VisorCentral.com - One Year On

Pages (24): « First ... « 10 11 12 13 14 [15] 16 17 18 19 20 » ... Last »
Show 20 posts from this thread on one page

VisorCentral.com (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/index.php)
- Off Topic (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/forumdisplay.php?forumid=6)
-- One Year On (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=26965)

Posted by Toby on 10-18-2002 05:35 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by K. Cannon
But, do you love L.A.?

Nope. It's not at all my thing. Despite all of its flaws, I much prefer La.

Although, I could consider several other southwestern states movable.

Posted by KRamsauer on 10-18-2002 05:36 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Toby
No, I'm not Randy Newman.[B]*sigh*

If you can explain why, having spoken to someone on the phoen with a deep voice, assuming they are a man does harm to that person, I'll be amazed. If in your mind that qualifies as prejudice, I feel sorry for you because that implies you see women as more important than men.

Posted by KRamsauer on 10-18-2002 05:44 PM:

Summary

Toby, I dont' think you understand my point. What I'm saying is that for the vast number of morally neutral qualities (religion, age, sex, religion, etc), there is no harm done in assuming someone fits one description before we have 100% proof. The only reason you should never make such predictions is when it has a material effect on that person or your impressions of that person. Because I have never been given a good reason to favor one sex/religion/race/etc. over another those traits are, in my mind, in the same category of hair color/shoe size/ birthday/etc that simply have no bearing on anything. I see those people as people and no combination of said traits can change that. I dont' assume someone is a racist/sexist/murderer/etc absent proof because those do indeed carry moral weight to me. If you cannot look at someone's religion and avoid forming a value conclusion about that person, by all means keep *sigh*ing and ignore said traits. That is the moral thing for you to do.

Posted by K. Cannon on 10-18-2002 05:44 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by KRamsauer
having spoken to someone on the phoen with a deep voice, assuming they are a man does harm to that person

This example is not AT ALL what the original discussion was about.

We were talking about ASSUMING to know a POLITICAL POSITION of a person based solely on their religion/ethnicity.

Lord, I have GOT to get some work done...

Posted by KRamsauer on 10-18-2002 05:47 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by K. Cannon

This example is not AT ALL what the original discussion was about.

We were talking about ASSUMING to know a POLITICAL POSITION of a person based solely on their religion/ethnicity.

Lord, I have GOT to get some work done...

And political position is, to me, as morally neutral a quality as gender! So to me there is no effective difference between the two. Here's a test. There are two people who are exactly the same in every respect. One wants war in Iraq, one doesn't. Do you like either one of them more? If so, then you would be wrong in predicting political position. I, however, see political position as not at all bearing on someone's worth or how much I like them.

Posted by KRamsauer on 10-18-2002 05:50 PM:

A little story. At one point, people were valued on their religion. This was wrong. So we were told to ignore religion because such beliefs were so deeply ingrained that we couldn't operate fairly without ignoring religion. Now, however, there are people not raised in such an environment and therefore don't have such prejudices ingrained in them. Because of this, they needn't ignore religion because recognizing it won't put someone at a disadvantage. If you have prejudices ingrained in you, the moral thing to do is indeed ignore religion.

Posted by Toby on 10-18-2002 05:51 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by KRamsauer
Reading the next sentence should have clarified it, but I meant "If you are jerk, I will discriminate against you, as we all do."

Sorry that you missed the humor.

quote:
You never once mentioned through that whole discussion your point was revolving around sampling one population and applying those findings to another.

You don't pay much attention to opinion surveys, do you?

quote:
That is so incredibly stupid I figured no one would even bother to bring it up! Clearly we cannot do that.

But it's _exactly_ what you're doing if you think that you know anything about the opinions of a Jew on Iraq simply because he's a Jew.

quote:
I never claimed we could.

Then please cite the worldwide survey to which you referred when claiming that knowing someone was a Jew told you something of their opinion on Iraq.

quote:
Remember I was claiming that knowing the traits of population allows you to infer individual traits. You read that as my saying knowing one population's traits can allow you to predict other populations' traits?

It is the only logical conclusion given the context at hand.

quote:
I never said anything of the sort, and I wish you'd have mentioed it in as many words earlier.

It's been done to death already.

quote:
What I'm not sure you understand is that it is perfectly valid to use a sub-sample to derive hypotheses about the population. [...]

