Sensible Erection | Holy crap, Arizona is doing it again. At least a small part.

Thursday, 21 July 2011

Holy crap, Arizona is doing it again. At least a small part.

quote [ Several police officers attended the meeting in May to read a statement asking that the police chief be investigated. They alleged abuse of authority, including the arrests of numerous political enemies.

They never got a chance to speak, however, because the building inspector who recently had been promoted to assistant town manager suddenly made an announcement:

"City Hall is closed, and this meeting is over." ]

Stay classy...

[politics] [by LeavemeAlone@1:15amGMT] [+10 WTF]

Comments

structured_spirits said @ 1:32am GMT on 21st Jul
Pool's Closed.

LeavemeAlone said @ 1:54am GMT on 21st Jul
Stupid AIDS

Aidentas said @ 3:41am GMT on 21st Jul [Score:2 Classy Pr0n]
...

sanepride said @ 3:06am GMT on 21st Jul [Score:2 Informative]
Here's the video of newspaper publisher Jade Jones being arrested at the city council meeting, over the protestations of the mayor:

Zaldron said @ 3:27am GMT on 21st Jul
This is a pretty sad thing to see. How long will we stand by silently...

sanepride said @ 3:30am GMT on 21st Jul
Um...as long as we don't live in Quartzsite, AZ?

ENZ said @ 4:04am GMT on 21st Jul
Can we just give the entire South-West back to Mexico?

bruceski said @ 4:09am GMT on 21st Jul
Noooo, I like being American!

sanepride said @ 4:50am GMT on 21st Jul
NM isn't so bad.

buckaroo50 said @ 4:13pm GMT on 21st Jul
You always hear about stuff in Arizona and Texas, but not much out of New Mexico. Is NM not so crazy?

sanepride said @ 4:36pm GMT on 21st Jul
Politically NM tends to lean more to the left. Lots of old hippies and artist-types there.

DeadCarbonCopy said @ 5:49am GMT on 21st Jul
Can we wait until after I get a job? It will probably move me out of state. My GF hates AZ but I love it... or used to. it's getting so hard to defend it these days. Meh, don't worry about giving it back. I'm pretty sure the state legislature will make sure there's nothing but barren wastes and golf courses before too long.

bruceski said @ 6:45am GMT on 21st Jul
Love the state, hate the people.

arrowhen said @ 7:50am GMT on 21st Jul [Score:2 Insightful]
The people are the state; everything else is just dirt.

bruceski said @ 7:43pm GMT on 21st Jul [Score:1 Funny]
Fine, love the dirt, hate the state.

sanepride said @ 4:40pm GMT on 21st Jul
A lot of AZ is beautiful, especially toward the northern part of the state. But I must say, Phoenix is perhaps one of the most unattractive cities I've ever visited. Just a vast urban sprawl in the middle of the desert.

kishi said @ 7:06am GMT on 21st Jul [Score:1 Underrated]
I'm still waiting on the SE Relocation Fund to help with my escape...

arrowhen said @ 7:49am GMT on 21st Jul
Dear SE: my girlfriend and I would like the fuck out of Louisiana, please. Getting her a marine biology job in a state that's not Louisiana or Louisiana-like (i.e., one that I as a non-scientist would define as "being adjacent to a real fucking ocean") would do. Thanks!

thatoneguywiththehair said @ 6:06am GMT on 21st Jul [Score:1 Funny]
I don't want to have to learn how to use an AK :(

kishi said @ 7:04am GMT on 21st Jul
But the state is nice, it's the assholes living here that are the problem. And they'd just migrate somewhere else, because they don't want to be Mexican- half of them already think that's what Arizona is turning into.

sanepride said @ 7:58pm GMT on 21st Jul
There are pockets of progressivism in AZ - Flagstaff, Sedona, some of Tucson. Unfortunately they are not the statewide voting majority.

bruceski said @ 4:08am GMT on 21st Jul [Score:5]

Navier-Strokes said @ 4:30am GMT on 21st Jul
Far be it from me to withdraw from Al, mostly because he's awesome and actually went out of his way to check a citation's validity, but doesn't his final assertion there fall under the umbrella of fallacy of composition?

zkhan said @ 4:34am GMT on 21st Jul
How so?

