The Illusion of Knowledge

~ "A little learning is a dang'rous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.” --Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

The Illusion of Knowledge

Tag Archives: logic

Add A Third Adjective: White, Male & [_]

19 Friday Feb 2016

Posted by Milton in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

2016 Election, analysis, Bernie Sanders, H.A. Goodman, logic, reasoning

As part of my futile war on bad analysis, I give to you today a piece at Salon by H.A. Goodman titled “Hillary Clinton just can’t win: Democrats need to accept that only Bernie Sanders can defeat the GOP.”  The thesis of the article, as you may have surmised, is that Bernie Sanders is a better general election candidate than Hilary Clinton.  As usual, I am not taking sides on the conclusion, just the reasoning, and here we have a particularly bad example of the latter.

According to Goodman, in the leading sentence of his second paragraph:

Bernie Sanders is the only Democratic candidate capable of winning the White House in 2016. Please name the last person to win the presidency alongside an ongoing FBI investigation, negative favorability ratings, questions about character linked to continual flip-flops, a dubious money trail of donors, and the genuine contempt of the rival political party.

If this is supposed to be a compelling argument, then Goodman doesn’t have much of a case.  There have only been 43 Presidents (and 44 presidencies) in the United States since its inception.  If you exclude white and male, virtually any description of a President leaves him looking different than his peers (excepting lawyer, Virginian and farmer).  For example, please name the last time a Jew won the presidency?  When was the last time a socialist won?  Or we can string adjectives together to make it sound as if we are dealing in precision: please name the last time a New York-born Jew, who graduated from the University of Chicago (though clearly not from the economics department) who is an avowed, socialist, who was played by Larry David on Saturday Night Live won the presidency?

I don’t know whether Goodman will be proven right or wrong that “Vermont’s senator will become our next president,” but I do know that if this is the level of analysis behind his prediction then it will be because of chance, not reasoning.

The plural of anecdote is…

07 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by Milton in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

anecdotes, Charlies Blow, data, logic, Racism, statistics

Charles Blow, in the New York Times, writes about the “Privilege of ‘Arrest Without Incident’”. The purpose of the article is to highlight the fact that white people, when arrested, are not injured by the police whereas black people, in similar circumstances, are. I don’t know if Blow is right, but I do know he has utterly failed to establish any evidence for his contention.

The piece opens with a description of a white woman who was arrested by police without injury after leading them on a chase and shooting at people. Then, after admitting that “[e] very case is different,” Blow assembles his “evidence” that non-whites are disproportionately injured when being arrested. He cites the cases of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, John Crawford, Antonio Martin and Jerame Reid. He sums up their experiences – which occurred in different states, under different circumstances involving different police officers – with the following analysis:

But none had the privilege of being “arrested without incident or injury.” They were all black, all killed by police officers. Brown was shot through the head. Garner was grabbed around the neck in a chokehold, tossed to the ground and held there, even as he pleaded that he couldn’t breathe; it was all caught on video. Rice was shot within two seconds of the police officers’ arrival on the scene. Crawford, Martin and Reid were also cut down by police bullets.

In the cases that have been heard so far by grand juries, the grand juries have refused to indict the officers.

Maybe one could argue that in some of those cases the officers were within their rights to respond with lethal force. Maybe. But shouldn’t the use of force have equal application? Shouldn’t it be color- and gender-blind? Shouldn’t more people, in equal measures, be taken in and not taken out?

Taking five cases of non-whites being shot, stringing them together, and then comparing them to one selected case of a white person not being shot and claiming it proves anything is ludicrous. What makes these cases representative of a larger trend? As far as I can tell, they are just six cases that have made the news recently and thus stand out in Charles Blow’s mind. Here are just a few pieces of data that we need to know before we can possible say anything concrete about whites vs. blacks and their propensity to be injured while being arrested:

  1. How many white people are shot while being arrested?
  2. How many black people are shot while being arrested?
  3. How many white people are not shot while being arrested?
  4. How many black people are not shot while being arrested?

Those numbers would at least be a start at something empirical, though there is a lot more information one would want to know about the circumstances in each case (beginning with the cause for each arrest) to be able to make useful comparisons.

Someone should have told Mr. Blow, long ago, that the plural of anecdote is not data.

♣ Search

♣ Archives

  • May 2017 (1)
  • November 2016 (1)
  • February 2016 (2)
  • November 2015 (1)
  • October 2015 (1)
  • September 2015 (1)
  • August 2015 (1)
  • May 2015 (1)
  • March 2015 (3)
  • February 2015 (3)
  • January 2015 (2)
  • December 2014 (4)
  • November 2014 (3)
  • October 2014 (3)
  • September 2014 (1)
  • August 2014 (2)
  • July 2014 (1)
  • June 2014 (1)
  • May 2014 (1)
  • March 2014 (1)
  • February 2014 (2)
  • December 2013 (7)
  • November 2013 (3)
  • September 2013 (4)
  • August 2013 (4)
  • July 2013 (1)
  • May 2013 (5)
  • April 2013 (5)
  • March 2013 (2)
  • January 2013 (1)
  • December 2012 (2)
  • October 2012 (2)
  • August 2012 (4)
  • July 2012 (7)
  • June 2012 (1)
  • May 2012 (4)
  • April 2012 (5)
  • March 2012 (7)
  • February 2012 (1)
  • January 2012 (2)
  • December 2011 (5)
  • November 2011 (2)

Blogroll

  • Cost of Government
  • Greg Mankiw's Blog
  • Reason
  • The American

Proudly powered by WordPress Theme: Chateau by Ignacio Ricci.