Lying whore.

[Huerta88]

@you with the face

To what do you attribute the apparent “vanishingly rareness” of priest molestations back in the day?
…
The problem with basing your preliminary assessments on stats is becuase this data is only available if someone collects it first. If no one has collected this data, then what you are going to use? Will your default position change in the absence of stats that will tell you what to believe? Or will you use this nebulous concept called common sense that I keep talking about?

I don’t know if you’re Catholic or not or if you have kids, but I should hope that if your kid told you that the priest fondled them you would not be initially skeptical just because some PDF file told that touchy-feeling priests were “vanishingly rare”. This concept makes absolutely no sense to me.

You have missed the point 100%. My actual point was that when I had no statistics I had a vague “gut feeling” that suggested to me that almost no priests were molesters ('cause that’s gross) and only a few people drove drunk late at night ('cause it’s illegal). That was without recourse to stats. Now that I’ve seen some stats, my “gut feeling” is better informed and I am much less likely to doubt either proposition as a general or specific possibility. So – stats led to making me a better risk evaluator.

He’s the prosecutor. If he is not going to advocate for the plaintiff, then I don’t know who else will.

Wow, this is off base. There is no “plaintiff” in a criminal case. The “party” he represents is the People of North Carolina. The people have an interest in seeing criminals indicted and prosecuted and an equal (actually, stronger) interest in seeing non-criminals not subjected to the coercive power of the state. The prosecutor is not an advocate for the complainant; the Ethics Rules I posted ages ago are quite clear on this. And the complainant is not a party to the case at all; she is at most a witness. This is pretty fundamental.

But until you’ve reviewed the same evidence that Nifong has, he has the advantage.

I’ve explained to you before that under the discovery rules, and unless defense counsel are lying (which no one’s caught them doing yet), the prosecution is obligated to reveal and has revealed to the defense, and the defense to the public, essentially all relevant inculpatory or exculpatory evidence. If Nifong has some “evidence” he hasn’t turned over, then he’s in violation of the discovery rules and for that reason alone needs to step down. Of course, there is no hidden smoking gun evidence.

Even though they are the ones who actually may have commited a crime. This amazes me.

If they did not do it, then she committed a crime. Right now, it does not seem so unreasonable to focus the rights of the people who’ve been indicted and jailed, despite having a consistent story, vis a vis the rights of a person who faces no current penal liability and has a much shakier account of things.

And anyway – I am not “defending” them, I am advocating for a process of prosecutorial discretion that was not applied here. You do realize that our system has (or is supposed to have) a bias built in to protect the rights of defendants, right?

[John_Mace]

@Shodan

The key word is “until”, which is why I underlined it. All this is useful until more, or any, facts are available. You were implying that the statistics should be used to overrule more direct evidence. No one has suggested this.

If you feel it makes a difference, then use “any”. Does that help? I can’t imagine that it does.

And yet he was suggesting it be used after other evidence (like DNA) was available. That contradicts your original statment, which was:

But nobody in this thread - not me, and certainly not Huerta88 - has ever suggested that we should rely on statistics if evidence pertaining to the case is available.

If you still don’t see the error, we’ll need to get an objective 3rd party to weigh in, because what is a blindingly obvious error to me, seems not to be on to you. I’m not going to continue arguing that point.

Yes, and so he has been repeatedly relying on it, rather than anything else. And it seems to bear out that the preliminary assessment, made before any, or more, or some, evidence is available, was correct. She seems to be lying, just as would be expected if white-on-black rape were rare.

She seems to be lying, just as would be expected if man on woman rape were rape. That statement makes as much sense as yours, since man on woman rape is rare.

Are you honestly telling me that you made the assessment of her honesty based solely on knowing that she was Black and the guys were white, and nothing else? I find that hard to believe, yet that’s what you seem to be saying. Instead, you came to that conclusion because of many other odd things about this case, but then keep going back to “White on Black rape” being rare as if that were the final word.

I keep repeating the obvious, and you seem to keep denying that it is true. This person presents herself, saying “I was raped by white guys”. And others react by saying something equivalent to “that’s pretty unusual - white-on-black rape is rather rare. A bit hard to believe, just off the top of my head - let’s look into this more deeply.”