Navier-Strokes said @ 4:39am GMT on 21st Jul
"... and I frankly don't really know how we can trust the rest of your testimony if you are reading studies these ways."

All of his study readings cannot be trusted
because one of his study readings could not be trusted.

atter_cob said @ 5:27am GMT on 21st Jul
No, if you present 10 facts and I check one of them, find out you did a shitty job in your research, then it is perfectly reasonable to say that all your facts are suspect. The basis is that they are not independent findings, they were all done by the same person. If that person is discovered to have done one of them poorly then it's reasonable to be concerned that s/he did a similarly poor job on the others.

It would be incorrect to assert that the other facts are wrong, however it is not unreasonable to state that you no longer believe they can be trusted without further checking.

In other words when the 10 facts are presented I might start off by assuming you are competent. Once I discover evidence of incompetence I may no longer be willing to assume you are competent at which point anything you have done will be suspect.

Navier-Strokes said @ 5:36am GMT on 21st Jul
If Al suggested increased scrutiny to the findings, I'd agree.
He does not, he suggests cutting off further testimony.

However, lemme focus my point further,
"... if you are reading studies these ways".

He asserts the gentlemen is reading multiple studies incorrectly
because he read one study incorrectly.
That is, in fact, textbook fallacy of composition.

zkhan said @ 5:40am GMT on 21st Jul
No, no, he's saying "you're lying" in so many words. This is not a logical error, it's a question of politeness.

Navier-Strokes said @ 5:55am GMT on 21st Jul
Was the gentleman lying or mistaken in the interpretation of one study?

Bodnoirbabe said @ 6:39am GMT on 21st Jul
Neither. He interpreted it to suite his need. The interpretation was false. So he didn't lie, per se, and he didn't mis-interpret on accident.

willrogers said @ 7:07am GMT on 21st Jul
That's not necessarily true because it's not a matter of "interpretation.

Franken directly asked him whether a "married same-sex couple would fall under the definition of nuclear family," to which the witness replied "I would think...." There is no reason to speculate on this matter because the answer is explicitly and unequivocally given in the study being discussed. Same-sex married couples are definitively part of the study authors' definition of "nuclear family" and there is an obvious truth value with a binary potential answer to Franken's question. Either (A) "yes, families headed by same-sex married couples are nuclear families" or (B) "No, families headed by same-sex married couples are NOT nuclear families."

Thus, this is either a weaselly way to get out of giving the true answer while simultaneously avoiding committing perjury if this guy actually read the study OR he actually didn't read the study in question (though someone else from his group may have) and is making shit up rather than being embarrassed by saying that he doesn't know and didn't read the study. There's also the options that the guy is a moron and didn't comprehend what he read OR he doesn't remember and doesn't want to look foolish in front of Congress.

Franken can't really prove what the truth of the matter is, so he doesn't really come out and call the guy a liar, but one of the options is definitely that is was an outright lie, which is why Franken asked the question in the first place, to see if the guy would double-down on his first potential lie.

happiest_sadist said @ 2:58pm GMT on 21st Jul
To be fair(ish), there's also the possibility that he read the study and though that "two parents, each of whom is biologically or through adoption related to the children" actually meant "a mother and a father, each of whom [per previous]". This is an erroneous interpretation, but not necessarily an outright lie or failure of scholarship; just a regrettable incident of a persistent and pervasive mental filter.

arrowhen said @ 7:45am GMT on 21st Jul
Accidentally misinterpreting is ignorance. Deliberately misinterpreting is lying.

Krutz said @ 6:41am GMT on 21st Jul
Go look up "Focus on the Family." This is James Dobson's outfit. It's basically just a hair up from Jack Chick and his religious tracts when it comes to veracity.

happiest_sadist said @ 3:00pm GMT on 21st Jul
Just because he's representing FOTF doesn't necessarily mean he's a douchebag.
It just makes it really likely. Oh, or he could be an utter fool instead.

