Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >> If you stop people for driving drunk even when you can't tell they're drunk, 
> >> how does that reduce accidents?
> > 
> >   Now you are not arguing only against me, but against the law of Finland.
> > Random sobriety tests are a common practice here, and nobody is complaining.

> That doesn't answer the question, tho. It doesn't matter whether it's the 
> law or not.

  The answer to the question is that it reduces accidents caused by drunk
drivers by both catching them before they have an accident and as a deterrent.

> >> You can disagree with simple baysian inference math, but you'd be wrong.
> >   Then I suppose our law is stupid for doing that...

> For one, it's a different circumstance, as I explain above. For another, do 
> you actually know if they profile the type of car you drive or anything like 
> that in pulling you over?  If not, you're begging the question.

  I said that I wouldn't be surprised if the police stopped more vehicles
of certain types (such as SUV's) and less of other types (such as buses and
trucks). However, that wasn't really the point.

> No, I'm writing as if you brought it up as a good example of why your ideas 
> work. Why did you bring it up if you don't think it's a good idea?

  I brought up the random sobriety testing as a counter-example to the idea
that testing people even when the police has no reason to suspect any crime
is wrong. Random driver sobriety testing is an example where testing people
even without justifiable cause makes sense.

  More specifically, "random testing is wrong" as an argument against testing
random people for citizenship is not a valid argument because "random testing
is wrong" is an invalid argument. There's a counter-example: Random sobriety
tests are not wrong.

  That doesn't mean that testing random people for citizenship is right.
It means that the *argument* that general random testing is wrong is invalid.

  That was the point of the example.

  (Of course *you* might disagree with random sobriety tests not being wrong,
but in Finland nobody is complaining, so I'm not the only one who agrees that
they are important.)

> See, this is where I get annoyed with these sorts of discussions with you. 
> You make assertions, you're argued against, and rather than seeing "Yes, I 
> see where that might be valid," you try to act like you weren't saying what 
> you did, or something.  It makes you sound dishonest, as well as unwilling 
> to admit you may be mistaken, at which point why continue the conversation?

  Taking into account the *context* where I make the assertions might help
understanding what I'm talking about.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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