What I'm sure of is that you don't have a clue to what I understand. Using a sufficiently-sized random sample from a given population, it is perfectly valid to draw conclusions about that population _as_a_whole_. That was never in debate, and if you thought it was, then I can't fathom why.

Posted by Toby on 10-18-2002 05:54 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by KRamsauer
You are definitely closed to reason though, [...]

I think you don't get that my wife's complaint about one-track-mindedness is _because_ the one track is reason. IOW, sometimes one must realize that there isn't a problem to be analyzed.

Posted by Toby on 10-18-2002 05:59 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by KRamsauer
If you can explain why, having spoken to someone on the phoen with a deep voice, assuming they are a man does harm to that person, I'll be amazed. If in your mind that qualifies as prejudice, I feel sorry for you because that implies you see women as more important than men.

I feel sorry for me too at this point if you think this bears any correlation at all to what starting this inanity in the first place.

Posted by K. Cannon on 10-18-2002 05:59 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by KRamsauer
Here's a test. There are two people who are exactly the same in every respect. One wants war in Iraq, one doesn't. Do you like either one of them more? If so, then you would be wrong in predicting political position. I, however, see political position as not at all bearing on someone's worth or how much I like them.

Um, is one of them short?

Gee, KRamsauer, you would have us believe that you are the most non-judgmental person on the face of the earth. And maybe you are...

To answer your test: No, that one factor in and of itself would not make me more or less inclined to like person A or person B. But if I assume, based on what you call neutral factors, that person A is in favor of war and person B is against, person A might still get offended that I assumed he was in favor of war.

And that is my point this whole time. It's not a question of, gee, am I a good enough non-discriminatory person that I can make assumptions about others'. It's a question of, gee, if I make (out-loud or on-line) assumptions about person A and I am wrong, will that be offensive to them.

Maybe you are as non-prejudiced as you say, but statistically speaking (!) you are probably in the minority. I think everyone has prejudice against others, although not necessarily for gender/race/creed/religion/etc.

Posted by KRamsauer on 10-18-2002 06:00 PM:

quote:
What I'm sure of is that you don't have a clue to what I understand. Using a sufficiently-sized random sample from a given population, it is perfectly valid to draw conclusions about that population _as_a_whole_. That was never in debate, and if you thought it was, then I can't fathom why.

Okay, so the part you take issue with is using that data on the population as a whole in individual cases? And let me scream this: I am not claiming you know everything about everyone, just that you know more than someone without access to the inferential statistics.

Posted by Toby on 10-18-2002 06:03 PM:

Re: Summary

quote:
Originally posted by KRamsauer
Toby, I dont' think you understand my point.

If that makes you feel better, go with it.

Posted by KRamsauer on 10-18-2002 06:06 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by K. Cannon

Um, is one of them short?

Gee, KRamsauer, you would have us believe that you are the most non-judgmental person on the face of the earth. And maybe you are...

And that is my point this whole time. It's not a question of, gee, am I a good enough non-discriminatory person that I can make assumptions about others'. It's a question of, gee, if I make (out-loud or on-line) assumptions about person A and I am wrong, will that be offensive to them.

Maybe you are as non-prejudiced as you say, but statistically speaking (!) you are probably in the minority. I think everyone has prejudice against others, although not necessarily for gender/race/creed/religion/etc.

You're right, I'm probably in the minority. That doesn't mean that it is a very powerful and fair way to think. The more people realize that all this stuff simply doesn't matter the better we will all be.

As soon as we realize all this doesn't matter will we rob the bigots of the world of their major power: the nagging belief that is perpetuated through the generations that perhaps they're on to something. They're not, and we all need to realize it.

I think this goes back to something someone (perhaps you?) said earlier. It is best to weight the pros and cons of anything, including telling someone you made an assumption about them. In 9 out of 10 cases that is dumb (I guess part of the 10% of smart instances is predicting what someone wants for their birthday), and frankly there is no benefit in making such a prediction. So in external relations such moves would probably hurt someone more often than it helps them. But, that being said, mental excersizes with morally neutral conditions to me do no harm, and I'm open to evidence that they do.

Posted by K. Cannon on 10-18-2002 06:12 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by KRamsauer
mental excersizes with morally neutral conditions to me do no harm, and I'm open to evidence that they do.