Dobson himself, we can be fairly sure of. His minions need to be judged separately (but as harshly as you like.)

willrogers said @ 7:10am GMT on 21st Jul [Score:2 Informative]
Actually, it's not.

This guy is giving expert testimony before a congressional committee. Franken's statement is an accusation that the man is either a liar or a poor expert. If either is true, then this man should not be giving expert testimony.

At most, Franken is committing an ad hominem attack by saying that this guy is either an idiot or a malicious liar and THEREFORE the rest of his testimony should be disregarded.

As I wrote in another comment in response to another of yours, I don't think Franken is wrong or committing the ad hominem fallacy because he is disputing the trust this man is assuming as an expert witness, which means that Franken is trying to prevent the fallacy of argument to authority.

atter_cob said @ 7:18am GMT on 21st Jul
Well, if the testimony is suspect, why would he want to waste time listening to more of it?

The quote "... if you are reading studies these ways" is perfectly reasonable (aside from maybe being intended as ""... if you are reading studies this way"). It does not insist that all studies were read the same way, rather it implies the possibility based on the evidence that one study was read this way.

Also, I think you're confused about what the term "fallacy of composition" refers to. It's not a generic term for over generalization.

willrogers said @ 7:53am GMT on 21st Jul [Score:2 Insightful]
As wrote in other comments, this guy was giving "expert" testimony and Franken was using this error/lie to refute the guy's credibility was an expert. He's not just submitting the studies on their own, he's testifying that they mean a certain thing and that by bringing them together as a cohesive argument they support certain claims and he, as an expert, should be trusted that they say what they do and that they support the claims he makes.

If his credibility is suspect due to these glaring mistakes/lies, then each piece of evidence he uses needs to be individually assessed on its own, as if there is no authority testifying to their meaning and veracity.

Naruki said @ 1:41am GMT on 22nd Jul [Score:-1 Troll]
While good arguments, the semantic issue atter_cob is arguing is still correct: fallacy of composition is when you assume the whole must be X because some part of the whole is X.

Franken didn't say he IS misreading everything, he said he MIGHT be. And because he left that qualifier there, the idiot/liar in question has the reasonable option of explaining why the rest of his work is still valid, or why Franken made a mistake.

It seems very unlikely that he can do so given his incompetent response to the factual question put to him, but a true expert should have been able to recover in that situation.

It is entirely reasonable for Franken to attempt to stop a waste of time, and he did so with a more than fair chance for the FOTF apologist to respond with valid argument.

In short, no fallacy of composition exists.

darkener said @ 5:31am GMT on 21st Jul
The problem here, I think, is that we're applying a boolean notion of "trust" when a more probabilistic approach is closer to reality.

This study reading is invalid and false. This doesn't automatically make his others untrustworthy, but it is evidence about his likelihood to either lie or make a mistake. It is correct to put less confidence than before in his other study readings.

What's less simple is how much to adjust our confidence by. You can interpret Al's words to mean that our confidence should now be so low that the probability of other things this man says being valid is small enough that they require significant scrutiny. That is, they're untrustworthy. And rightly we should demand pretty high confidence in the process of making laws.

Navier-Strokes said @ 5:54am GMT on 21st Jul
I should have been more specific, and for that forgive me.
See my comment above:
"'...if you are reading studies these ways'

He asserts the gentlemen is reading multiple studies incorrectly
because he read one study incorrectly.
That is, in fact, textbook fallacy of composition."

Al's conclusion of trustworthiness is based on the cause that
the gentleman is reading studies (plural) this way,
where in fact only one study described was studies this way,
at least insofar as Al points out.
So, let's remove trustworthiness from the equation
and focus on the assertion that
the gentleman is "reading studies these ways",
which has not been shown to be true.
This is fallacy of composition.

That Al builds his case for rebuking further testimony
on this false conclusion is more nuanced logically, as you point out.
That I would simply increase scrutiny on his analysis
rather than move to invalidate it in its entirety is,
I suppose, part of that "probabilistic" aspect you mentioned,
with mine set in the middle versus
Al apparently setting his phaser to 'kill it with fire'.