And sure enough, her story has very little to substantiate it. And then there is a chorus of people all saying, “No! No! Your assumption can’t be true, because she might be a left-handed Eskimo, and we don’t know the rate of false reports for Arctic-dwellers!”

First of all, we still don’t know that she was lying. It appears so, but can we wait till this goes to trial (or the case gets dropped) before we pass final judgement? That’s all anyone has been saying.

How do you know that all the whites in the county are blacks passing for white?

Well, that would blow your statstics out of the water, wouldn’t it? If you want to assume that statement has any merit, then I don’t know how you can rely on statistics to make your case. Frankly, I’m confortable making the assumption that we have a good idea of how many Blacks there are in the US and in Durahm. If you want to dispute those numbers, I’ll be happy to open a GD thread where we can debate: Resolved: We know the demographics of the US to a reliable degree. Or, you can open one which says: Resolved: Most Blacks lie about their race when answering census data.

[you_with_the_face]

@Shodan

Rape of blacks by whites is relatively less common than rape of blacks by blacks, or rape of whites by whites.

True.

There is no way to reliably determine the incidence of rape in this country.

Unanswerable.

Being yelled at with racial slurs by drunken whites is a likely event.

If you’re black and among drunk racist whites who would do such a thing, then yes this is likely.

I fail to see how the answers to these question have anything to do with your assertion…

She seems to be lying, just as would be expected if white-on-black rape were rare.

…but I’m interested in seeing what kind of “math” you use to make it all sensible.

[monstro]

@Shodan

OK, one more time.

If you like, please answer the questions below.

Rape of blacks by whites is relatively less common than rape of blacks by blacks, or rape of whites by whites.

How is this RELEVANT? The girl allegedly SAW her attackers and eliminated the sole black guy!
Is this statement true, false, unknown, unanswerable, or other?

There is no way to reliably determine the incidence of rape in this country.

Is this statement true, false, unknown, unanswerable, or other?

Being yelled at with racial slurs by drunken whites is a likely event.

As above.

That’ll do to start with.

Regards,
Shodan
[/QUOTE]

[you_with_the_face]

@Huerta88

You have missed the point 100%. My actual point was that when I had no statistics I had a vague “gut feeling” that suggested to me that almost no priests were molesters ('cause that’s gross) and only a few people drove drunk late at night ('cause it’s illegal). That was without recourse to stats. Now that I’ve seen some stats, my “gut feeling” is better informed and I am much less likely to doubt either proposition as a general or specific possibility. So – stats led to making me a better risk evaluator.

And this still sounds nutty. It’s quite possible that 99.09% of priests would never molest anyone. That doesn’t mean that the one time that that 0.01% of priests do molest, it’s an unbelievable thing.

Just like with race, your assessments are based on the notion that there is some inherent quality to priests that would prevent them from being molestors. Not so, though. Priests are just as capable of being molestors as Joe Blow the Atheist, so fixating on “priestliness” presents a bias that will make it less likely that a guilty priest will ever be brought to justice. This is dangerous as it leads exactly to statistics that justify this prejudice in the first place.

If the stats on molesting priest was 0%, would that cause you to doubt the word of your child making that claim? I’d like a response to this question because we can talk theoreticals all day and never see eye to eye. What does your worldview look like in practice?

There is no “plaintiff” in a criminal case. The “party” he represents is the People of North Carolina. The people have an interest in seeing criminals indicted and prosecuted and an equal (actually, stronger) interest in seeing non-criminals not subjected to the coercive power of the state.

True, but like I said before, if he’s not going to be an advocate for the accuser then who is? He said he believes a crime was committed and you fault him for that. Well, what should he say? That he doesn’t believe one was committed but “I’m going to prosecute anyway”? I’m not saying his performance has been flawless (I actually haven’t even much of him), but the things that you take issue with don’t make sense to me.

I’ve explained to you before that under the discovery rules, and unless defense counsel are lying (which no one’s caught them doing yet), the prosecution is obligated to reveal and has revealed to the defense, and the defense to the public, essentially all relevant inculpatory or exculpatory evidence.

I understand that the prosecution has to share its evidence with the defense, but I’m not under the impression that this information has to be shared ith the public. Do you have a cite for this? This isn’t my area, so I’m not arguing with you. I’ve never heard of this before.

Nifong has some “evidence” he hasn’t turned over, then he’s in violation of the discovery rules and for that reason alone needs to step down. Of course, there is no hidden smoking gun evidence.