What if J. Happel was hurt and/or offended by your assumption that Jewish people automatically favor war against Iraq?

(BTW, I don't know if he was, I certainly hope he was not, but am trying to get a good example for KR.)

Posted by KRamsauer on 10-18-2002 06:21 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by K. Cannon

What if J. Happel was hurt and/or offended by your assumption that Jewish people automatically favor war against Iraq?

(BTW, I don't know if he was, I certainly hope he was not, but am trying to get a good example for KR.)

The way around that is I don't, the first time I see him, dance around singing "you want war with Iraq, lallalalalalalalala." I ask him, just like I would any other person.
If he offended by the notion that someone is under the impression that more Jewish people favor war than don't, I think he needs to rethink his views. Just like someone from Green Bay who is offended that people assume he is a Packers fan and not a Giants fan, it's just one of those things that shouldn't get to you. Remember, this is not a morally charged debate (which it would be if someone were to for some reason believe Jews are a war-loving people). Remember, in my framework, wanting war against Iraq is no more offensive than prefering orange M&Ms.

Posted by K. Cannon on 10-18-2002 06:27 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by KRamsauer
If he offended by the notion that someone is under the impression that more Jewish people favor war than don't, I think he needs to rethink his views.

No, in this case, he would be offended by the fact that you assumed HE favored war with Iraq.

quote:
Just like someone from Green Bay who is offended that people assume he is a Packers fan and not a Giants fan

Hardly "just like" war with Iraq at all

quote:
it's just one of those things that shouldn't get to you.

You can hardly be in a position to determine what should get to other people

quote:
Remember, this is not a morally charged debate

Maybe not **to you**. You can't judge what other people get all morally-charged-up about.

quote:
orange M&Ms.

I find your reference to orange M&M's offensive b/c too many of them make me look fat in my jeans. (Just ask my husband.)

Posted by Toby on 10-18-2002 06:28 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by KRamsauer
The way around that is I don't, the first time I see him, dance around singing "you want war with Iraq, lallalalalalalalala." I ask him, just like I would any other person.

Why do you need to ask if you've got the inferential statistics?

quote:
If he offended by the notion that someone is under the impression that more Jewish people favor war than don't, I think he needs to rethink his views.

Or maybe you need to cite the survey? Please. Just humor us.

quote:
Just like someone from Green Bay who is offended that people assume he is a Packers fan and not a Giants fan, it's just one of those things that shouldn't get to you.

You are seriously twisted if you think that is a sensible comparison.

quote:
Remember, this is not a morally charged debate [...]

No, war is never a morally charged debate. Excuse me while I spit liquid all over my monitor.

Posted by KRamsauer on 10-18-2002 06:32 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by K. Cannon

No, in this case, he would be offended by the fact that you assumed HE favored war with Iraq.

Hardly "just like" war with Iraq at all

You can hardly be in a position to determine what should get to other people

Maybe not **to you**. You can't judge what other people get all morally-charged-up about.

I find your reference to orange M&M's offensive b/c too many of them make me look fat in my jeans. (Just ask my husband.)

Isn't this whole discussion about how things should be? I mean if we are just going to rehash what actually goes on in the world, we're pretty terrible at it. I am laying out a framework that I think would help everyone who follows it. So your observations that "that's not the way the world works" is beside the point because I'm saying how it should work.

Posted by KRamsauer on 10-18-2002 06:33 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Toby
Why do you need to ask if you've got the inferential statistics?[B]Or maybe you need to cite the survey? Please. Just humor us.[B]You are seriously twisted if you think that is a sensible comparison.[B]No, war is never a morally charged debate. Excuse me while I spit liquid all over my monitor.

You mayconsider it be a morally charged issue but I don't. I'm sorry you look down on someone because of their view on this issue. That must cause a lot of problems.

Posted by John Nowak on 10-18-2002 06:36 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by KRamsauer
You mayconsider it be a morally charged issue but I don't. I'm sorry you look down on someone because of their view on this issue. That must cause a lot of problems.

If war is not a morally charged issue, what is?

All times are GMT. The time now is 06:33 AM.

Pages (24): « First ... « 10 11 12 13 14 [15] 16 17 18 19 20 » ... Last »
Show 20 posts from this thread on one page