Bricker is a disingenous punk.

The BBQ Pit
141

[QUOTE=DMC]
I flip a coin and am as likely to be correct as someone who selects the white woman, as credibility isn’t dependent on likelihood. On the other hand, if you say “Guess the color of the next woman to be raped by a white male.”, I’ll choose white, as frequency of the occurrence actually does make a difference in that case.
[/QUOTE]

But that is precisely the point. If you agree, based on history, that the next woman to become a rape statistic will be white, then it follows that the last woman to become a rape statistic was white.

In fact, if we had a long list of all women who have been raped, but all we had were their initials, and I told you that I’d give you a million dollars if you could correctly identify the race of the one set of initials I point to, your best guess would be “white”.

142

[QUOTE=magellan01]
But that is precisely the point. If you agree, based on history, that the next woman to become a rape statistic will be white, then it follows that the last woman to become a rape statistic was white.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t agree that the next woman to become a rape statistic will be white. It’s simply more likely. It still has fuck all to do with the credibility of a black woman claiming to have been raped by a white man. Once again, I’m more likely to hit on red in roulette than I am to hit on a specific number. That doesn’t mean that my claim that I hit a specific number is any less credible than my claim that I hit on red, as both are perfectly plausible.

Of course, but that still has fuck all to do with credibility.

You seem to have a hard time differentiating between how frequently something occurs with how credible it is.

I watched falcons flying around for hours today, in middle of a major metropolitan area. I also had a cable installer not only show up, but show up on time during the same day.

Do you believe me?

143

[QUOTE=monstro]
I’ll give you another hypothetical to explain you with the face’s argument.

I do a study and determine, among other things, that in households where domestic violence occurs on a monthly basis, I tend to find a half-gallon of ice cream in the freezer. Doing a random sampling, I find that 75% of violent households have ice cream in the freezer. Only 50% of non-violent households have ice cream in the freezer.

Those are the facts.

Two women claim to have been beaten by their husbands. One likes ice cream and the other doesn’t. Only one claim is true. If you can tell me which one I will give you a million dollars. Which one do you go with? Why?
[/QUOTE]

Your analogy is not as clean as the original hypothetical. There is not a one to one relationship between them liking ice cream and them having it in their freezers.

But I’ll clean up your analogy a little and give you an answer. Let’s say that all these women live alone (so there is more of a one-to-one relationship between “likiing ice cream” and them “having it in the freezer”) and are beaten by strangers. Then, the more logical answer would be the woman who likes ice cream. Why? Because there is a strong positive correlation between liking ice cream and having it in the freezer. And, according to your hypothetical, between having ice cream in the freezer and being beaten (by their boyfriends). Althogh it is not as strong a correlation.

144

[QUOTE=magellan01]
No. I’m asking you to take into account ALL of the little information you have. Let’s try a simpler one. I’m waliking down a street in Manhattan. I pass a 10-year-old boy who says " I saw a dog today". I walk further down the street in Manhattan and happen upon another boy who says “I saw a falcon today.”

Now either boy could be lying. Manhattan has both dogs and falcons. So, again, for one million dollars, only one kid is telling the truth, which one?

Which guess increases your odds of gettinig the cash?
[/QUOTE]

Alright. I think we’re on to something.

Honestly, I would pick the dog-boy. Dogs are much more common than falcons, and a child is more likely to correct identify a dog than a species of a bird. Note that I have not used statistics to come to this conclusion, but common sense. I would probably use the same rationale if the boys lived out in the country, where the dog-to-falcon ratio is much less.

But this scenario is much simpler than the one proposed earlier. A more analogous rape scenario would be you’ve got two American women: One claims to have been raped by a white man and another claims to have been raped by a Pygmy man. Using a null model, you would not expect an average American woman to ever encounter a Pygmy throughout her lifetime, let alone a Pygmy man. Thus, I would find the Pygmy rapist to be more far-stretched than the American rapist.

