From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon May 26 2003 - 16:49:05 MDT
Michael Wiik wrote:
> I thought it might be fun to search google for phrases consisting of a
> recent US president's last name + 'crime family'.
>
> "kennedy crime family" : 2 hits
> "nixon crime family" : 0 hits
> "ford crime family" : 0 hits
> "carter crime family" : 0 hits
> "reagan crime family" : 2 hits
> "clinton crime family" : 85 hits
> "bush crime family" : 4,410 hits
As promised, here are seven possible fallacies:
1. The more recent a President's term, the more pages about that
President may be online.
2. The number of people accusing a President of X does not necessarily
correlate in any way with whether a President is actually guilty of X.
This, of course, is the most important point on the list.
3. Did the author test more than one phrase before reporting the results
for "crime family"? (I'm sure Wiik didn't actually do that, but it's
something one should think of when seeing this kind of report on, say,
rec.humor.funny.)
4. Are Democrats more likely than Republicans to use the phrase 'crime
family'? Are Democrats more likely than Republicans to repeat the phrase
'crime family'? (See also point 3 - if people who dislike Bush are
predisposed to think of the particular phrase 'crime family', for whatever
reason, and the author dislikes Bush, the author is more likely to type
that particular phrase into Google.)
5. Is Bush a more common name to begin with? (Looking at the Google
results, it appears that most of the pages returned are indeed about
presidents rather than other individuals who happen to be named Bush or
Clinton - but I did look.)
6. There were two Presidents named Bush, whose results are being added
together. (Yes, they are part of the same "family", but regardless.)
7. It is a salient fact about Bush II that he is known as the son of Bush
I - this may predispose people to use the phrase 'crime *family*' in their
accusations, regardless of which of the three Presidents has been most
frequently accused of crime or criminal connections. See also point 2.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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