--- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >
> And yet, is it our business to somehow convince > them that this is what they're doing? > > I ask because one poster on this forum suggested > as much yesterday. The implication (possibly unin- > tended) of the post was that if she encountered a > friend who had come to believe something that she > considered untrue or even insulting to certain > minorities, she'd *have* to say something to set > the person right and change his or her mind, to > make (not stated, but definitely implied) some > kind of stand for "the truth." > > If one feels that, doesn't that imply that they > feel that they KNOW the truth? > > I can't speak for you, Doug, but I DON'T know the > truth. About *anything*. All I have is opinions, > which as far as I can tell based on past perform- > ance (no scientific tests so far...sorry, Off), > are sometimes accurate, and sometimes not. Not arguing, just some points your post triggered. Sometimes we seem to be trying to convince others of our POV -- but it is in the context of friendly debate -- taking our opinions out for a drive and see if they hold up at 90mph as well as they do parked in the garage. Whether the person changes their mind is immaterial. A second, separate point, I liked Judy's post yesterday, it was a good counter that made me think a bit. The gist -- parapharsing "racism IS bad and I will speak up against it and try to uplift weak and/or irrational views." Your counter -- there is no TRUTH -- with the implication possibly (perhaps not intended) being to not speak up against things like racism and not bothering to try to uplift weak or irrational views becasue they may be right. Paraphrasing "Who Knowns!?" Thats somethig to gnaw on. It raises the issue uncomfortable question "Is racism a good thing in some contexts?". Perhaps it is in some very strange and hypothetical contexts. But in the context of life in 2007 it is (almost always) a "bad" thing. Qualifying a "truth claim" to specific context significanly helps focus the discussion and reduces hypothetical exceptions to the claim. In addition to context, taking a probabalistic view is a wonderful thing. Statistics is the backbone of science. No peer-reviewed article, even a series of 100 of them, establishes TRUTH in an absolute sense. All scientific claims are in the form of "We are 95% confident that the event occurs within a range +- 2% of X" (95% and 2% being just plug in examples.) It is from this framework that I qualified the above "truth claim", "it is (almost always) a "bad" thing." "Almost always" in this case might mean that, "in 'this' context, we are 99.99% confident that racism leads to negative outcomes". This is in contrast to the "Who Knowns!? view which can and has been used sometimes to imply or argue that all views are equally valid that is they all have a 50/50 chance of being true. In the framework of the above truth claim, it would translate into "in 'this' context, we are 50% confident that racism leads to negative outcomes" . Hopefully no one has such a limited view.
