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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (587965)	9/29/2010 1:56:17 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1577901

Your quoting part of the statement as if it was the whole statement. Its - "Data doesn't tell us anything (other than the specific data point itself) without the reasoning." I'm too smart of a guy to think that statement false. If the data is say unemployment is X%. What does that tell us? Only the specific data point, what unemployment currently is. If we know it changed from X% to Y% after policy Z was implemented, those data points don't tell us that the change in unemployment where because of that policy. You need reasoning to show the connection. For certain types of issues, such specific data strengthens the reasoning, sometimes by a lot, but it doesn't lead us to a conclusion all by itself. For the issues I was posting about, data is either rather irrelevant (If the statement is "we don't have the data", its not exactly reasonable to respond with "give me the data that shows that."), or so obviously overwhelmingly behind my point that its silly to request the data (for example my statement about how the resources on Earth are tiny compared to the resources off of Earth, asking for data to back that up is like asking for specific data about the curvature of the Earth, and if it isn't forthcoming declaring that "maybe the Earth is flat, you don't have the data that shows me otherwise"). Data informs arguments. Its even necessary for certain types of arguments. But it doesn't lead us to a conclusion by itself.