[WikiEN-l] Re: Not with a Bot (Israel) resent--hit enter button early

Wed Sep 17 21:38:13 UTC 2003

--- Steve Vertigum <utilitymuffinresearch2 at yahoo.com>
wrote:
> Why dont you email Chomsky Daniel. Im not an expert.
> Read that link on the email too. I think you two
> would hit it off--dont axe me why.
>
I'm sorry, I missed that link.

I've read some of Chomsky's works, linguistic and
political, and I still find it surprising that so many
liberals are anti-Israel. I'm sorry, anti-apartheid,
whatever you want to call it.
>  
> We can agree then that 1. there are standards which
> would cause us to void some statistics-- we can
> refuse to be ignorant and 2. admit that statistics
> are not unpolitical-- that we not simply take them
> at face value.  We can agree that 3. these
> statistics are of questionable statistical value
> since they deal with ethnic divisions which are
> based on dubious ethnic distinctions.
>  
> We can also agree to 4. use the .il statistics
> anyway provided we violate their "moral" copyright--
> And AS I SAID THREE times: **Not with a bot.  A
> bot's use represents a privelidged means of access
> to the Wikipedia. Such a privelige must not be given
> to POV numbers. They are not statistics---the
> science behind them is poor. They are merely
> numbers.
>  
> To use such numbers would require a disclaimer that
> essentially says "these are not statistics--they are
> politicized numbers."
>  
> ~S~

I agree with you on the first point, but that's it.
See [[Begging the question#Circular Arguments]]. You
are proving your premise with itself. Both in this
email, where you said "I think we can assume..." (we
cant) and proved what you thought we could assume, and
before, saying that you're not anti-Israel, just
anti-apartheid (who isn't? But israel isn't
apartheid).

And of course these numbers are collected for
political and/or burocratic purposes, such as creating
budget projections and accurately representing
districts. Why else would they collect them.
LDan

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