That’s only assuming that this evidence has to be turned over to armchair spectators via the media. I was under the impression that discovery only applied to information-sharing between the defense and prosecution (and vice versa), but did not require that evidence be released to the public.

If they did not do it, then she committed a crime.

Right, but she’s not on trial. If the guys are found “not guilty”, this is not the same thing as innocent. O.J. is a living breathing example of how someone doesn’t suddenly become innocent just because the state fails to prove its case. So even if the final verdict is not guilty, that’s not proof that she’s a criminal. But you continually act as if this is so.

[you_with_the_face]

@John Mace

Are you honestly telling me that you made the assessment of her honesty based solely on knowing that she was Black and the guys were white, and nothing else? I find that hard to believe, yet that’s what you seem to be saying.

I don’t find that hard to believe, John. Maybe a month ago, I would have. Maybe even two weeks ago. Now? Attributing that thought pattern to him is easy. In fact, it’s the only that jibes with what he saying.

[John_Mace]

OK, I found actual rape statistics for North Carolina, if anyone is interested.

What you have to do is click on a given year (eg, 2004) at the upper left, then click on “rape” from the list on the right, then you can view by all kinds of categories, including “Rape by Race - Victim and Offender Race Analysis”. I looked at a few years, and it turns about to be about what I’ve been saying based on other cites-- somewhere around 5-7% for White on Black rape. Black on white rape is higher, at about 20-30%.

Now, there’s something not quite right with these statistics, too. If I look at the data for 2004, it says (in the first, overall summary) that there were 1398 White victims and 790 Black victims. But if I look at the breakdown by race of the vitcims (the two tables below the summary table), it shows 1591 White victims and 913 Black victims. Something doesn’t jibe (unless I’m reading this wrong).

BTW, this took about 2 mintues of effort. I just typed in “rape statistics fro North Carolina”. This was 4th cite llisted.

Keep in mind that we’re still not at the point of seeing rape statistics for Durham (which has about twice the African-American population than the state as a whole), and I’m not advocating using these numbers to prejudge whether any given case is credible or not.

[crowmanyclouds]

@Contrapuntal

…Meanwhile this quadruple murder is still awaiting DNA testing… http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=local&id=3730471

Well since they don’t have anybody in custody to compare the DNA with, just what are they going to do with results NOW anyway.
(Did I miss it or does that cite make NO mention of DNA at all?)

@Contrapuntal

…The second dancer shows her [del]ass[/del] manners in court… http://www.wral.com/news/9294698/detail.html

So, aside from giving you another opportunity to snipe at her, this is relevant how?

@Contrapuntal

…This person accused of first degree rape and resisting arrest has a bond of $150,000, less than half that of the Duke students… http://www.herald-sun.com/durham/4-739380.html

And? You do know how bail amounts are set?
If Bill Gates was the accused how high do you think his bail would be set? (given that Mr. Gates can afford to use $100,000 bills to wipe his ass)

@Shodan

…It is not impossible that this woman is telling the truth (the second time, when she claimed three rapists instead of twenty)…

Again CITE, the Duke police report IS NOT A VICTIM STATEMENT!
The officer who wrote it was NOT at the hospital (he was checking license plates at the house), he does not quote the Duke officer that was at the hospital, or quote any Durham officer at the hospital.
Who was in charge of this investigation the Duke University PD or the Durham PD?
(Does the Duke University PD’s jurisdiction extend past the university campus (and off campus housing?), if a murder occurs on campus, does DUPD handle it or does the DPD take over)

@Shodan

…and the only other witness to have come forward has changed her story, and there is reason to suspect that this other witness made the change for her own financial and legal benefit…

Show me where she changed her story.
I think you all are getting story and opinion confused.
Her initial opinion was “I don’t think it happened”, now it’s “I think it did happen”. She is not going to be asked what her opinion is, AFAIK the only time that opinions are admissible is when they come expert witnesses.
This is (my short version) of her story,
I got there at X time,
she got there, stuff happened (drinks offered, dancing, broomstick, ugly yelling, we want our money back…)
I went out to my car,
she tried/went back in,
she came back out, I drove off, 911 call, drove to Krogers,
stuff happens at Krogers, cops come,
I lied and said “I picked her up on the side of the road” because I didn’t want to be involved.So apart from the “side of the road/was at the party” change, someone show me what part of her story that’s been different?
'Cause in every story I’ve seen, all the defense mentions is the change in her opinion.