But if we’re talking about a black woman and a white woman accusing white men of rape, I don’t see the differences between these scenarios being that big to justify incredulousness, at least based on real world statistics.

So…after rambling on for awhile…I conclude that in order for me to play this game using strategy rather than random selection, one of the events would have to be very unlikely compared to the other. White-on-black rape doesn’t fit that bill to me, but Pygmy-on-dog-boy rape does. And if this game does not require that SOMEONE be lying, then I say believe both claims. Skepticism for skepticism’s sake is just stupid.

145

[QUOTE=magellan01]
No. I’m asking you to take into account ALL of the little information you have.
[/quote]

Which amounts to nothing at all.

That’s why your question requires me to make a random WAG. None of the information that is pertinent to credibility has been provided in your hypothetical. None at all.

Should I be assuming that a boy would be able to identify a falcon just as easily as a dog? No, that’s a bad assumption. Straight out of the gate, I have a question about the kid’s credibility, i.e. his ability to render an accurate (not necessarily honest) account of what he saw. It’s perfectly possible that he saw a falcon, and if he was an ornithologist instead of a little boy, then I would say both claims are equally credible. But knowing how easy it is for kid to misidentify uncommon animals, I can’t assume the one kid’s credibility with respect to falcon identification is the same as the other kid’s credibility with respect to dog spotting.

So I’ll put my money on the kid with the dog. Not because dog’s are more common. But because a kid is more likely to know what a dog looks like when they see one. See the difference?

To return to the rape analogy, there is no reason for me to assume that a white woman’s credibility with respect to knowing whether she was raped or not is any different than a black woman. So the question that I had in your second scenario does not apply here.

146

[QUOTE=samclem]
That’s the ice cream causing a brain freeze. :slight_smile:
[/QUOTE]

Whatchoo tryin’ to say? That my husband beats me?!

OUTRAGE!

147

[QUOTE=DMC]
I don’t agree that the next woman to become a rape statistic will be white. It’s simply more likely.
[/QUOTE]

That is all anyone has been saying. Based on the information given, it is more likely. Not thatthat is the necessary reality, only that it is more likely.

So, lets subtract information. let’s say all we know is: a woman was raped. Now, what race is she, white or black. If you had to make a best guess, you’d say “white”, right? Because more white women are raped on any given day than black women, right?

Similarly, if I say a woman will be raped between 8:00 and 9:00 tonight and ask you to guess the race of the victim, and that I’ll give you a million dollars if you’re right, wouldn’t you guess white?

For your sake, I hope you would, because barring any other information, the odds that a rape victim is white is greater than the odds of her being black.

Back to the original hypothitical. We have two women who claim being raped by a white guy, both of equal credibility, one is white one is black, statistics simply say that if that is all the information we have, it is more likely that the white women was raped.

[QUOTE=DMC]
It still has fuck all to do with the credibility of a black woman claiming to have been raped by a white man. Once again, I’m more likely to hit on red in roulette than I am to hit on a specific number. That doesn’t mean that my claim that I hit a specific number is any less credible than my claim that I hit on red, as both are perfectly plausible.Of course, but that still has fuck all to do with credibility.
[/QUOTE]

The credibility of all claims is equal, yes. But if you ask me to assess the probability of a specific claim being true and my choices are “red” versus “22”, I have to go with red.

[QUOTE=DMC]
You seem to have a hard time differentiating between how frequently something occurs with how credible it is.
[/QUOTE]

I think this gets to why this has been so problematic. The question does not go to the credibility (truthfulness) of any individual. We have no way to look at that. It is a hypothetical, the person anonymous except for three things

woman
claim of rape
race

Therefore, it simply goes to the probability of a claim being credible. And the only way to measure the claims is with statistics aligned with the three known factors.

148

Sure. To me, the distinction is that in the former, you’re looking at the actual, real-world situation. In an individual situation, it’s not relevant to use statistical likelihoods because the whole point of using statistics in such a manner is to help predict results in absence of better information. In the latter, you’re looking at the situation zoomed out to a set of basic data (i.e. black woman + white man) and you could possibly say that given those data, someone is more likely to be shown to be credible once a closer look is taken. I hope this is more clear.

