Some quotes:
- “All generalizations are false, including this one.” -- Mark Twain
- “All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.” -- Alexandre Dumas
- “All generalizations are bad.” -- R.H. Grenier
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Faulty generalizations
James Ginderske's statement on Morse Hellhole that "every single blogger in RP is supporting Claypool because its[sic] the right thing to do for this neighborhood" leads me to this Wikipedia entry about faulty generalizations.
Some quotes:
Some quotes:
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17 comments:
Yes, I guess it was a bit of hasty generalization with a dash of misleading vividness...we all need to be more careful (okay, I need to be more careful) about that kind of stuff...
I guess I gave James a pass because I do in fact support Claypool, but you are right...good catch...
I'm not trying to catch anything or anyone, really. I guess I just marvel at people making statements like this. It ties in to the statistics and ochlocracy entries. Some folks think that just because they think a certain way that everyone does.
Part of me doesn't want to support Claypool or anybody else that seems to be getting popular support from "every single blogger in RP" just because they are getting support from certain specific bloggers in RP. In some ways, I realize that's an infantile, childish response. On the other hand, you can tell a lot about a candidate by the people who support them. In this instance, it makes me feel like none of the people are a decent choice.
On another note: it's a damn good thing I've got a cynical sense of humor and a skewed look at what I love -- it seems that everything in here is only marginally likeable (with the obvious exception of pizza) and that the only reason I've been able to write about any of it is because things that are ridiculously stupid make me laugh a lot. Coming soon: hypocrisy!
Oh dear...sorry I didn't mean to suggest that you were playing some cheap game of "gotcha" (email communications only having a 50/50 chance of having their tone understood and all that). Intended more as a compliment for the reality check you gave us...
Please keep laughing AG...as I've said before, I'm counting on you to...
You don't happen to love baby kittens do you? That might be a good one...if you actually love them that is...
Archie, as you know, the familiar Rogers Park blogs are filled with inaccuracies, exaggerations, unsubstantiated attacks, and outright lies.
Out of all that, THIS is the one comment that merits a comment from you? I'll grant you, Jim's statement is an exaggeration. It should have said "many popular bloggers" or something like that. But, compared to the other statements that these blogs routinely spew, Jim's statement was a model of restraint and substantiation.
I find it strange that no other post on this blog names a specific individual or quotes a specific passage. Your entries on Copyright, Spell checkers, Ochlocracy, Hyperlinks, and Statistics are all done so that we are left to make our own connections between what you wrote and things other bloggers said.
What is it about what Jim said that merits the direct attack?
Rebecca said: " I didn't mean to suggest that you were playing some cheap game of 'gotcha'"
Oh, that's not how I took it -- I just wanted to make sure everyone knew where I stood, something I'm constantly worried about ever since....well, I don't want to get into it.
Thomas asked, "What is it about what Jim said that merits the direct attack?"
If I could just change one word in your question, I'd like to change "attack" to "comment." I don't feel that I was in any way attacking James. It certainly wasn't an attack in the way we're used to on those other blogs, right? I just wanted to comment upon that statement.... I didn't call him any names or use any bad words, so already we're several steps beyond the norm.
Now -- why did I deviate from the formula I've been following? That's a damn good question. I really don't know what it was about that statement that caused me to directly quote him and comment upon it, rather than just doing a more general post like I've been doing. I do have some theories:
1) The other types of comments you mentioned -- the "inaccuracies, exaggerations, unsubstantiated attacks, and outright lies" -- are all so painfully obvious and blatant that I feel like we -- those of us sensitive and intelligent enough -- know what they are. I don't have to point directly at them. This statement however was relatively innocent. Perhaps it's even accurate. But as Twain, Dumas, and Grenier all say: generalizations are false, dangerous and bad (even this one). Nobody else seemed to even question it, so I thought I would. And while my other posts have had relatively obvious parallels, I didn't think that this one would be readily apparent.
2) I wasn't able to find any really great examples of faulty generalizations that would prove my point. This time, I decided to go right to the source.
