6 ms·

You just cited a blog which has this on their About Us page: "If whites permit themselves to become a minority population, they will lose their civilization, t

by czep 11y ago

You just cited a blog which has this on their About Us page: "If whites permit themselves to become a minority population, they will lose their civilization, their heritage, and even their existence as a distinct people." Instead of allowing your father to fear for his and your safety based on his irrational and bigoted views, perhaps you could educate him not to accept data from fringe sources. Your reproduction of these titilating facts, completely removed from context, taken from a blog which has a White Power political agenda, is a curious tactic. Do you use this "evidence" to lend credence to your father's views? Do you think this justifies his ignorance? If you truly recognize his views as irrational, then you should not be dredging up wingnut blogs which are merely trying to incite hatred and divisiveness. Please, educate your father so that his ignorance and bigotry do not permeate through to the next generation.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
See my reply to EthanHeilman. Specifically, are you claiming the DOJ stats cited by this source are false, or that they made an arithmetic error when multiplying (# victims by race x) x (% of offenders of race Y)? As for my father's feelings, it's really not cool to suggest he's bigoted. He's not - he's the epitome of a NY liberal and far more left wing than I am. E.g., he mostly accepts the tribalist fascism of the modern left, in comparison to my individualism. He's just unable to rationally assess the risk of low probability events that get lots of media coverage. (He's hardly the only one. See, for example, this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10655349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10655349 )
cthalupa 11y ago
This is a logical fallacy that is unfortunately rampant on here. It's an ad hominem - the source may be a bunch of shitty people, but if we're arguing that we shouldn't accept something, attack the actual content of the message. It's generally quite easy to do so when the source of information is biased, so dismantle the message if you want to argue about how it's incorrect. It looks like these numbers posted were very low effort and lacking any real context whatsoever, so it shouldn't be too hard to rebut them. Edit: In fact, unprepare does so quite well in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10655743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10655743
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  It's not entirely an ad hominem. The original claim contains an implicit appeal to authority in citing the link to the blog. Saying that the authority cited is not actually a valid authority (due to a known bias) is not quite the same as ad hominem. We resort to reputation to calibrate the burden of proof. If the source cited is not a valid authority, that doesn't make them wrong, but it does make it harder for them to establish a claim that merits rebuttal.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    I'm not appealing to authority at all. The article reproduces verbatim a table from the DOJ, then does multiplication. I reproduced the multiplication myself, since so many people seem to think the white supremacists can't multiply.
    - logfromblammo 11y ago
      But the multiplication does not support the assertion. I am sure that many people biased by skin color can perform multiplication with the help of a calculator. The accuracy of the calculation is not at issue. The issue is that the multiplication is not valid according to Bayesian probability analysis. It doesn't matter how valid the original numbers are if you interpret them incorrectly. The implicit appeal to authority is that a group known for social policy commentary is somehow expected to have greater credibility in the area of statistical analysis. In reality, they are just as bad at it as everyone else. So in exposing the appeal to authority, we see more clearly that the burden is on them to show that their analysis is mathematically correct. So tell me. Why does the multiplication support their claims?
      - yummyfajitas 11y ago
        Scroll up. I'm not claiming white people should be afraid of blacks. I'm claiming that they have a vague proximal reason to be afraid, analogous to maaku's "possibility of being assaulted without recourse or lynched...a few generations back". My opinion on all of these vague feelings of fear: "completely irrational and entirely his [the person feeling it] problem."
force_reboot 11y ago
The problem is that liberals, who are well aware of crime figures, don't publicize them because to do so would be "racist". That is, they don't think that publishing these figures would serve any purpose other than perpetuating so called racism. So only the (far) right talk about them. Note that you haven't actually shown the figures are wrong.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>Please, educate your father so that his ignorance and bigotry do not permeate through to the next generation. Do you refer to the fear of men as being rapists as bigotry? And what about issues of the credible source not actually being such, such as the CDC not being a credible source once you realize how they twist their numbers (picking definitions of rape which exclude most female on male instances)?

by czep 11y ago

yummyfajitas 11y ago

See my reply to EthanHeilman. Specifically, are you claiming the DOJ stats cited by this source are false, or that they made an arithmetic error when multiplying (# victims by race x) x (% of offenders of race Y)? As for my father's feelings, it's really not cool to suggest he's bigoted. He's not - he's the epitome of a NY liberal and far more left wing than I am. E.g., he mostly accepts the tribalist fascism of the modern left, in comparison to my individualism. He's just unable to rationally assess the risk of low probability events that get lots of media coverage. (He's hardly the only one. See, for example, this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10655349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10655349 )

cthalupa 11y ago

This is a logical fallacy that is unfortunately rampant on here. It's an ad hominem - the source may be a bunch of shitty people, but if we're arguing that we shouldn't accept something, attack the actual content of the message. It's generally quite easy to do so when the source of information is biased, so dismantle the message if you want to argue about how it's incorrect. It looks like these numbers posted were very low effort and lacking any real context whatsoever, so it shouldn't be too hard to rebut them. Edit: In fact, unprepare does so quite well in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10655743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10655743

logfromblammo 11y ago
It's not entirely an ad hominem. The original claim contains an implicit appeal to authority in citing the link to the blog. Saying that the authority cited is not actually a valid authority (due to a known bias) is not quite the same as ad hominem. We resort to reputation to calibrate the burden of proof. If the source cited is not a valid authority, that doesn't make them wrong, but it does make it harder for them to establish a claim that merits rebuttal.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  I'm not appealing to authority at all. The article reproduces verbatim a table from the DOJ, then does multiplication. I reproduced the multiplication myself, since so many people seem to think the white supremacists can't multiply.
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    But the multiplication does not support the assertion. I am sure that many people biased by skin color can perform multiplication with the help of a calculator. The accuracy of the calculation is not at issue. The issue is that the multiplication is not valid according to Bayesian probability analysis. It doesn't matter how valid the original numbers are if you interpret them incorrectly. The implicit appeal to authority is that a group known for social policy commentary is somehow expected to have greater credibility in the area of statistical analysis. In reality, they are just as bad at it as everyone else. So in exposing the appeal to authority, we see more clearly that the burden is on them to show that their analysis is mathematically correct. So tell me. Why does the multiplication support their claims?
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      Scroll up. I'm not claiming white people should be afraid of blacks. I'm claiming that they have a vague proximal reason to be afraid, analogous to maaku's "possibility of being assaulted without recourse or lynched...a few generations back". My opinion on all of these vague feelings of fear: "completely irrational and entirely his [the person feeling it] problem."

force_reboot 11y ago

The problem is that liberals, who are well aware of crime figures, don't publicize them because to do so would be "racist". That is, they don't think that publishing these figures would serve any purpose other than perpetuating so called racism. So only the (far) right talk about them. Note that you haven't actually shown the figures are wrong.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

>Please, educate your father so that his ignorance and bigotry do not permeate through to the next generation. Do you refer to the fear of men as being rapists as bigotry? And what about issues of the credible source not actually being such, such as the CDC not being a credible source once you realize how they twist their numbers (picking definitions of rape which exclude most female on male instances)?