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Let's make America smart again

wareyin said:
Some things may be hard to measure, but that doesn't mean you get to completely ignore any measurement at all because it's not quite as precise as you claim you require.
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It's not only not precise, it's not accurate. There's a difference, though I doubt you know what it is. And the complete lack of any accuracy makes it non-evidence. You still have no counter-argument.

While accepting far less rigorous measurements for claims which agree with your partisan bias.
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Again, not relevant to the validity of this argument.
 
Ziggurat said:
It's not only not precise, it's not accurate. There's a difference, though I doubt you know what it is. And the complete lack of any accuracy makes it non-evidence. You still have no counter-argument.



Again, not relevant to the validity of this argument.
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Your argument is akin to claiming that a measurement of 8 feet 6 inches by tape measure for a parking space is not precise enough, to be good enough for a partisan such as yourself to accept it, one must get a measurement down to the nanometer or it's not accurate.

Eta: while simultaneously using paces to measure the parking space you are painting in.
 
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wareyin said:
Your argument is akin to claiming that a measurement of 8 feet 6 inches by tape measure for a parking space is not precise enough, to be good enough for a partisan such as yourself to accept it, one must get a measurement down to the nanometer or it's not accurate.

Eta: while simultaneously using paces to measure the parking space you are painting in.
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You just proved my point: you don't know the difference between precision and accuracy.

You aren't equiped to be having this debate with me.
 
Is my mother a bigger liar to me than the guy who has defrauded me of £1000? Since I apparently can't use the fact that I've not caught my mother lying to me but the defrauder is in prison after being found guilty I have no way to determine who is the biggest liar! Must be hard living in a world in which one can have no understanding that some people lie more than others.
 
Ziggurat said:
Edited by zooterkin: 
<SNIP>
Edited for rule 12.
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You are demanding nanometer precision for which tape measure accuracy is good enough. When we want to know who lies more, a list of lies by each party is tape measure accuracy. Sure, 10 different people may get a range differing by up to 1/16, and they may be all off by a 1/16 (or even more), but when you are looking at a difference of 31-71, small inaccuracies or a lack of precision simply do not matter. Of course, if one is highly partisan and desperately looking for a reason to deny that one candidate lies more, one can throw out the measurement because it may be off by one or two percent, and so the whole thing is just not accurate enough to accurately gauge whether 69-73% is really greater than 29-33%.
 
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Darat said:
Is my mother a bigger liar to me than the guy who has defrauded me of £1000? Since I apparently can't use the fact that I've not caught my mother lying to me but the defrauder is in prison after being found guilty I have no way to determine who is the biggest liar! Must be hard living in a world in which one can have no understanding that some people lie more than others.
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This is an improvement from your personal attacks, but I've already addressed this:

Ziggurat said:
Supposing hypothetical candidate A lies 10% of the time, but they lie about the things you care about the most. Candidate B lies 20% of the time, but they lie about things you don't care about. Which candidate has a bigger honesty problem for you? Candidate A, obviously, even though candidate B lies more often. There's a large subjective component here, and justifiably so because we don't all have the same priorities. Why should we treat all lies as being the same? Well, we shouldn't, obviously. Furthermore we need not (and will not) always agree on which lies are more serious, because we do not have identical values.
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Your hypothetical falls squarely under this rubric. It doesn't matter how many times the guy who defrauded you lied to you, his one lie was far more consequential than the many times your mom probably lied to you. You don't need a statistical analysis to figure that out, and in fact it wouldn't help. But this conclusion, while absolutely justified, is still specific to you.
 
wareyin said:
You are demanding nanometer precision for which tape measure accuracy is good enough.
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Once again: accuracy and precision are not the same. You don't understand the difference, and so you don't understand how something affects one or the other. The problem here is NOT one of precision, it is one of accuracy.
 