CMC fnord!

[Shodan]

@John Mace

And yet he was suggesting it be used after other evidence (like DNA) was available.

I was talking about stuff like this;

I think I’ve addressed the statistics angle. If they aren’t reliable or well-sourced stats, then they have less or no value. If they are, then they might (until a critical mass of other evidence comes in) be part of (I am tired of saying this, but only “part of”) what influences my viewpoints or assessments of plausibility. I’ve never said (pace the strawman) that it was the only, or even predominant, factor that might make me lean one way or the other in my gut reaction.

I think you are misunderstanding him here. If you don’t feel the same, well, if he can live with it, so can I.

@John Mace

She seems to be lying, just as would be expected if man on woman rape were rape. That statement makes as much sense as yours, since man on woman rape is rare.

I’m sorry, but this makes absolutely no sense to me. “Man on woman rape is rape”? Do you mean “rare”?

I can’t address the point, as I don’t understand it.

@John Mace

Are you honestly telling me that you made the assessment of her honesty based solely on knowing that she was Black and the guys were white, and nothing else? I find that hard to believe, yet that’s what you seem to be saying.

Where in the world did you get this?

I honestly do not see how you can come to that conclusion based on my posts. I keep saying, over and over, that we need to examine the evidence, and then you come back with a complete non sequitur like the above.

No, I did not make an assessment of her honesty based on her race.

@John Mace

Instead, you came to that conclusion because of many other odd things about this case, but then keep going back to “White on Black rape” being rare as if that were the final word.

No, not the final word. The first, most preliminary assessment, made before an examination of any of the crucial evidence, and subject to immediate revision if any more concrete evidence is discovered.

@John Mace

First of all, we still don’t know that she was lying. It appears so, but can we wait till this goes to trial (or the case gets dropped) before we pass final judgement? That’s all anyone has been saying.

Again, the notion that I have made a final judgement, or that this judgement is based on her race, is simply bizarre.

This is unworthy of you, frankly.

@John Mace

Well, that would blow your statstics out of the water, wouldn’t it? If you want to assume that statement has any merit, then I don’t know how you can rely on statistics to make your case.

Can’t you always make a similar assumption? And therefore, as monstro says, questions about crime statistics (or anything else) are worthless.

@John Mace

Frankly, I’m confortable making the assumption that we have a good idea of how many Blacks there are in the US and in Durahm.

OK, why is that? IOW, why are you willing to make assumptions about the incidence of false reporting in some cases, but not others?

Do you see what I am saying? You seemed to believe in an earlier post that the science of statistics had some value. So do I. But you also seem to assume that an assumption about false reporting is valid in one case, but must be rejected out of hand in another. It seems to me, as a preliminary, first-order-of-magnitude, off-the-top-of-my-head, subject-to-revision-at-any-time, before examining any of the evidence, not instead of any evidence, we can make the same assumption about the Duke case as you do about demographics.

And finally,

@you with the face

@Shodan

Rape of blacks by whites is relatively less common than rape of blacks by blacks, or rape of whites by whites.

True.

There is no way to reliably determine the incidence of rape in this country.

Unanswerable.

Being yelled at with racial slurs by drunken whites is a likely event.

If you’re black and among drunk racist whites who would do such a thing, then yes this is likely.

Why do you believe the first and third are true, but the second is unanswerable?

Regards,
Shodan

[you_with_the_face]

@Shodan

Why do you believe the first and third are true, but the second is unanswerable?

1. **Rape of blacks by whites is relatively less common than rape of blacks by blacks, or rape of whites by whites. **

Just knowing how race relations work in this country from personal experience tells me the answer to this question. It also doesn’t hurt that I understand the risk factors for rape.

Whites tend to stick with whites when it comes to relationships and blacks tend to stick with blacks. Intimate relationships between attackers and victims significantly increase the odds that a rape will occur. So if there are fewer intimate relationships between BWs and WMs in proportion to WWs and WMs and BWs and BMs, then this translates into disproportionately fewer white-on-black rapes.

