There are more of us than there are of them

[rah]

Sometimes pointing out facts doesn't mean someone is supporting something.
Partisanship shouldn't blind people to facts.

 

[Farm Boy]

That is literally its primary purpose.

Now, I'd still like to see where Mr. Squirrel, who does like excuses to take potshots at America and who thinks people who pray are of dubious sanity, got the numbers he implies.

 

[rah]

Influence, not blind. But alas, these days, you're probably more correct.

 

[Akka]

Sometimes pointing out facts doesn't mean someone is supporting something.
Partisanship shouldn't blind people to facts.

Partisanship literal definition is being prejudiced and having a bias toward a cause, so I don't really get how you could expect it not to be blind to the facts.
Especially here, considering multiple threads (including this one) are blatant examples of people not caring about, and even deliberately ignoring, facts that go against their dogma.

 

[rah]

Having a bias towards a cause is not the same as being blind to the facts.
Facts are facts, but opinions are a different thing.

I can support the 2nd amendment but that doesn't change the fact that guns are the leading tool used for suicides. Whether I think that matters is something else.

 

[El_Machinae]

Children die though. From the numbers that were posted before, the child mortality rate in the camps seemed lower than that of the US as a whole. Not that the US child mortality rate is anything to write home about of course, but still.

Gotta find that silver lining when defending locking up children eh?

There might be a better way to look at that feedback of the original concern. The very last thing you want is for someone to not make the comment, even if they think it. When making a case, it needs to resonate with the audience. If someone critiques it, it means that you know there is a cohort that does not find resonance in that specific argument. It allows you to refine the argument, if you choose.

If I were trying to make the case that people should water their lawn less often, pointing out the number of traffic accidents caused by people driving to the hardware store won't resonate with some people. Unless, of course, more traffic accidents happen in that scenario than others

If children are dying in camps, the argument that statistically they don't have a very high death rate is a good counterpoint. In my opinion the proper retort is that kids are being locked up at rates that allow statistics to even be collected such that any type of accuracy is achievable.

If getting stabbed by strangers did not significantly affect people's future suicide rate, the horror is that people are getting stabbed in high enough numbers to even know that!

The critique is valuable, because it lets you know when to bust it next. You can refine it so that it resonates to a larger audience, or you can save it to only convince people for whom the critique is not valuable

 

[Akka]

Having a bias towards a cause is not the same as being blind to the facts.

It all depends on the intensity of the bias. Partisans tend to be people strongly involved in a cause and with a strong dedication to it, so they tend to be especially susceptible to being blind.
There is a reason why ideologues who end up leading nations have a pretty poor record of actually providing their supposed utopia and devolving into oppressive regimes.

Facts are facts, but opinions are a different thing.

I can support the 2nd amendment but that doesn't change the fact that guns are the leading tool used for suicides. Whether I think that matters is something else.

That's the point : what you think matters. Enough dogma and facts simply cease to matter - and that's the point when one enters fanaticism, when facts become only tools to be used or discarded in order to support the ideology, instead of the ideology stemming from facts.

 

[rah]

While I do agree that once you reach fanaticism you may be correct, but partisanship isn't quite that level.
Whether you use or discard a fact does not change that it is a fact.

 

[Akka]

While I do agree that once you reach fanaticism you may be correct, but partisanship isn't quite that level.

True, but it's a possible, and frequent, slippery slope toward it.

Whether you use or discard a fact does not change that it is a fact.

You're preaching to the choir here. I'm not the one who needs to be convinced about that.

 

[Farm Boy]

In my opinion the proper retort is that kids are being locked up at rates that allow statistics to even be collected such that any type of accuracy is achievable.

We have been presented nothing to evaluate if this is true. Statistics without reliable significance are more than capable of making a (horsehockey) argument.

That people die at Bonnaroo is used by people who argue against it, but it's one of the largest cities in Tennessee for 3 days when it runs. I have no idea how the mortality rates actually change compared to the alternatives the attendees have available and would be selecting. But seeing the meat wagon alone does not make a meaningful argument. County coroners are busy boys and girls day in and day out.

 

[rah]

Working in the Market research field has had me seeing this all the time. Clients desire an outcome that may not be reality. And when they're paying the bill, the tendency is to give them what they want. Always read the methodology and the sample design.

 

[El_Machinae]

We have been presented nothing to evaluate if this is true. Statistics without reliable significance are more than capable of making a (******) argument.

Yeah, asking why he thinks that would also have moved the ball forward. My suspicion is that it's a bad application of statistics.

