On Sun, 30 Nov 2003 22:31:10 GMT, "Ed Huntress" wrote:

(snip)
And how you pick among them determines if you have a critical mind that you
employ in a search for the meaningful truths, or if you have a manipulative
mind that you employ in a search for ways to twist a story to your
advantage.


Ah, but "meaningful" is pretty subjective, too. I went around a while back here
on the MS newsgroup with a guy who was selective with his truths like that. He
was discussing the comparative sizes of the continents and wanted to make the
continent he chose look larger, so he threw in the statistic that it was the 5th
largest continent. Yes, that's a true statement. That statement would also mean
it's the 3rd smallest one, but since he wanted to emphasize how BIG the
continent was he chose that direction. When I called him on it he thought I was
disputing his claim about the size of the continent. I wasn't. I was just
disputing his slant.

And an argument like the one you're making here is a legitimate one,
while a
lie like Ford is perpetuating is not.

Where was the lie? If a statement is ambiguous that doesn't make it a lie
if you
disagree with one of the possible interpretations of it.

That's a good question, Noah. Let's see which kind of mind you have here.
What do you think the purpose of "Andrew Ford's" assertion was? Was it to
reveal something about the relationship between open carry and murder rates,
or was it to employ a mixed kind of statistic to delude the reader with an
anomaly, in the sense that Mark Twain talked about statistics when he
described "lies, damned lies, and statistics"? (Actually, I don't think it
really was Clemens, but I won't quibble.)

What do you say? Can you distinguish between statistics employed to tell
lies, the way Goebbels did and the way that many politicians do today, or do
you recognize the truth that's being implied, and are you willing to judge
an assertion on the basis of whether its rhetorical use is honest or
dishonest? Are you one of the people who isn't afraid to make a judgment of
that type, or not?

When I first saw that statement the first thing that occurred to me was that it
wasn't quite true. There is NO state in the US where just ANYBODY can go buy a
gun. Minors can't(legally), people who have been disqualified for several
reasons (felons, those adjudged as dangers to society because of mental illness,
people with restraining orders against them) can't do it legally either.

That's really the question here, because, as several people have pointed out
in this thread, there isn't much question about what "Ford" intended by his
statistic. To assume otherwise is to assume that he was talking about
something else when he called those people "crazy" who didn't have his
penetrating insight -- aided by his bogus statistic, of course. g That's
always a possibility but then we'd want to know how people understand the
meaning of the assertion.

That's always a problem, because people don't "always" say what they mean or
mean what they say. Added to that is the "Inferring what others imply" problem,
too. Seeing through all those filters is difficult, if not impossible.
One thing I always try to keep in mind is the list of logical fallacies people
often employ. Once you spot them, it's pretty easy to figure out what's being
attempted.


It is easier to fight for our principles than to live up to them.-Alfred Adler