The question is why do you need stats to figure this out? Are you under the impression that “free love” exists between the races and that the racial mix of the population is heterogenous? That’s the only reason why I’d think you’d have to refer to stats to figure this out.

2. **There is no way to reliably determine the incidence of rape in this country. **

This question is unanswerable if only for the fact that the “true” incidence is always going to be unknown to some extent. It doesn’t matter if you are looking at HIV or rape. Unless this information is reported by a human being (and we know how reliable they are), it won’t be recorded by a statistician. So how can you ever be sure everything is reported if you only know what is reported? It’s circular. Unless you have an ominiscient, omnipresent entity available to tell whether your counts included everybody, then the most that you’re working with is an estimate.

But the reason why the question is “unanswerable” as opposed to “true” is because it’s not in the realm of the impossibility to devise a way to reliably determine the incidence of rape. If we had that method, we wouldn’t know for sure whether it’s capturing the true incidence, but its possible that it could be. We just wouldn’t be able to verify it.

3. **Being yelled at with racial slurs by drunken whites is a likely event. **

This is true if you are in an enviroment where there are drunk racists whites who would do that. I don’t see why this is so difficult to understand. Your question has as much meaning as saying “Being killed by a drunk driver is a likely event.” This is true if you are in close proximity to a vehicle driven by a drunk driver. That shit happens everyday.

In order to answer this question with “false” you have to make the error of taking prevalence and assuming that represents an individual’s risk level. Yeah, it’s a rare event to be killed by a drunk driver if that likelihood is determined by taking the number of people killed per year by drunk drivers and dividing that by the US population. But if you hone in on only the people with risk factors and then do the math, suddenly we aren’t talking about infintessimal odds anymore. Suddenly things become very likely.

[you_with_the_face]

And in the interest of conquering more ignorance, I ask that those who thought I was pulling stuff out of my ass about the serial killer rape thing, please read this article in Tuesday’s Washington Post.

PEORIA, Ill. – A serial killer who prosecutors say burned some of his victims to ash and bits of bone in his mother’s backyard pleaded guilty Tuesday to killing eight women.

[…]

The killings and the time it took authorities to connect them and then track down the killer caused an uproar in Peoria’s black community. The victims were black and several were prostitutes and drug addicts. Bright is white.

[…]

Authorities have refused to discuss a motive but say Bright was fascinated with sex and pornography involving black women.

(bolding mine)

[Contrapuntal]

@you with the face

Contra, if you don’t think people saying that I want to be slavemaster-style raped or constantly attributing “disappointment” to me because the stats “do not conform to my worldview” particularly nasty, then I’m wondering what would count, in your eyes. Scan some of these pages and then tell me what you think.

This is an example of why I find it difficult to communicate with you. I see nothing about slavemaster rape or world view in the posts noted by holmes, which are the ones I referred to. I said that I saw nothing particularly nasty in those posts. Now you bring up entirely different posts, and very strongly imply that I saw nothing nasty in them. That is tantamount to putting words in my mouth. An apology would be nice.
If someone said that you wanted to be slavemaster-style raped then that is indeed a nasty thing to say.

If being told that you get disappointed when statistics do not conform to your worldview is your idea of nasty, then perhaps the Pit is to be avoided. Seems pretty mild to me. (No comment on whether it is true or not, just on how nasty it is.)

[you_with_the_face]

@Contrapuntal

This is an example of why I find it difficult to communicate with you. I see nothing about slavemaster rape or world view in the posts noted by holmes, which are the ones I referred to.

Why are you relying on holmes to give you the full picture of what’s going on in this thread? I fully realize that his posts contained nothing about slavemaster-style rape. I was merely giving you a hint that there are other things going on that aren’t necessarily evident right in front of your eyes.

[holmes]

Contraputal I assumed, wrongly that you take those few early examples and read thru the thread and notice how it progressed from that point, not that those were the THE examples of what I was speaking about. If you notice in those posts, YWTF’s gender and color are now part of the focus of what’s wrong with her ‘reasoning’ and that’s part of what I was refering to; those two posts are the beginning of that.

I wasn’t clear and that’s on me and I think YWTF assumed as I did that you would have read on, so I can see why she’s questioning why you didn’t comment on the tone of the thread.

[Malacandra]

@you with the face

And in the interest of conquering more ignorance, I ask that those who thought I was pulling stuff out of my ass about the serial killer rape thing, please read this article in Tuesday’s Washington Post.