Krutz said @ 6:42am GMT on 21st Jul
It's probably also based on the organization the man represents. It's like trusting statistics on race relations as interpreted by the Ku Klux Klan.

willrogers said @ 6:50am GMT on 21st Jul
I think the application of the fallacy requires more nuance, too.

It's true that Franken is casting aspersions about how the guy used the other studies he cites against gay marriage and families headed by gay and lesbian couples. This might be a fallacy of composition or even a hasty generalization fallacy (i.e. Franken is casting aspersions about the entire testimony before he has read it, based upon only one part), as you note.

That said, I think it's less that Franken is saying this guy should be mistrusted because he was blatantly and obviously wrong about one the studies used in his testimony, and more that Franken is basically insinuating that this guy is a liar.

Franken can't really "prove" that the guy is lying both in his testimony and in the direct question to him about how a "nuclear family is defined," because there is still the possibility that the guy simply misunderstood what he supposedly read, didn't read it in its entirety and therefore missed the definition of "nuclear family," or is just a fucking moron.

Therefore, you might say that it actually could be an ad hominem attack (i.e. he lied about this one thing, so he's lying about everything and should be written-off entirely) combined with a hasty generalization, but I still think that on the basis of the mistake and/or lie (being so fundamental to the meaning of the study), it's quite warranted to question this guy's credibility and/or the accuracy of his further statements.

I mean, Franken quoted directly from the study where they explicitly defined "nuclear family" and anyone who actually read the whole thing would know what was meant in the study and not need to speculate as this guy did. The guy is supposed to be giving expert testimony (hence the scientific journal citations), so it's pretty fair to question the guy's credibility and the accuracy of his testimony, because it is actually Franken's way of preventing an argument from authority fallacy (this guy he's questioning being the authority) from occurring.

mwoody said @ 4:23pm GMT on 21st Jul [Score:1 Underrated]
You continue to misuse the idea of a "fallacy of composition." That a concept as fundamental to the human experience as "people who lie to you once are more likely to do it again" could somehow be a logical fallacy is tremendously silly, and you invalidate your entire argument by continuing to base your objections upon it.

cache22 said @ 5:09pm GMT on 21st Jul
The statement "if X then Y" does not make any claims as to the truth value of X.

Naruki said @ 1:45am GMT on 22nd Jul
He asserts the gentlemen is reading multiple studies incorrectly
No, he does not. The word IF has a specific effect on the sentence in question.

Since you misrepresented Al's argument, the rest of your comment is invalid.

NB: this is also not a fallacy of composition. I am not saying one invalid part means the whole must be. I am saying that the foundation of your entire argument is false, therefore everything you built from that false premise is invalid. The difference is subtle but important.

zkhan said @ 5:33am GMT on 21st Jul
I think that's stretching it. The man reached an obviously wrong conclusion. The possibility presents itself that this was a willful misrepresentation of the facts, in which case it is reasonable to throw out everything else generated by him. The other possibility--that he reached his conclusion because he didn't fully understand the results of the study--would be problematic in a different but almost equally serious way.

willrogers said @ 7:14am GMT on 21st Jul
Exactly.

The main point that needs to be understood here is that this man is supposedly giving EXPERT testimony before a congressional committee.

The mistake/lie he committed is so blatant, fundamental, and important that it casts serious doubt on his trustworthiness and authority as an expert.

It's not really the study and physical evidence that Franken is criticizing here, it's the supposed expert using that bad/false evidence to support his argument.

The prudent thing is not to completely disregard this witness but to render his testimony and any evidence he cites as provisional and suspect until each is independently verified and validated.

thatoneguywiththehair said @ 6:04am GMT on 21st Jul
No, he's defeating a false appeal to authority. The person he's refuting referring to a study, which is to say, an authority. Franken defeated the referral to authority by asserting that the referral was incorrect, and that the authority was not actually stating what the referral inferred that it did.