149

Forgot-- That quote there was from Shodan (name added in case he comes looking for the response).

150

[QUOTE=magellan01]
That is all anyone has been saying. Based on the information given, it is more likely. Not thatthat is the necessary reality, only that it is more likely.
[/QUOTE]
No, it’s not all that anyone (or even you) has been saying. What’s being put forth is that likelihood of a plausible event has a bearing on the credibility of a person claiming to have experienced that event. That’s wrong.

Of course, but once again, that has nothing to do with credibility.

Duh. See above.

Of course.

No, they say no such thing. If both are equally credible, then they are equally credible.

For you, Brandon, or anyone else who thinks likelihood has any bearing here, here’s two little questions for you.

Assume that 99% of all rapes are white men raping white women, and 1% of all rapes are white men raping black women. Two women come forward and claim to have been raped, one white, the other black. What are the odds that the white woman is lying? What are the odds that the black woman is lying? Feel free to use a calculator, spreadsheet, or anything else you’d like.

I’ll even be fair and give you my answer up front. They are the same.

Of course it does. The theory posited and defended in the other thread was that the black claimant had less credibility because white on black rape is rarer than white on white rape.

151

[QUOTE=you with the face]
That’s why your question requires me to make a random WAG. None of the information that is pertinent to credibility has been provided in your hypothetical. None at all.

To return to the rape analogy, there is no reason for me to assume that a white woman’s credibility with respect to knowing whether she was raped or not is any different than a black woman. So the question that I had in your second scenario does not apply here.
[/QUOTE]

Here is the problem. You are thinking that credibility is entering the equation. It is not. Only **after **we determine which woman is lying can we begin to say anything about the credibility of either one. Before hand, we know as much about their credinility as we do about their love of apples. Thererfore it has zero weight in our decision making process. We have to assume they are both equally credible or un-credible. We can only use the information we have. That is:

hypotheticals
woman, on black, one white
both claim being raped by a white male
one is telling the truth, one is lying

additional information
more white women are raped by white males than black women are raped by white males

Therrefore, it follows that if a specific rape is committed by a white male there is a greater chance that the rape victim in that specific instance will have been a white woman.

152

[QUOTE=magellan01]
That is all anyone has been saying. Based on the information given, it is more likely. Not thatthat is the necessary reality, only that it is more likely.
[/quote]

But as I kept saying to Badger, we are not talking about predictions. In fact, the thought process that applies to making an prediction is completely separate from the thought process associated with evaluating a claim that has allegedly already happened.

I have a 1 in 6 chance of getting any particular side when I roll a die. Correct?

Say I roll and get a deuce. The chances of a deuce coming face-up as opposed to any other number is relatively low (~17%). Should that “rareness” be factored in when assigning credibility to my claim that I rolled a deuce?

Of course not. That’s ludicrous. I have no reason to conclude that my rolling a deuce was implausible, either absolutely or relatively. Maybe if i rolled several times more and each time I got a deuce, then I could start panicking. But just because something is less common relative to something else doesn’t necessarily mean that its exceptional in any kind of way.

When you say that one claim is more credible than another, essentially you need to explain why the supposedly less credible claim is exceptional enough to warrant skepticism. If all you have to fall back on is “because its less common” then you are not being logical. More people get married in June than in October, but that doesn’t mean that when someone says they were married in October, we should raise an eyebrow.

153

[QUOTE=magellan01]
Only **after **we determine which woman is lying can we begin to say anything about the credibility of either one.
[/quote]

This makes no sense. If we know that a woman is lying, questions about her credibility are entirely moot. She has no credibility because she is lying.

Which is why we can’t confidently say which claim is more credible or not. Because we don’t who is most likely to be lying.

If we assume that both women’s credibility is 100%, then that means 100% of the time we should expect these women to be truthful when they claim rape.

