On 06/28/09 08:05, somebody wrote:
> You are not supposed to take idioms literally. It's stated as such, because
> it doesn't make a good concise idiom when people say "where there's smoke,
> there's a higher probably for fire than not".

	Even that may not be true. The only thing that's true is "where there's 
smoke, there's more likely to be fire than if there wasn't smoke".

	However, given that there's smoke, there may still be a greater than 
50% chance that there was no fire.

	Which is why it's a stupid idiom.

>> Not quite what he said, I believe. More like "Extraordinary claims
>> require extraordinary evidence".
>
> I don't need extraordinary evidence, for I am not making extraordinary
> claims. I'm making the "ordinary" claim that MJ was a creep at best. I don't

	Oh. OK. I thought this was about him being a pedophile. No arguments 
that he acted abnormally.

>> And you *can* judge fellow humans on whatever criteria you wish. You're
>> even free to judge them on the basis of height. Or weight. Or skin
>> color. Or muscular build. Or beauty.
>
> What does that have anything to do with anything? A thinly veiled attempt at
> character assasination? When did I give the impression that any of those
> things mattered to me?

	You keep insisting that society *can* have less rigorous criteria to 
judge someone. I'm pointing out that individuals and society can judge 
someone however they feel like. No one's arguing about what they *can* 
do. It's whether we feel it's appropriate to do so.

>> No arguments with you that MJ was a weirdo. But that's not the point of
>> the discussion. The issue is pedophilia, and I'm sure if you do the
>> study, you'll find that the majority of people who like kids the way he
>> did never molest anyone.
>
> The crux of the matter is, I believe someone can be a pedophile and *not*
> have had any sexual acts with kids, for whatever reason. The law, of course,
> should only consider if the act took place. Last thing we want is a thought

	Actually, I don't think so. Or rather, the law likely has a looser 
definition of a sexual act than you or I may think.

>> I'm saying that unless there's other evidence, it's naive to believe MR
>> was a racist, purely based on that one video.
>
> I did not say he was. But, out of curiosity, how do we define "racist"? Is
> it necessary for someone to be convicted of hate crimes to be labelled as
> one? Again, I believe there are degrees of racism, all the way from white to

	No - just a pattern of explicitly racist behavior. For all I know, that 
was MR's only episode.

> black including all shades of gray. It looks to me that MR is at least
> slightly racist, however you define "slightly". That video *is* information,
> and as information, I don't feel at all that it should be discarded because
> "it's a single datum" and hence statistically meaningless, or because "it
> doesn't amount to a crime in court"... etc.

	Here I disagree with you. Courts have nothing to do with it. I feel 
that for serious charges, judgment should be suspended until there _is_ 
enough data to declare it.

> It may be isolated (and any data about him will be isolated unless you
> follow them 24/7), but why would you assume that latter? I haven't seen any
> non-black raven and I have seen one black raven: I have not seen anything
> that says MR is not a racist (granted, that's something you don't get to see
> much), and I've seen one case which suggest he may at least have some latent
> racism in him. Am I to ignore what I saw?

	See above paragraph. I personally need more data of being a racist 
before coming to a conclusion that someone indeed is a racist.


-- 
Circular Definition: see Definition, Circular.


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