wayfriend wrote:Zarathustra wrote:This statement seems to indicate that you don't understand either the argument or the evidence.
Stop telling me what I don't understand. This is BELLIGERENCE.
Stop failing to notice that I said, "This statement seems to indicate ..." This is willful negligence. You quoted it. You must have seen it.
What difference does it make if I say, "Your statement seems to demonstrate a lack of understanding of our argument," vs "You are wrong about our argument"? Don't those two statements mean the same thing? I have no idea what you actually understand. But you're wrong. And being wrong usually seems to indicate a lack of understanding. You're free to disagree and provide an argument why I'm wrong to infer that. But whining about it and describing my personality in negative all-caps terms isn't such an argument.
wayfriend wrote:It is so OBVIOUSLY, PATENTLY, SIMPLY refutable, that I have to take this comment as an obvious troll posted to be inflammatory.
I enact gun laws. Crime rises 10%. Did the laws fail?
I enact gun laws. Crime rises 10%. Investigation shows the rise in crime is due to a rise in unemployment. Did the laws fail?
I enact gun laws. Crime rises 10%. Investigation shows the rise in crime is due to a rise in unemployment. Further investigation shows that the rate probably would have risen 20% without the gun laws. Did the laws fail?
Did I say anything whatsoever about the law failing? I clearly said, "my hypothesis or prediction has been proven to be false." It's entirely up to me to state my hypothesis/prediction in terms which take into account mitigating factors. If I fail to frame a hypothesis in the correct terms, it's not the fault of those who point out my hypothesis was disconfirmed.
The prediction in MA was that gun crime would go
down. Not that it would go
up due to other factors which weren't in the prediction, but still be reduced by X amount after all other factors have been taken into account. Since that's not the prediction which was made, it's accurate to say that the evidence falsifies the
specific prediction that was made. Which is clearly what I said, several times: "a certain effect," "a specific result," "the effect which I had predicted," "a causation (in the specific way predicted)."
You ignoring that I said this multiple times seems to indicate a lack of reading comprehension. But whether or not it's reading comprehension or willful negligence brought on by a powerful, blinding, emotional reaction, I can't say for certain. But, you missed my point, multiple times. Maybe it was my lack of clarity. I should have said a few more times, perhaps.
wayfriend wrote:If I make a prediction that a certain action will have a certain effect, and the opposite effect occurs, then you can't make any judgement without investigating the details.
No, you can make one specific judgment: the predicted effect didn't occur. The prediction was therefore wrong. We can say with 100% certainty that
the evidence does not show the causation which the people who made the prediction want to show. That doesn't mean that the causation in question doesn't exist. It's not even the same as
saying that the causation doesn't exist. It does, however, show a lack of causation for the specific result which was predicted. It's impossible to cause something that didn't happen. A careful reading--coupled with the kind of emotional detachment that will keep one from making accusations of "misinformationalist," "troll," "belligerent," "inflammatory,"--will help make this distinction clear.