Yes, there’s an exception to every rule. And anything is possible.
If “anything is possible” trumps “reasonable doubt,” then reasoning becomes impossible.
And your prejudicial thinking becomes just as problematic. Imagine the converse: If I assume that someone who lives in Des Plaines Illinois is not a serial killer, are you gonna come along with the most infinitesimally unlikely exception, John Wayne Gacey, and give everyone else in Des Plaines the “benefit of the doubt”–they may be a serial killer–until you receive “evidence to the contrary”? That’s an exact analog of your reasoning. That’s not what benefit of the doubt means; that’s the opposite of benefit of the doubt.
If you let the unlikeliest of exceptions rule your reason, you will be ruled entirely by illogic. And, of course, you’ll almost always be wrong.
I for one wasn’t saying “it’s possible in the sense that anything is possible”. I wasn’t saying you have to always account for outliers. I was saying that in this particular case, the phenomenon of non-orthodox thinking among BJU grads may be significant enough that you have to account for it. No general rules, nothing like that.
No, lissener, I wasn’t. I said that based on about ten students – which out of 12,000, and given that they were part of a large social network, is hardly outlier territory – and given a large number of similar claims from other people, there may be good reason to believe that in this case it matters. I did edit my post to say “may be” rather than “is” because of course I haven’t done a double-blind study, but you haven’t either, so we’re working on the same level here.
Let me put it this way: Your experience guided by your wisdom tells you that students there are more likely to adhere to a certain set of beliefs than not. I agree with you, but my experience guided by my wisdom tells me that a significant enough percentage of them may be deviant to be worth considering when deciding whether a given person adheres to a certain set of beliefs. I don’t think you were wrong for your initial claim that it’s more likely; I think that’s so, but in judging people we can’t go entirely by statistics especially when we have evidence that a significant minority exists.
I still think the word “significant” is a huge leap, unless your “sample” of ten was rigorously chosen for randomness. (I mean, if he’s the only one you’d happened to meet, you’d be claiming a statistic of 100% of your “sample.”)
In any case, I never argued for more than likelihood. (Although since the singer in question says he’s “singing for Christ,” I doubt he went there under duress, as in Lib’s likeliest scenario.)
What difference does that make? Once more, the statement was “Well, except they’re all alike in one particular: they fit in well enough at BJU to earn a diploma.” Even if it is only 1%, it is not “all”. I may be weak with statistics, but I’m pretty good with grammar. And besides that, the person in question obviously didn’t fit in very well, since he never earned a diploma. The only thing I’m trying to figure out at this point is why you’re so hell bent on defending that completely erroneous and indefensible statement. Either you have some bug up your ass about me, or else you don’t comprehend what the statement actually says.
Lib, once again, your argument boils down to, “anything is possible.”
We had a woman at my video store, three movies she rented were never returned. She insisted she returned them. After 30 days, we charged her credit card for them. She came in screaming, insisting she was 100% sure she returned all three movies. I said, "The only way that could possibly be true, is if, after you returned them, those three movies, out of the pile of movies under the drop slot, were somehow not checked in through the system, and were shelved, and then someone shoplifted those three specific discs. She looked at me like, “Well?” I said, “That’s the only way that could have happened.” She said, “Well, isn’t that possible?” I said, “Only to the extent that *anything * is possible.” She thought that was good enough to get out of paying for them.
I’m deja vuing all over again, Lib, with you and this thread.
No, it doesn’t. It boils down to a counterexample (Chris Sligh) that disproves a generality (“all”), plus the pointing out of an actual error (“to earn a diploma” — Chris didn’t). Your statement was simply wrong.
“Well, except they’re all alike in one particular: they fit in well enough at BJU to earn a diploma” is false.
Lissener, I made the same assumptions that you have when I decided to go to a church related college that is much smaller and in a more rural area than BJU. This was in 1961. I had planned to be a Christian education major and expected the atmosphere to be pretty much like the church camps and national convocations that I had attended.
I could not have been more wrong! We were a mixture of people just as you would find at any other school. There were lots of townies, people of other religious faiths, students from other countries, wicked people from far away places like Greenwich, Connecticut and Cherry Hill, N.J. And the biggest surprise of all was that all of the “religious” people weren’t alike either and none of them fit the stereotype.
I am in full agreement with Liberal on this one, but I wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t experienced it for myself.
Is that really why you started this thread? To nitpick to death an off-hand comment? Well congratulations, you’ve succeeded in showing that technically the exact wording lissener used isn’t 100% accurate. Small victory for you.
