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I mean, if you'd rather point to the vaguely relevant and not really dispositive citations you gave to someone else's arguments than respond to anything I'm say

I mean, if you'd rather point to the vaguely relevant and not really dispositive citations you gave to someone else's arguments than respond to anything I'm saying, then I guess we're done here? I'll admit I was hoping for better, but if you don't want to go to the trouble, then I suppose that's your lookout.

scarface74 6y ago
As oppose to your very well vetted citations?
- throwanem 6y ago
  Hey, you're the one claiming you aren't arguing anecdotally. I never said I wasn't, and I can't say I'm much concerned now with you trying to call me on not doing something I never pretended to be trying to do. It's not that I mind an anecdotal discussion. Most people live anecdotal lives in an anecdotal world, and that's very easy to lose track of when you try to reason out everything from first principles and raw data. For one thing, it's very easy to assume that a given number has weight independent of its sources or its context, as you seem to have done throughout this conversation. But of greater import is the ease with which one loses track of the fact that these matters, which we so easily discuss entirely in the abstract, determine the course of real people's real lives, and those lives are of greater import than any conclusions we might find comfortable to draw in an environment of security and comfort. If you're not comfortable with an anecdotal discussion, that's fine too; as my rather longer comment in the other subthread demonstrates, I'm as willing to engage on that field as on this one - especially with an interlocutor who does such a poor job supporting his claims, having apparently chosen a few sources which even then only support his arguments if they're not examined in the slightest degree. But if you're going to claim that anecdotal commentary is a problem when I engage in it, I'd expect to see some behavior on your part other than yourself engaging in it, too.

scarface74 6y ago

As oppose to your very well vetted citations?

throwanem 6y ago
Hey, you're the one claiming you aren't arguing anecdotally. I never said I wasn't, and I can't say I'm much concerned now with you trying to call me on not doing something I never pretended to be trying to do. It's not that I mind an anecdotal discussion. Most people live anecdotal lives in an anecdotal world, and that's very easy to lose track of when you try to reason out everything from first principles and raw data. For one thing, it's very easy to assume that a given number has weight independent of its sources or its context, as you seem to have done throughout this conversation. But of greater import is the ease with which one loses track of the fact that these matters, which we so easily discuss entirely in the abstract, determine the course of real people's real lives, and those lives are of greater import than any conclusions we might find comfortable to draw in an environment of security and comfort. If you're not comfortable with an anecdotal discussion, that's fine too; as my rather longer comment in the other subthread demonstrates, I'm as willing to engage on that field as on this one - especially with an interlocutor who does such a poor job supporting his claims, having apparently chosen a few sources which even then only support his arguments if they're not examined in the slightest degree. But if you're going to claim that anecdotal commentary is a problem when I engage in it, I'd expect to see some behavior on your part other than yourself engaging in it, too.