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Are we looking at different dictionary.com's or something? impartial - adj: not prejudiced towards or against any particular side or party; fair; unbiased neu

Are we looking at different dictionary.com's or something? impartial - adj: not prejudiced towards or against any particular side or party; fair; unbiased neu·tral -adj ... 2. not aligned with or supporting any side or position in a controversy. How are these not synonyms? Ditto with Godwin's Law - go and look at the Wikipedia entry: Godwin's law does not claim to articulate a fallacy; it is instead framed as a memetic tool to reduce the incidence of inappropriate hyperbolic comparisons. "Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: "I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler or to Nazis to think a bit harder about the Holocaust," Godwin has written.[10] Which (again) is the original point: You have one unattributed example (involving Nazis!) of biased reporting, which you're trying to build a whole argument on. That doesn't work - you have an infinity of potential claims (eg. the FSM did it), so unless you have an infinite amount of time you can't possibly deal with them all. But you can give them weight/air time according to the weight of evidence behind them. Framing that sort of judgement as "inherent bias" is specious reasoning.

MichaelSalib 16y ago
How are these not synonyms? The difference is time. Judges are impartial, but they are not neutral: the whole point of judge's role is to become non-neutral. By the time a journalist has conducted interviews, done research, assembled their notes, and started writing a story, they should not be neutral either: they should have come to some conclusions about the world that a completely ignorant (read: neutral) reader would not share precisely because they've done research. Ditto with Godwin's Law - go and look at the Wikipedia entry You are misrepresenting the article. Read the first sentence: Godwin's law is a humorous observation... That's it. An observation. That is funny. Observations are not normative. Your insistence that they are is a category error. You have one unattributed example (involving Nazis!) First of all, the example involves Holocaust deniers, not Nazis. There's actually a pretty spectacular difference between the two: Holocaust deniers, vile that they may be, have generally not killed anyone. Secondly, if you want a cite, feel free to read http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/18/national/18holocaust.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/18/national/18holocaust.html
- anthonyb 16y ago
  Neutral and impartial are synonyms, and any differences between the two are inferred from context. In other words, you're creating distinctions where none exist. I could continue to rebut your argument, but I suspect that I'm wasting my breath.

MichaelSalib 16y ago

How are these not synonyms? The difference is time. Judges are impartial, but they are not neutral: the whole point of judge's role is to become non-neutral. By the time a journalist has conducted interviews, done research, assembled their notes, and started writing a story, they should not be neutral either: they should have come to some conclusions about the world that a completely ignorant (read: neutral) reader would not share precisely because they've done research. Ditto with Godwin's Law - go and look at the Wikipedia entry You are misrepresenting the article. Read the first sentence: Godwin's law is a humorous observation... That's it. An observation. That is funny. Observations are not normative. Your insistence that they are is a category error. You have one unattributed example (involving Nazis!) First of all, the example involves Holocaust deniers, not Nazis. There's actually a pretty spectacular difference between the two: Holocaust deniers, vile that they may be, have generally not killed anyone. Secondly, if you want a cite, feel free to read http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/18/national/18holocaust.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/18/national/18holocaust.html

anthonyb 16y ago
Neutral and impartial are synonyms, and any differences between the two are inferred from context. In other words, you're creating distinctions where none exist. I could continue to rebut your argument, but I suspect that I'm wasting my breath.