If we assume that both women’s credibility is 0%, then that means we can’t count on either one to be truthful about their claims.

In either situation, their claims are equally credible.

You are stuck in prediction mode. Until you break out if it, you will continue to make unpersuasive arguments like this.

154

[QUOTE=DMC]
No, it’s not all that anyone (or even you) has been saying. What’s being put forth is that likelihood of a plausible event has a bearing on the credibility of a person claiming to have experienced that event. That’s wrong.
[/QUOTE]

That’s not what I, at least, have been saying. I don’t think others have been either. Both women are equally credible, so you can’t use credibility as a factor in the equation. THAY ARE EQUALLY CREDIBLE. But the hypotheticl says one is lying, so what information do we have to help us? The only thing is the staistics concerning rapes by white males. It says that it is more common that their victims will be white women. That’s the only information we have. We have to come to a conlclusion based on that AND THAT ALONE. Their credibility does not enter into it. One is lying. We will know something about their repsective degrees of credibility only AFTER we determine which one is lying.

[QUOTE=DMC]
Assume that 99% of all rapes are white men raping white women, and 1% of all rapes are white men raping black women. Two women come forward and claim to have been raped, one white, the other black. What are the odds that the white woman is lying? What are the odds that the black woman is lying? Feel free to use a calculator, spreadsheet, or anything else you’d like.

I’ll even be fair and give you my answer up front. They are the same.
[/QUOTE]

(I’ll assume you meant "claimed to have been raped by a white male.)

You are correct. But this us a different question. If you add the instruction that one of the woman is lying, then force a best-guess decision, one has to look to the statistics, as that is the only illuminating information. If we didn;t have that statistical information, then you might as well flip the coin.

155

[QUOTE=magellan01]
You are correct. But this us a different question. If you add the instruction that one of the woman is lying, then force a best-guess decision, one has to look to the statistics, as that is the only illuminating information. If we didn;t have that statistical information, then you might as well flip the coin.
[/QUOTE]
But in the thread in question, we don’t have the instruction that a rape accuser is lying. We simply have an accuser, and some people posited that since the accuser is making a claim about something that happens less often than white on white rape, her credibility takes a hit. That’s the claim being made, and the one that several of us here are disagreeing with.

156

[QUOTE=you with the face]
This makes no sense. If we know that a woman is lying, questions about her credibility are entirely moot. She has no credibility because she is lying.

Which is why we can’t confidently say which claim is more credible or not. Because we don’t who is most likely to be lying.

If we assume that both women’s credibility is 100%, then that means 100% of the time we should expect these women to be truthful when they claim rape.

If we assume that both women’s credibility is 0%, then that means we can’t count on either one to be truthful about their claims.

In either situation, their claims are equally credible.

You are stuck in prediction mode. Until you break out if it, you will continue to make unpersuasive arguments like this.
[/QUOTE]

Let’s talk about credibility. Person X, who you know nothing about, makes a claim to you. How do you assess the veracity of his claim? There are two methods. One is through the credibility of the individual. The other is the credibility of the claim itself.

We have identical twins. You know nothing of either of them. Twin A says he’s been to Switzerland. Twin B says he has been to Andorra. One of them is lying. You have to choose one. If you are right I will give you a million dollars, who do you choose?

You choose Twin B, right, because the probability of a random person having been to Andorra is smaller than the probability of a random person having been to Andorra. That doesn’t mean that you are correct, for all you know the twins live in Andorra. But with the limited information you logically view the claim of Twin A as being more credible. I think we get hung up when you assume that because the claim of Twin A is more credible that Twin A is more credible as a person. That doesn’t necessarily follow. It could very well be that he the one lying. But again, based on the information we have, his claim is more credible.

157

[QUOTE=magellan01]
That’s not what I, at least, have been saying. I don’t think others have been either. Both women are equally credible, so you can’t use credibility as a factor in the equation. THAY ARE EQUALLY CREDIBLE.
[/QUOTE]
Since you don’t seem to have actually read the thread in question, yes, people are saying what we disagree with.