At that point, figuring out how to frame things to most speedily teach that the statistics were misapplied might help speed the transition through dissonance

 

[Truthy]

I'd guess that a large majority of childhood deaths in the US are caused by car crashes and other accidents like gun accidents, drowning, falling, fires, etc. Aka, things you wouldn't expect in an immigration detention center. At face value the argument is obviously bad if it's not talking about comparable deaths.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'd guess that a large majority of childhood deaths in the US are caused by car crashes and other accidents like gun accidents, drowning, falling, fires, etc. Aka, things you wouldn't expect in an immigration detention center. At face value the argument is obviously bad if it's not talking about comparable deaths.

Making it to adulthood is a pretty important part of having a successful childhood. We shouldn't dismiss their quality of life, but we shouldn't dismiss survival rate either.

 

[Truthy]

No, the survival rate doesn't matter if we're not comparing apples to apples.

If someone says "kids are dying in the camps" and someone responds "fyi, kids die outside the camps at greater rates," that's not useful. What the first person is really saying is "kids are dying in the camps due to negligence or cruelty." The response has to address that. Even if kids really do die at greater rates outside the camps, that isn't a useful point because both of the following can easily be true (1) kids are dying in the camps due to negligence or cruelty and (2) kids are dying at lower overall rates because cars, guns, swimming pools, trampolines, leukemia, etc. kill a lot of kids outside the camps.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

That is literally its primary purpose.

Now, I'd still like to see where Mr. Squirrel, who does like excuses to take potshots at America and who thinks people who pray are of dubious sanity, got the numbers he implies.

Well, I remember looking it up a couple of months ago, and I thought I'd posted the numbers on here, but I had a search and can't find that post so maybe I didn't. But from memory...

The number of child deaths (and I can't remember how "child" was defined here, but I remember trying to find stats that excluded newborns to make it more comparable) per 10,000 per annum in the US is about 20. It's a few times more than most other developed western nations. You can certainly look up the fact that it ranks 20th in the top 20 most developed nations (or somesuch) anyway.

Meanwhile, the number of people interned in these camps was quoted at something like 50,000 to 100,000 at any one time. So it seems fairly reasonable, if not conservative, to think about 10,000 of those are children. And then the claim was that 7 children had died during the Trump administration, which was about 2 and half years at the time.

So that's significantly less than the child mortality rate of the nation as a whole. Which you would of course expect if they're being monitored in a controlled environment with less change of stumbling over random environmental hazards and (hopefully) actually being looked after.

So the mere fact that some children have died doesn't, in and of itself, indicate anything untoward at all. Get any random sample of 10,000 children and come back a couple of years later and more likely than not several of them will be dead.

That is all. I'm not sure which part of any of the above incidates a pot shot at America, other than the fact that you have a higher child mortality rate than similar western nations, which is just a fact. And I really have no idea how "people who pray" come into it at all...

If someone says "kids are dying in the camps" and someone responds "fyi, kids die outside the camps at greater rates," that's not useful. What the first person is really saying is "kids are dying in the camps due to negligence or cruelty." The response has to address that.

No, I think the initial claim has to address that. If the first person is "really" saying that, then there's no reason for them to not have said it.

 

[Zardnaar]

It's like that year you were safer in the army in Iraq than walking down the street in America.

NZ deports people but we don't lock them up in camps. I suppose some kids might get detained due to parents but there's a government department for that.

Usually it's because people come here on a visa decide to stay but a business or whatever but mess up the paperwork or breach the conditions of the visa.

Sometimes a broken heart when visas run out (get married if it's that serious).

 

[Farm Boy]

Credibility Mr. Squirrel. Which I have to assign to your memory in this instance, whatever source you would have run across, and your dedication to have looked at it critically when you did.

I think that requires a specific sample, Zard. It has to be young men in the military vs young men out in public looking for something to do. At which point, it's not one year if I remember correctly, it's perpetual.

 

[Zardnaar]

Credibility Mr. Squirrel. Which I have to assign both to your memory in this instance and whatever source would have been primary.

I think that requires a specific sample, Zard. It has to be young men in the military vs young men out in public looking for something to do. At which point, it's not one year if I remember correctly, it's perpetual.

It's been 15 years, I think the stats were deaths overall and not young men in particular.

 

[Farm Boy]

That's possible. I just know that young men out in public trying to entertain themselves are the group very much most likely to meet an early demise. But that's just sort of built into expectations about how society functions, so it's kinda white noise unless it's personal.