I am too drunk to link to various types of fallacies and whatnot, but here's what it boils down to: the bald guy referred to a study and hoped that people would just believe him when he said that the study was about "a man and a woman". Actually, the study just said, "two parents".

However, since I wouldn't put disengenuous behavior past Mr. Franken, I implore all viewers to watch the prolonged video to see if the bald guy has a rebuttal. I will also not link to, nor research, said prolonged video, as I am drunk. But still. Check it out.

DISCLAIMER: I am on Mr. Franken's side, even though I think he's still primarily a performer. Read the study and you'll know who's got SCIENCE on his side.

Again, I don't know who that is. But I bet it's Mr. Franken.

bruceski said @ 6:42am GMT on 21st Jul
I see your point. Would it be better said that if he has misstated the position of one paper (either intentionally or erroneously) all his other citations should be considered suspect until verified?

willrogers said @ 6:53am GMT on 21st Jul
Pretty much.

It's the composition fallacy if it's an outright claim from Franken that none of his testimony should be accepted and he should be disregarded entirely, but it's not really a fallacy if it's being used as a reason to not implicitly trust what this guy says is true.

The latter would an argument from authority fallacy, and this guy getting that study so blatantly and fundamentally wrong (and/or possibly just plain lying about it to Franken's face) is cause for questioning his authority.

Navier-Strokes said @ 3:22am GMT on 22nd Jul
In terms of "If X then Y", where X = reads studies incorrectly, and Y = invalidate whole testimony, I interpreted the thrust of Al's whole argument as supporting Y as his conclusion by prefacing that he had just shown X to be, which he had not, and his belief that X is true would be the fallacy of composition, as I mentioned. I did not interpret the video as showing Al suggesting increased scrutiny on the rest of the guy's research (Was it his research, or just his organizations? Not clear who authored to research in question.)

willrogers said @ 3:33am GMT on 22nd Jul [Score:1 Insightful]
But you're not understanding that this guy and his organization were called as expert witnesses by Republicans that are against marriage equality.

Franken is basically refuting this guy's expertise based on the blatant mistake/lie in a citation supporting this guy's main thesis, i.e. that children are statistically better off in homes with heterosexual parents.

Thus, Franken is trying to combat an appeal to authority fallacy, as someone who made such a glaring error and misinterpretation or lie about one of their key pieces of evidence probably shouldn't be given the trust and deference that experts generally receive.

This is why Franken is not committing the composition fallacy, he's not arguing against the whole of the pieces of evidence from a small piece, because he's not really refuting the individual studies being cited. What Franken is really doing is saying that the studies may be valid or invalid, but we can't trust this guy to tell us that or even what they say, so this guy should not be treated as an expert and all the evidence he tried to introduce should have to be individually assessed and scrutinized.

nbob said @ 7:19am GMT on 21st Jul [Score:2]
What? When the hell did he become a Senator!?

arrowhen said @ 7:35am GMT on 21st Jul
Like, forever ago?

sanepride said @ 5:31pm GMT on 21st Jul
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Franken#U.S._Senate

http://sensibleerection.com/entry.php/76621

mwoody said @ 7:08pm GMT on 21st Jul
Why not him? He's good enough, he's smart enough, and doggone it, people like him.

sanepride said @ 7:52pm GMT on 21st Jul
Um...you know who's President, right?
No? Maybe you better sit down...

nbob said @ 4:59am GMT on 22nd Jul
Next you're going to tell me Cher won an Oscar and Sonny became a Congressman.

Krutz said @ 5:34am GMT on 21st Jul [Score:2 Funny]
So do a lot of these small-town officials look around, realize they live in a relatively isolated desert wasteland, and suddenly think "why shouldn't I run Bartertown?"

thatoneguywiththehair said @ 6:07am GMT on 21st Jul
Yes.

And then a guy in a brown coat shoots her horse and goes, "I do the job: I get paid."

kishi said @ 7:12am GMT on 21st Jul
All I know is I end up wearing a soft cotton dress and a pretty floral bonnet, sitting next to a heavily armed guy while he shames me in front of new people.