Subject:
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Re: The Scott and Larry show (was: Nothing personal, but...)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 20 Jun 2001 19:16:24 GMT
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Viewed:
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704 times
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Y'know, the odd thing is I usually find Scott's remarks to be rather arguing
the absurd, but I will admit that he's not wrong. Just pointless.
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Scott Arthur writes:
> If it was a HUNCH, Larry needs to make it clear that it was a complete
> fabrication - not dress it up as fact. Read the text I quoted again - does
> it sound like a hunch. When Larry said he was "unwilling" to tell us all
> where he found the data, did that make it sound like a hunch?
You're absoloutely right. Larry should indeed indicate that his statistics
for the countries he was referring to were complete guesses based on his own
experience.
But that's a stupidly useless assertion. It begs the question what is fact?
If Larry has only a LITTLE bit of experience of walking around in one city
for 2 minutes, he's only got a pathetic amount of experience upon which to
base any statistic. It doesn't make his guess "fact". If he walks around for
an hour in TWO cities, it makes his "guess" better but still not "fact". If
he lives there for 19 years in 4 different cities, making visits to many
different towns and counties, it's STILL not "fact", it's just a "guess". If
he does a nationwide survey and makes a point to visually catalog EVERYONE
he sees and WRITE DOWN what he sees, it's STILL not FACT, it's just a
"hypothesis", AKA "guess" based on the information he has. In "fact", there
is no such thing as "fact", it's all, 100% guess. But because there's
experience to back it up, it's better than pulling it out of thin air. So
good, "in fact", that we CALL it "fact", because to go around saying
everything is a "guess" makes our lives virutally meaningless and blaringly
tedious.
Don't bother arguing the absurd, Scott. It's a waste of time when what
you're debating is so far above the philisophical level of "what is fact?".
If that's what you want to debate, go ahead and debate it. But don't force
it upon someone else when it's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
And if your argument is based on the arguing of "what is fact?", then
chances are you have a PATHETICALLY weak argument, because you couldn't find
anything worthwhile to debate in Larry's point.
DaveE
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