3) Some of my examples from the statistics post were faulty generalizations and I didn't want to rehash that.
4) I was being lazy.
That all said, I'm going to personally lean towards #1 and #4. It had nothing to do with James himself, and it certainly wasn't meant to be an attack. I hope it didn't come across that way.
Thank you both for your thoughtful comments.
I just think your priorities are skewed, and I definitely don't think the problems are as obvious as you suggest. Here's a quick review of the RP blogosphere in the last couple of days.
1. Angela Caputo of the Pioneer Press publishes an article about a recent 49th Ward zoning meeting. Arguably, it contains inaccuracies and/or culpable incompleteness. (See Hugh's comments on RPR and MHH for arguable inaccuracies.)
2. Rogers Park Review publishes the entire story verbatim, despite it being copyrighted material belonging to Pioneer Press. (In theory, RPR has their consent to republish.)
3. Hugh Devlin posts a number of comments on RPR, attacking the Pioneer Press story. (Some of which I dispute, below.)
4. The Morse Hellhole rehashes the story from RPR, copying with it some of Hugh's comments, plus attributing statements to Hugh that Hugh didn't say.
5. I point out what I see as inaccurate in Hugh & Craig's complaints about the story; they respond. Hugh complains about Craig making up things he didn't say.
6. Despite all of the above, many (not all) commenters on Morse Hellhole voice their support for Craig and perceive no problem in any of the above.
The problems in how certain Rogers Parkers run their blogs is not as readily apparent as you say, at least not to everyone.
Compared to the above, complaining that someone exaggerated by saying "all" instead of "many" is rather petty. Taking this against the context that Jim had just set up an event for four candidates, which went uncommented on your blog (directly or obliquely), it looks even more out of character.
I think I get why it annoyed you, really. You're a blogger in RP, and you didn't say you supported Claypool. Thus, Jim's statement, taken literally, would be putting words in your mouth that you didn't say. Still, you went to great lengths to address that, while ignoring a plethora of other things that really merited the attention more. Of all the people in RP who might be publicly pilloried for an unfortunate statement this week, you picked the least deserving.
Ahem. IMHO.
Thomas said: "I think I get why it annoyed you, really. You're a blogger in RP, and you didn't say you supported Claypool. Thus, Jim's statement, taken literally, would be putting words in your mouth that you didn't say. Still, you went to great lengths to address that, while ignoring a plethora of other things that really merited the attention more. Of all the people in RP who might be publicly pilloried for an unfortunate statement this week, you picked the least deserving."
Thomas -- I think that's unfair. I wouldn't call any of my posts "going to great lengths" nor would this specific post count as a public pillory of James. I write about the things that catch my eye -- yes, I could (and probably will) write about journalistic ethics, and the above mentioned hypocrisy, but this one just caught my eye and got me a little upset. It was easily categorized, summarized and posted, and so it was.
Keep in mind that I (like all other bloggers in the world) have no obligation (like all other bloggers in
1) Report the most important issues
2) Report the truth
3) Report anything at all
And for the love of god, why does everybody take this so seriously?
Tom, I've tried to be quite careful lately about obtaining explicit permissions to reprint. At the very least I put proper credits on posts that we don't write. We don't selectively "edit" other peoples work to influence it's meaning, or place it in a misleading or negative light - we just put it up, credit it and include links to the original source material. In the cases of certain images, we haven't credited them because they are free use or stock photography.
As we all know from Archie's copywrite post and other places, what actually constitutes copywrite infringement online is being tested. I have to admit I have mixed feelings about the whole thing, but I generally feel if I post things for educational use without distorting the original intent, in a non-commercial setting like RPR, and give proper credits and links back to original source material, I've behaved in a responsible way. Luckily those who have grated permission for reuse have so far agreed with this position. But I do understand there are possible argument against my pratices.
As for Angela's piece, I don't know whether Gary discussed the reprint on RPR with her. But I would be happy to follow up with her and ask for retroactive permission if she hasn't yet granted it to Gary...
