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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (17286)	6/22/2001 11:59:47 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Tim Fowler is entitled to his opinions, but if he wishes others to value his opinion ahead of the "experts" he needs to do two things. He needs to move beyond his previously stated partiality, and...he needs to provide credentials that will attest to his credibility in the field of mathematical and statistical analysis. That would be true if I was basing my arguments on math or statistical analysis. But since I am pointing out basic flaws in logic all that is needed is a good general understanding of logic. I'm not challenging the statistics. I'm not sure if the mistake in logic that I am referring to was made by the people you consider experts or by you interpreting their research, but now you seem to be making another error in your logic. For the sake of argument I will accept the experts you cite as experts in statistical analysis. I will also, atleast as long as I lack any reason to think their statistics are inaccurate, accept the accuracy of their statistics. However you have not shown or even claimed that they are experts in logic. Furthermore even if they are you provide no argument from them against my points about the weakness in the logic of your posts. So it comes down to you arguing with me about the logical errors. But you don't even provide a defense for them or an argument as to how they are not errors in logic instead you call me a weasel (either an ad-hominem argument or just irrelevant abuse, also inaccurate), and you make an argument along the line of "these people are experts so they must be right". (unjustified appeal to authority see nizkor.org Since you want an expert or some links to information I'll post a link to provide more information about the errors in logic I pointed out previously. It is an error of Composition nizkor.org 1. The parts of the whole X have characteristics A, B, C, etc. 2. Therefore the whole X must have characteristics A, B, C. Now to be fair you never actual directly said something along the lines of 1 - Many developing countries outlaw abortion. 2 - Therefore developing countries as a group outlaw abortion. Instead what you did was treat developing countries as a proxy for countries outlawing abortion. You never to my recollection directly made a statement like this, but your argument assumes it. If "developing countries" can not be considered as equivalent to "countries that outlaw abortion" the whole argument falls apart. But in fact there are many developing countries where abortion is legal so the two sets of countries are simply different. Tim