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The Sophisticate: "The world isn't black and white. No one does pure good or pure bad. It's all gray. Therefore, no one is better than anyone else." The
by orangecat 17y ago
The Sophisticate: "The world isn't black and white. No one does pure good or pure bad. It's all gray. Therefore, no one is better than anyone else."
The Zetet: "Knowing only gray, you conclude that all grays are the same shade. You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you replace it with a one-color view..."
-- Marc Stiegler, David's Sling
http://lesswrong.com/lw/mm/the_fallacy_of_gray/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/mm/the_fallacy_of_gray/
- grandalf 17y agoI love this quote. I think most people apply the Sophisticate's error to China by supposing that since both the US and China are different shades of gray, they may then decide arbitrarily to critique China... similarly: We saw it manifested in yesterday's post - the one who believed that odds of two to the power of seven hundred and fifty millon to one, against, meant "there was still a chance". All probabilities, to him, were simply "uncertain" and that meant he was licensed to ignore them if he pleased. If you care about censorship, you are not licensed to ignore censorship in the US just because both are gray. If you care about humanitarian abuses, you are not licensed to ignore them in the US just because China may commit worse ones.
- orangecat 17y agoIf you care about censorship, you are not licensed to ignore censorship in the US just because both are gray. If you care about humanitarian abuses, you are not licensed to ignore them in the US just because China may commit worse ones. You are however "licensed" to focus more on China, on the grounds that their abuses are orders of magnitude worse.
- grandalf 17y agoI challenge that assertion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1217082 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1217082