No. My “extremely negative reaction[s]” have been when you respond to something that I did not say.
E.g. you said “Because you claimed that the toxicity from religious tribalism is worse than other types of tribalism”, and I knew that I had not made that claim, and so had an “extremely negative reaction”.
No. When you need to first paraphrase my my statement, and then enter a rather dodgy syllogism (as here) to get to the word you were explicitly putting into my mouth, then you are not interpolating. Likewise, when you are enter into an Argument from Silence, you are not interpolating. Likewise when you take an interpretation, that is both not necessitated by my wording, and is contradicted by my other statements, you are not interpolating (it is not interpolation if it conflicts with existing data).
If this is what you mean by “interpolation”, then I would suggest that we need to stop even attempting to communicate, because we are clearly not speaking the same language.
Except that this is not how things came about. I did not “juxtapose” the two issues.
First you wrote:
I responded:
You responded:
Only then, and as an explicit response to that statement, did I bring up relative murder rates (and later other summary data). This was not me juxtaposing these issues, and it was not my (ungoaded) choice.
My background is in Statistics. If the issue of bias is seriously raised (as your unwillingness to accept a simply anecdotal account seemed to indicate), then my reaction is to test the purported bias against empirical data.
I would conclude that given that you appear neither satisfied by my anecdotal account, nor by the empirical data I presented supporting my negative view of US society, as evidence that I lack significant bias, I am at a loss how you expected this issue to be resolved.
I would point out that you have not provided any evidence that this behavior is no more common outside of conservative Christian reactions to Church-and-State cases, outside of a relatively small, unrepresentative and socially-condemned fringe (drug cartels, Sovereign Citizens, the KKK, etc) that we have already agreed to.
This issue is further aggravated by conservative Christianity’s disproportionate, and thus arguably anti-democratic, influence on the halls of power, through a majority on the Supreme Court, to control of the Republican Party, to their favored candidates holding the position of President, against a popular majority, for eight of the last twenty years.
With all this unwarranted privilege, conservative Christianity (or some apparently not-insignificant elements of it) still reacts violently to the least check on their excesses.
It is not a clarification of my opinion – because I had not expressed an opinion on the situation before your “2020-X”. It is a correction of an opinion that you fallaciously imputed to me.
I would be less grudging about accepting your apology for your “misunderstanding” if you acknowledged that it was your fallacy (not my statement) was at its root.
Being asked questions about things you didn’t say, is at first confusing, and with repetition downright aggrevating. Your questions frequently aren’t about clarifying what I said, but by taking your (often false) assumption about what I have said as the premise for your question.
You did not ask me: “Do you mean that there was some time that the US did not lag behind other developed countries” …
You asked me “When was the last time the US did not lag behind other developed countries? Why do you think it lags now compared to then?”
This means that you’ve already baked the assumption in, before asking me the question. It is akin to what is known as a Loaded Question.
The former is a legitimate request for clarification. The latter tends to derail conversations, and aggrevate the person you’re talking to.
Likewise, when you consider my statements to be inconsistent or contradictory, the correct thing to do is to quote the statements (paraphrases tend to just add to the confusion) and ask me to explain the apparent contradiction, not to assume a meaning and barrel on.
That does not surprise me in the least. I would also question whether the decision is always, or even in the majority, well-informed. Yes, in professions where capital costs and economies of scale are high, the US may be the best choice. But I’d argue that this is more of a matter of necessity (or at least severely limited choice), not quality of life. For the many more immigrants that end up driving taxis, working in restaurants, etc, I would argue that the decision is likely less well-informed, and is probably driven by a combination of name recognition, and the (often false) hope of upward mobility in the “Land of Opportunity”. In neither case do I see evidence that I have inferior knowledge on the generalities of the issue (I would of course have less information on the details of specific PhD programmes and specific high-tech industries).
Yes, but the question wasn’t whether I am biased about Cambridge, Massachusetts. The question was whether I am biased about America (implicitly America as a whole). I would therefore suggest that it is the America-wide average that is the relevant statistic. I would also wish to quietly and peacefully suggest that you are moving the goalposts here.
I would further point out that @Mercer has already suggest that “You may need to get out of the northeast to see just how bad it is.” What is the proportion of conservative Christians in Cambridge relative to the rest of the US as a whole, out of interest?
This was in reponse to my response to his statement that:
I responded with:
I then proceeded to demonstrate that the data was in no way unclear on the issue – a point that was acknowledged by this reply to “Chill out”:
I do not think a degree of displeasure at Joshua commiting the very thing that he was accusing me of (failing to look closely at the data) was unwarranted. I will leave it to you to decide whether you think the degree I expressed that displeasure was unwarranted.
I will admit I have not been at my best on this thread.
On this forum I’ve been recently trying to make an attempt to discipline myself to avoid interactions with those who conversing with has tended to produce more heat than light. I have been relatively successful avoiding Thoughtful and r_speir. Less so avoiding Eddie. I did not know, previous to this thread, that you were someone I should consider likewise avoiding. I am however now seriously considering it. I am dissatisfied with this thread – not so much because you didn’t agree with me, but because I feel that your disagreement failed to put my thesis to any significant test. We argued more about whether or not I said things, and about my purported bias, than about any concrete way to assess the relative or absolute seriousness of the issue.