What would be a big victory for you, and for this board, is to realize that posts on this board aren’t carefully constructed manifestos. Lissener, or Diogenes, could have written three pages dealing with every exception and caveat to their hypothesis, but really, that’s unnecessary for seemingly everyone but you. Diogenes and Lissener made off-hand remarks, and that’s the level of scrutiny that should be given to them.
Look, you clinically insane person. Someone before me in that thread said he had graduated from BJU. No, I did not exhaustively factcheck that statement before I me-tooed it. If I had, I would simply have amended my statement to “attended” instead of “earned a diploma from.” Is that really the level of pedantry you’re performing this opera about? The statement, “Well, except that they’re all alike in one particular: they all attended BJU”–which is the statement I would have made if I had spent 6 hours faxing back and forth witht the records department at BJU to determine if the word “graduated” in the post I was referring to would stand up in a court of law–is 100% factually correct.
(Lib, when the head of the pin you’re dancing on gets so fucking infinitesimal, it’s time to pay the band and go home.)
And one fucking exception among thousands doesn’t “disprove” anything, you frightening moron. I went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, one of the best–and most expensive–art schools in the world. And extremely competitive, admissions wise. So you could safely generalize that if you met someone who went there, they were incredibly likely–almost certain–to be passionate about art. Guess what? one kid there hated art, but his dad was a famous artist, who insisted on his attending, and donated buttloads to the school to get him in. What does that one in a thousand example prove? That in assuming a randomly selected student from SAIC was passionate about art and earned their place there, you’d be right 999 out a thousand times; that knowing that someone attended SAIC is a pretty relevant chunk of information in finding out about that person.
Your bizarre and irrational defense of this idiot, just because you’re gay for his unoriginal derivative lame boring singing, just boggles me. By insisting that YOU are more rational for assuming that he’s that one in a thousand extreme exception, than I am for presuming him to be one of the 999 until there’s evidence to the contrary, is evidence, I think, of an organic problem.
I said that those ten people were part of a larger social circle with many similar-minded people in it. And since you are also not presenting any scientifically chosen evidence, insisting that everyone else has to is a little disingenuous.
And I agree with you about likelihood, so I wasn’t even replying to you so much as noting that this is a case where, as Zoe notes, “common sense” might not tell you everything you need to know about a given individual. Not to refute you, but to expand on the point. As for Sligh singing for Christ, Polycarp might sing for Christ someday too; would you assume he held the same beliefs you expect most BJU grads to hold? It is possible for a liberal Christian to come out of a conservative Christian family and school.
It’s simple, really. Most people are not gay. Given any random person, assuming that they are straight is fair enough, but there’s a significant enough minority that you will be wrong sometimes. You keep insisting that the idea of a liberalish BJU grad is an absurdity on the level of the 1 out of 999 art students who hates art, or whatever, but we’re trying to explain that it’s a lot more like the odds that someone will be gay. Sure, you can assume they’re not, but you’ll be wrong a statistically significant portion of the time.
Yes, but Zoe, keep in mind there are Christian schools, and then there are fundy schools like BJU, which aren’t accredited, or at least, have a rather shady accreditation, and which have a certain kind of reputation.
I myself attended a Catholic liberal arts college. Now, not everyone there was Catholic, or even Christian-despite being connected to an order of nuns. BUT…we were an accredited school, we had a strong international program, and a reputation for being very liberal and open-minded. BJU has just the opposite rep.
BJU, for example, has stated that Catholicism is a cult. The place is seen as basically a joke.
I suppose it’s POSSIBLE that this guy isn’t a fundy, but let’s be honest here-there are many Christian schools that aren’t the hardcore, lock-step, ultra-controlling institutions that BJU is. Why would you want to put up with such rules as these?
I can think of far more reputable schools to attend, if all you wanted was a diploma.
Not a bad effort, Guin. If you happen to stop by again, how about connecting the dots from “Bob Jones III thinks Catholics are cultists” to “every student attending the university thinks Catholics are cultists”. That’s a rather severe disconnect. At any rate, thanks for the ammo next time I point out how full of crap the Department of Education is, what with its shady accreditations and all.
It’s possible that the guy isn’t cut from the same cloth as the rest of the alumni of BJU, especially considering he is no longer there. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that he or any other student is forced to go there by their parents or for some other daft reason.
Then again, this conversation has started to remind me of a quote:
That’s a bunch of bullshit, dude. My point had nothing to do with “samples and statistics”. Are you seriously saying that you can make a common-sense claim, based on nothing but your observations of how things usually work, and nobody can refute you unless they’ve done a double-blind study? Your experience is valid but nobody else’s is? Come on. You’re saying “X is more like than Y”. We’re saying “X is more likely than Y, but not so much more likely that Y doesn’t happen a significant amount of the time”. Neither side has any better evidence, from a scientific standpoint than the other.
