From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Thu May 15 2003 - 13:24:48 MDT
John K Clark wrote,
> "Michael Wiik" <mwiik@messagenet.com> Wrote:
>
> >please explain exactly what the 'group' (henceforth the group 'that
> > approved of the war with Iraq') was 'right' about
>
> Well, all the verbiage (some of it mine) about WMD turned out to
> be bunk but
> they were right about the war going well militarily,
This is an excellent point that is very hard for our monkey-brains to grasp.
It makes no sense to argue whether some groups is "right" or "wrong". That
is binary thinking. In reality, we need to be specific. There are hundreds
of subtopics relating to the war on Iraq. All sides were right about some
and wrong about others. It make no sense to try to prove one group more or
less right than another. Even if we gathered all the statistics, we would
probably disagree on which predictions were more important than others. In
any case, I believe that the accuracy of either side will have the obvious
majority in correctness that believers always assume. Both sides rate their
issues as important and dismiss other issues they don't care about. As
such, I am sure both sides are 90% accurate in all "important" areas as
defined by their followers. In this way, both sides are positive that they
were mostly right and the other side was mostly wrong. And neither position
contradicts the other.
Any statement that only gives two positions is inadequate:
On topic X, group A is right and group B is wrong.
...
Conservatives were right about the war.
Liberals were right about the war.
One side won the argument.
Any statement that tries to ascribe a single position to a large group of
people inadequate:
Group A does this....
...
Gays opposed quarantines for AIDS.
Hispanics like to prove their machismo.
Democrats like raising taxes.
Republicans are anti-abortion.
If any of these example sentences seem rational to anybody, I suggest that
they need a fundamental course in logic. All of these examples are overly
broad or nonspecific. In science, they would be termed non-falsifiable.
They oversimplify a position beyond all possibility, and imply universal
stereotypes that fail for so many individuals. Any conclusions or arguments
based on these types of statements are fundamentally flawed.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, IAM, GSEC, IBMCP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> <www.Newstaff.com>
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