James Brown
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Can't a person be both ignorant and a bigot?
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An American Poll
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Jimmy Higgins
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Ron’s point is that yes, they can, however this doesn’t demonstrate that No’s are bigoted because there are alternative explanations for no.
Politesse
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ronburgundy
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Correct. Thanks for the assist. I also think that ignorance and bigotry are positively correlated, and that there is other evidence to infer that some of the "no" answers are probably driven by a combo of ignorance and bigotry. My point is that a "no" answer requires ignorance but not bigotry b/c there are obvious non-racist (and good) reasons to not want to add a whole new numeric system to the math curriculum.
I'm not saying ignorance is the alternative explanation to bigotry. The "no" answers require ignorance but also require something in addition. "Bigotry" is a possible something more, but there are other somethings that are not merely possible but that are highly probable, such as the desire to avoid adding non-essential things to the curriculum (a desire shared by many people across the political spectrum). I'm saying that rather than ignorance + bigotry, at least some of the "no" responses are probably ignorance + not wanting to complicate the curriculum.
James' post highlights a common error when interpreting data as evidence for a claim, which I've seen lead to many fruitless exchanges on this board about many topics. Alternative explanations for data or an observation do not have to be mutually exclusive and often are not. They merely need to provide a plausible account of how the event or behavior happened that does not require the claimed cause. It doesn't mean the claim cannot be correct or that the cause could not possibly also be at play. It just means that the data/observation in question does not provide good evidence for that cause/claim.
And if the alternative account is not merely possible but highly probable or already known to be true (as in this case), then the data cannot be said to provide any evidence of the claim, since that makes the probability of the data just as high in world where the claim is false as in a world where it is true. And the difference in probability of observing Y in a world where X is true vs. false is what determines whether and the degree to which Y is evidence of X.
Worldtraveller
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