(bolding mine)

And this rebuts the notion that no white serial rapist/murderer of black women ever existed, but does diddly squat to suggest that the white-on-black rape stats are vastly understated because of the absence of identifiable victims. :rolleyes:

Really you were on much better ground talking about the statistics of white-on-black rape under the specific circumstances of black strippers performing at white frat parties - which is highly applicable and could well be orders of magnitude higher than the basic white-on-black rape figures. (Credit where it’s due.)

[Contrapuntal]

@crowmanyclouds

Well since they don’t have anybody in custody to compare the DNA with, just what are they going to do with results NOW anyway.
(Did I miss it or does that cite make NO mention of DNA at all?)

Sorry. Here is a better link. No DNA results in the quadruple murder case. No DNA results after seven months in another case. (Triple homicide.) http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=state&id=4215397

So, aside from giving you another opportunity to snipe at her, this is relevant how?

Goes to character and credibility, your honor. As for sniping, she pretty much made herself a target, no?

And? You do know how bail amounts are set?
If Bill Gates was the accused how high do you think his bail would be set? (given that Mr. Gates can afford to use $100,000 bills to wipe his ass)

The families of the defendants are upper middle class. The students themselves, I suspect, are not wealthy at all. And hardly a threat to flee jurisdiction. Compare this to Kim Roberts’ bail on her embezzlement/parole violation being reduced to $0.00. Where does your implied “ability to pay” theory fit in there?

Show me where she changed her story.

She has lied almost from her first words. In the bogus 911 call she first says she is driving her car, then says she and a friend were walking. Her credibility is zero.

[you_with_the_face]

@Malacandra

And this rebuts the notion that no white serial rapist/murderer of black women ever existed, but does diddly squat to suggest that the white-on-black rape stats are vastly understated because of the absence of identifiable victims. :rolleyes:

(bolding mine)

Cite for when I said or implied the stats were “vastly understated”? I simply said that had raped occured in these kind of cases, they wouldn’t be reflected in the data. We don’t even know if rape occured in this Peoria case. We will never know because the victims are dead.

Oh yeah, and burned to pieces.

God, Malacandra, give it up. Every time you attribute an emotional response to me about the statistics, you tell everyone how the numbers really make you feel. And right now you’re telling us that you feel threatened and defensive just because the whole “vanishingly rare” thing is unsupported by other data.

Never in my life have I seen someone who lacks as much self-awareness.

[Contrapuntal]

@you with the face

Why are you relying on holmes to give you the full picture of what’s going on in this thread? I fully realize that his posts contained nothing about slavemaster-style rape. I was merely giving you a hint that there are other things going on that aren’t necessarily evident right in front of your eyes.

Bullshit bullshit bullshit you fucking weasel. Show me where I said that the slavemaster comment was not nasty.

@you

Contra, if you don’t think people saying that I want to be slavemaster-style raped or constantly attributing “disappointment” to me because the stats “do not conform to my worldview” particularly nasty, then I’m wondering what would count, in your eyes.

If you “fully realized” that the slavemaster comment was not included, why accuse me of finding nothing nasty about it? How is making a false accusation “giving me a hint?”

I asked holmes for examples. He provided two. I said I saw nothing nasty in them. You then respond with the above, and then imply that I am relying on him for the full picture. Who the fuck said anything about the full picture? This has been your pattern with me from the jump. You dissemble, equivocate, and bluster your way through when things are not going your way, and frankly, I am tired of it.

As for things taking a nasty turn, I was essentially called a racist in post 115. I think things have been nasty for quite a while.

holmes, I did misunderstand. I thought those were the examples I asked for. However, there was nothin unclear in my response to you. Clearly, I was referring to them. **ywtf **is smart enought to see that.

[you_with_the_face]

@Shodan

I was talking about stuff like this;

What John is saying is that the stats were used in this thread to justify skepticism when we already had evidence, including some DNA evidence. If we have DNA, then we’ve already passed the point that stats would have any place in your analysis of the case, according to you.

And it’s so obvious that he means “rare” not “rape”.

[you_with_the_face]

@Contrapuntal

Bullshit bullshit bullshit you fucking weasel. Show me where I said that the slavemaster comment was not nasty.

Look up the word “if” in the dictionary, Contra.