re: #38 Buck

You leave out the phrase “shown a tendency”. It is very important.

“shown a tendency” is not the same as “does”. You want to parse this to the extreme, then you have to include that phrase.

No, I didn’t. Maybe I should used a different phrase than “base-rate correlation.” You know, correlation…a simple (admittedly very simple) measure of tendency…that explicitly is distinct from causation.

And if you want to get into parsing, “tendency” is semantically softer than unmodified “did/does”…which is a point to my side.

…and Israel has not shown a tendency to produce terrorism.

Unless you accept the idea that support for Israel produces terrorism.

Um…what?

What I pointed out were the unjustified extrapolations you made into a text; I proposed a counter-interpretation, but did not justify it as “correct” because we’re operating without metrics at to how statuses are assigned.

You made an assumption about the text’s meaning that extended beyond the words on the page, I pointed it out in formal terms. I was addressing a problem of language-as-written versus language-as-read.

That last part is just a nasty insinuation.

re: #41 Buck

Is this DHS report really “a void of interpretation”? Are you saying that there are unclear? Are you saying it is poorly written?

In order to make the facts work for you, you tell me that this report (that I think is very clear) is “a void of interpretation”.

No…the sentence I was parsing would be the referent “void.” Hence the entire deconstruction of what your offense was based on; hence why the offending paragraph does not reference the whole paper.

Also, I smell concern trolling plus nasty insinuation.

But honestly, I’m not going to engage you any more.

Either you’re a coward that like to formulate little insults about his opponent and drop them into the middle of muddy “arguments” that amount only to purposeful twisting of the words of others, then pretending it was all unintentional…

…or you’re damnably stupid and truly don’t understand the documents you post, the posts you respond to, or the semantics of your own writing—and have remained in that pristine state of suspended incomprehension for at least as long as I’ve been lurking here without acquiring any self-awareness.

I’m tempted to reel out some elaborate string of insults—you see, I like my insults to be elaborate, vulgar, and blatant, not cravenly couched in the language of concern and questioning—but instead I’m just going to promise that I’m going to continue to throw sawdust on the pseudo-rhetorical vomit you treat as logic whenever you post an article.

Now go tend to your heirloom butthurt—it needs pruning and watering—and convince yourself that I’m a anti-Israel liberal loon rather than someone with an appreciation for the distinction between actual logic and fallacy-assisted ideological mastubation.