....
If we're talking about a nation other than the US, having to spend that much means that they DON'T have a PCI of US$150. PCI is usually measured in the buying power of the local currency versus stable first world currency. Your example is self-contradictory.
I learned about this in my freshman year of high school. You're making shit up, and not even trying to hide it.
You need ALL THE DATA to be able to get the point. You checking hte "stats" for X nation means nothing, you may get a general idea if it is very poor, but culture and other aspècts are highly important especially if you look on AVERAGE as there is huge difference ebtween nations with equal per capita income because of different cultures and systems.
Do you seriously suggest that one airplane ticket will teach me more about a nation's prosperity than the what the collective efforts of countless economists and businessmen will? If that's true, why does anyone bother with a business college?
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