Ziggurat said:
Once again: accuracy and precision are not the same. You don't understand the difference, and so you don't understand how something affects one or the other. The problem here is NOT one of precision, it is one of accuracy.
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And once again you are pretending that one needs extremely accurate measurements to tell whether a mountain is larger than a teacup.
 
wareyin said:
And once again you are pretending that one needs extremely accurate measurements to tell whether a mountain is larger than a teacup.
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How do you know which is which, unless you make accurate measurements?

If we're going to make America smart again, perhaps we should start with remedial metrology.
 
wareyin said:
And once again you are pretending that one needs extremely accurate measurements to tell whether a mountain is larger than a teacup.
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The problem isn't that the measurement isn't extremely accurate. The problem is that the measurement has effectively NO accuracy.
 
Ziggurat said:
The problem isn't that the measurement isn't extremely accurate. The problem is that the measurement has effectively NO accuracy.
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theprestige said:
How do you know which is which, unless you make accurate measurements?

If we're going to make America smart again, perhaps we should start with remedial metrology.
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The problem is that you wish the measurement was untrue, so you pretend that it is inaccurate enough to be meaningless. A child with no understanding of measurements can see that a teacup is smaller than a mountain, but a partisan conservative must pretend that without a set of micrometers, we just can't tell.
 
wareyin said:
The problem is that you wish the measurement was untrue
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My motives are irrelevant to the validity of the argument, but motives (and presumed ones at that) are the only thing you can attack.

so you pretend that it is inaccurate enough to be meaningless.
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I don't have to pretend. It's not.

A child with no understanding of measurements can see that a teacup is smaller than a mountain, but a partisan conservative must pretend that without a set of micrometers, we just can't tell.
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A micrometer offers better precision, not necessarily any better accuracy. But the problem here is not one of precision. Your ignorance of the difference, and unwillingness to educate yourself about it even when it's pointed out to you, are exactly why (as I've said repeatedly) you're not equipped to be having this debate with me. You simply don't know enough.
 
Ziggurat said:
My motives are irrelevant to the validity of the argument, but motives (and presumed ones at that) are the only thing you can attack.



I don't have to pretend. It's not.



A micrometer offers better precision, not necessarily any better accuracy. But the problem here is not one of precision. Your ignorance of the difference, and unwillingness to educate yourself about it even when it's pointed out to you, are exactly why (as I've said repeatedly) you're not equipped to be having this debate with me. You simply don't know enough.
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Your motives are entirely relevant to your decision to ignore data that disagrees with your bias. When the differences between 2 things are so massive, complaints about accuracy are simply an excuse to ignore the colossal differences between them. If one measures a teacup at 3 inches in diameter when in reality it is 4, that is certainly inaccurate. Similarly, if one measures a mountain at 1200 feet when it's really 2500 feet, that is wildly inaccurate. Those inaccuracies still do not mean we don't know that the teacup is smaller than the mountain.
 
wareyin said:
Your motives are entirely relevant to your decision to ignore data that disagrees with your bias.
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But still not relevant to the validity of my argument.

When the differences between 2 things are so massive, complaints about accuracy are simply an excuse to ignore the colossal differences between them. If one measures a teacup at 3 inches in diameter when in reality it is 4, that is certainly inaccurate. Similarly, if one measures a mountain at 1200 feet when it's really 2500 feet, that is wildly inaccurate. Those inaccuracies still do not mean we don't know that the teacup is smaller than the mountain.
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Go on, tell us what the accuracy on Politifact's sample is. Show your work too.
 
wareyin said:
Your motives are entirely relevant to your decision to ignore data that disagrees with your bias.
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Yeah, but since we can't break open his head and show his bias to the rest of the forum, do you think you could address the actual arguments he's made? I mean, questioning other posters' motives is something we do regularily, but I think you've made your point about it, already.

I understand your frustration, but we're not getting anywhere with this.
 
Ziggurat said:
But still not relevant to the validity of my argument.



Go on, tell us what the accuracy on Politifact's sample is. Show your work too.
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Still pretending that we need pinpoint accuracy to tell the difference between a teacup and a mountain.
 
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