[QUOTE=Huerta88]
In the absence of (or pending) other decisive evidence, and ceteris paribus (why not, since I’ve already been accused of Big Wordism?) – yes, what I would have to go on would be (uncorroborated statement as to statistically improbable event) plus (knowledge of statistical improbability), and if forced to make a decision or take an action (i.e., do I prosecute the blonde? Do I respond favorably to a demand that I get outraged about the “rape?”), I would not refuse to give weight to the significant (albeit far-from-infallible) information that I had and that I believed had relevance to resolving the otherwise unresolved proposition.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Ellis Dee]
He’s simply saying that without evidence, the statistics cast doubt on the veracity of the woman’s claim.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Greathouse]
YWTF, Why is it wrong to gauge the probability that this woman is telling the truth based on past occurances of similar situations (black woman raped by white men), when you have nothing else to go on other than one person’s word against another? If no other evidence ever came to light, would you believe the woman was telling the truth and it was simply unfortunate that no evidence was found or would you assume she was lying? I would assume she is lying and that the men had actually done nothing illegal.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Greathouse]
The numbers that have been shown to me do not support a high likeihood of event unfolding in the manner claimed by the alleged victim. At this point, to me, it I see nothing wrong in using statistics of past crimes and claims of crimes to guauge the likelihood of this allegation being true based on no other evidence.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Greathouse]
The numbers do not support the alleged victim’s claim because they show a very, very small number of rapes are white men attacking a black woman.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Huerta88]
What none of you seem to be picking up on is the broader point that (1) evaluating her credibility and (2) evaluating the likelihood of a given event having actually happened and (3) evaluating the plausibility of a given allegation being in fact true are at some level (from our perspective) all proxies for each other.
[/QUOTE]
Do you still think people aren’t saying the things we claim they are?

158

[QUOTE=DMC]
Since you don’t seem to have actually read the thread in question, yes, people are saying what we disagree with.

Do you still think people aren’t saying the things we claim they are?
[/QUOTE]

There is a distinction between the credibility of the particular claim and the credibility of the person. Again, since we can not judge the overall credibility of the person we are stuck having to compare the credibility of the claim by itself.

I thiink that is what most peolpe you cited were saying. The only one who seems to tread into questionable territory is Huerta88 in the second quote of his that you included. His #1 is misleading. There is her overall credibility as a person and there is her credibility as it is attched to a particular claim. If he means the latter, he is correct. If he means the former, which I don’t think he does, he is grossly mistaken.

159

[QUOTE=magellan01]
There is a distinction between the credibility of the particular claim and the credibility of the person.
[/QUOTE]
No there’s not in the scenario as given. The frequency of a claimed event having occurred has absolutely no bearing on the credibility of the claimant, but if you think it does, you’ll be able to answer my two little questions above. Give it a shot.

The only metric that affects the credibility of a claim is the frequency of which said claim is lied about. If you have evidence that black women are more likely to falsely accuse white men of rape than white women are, then I’ll give the black woman less credibility. You won’t be doing so, so she’s equally credible.

160

[QUOTE=Lama Pacos]
Sure. To me, the distinction is that in the former, you’re looking at the actual, real-world situation. In an individual situation, it’s not relevant to use statistical likelihoods because the whole point of using statistics in such a manner is to help predict results in absence of better information. In the latter, you’re looking at the situation zoomed out to a set of basic data (i.e. black woman + white man) and you could possibly say that given those data, someone is more likely to be shown to be credible once a closer look is taken. I hope this is more clear.
[/QUOTE]

Thanks for your response.

It would seem to me that, in the twenty-nine page trainwreck that spawned this one, a good many Dopers said more than once something like “assuming no other evidence” or “all other things being equal”. As did Bricker. you with the face has already stated clearly that she deliberately disregarded all such disclaimers, and this apparent unwillingness to engage an argument honestly would explain the length of the thread.

But thanks again for the explanation.

Regards,
Shodan