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-- The Statistician's Lie: Generalization is OK

The Statistician's Lie: Generalization is OK

One of the greatest weaknesses of the human mind is its dependancy on generality. Without classifying people, places, events, and phenomena into a variety of different categories, it is difficult to understand the nature of our experiences. This dependency, vile as it may be, is inescapable, we must generalize and classify in order to place things in a frame of reference from which we can interpret them. However, when we allow these generalizations and classifications to affect our interaction with one another, we take on the risk of error. When this error impinges upon the freedom a fellow human, this generality has become unacceptable.

There are people, however, who believe these generalities are acceptable. The allure of the simplicity of the general rule blinds them from the fundamental fallaciousness of their reasoning. These are the same people who believed that blacks should not be allowed to vote since most of them lacked the education to fully understand the complex issues they were supposed to vote based upon. That generality has passed, and so has that attitude, but the fundamental misconceptions upon which it was based remain. The fact is, as soon as you start asking whether blacks should be allowed to vote, gays should be allowed to marry, children should be allowed to drink, and the elderly should be allowed to drive, you have already violated the Natural Rights of each of those individuals to be treated as an individual rather than as a member of some superficial category. A flawed human construct created by flawed human minds.

So long as these toxic ideas continue to poison our society, putrefy our culture, and contaminate our laws, the very thought of calling ourselves a "free" society can be considered nothing less than an act of lunacy.

thank-you.

quote:

The allure of the simplicity of the general rule blinds them from the fundamental fallaciousness of their reasoning

not always does it blind you, sometimes you are fully aware of it being fundamentally flawed yet you decide that putting up with it outweighs the difficulties faced when trying to "judge each and every one as an individual with equal rights". Sounds fantastic but try it to explain to the owner of a nightclub who doesn't wanna waste time (and money) for having the bouncers carefully analyzing each guest's potential for aggression? Many Clubs here have a "racist" policy of not letting in Turkish and /or Black guests. It occured very often that Turks, who do have a different mentality, are genereally more impulsive, started fights with Austrian gusets (who genreally tend to have a few more drinks). Blacks on the other hand are "said to" deal with drugs, just because some, or even many indeed do so. Notice that all 3 attributes are based on the "many of then" argument. Then again, we come back the the owned of the night club who wants minimal trouble and therefore willingly accepts his racist door policy for the sake of money, time and trouble saving.

Same goes for the debate about the Israeli-Arab marriages in the other thread.

Im neither defending nor attacking anything here (in the other hand I do) I'm just trying to put your theoretically absolutely right notions into the context of cruel every-day life.

quote:

The fact is, as soon as you start asking whether blacks should be allowed to vote, gays should be allowed to marry, children should be allowed to drink, and the elderly should be allowed to drive, you have already violated the Natural Rights of each of those individuals to be treated as an individual rather than as a member of some superficial category. A flawed human construct created by flawed human minds.

I agree that generalisations are often misused, but I'm not sure what practical suggestions can come from this. Surely anything other than anarchy is flawed according to your post? Because the instant you impose a law, for example against under-age drinking or under-age driving, you are categorising people and acting upon that categorisation. What is the point that you're driving at?

problem is simply

people lump others with everyone

like every christian is out to convert everyone..at any cost

total lie....total generalization

btw..i took it from a thread in this forum.

Bravo. (Not being sarcastic)

quote:

Originally posted by evil_bastard I agree that generalisations are often misused, but I'm not sure what practical suggestions can come from this. Surely anything other than anarchy is flawed according to your post? Because the instant you impose a law, for example against under-age drinking or under-age driving, you are categorising people and acting upon that categorisation. What is the point that you're driving at?

Agreed.What are we supposed to do without these generalisations?Surely taking these away will result in total chaos and disorder in our society?

like current income from the stats in a country could be 24,500 dollars but that does not mean that everyone makes that amount of money. Newspapers here would lead you to believe that but it's simply not true. In western society...the top 10% makes 80% of the income
which is a true fact....but ppl like to generalize and say all rich ppl make too much. Personally I blame the media for interpreting and people for believing the interpretation as fact.

Many generalisations are acceptable and useful to society. But some are unacceptable, as I described in another thread I find Israeli marriage laws targetted at Palestinians unacceptable because I don't feel they are justified.

Clearly there is a balance to be struck. Some of us draw the line at different points. But I don't agree that they are a flawed aspect of the human mind because they have obvious values.

If we didn't categorise anything, how could we anticipate anything? How would we know where to deploy our medical resources, our police, our emergency services, our armed forces, or anything? There would be a dramatic decline in social efficiency if not total anarchy.

There is a danger that generalisations can be misused, for example in the form of racism, but this doesn't prove that the concept is flawed. Like any theory (eg Social Darwinism), people can undermine the theory by misusing it or applying it to situations where it is socially unacceptable.

Canada has a great stats site...i don't think any country has stats as in depth as us...could be wrong tho

http://www.statcan.ca/start.html

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