[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Well, if you’re going to just invent numbers that satisfy your own feelings, I guess I can see why you have so much trouble in GD while demonstrating that you still have not grasped the problem with your claim.
[/QUOTE]
Actually, I offered my numbers and requested yours in order to see where precisely we might disagree. Sorry if you find such an exercise on a debate board frivolous and something to pooh-pooh. You might want to rethink why you spend any time here or what your role is—official and not.
The only problem with my claim is that you chose to take a comment that obviously speaks to generalities and place it under an electron microscope. This is a common MO with you, trite as it is. You use it to derail or end a discussion the implications of which might lead to the ruffling of your delicate political sensibilities.
You want Der Trihs to be treated as a species unto himself because his particular set of beliefs are unique to him. Sure. We can then apply the same test to every single member on these boards, or in the world. Right? We can then dispense with “conservative” and “liberal” as categories because they, too, of course, are similarly ham-handed and potentially erroneous. Or at least not very helpful and fraught with pitfalls. Here’s an idea, why not start a new message board entitled “Beyond a Shadow of Doubt”, Hosted and Moderated but yourself, in which each and every post in every thread is simply offered in symbolic logic?
In this rough-and-tumble world we inhabit, Tom, people do use terms that are understood by others to be imperfect, yet quite useful. “The Left” is one such term. “The Right” another. I showed you earlier that although I do not adhere to all of what “The Right” might imply, I would not take someone to task for categorizing me there. I would not fly off the handle demanding that everyone refer to my particular belief set, sui generis, as Magellanism, because I understand how the term is being used. Additionally, if someone listed some of my beliefs (restricted to those that are not traditionally positions of the left) and then said something to the effect, “Let’s see what Magellan01 wrote about that and get a peek at what the right thinks”, no problem. Substitute the name of a poster you believe to be clearly on the Right; even if I didn’t agree with all of the points listed I wouldn’t freak out “…b-b-bbut as a member of the Right I don’t believe that and you’re implying I do. How dare you!” I would understand you were simply making a point, using every-day terms to do so.
If you had gone to the trouble to use the descriptor “extreme”, I’d have even less of a problem, as there would be two qualifiers in the sentence. “Peek”, implying that we’re just going to get a small glimpse of what the thinking might be; and “extreme” explaining that that glimpse is restricted to what a small subset of the larger group thinks. Tell me, next time shall I use “double-extreme” or “triple-secret-extreme”? Would that keep your panties smooth and comfy?
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Even if 99% of the people who hold a position are on the left, if only 1% of the people who are on the left hold that position, it cannot demonstrate the beliefs of “the left.” Even if you want to keep inserting or withdrawing the adjective “extreme” so as to make more difficult to pin down your actual belief, you are still demonstrating failures in logic.
[/QUOTE]
It’s quite amazing that you attempt to take me to task for making a point loosely then seek to ignore an important qualifier that goes to deeper specificity. Especially after you made the error initially and had to be corrected. — Opps, sorry. I forgot about your Cloak of Infallibility. :rolleyes:
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
However, to play the silly game:
- 45% / 25% / 30%
- 60% / 15% / 25%
- 75% / 05% / 20%
3-B) 00% / 00% / 100%
- 10% / 00% / 90%
- 80% / 00% / 20%
[/QUOTE]
Let’s. There are three different issues. A) the necessity to account for your “excluded middle”, B) the apportioning of the particular belief, and C) the incidence of that belief on the left.
First, given the broad, flexible, somewhat amorphous meanings of the terms “left” and "right"your desire to include an excluded middle as a category is a waste of time. While it might be difficult to draw one line demarcating the left and the right, at least you have the benefit of using one to define the other. In other words, you have the benefit of judging positions relatively, not just in the absolute. Adding your third category actually makes things more difficult and muddier. Which, I know, is precisely your little game. But it does not help the problem of roughly-defined categories.
The qualifier I used (the one you overlooked and then minimize the importance of) makes room for those beleifs that are not held by the mainstream of either side. Of course, if we did have your third category in real life, and you placed people there—with their consent—we could then go to them and say “okay, we’re going to dispense with the this third cagtegory and place you in one of the other two, you pick”, we’d be right back to where we started. Back to how political conversatons are held routinely, sans the wadded up panties alluded to earlier.
Now, the apportioning. We can skip over #s 2, 3, and 5, as we already agree that the belief is more prevalant on the left than the right, *and *that most people who might hold that position would be on the left. (Wow, seems like this exercise might not have been so frivolous after all.)
So let’s go to #1. Without even question your 45/25 split (which I do), if we went to the 30 and asked them to categorize themselves L or R, which do you think they’d wind up choosing. Do you think on that issue they’d feel more solidarity with the party that argues for keeping “under God” in The Pledge, or the one that has vocal adherents that we should take “in God We Trust” off our currency? (Mind you, I’m not saying that all members of either party agree with those respective positions, only that those positions are associated with those parties.) It seems obvious to me that they would choose the Left. But even if we just split the 30 down the middle, we have a belief more prevalant on the Left than the Right.
That leaves #s 3-B and 4: “rape” and “murderous thugs”. Given your answer on #3 (75/5/25) I think you’d have to grant on both 3-B and 4 that if we took your “excluded middle” and again pressed to them to self-identify with either L or R, that the result would be overwhelmingly Left. If you disagree with that, I’d love to hear your rationale.
And that brings us to C: incidence, the percent on the Left that might adhere to each of the positions. From a logic standpoint, this is your most valid criticism. That’s “most valid”, not “valid”. It wouldn have been completely valid had I NOT qualified my original statement, “extreme left”. (emphasis added)
I was careful to do so because quite a while ago I was taken to task for claiming that Der Trihs did, in fact, speak for the left in general. Posters, Miller, for one, if I recall correctly, and others which I thought included you, pointed out that most of those on this board who self-identify with the left thought he was too extreme or rabid in the points he made. I saw that they (you?) were right and since then I have consistently attributed him to an extreme wing of the Left. Since then, no one has taken issue with that characterization.
Until now. Until you. And you do so by first misstating what my original statement was and then—quite amazingly given your electron microscope—willfully ignoring or minimizing that important qualifier that tightened the scope of my statement.
Man, that’s odd.