I'm very sympathetic to the "why so serious" comment AG...Personally I get a bit queasy when I feel myself starting to devolve into hubris...but it still happens more than I would like it to. My own favored position is one of "serious play", but I don't always achieve it.
Just another reason why I appreciate people like you and Roswell's C so much...but I just don't have enough talent to do likewise, so I come here to live vicariously...I hope you don't mind...
(By the way, I don't think you should constantly worry about the "ever since" if it is what I think it is. Everyone knew that was just a load of BS on you know who's part...)
Now on to the fluffies!!
Rebecca said:(By the way, I don't think you should constantly worry about the "ever since" if it is what I think it is. Everyone knew that was just a load of BS on you know who's part...)
I appreciate that very much. However, as Tom said, "The problems in how certain Rogers Parkers run their blogs is not as readily apparent as you say, at least not to everyone." It certainly felt to me like everyone wanted to listen to "certain Rogers Parkers" and very few out there acted as a voice of reason. Despite my burning desire to keep hammering the issue, discussing my intent and position, I knew that nobody would listen and I'd just dig a deeper hole....
Eh, it's in the past. Let's get back to the kitties!
A guy on today's Morse Hellhole makes what I found to be a striking overgeneralization: "These [new voting] systems are much more secure than the old punch cards because once a vote is cast on them it cannot be tampered with or changed in any way."
Does he get his own treatment here like JG got? I'm not going to hunt down every overgeneralization on the blogs to repost here, but then, neither will you.
Tom, are you serious? Are you still talking about this? Did I not explain myself -- even though I have no obligation to -- well enough? What is going on here?
If it weren't for the fact that all your comments have been spelled properly and used proper grammar, I'd suspect you were someone else just trying to beat a dead horse.
Furthermore what do you mean by "treatment?" How did I "treat" James?
All I said was that his statement lead me to a Wikipedia entry. Nothing more, nothing less. It was his statement that got me thinking about stuff. I didn't attack James in any way. I just said that what he said made me think about faulty generalizations. That's it. Is James pissed off about what I wrote? If so, he can come here and talk about it. Why are you so into this?
And no, I'm not going to post every overgeneralization I see out on the blogs. But then, I haven't posted every false statistic, or every example of mob mentality either, have I? I write one entry about a topic and then I let it go."I'm not going to hunt down every overgeneralization on the blogs to repost here, but then, neither will you." That's so dramatic and hilarious, Tom. It's like you think you're accusing me of something.
Are you going to tell me what's really bugging you?
In a phrase, cognitive dissonance is bothering me. On the one hand, I got used to your blog being non-confrontational, impersonal, indirect, and clever. Against that context, this post stands as the sole exception. Add to that your comments after the fact, which dodge and weave around a real explanation of why this event merited such a change in tone and tactics. Although you've made a directly personalized complaint, you seem very comfortable retreating to indirectness when called to account.
I feel as I imagine Clarice Starling did when she said, "That's more like something Miggs would do."
I feel that I haven't weaved around anything, that I offered up as detailed an explanation as was possible. I don't feel I've resorted to indirectness. I've been nothing but up front with my replies to your increasingly tiring comments.
So I wrote an entry that was inconsistent with the rest of the stuff on the site. My next entry will be filled with profanity, blasting George Lucas for making some awful Star Wars movies. The next entry is going to be all about my mother and her experiences as an aide in the Reagan White House. What does it matter?
Except I know that you believe that good writing and ethical behavior do matter in blogging. That's a major underlying theme of the rest of your blog posts. So your claim that none of it matters isn't consistent with bothering to write about spell checking or copyright violations. Cognitive dissonance again.
We're going to have to agree to disagree on this one, Tom. I don't know how to explain it any further. You seem to think that I have some vendetta against James or that I have somehow gone out of bounds, and I just don't see it. Nothing in the six comments I wrote following the post has done anything to change your mind -- you won't concede a single point. I don't think anything can be gained by continuing this back-and-forth.
I enjoyed your blog.
Good Luck.
Michael Lee
Lee Street Management
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