runner: Posse ad esse aposterori a priori, ad hoc, a caoite ad calcem, sub judice lis est!
absit invidia!
Rhrosty.

Oops ! That website should read: www.firstsources.info

Fat fingers and bung eyes, not a good combination.

BTT: when someone holds fiercely to a paradigm, a version of Truth, it is bound to be traumatic when some inconvenient 'fact' cuts right across it. Thirty-odd years ago, I did an income study of a community where we had lived, and found, to my horror (like my ex-friend's above) that the average weekly income there was equal to the Australian average. Rents were only a fifth of usual rents and housing repayments.

That sort of discovery can turn your world upside down. Ultimately of course, the underlying premise, the reason to hold to a particular paradigm in the first place, is a basic principle, in this case that all whites were b@stards, 'therefore' ......

But paradigms can collapse once some major component is found not to be true. What to replace it with ? How to maintain, with friends, what one now suspects is not actually true, and retain those friendships ? Is truth worth losing friends over ? But how can one live with untruths ? How to be happy though human, with integrity ? Very traumatising.

Joe

Cobber the hound wrote:

>>Don you have taken the Dunning–Kruger effect to a whole new level.>>

For those who don't know I can't improve on the Wikipedia definition so I'll just quote it:

>>The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude. Conversely, highly skilled individuals tend to underestimate their relative competence, erroneously assuming that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.

As David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University conclude, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others".[1]>>

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

This explains why clueless people often sound so much more credible than people who know what they're talking about.

The clueless really are clueless about the extent of their ignorance so they never put in any qualification or allowance for their own fallibility. As a result climate deniers usually sound more credible than actual climate scientists.

Well posted Cobber

:-)

stevenlmeyer

Trying to gauge temperature changes by ad hominem argument and appeal to authority only proves you are a fool and don't understand what you're are talking about.

As there is no-one who denies that that there is a climate, and as you have been repeatedly proved wrong on this topic, you are a dishonest fool as well.

You are not entitled to assert otherwise unless and until you refute the arguments proving you wrong here:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16680&page=0
here:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16726
here:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16753&page=0
and here:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16757&page=0

"The clueless really are clueless about the extent of their ignorance so they never put in any qualification or allowance for their own fallibility."

Like you and your positive prognostications about catastrophic man-made global warming based on computer models that have ALL proved flatly incorrect?

Case in point. My poor old mum died on Saturday and at one of the wakes, a friend was talking about an Aboriginal massacre that was supposed to have happened around Dubbo in which two hundred people were poisoned by a white woman (a new twist) with strychnine. Horrible. How evil whites are.

I asked him if there was any evidence that this had happened. he dismissed this, suggesting that of course there wasn't, it happened a long time ago and the woman had probably buried the bodies. I suggested that two hundred bodies was a lot to bury, and surely there would be some evidence of it. He suggested that she might have burnt the bodies. Each body takes a ton of wood to burn. I helpfully suggested that she must have worked pretty hard to collect one or two hundred tons of wood. Even so, bits of bone would be around. Such a crime would leave evidence.

So what do you go by ? that an incident sounds plausible because it fits in with a pre-formed paradigm, and thereby doesn't actually need evidence - in fact, such declaration reinforce a paradigm and are therefore correct; or do you ask for some evidence, forensic reports, doctor's reports, and just some physical evidence. As well, in this case, which was rumoured to have occurred around 1900, when there were already established reserves all around Dubbo, Wellington, Warren, etc., at which names of people would have been recorded, children would have been going to reserve or Mission schools, so their sudden absence from any ration or school records, etc., would have been noticed, recorded.

There are many more aspects which constitute evidence than people airily believe. Hearsay is not evidence. Reports of evidence - such as, say, pushing people off cliffs, i.e. that cannot actually be substantiated with evidence - are just that, reports without evidence, rumours, hearsay. Yes, they may have occurred but how can one say yes or no, how can one distinguish between bullsh!t and truth without something substantial ?

[TBC]

[continued]

So what should count as evidence, sufficient for us to believe something ? What is the relationship between Truth and Belief ? My ex-friend was pretty pissed off that I raised any queries: after all, if one has the One True Paradigm, all else is racist carping. We parted without any undue violence.

But Paradigm-holders, in this sense, work from Paradigm to assertion, not from evidence to assertion, you might say from top-down, not from bottom-up: Paradigm-holders don't construct a case, they 'confirm' a case. The Paradigm makes complete sense, therefore is correct, all of it, chapter and verse. And if course it has to be.

Watch the next episode of NCIS or Midsomer Murders: is the story plausible ? Yes, of course, otherwise you wouldn't watch it. Is it 'true', 'real', a depiction of an actual event ? No, of course not, we know that. Plausibility is not 'evidence'.

Joe