We Are #2! Minnesota No Longer the Most Institutionally Racist. (Still #1 best place to be White)

[ronburgundy]

IOW, you consider every person who survives cancer or any other life threatening disease to be evidence of a loving God. That reduces "evidence" to something of virtually zero value in evaluating the validity of claims.

That's not fair. Laughing dog is correct - in this instance, anyway. That income and other achievement differences exist is a fact. Like telling the doctor you have a fever. Though that fact, alone, does not give a conclusion or diagnosis. It may be consistent with many things, but not diagnostic of those things. So if a doctor says you need an orchiectomy because you have a fever, suggest that he get more information first.

I am not disputing whether it is a fact, but whether a fact is "evidence of" X merely by being consistent with X, even when it is just as consistent with infinite universes where "not X" is the case.
Cancer survival is also a fact, and it is consistent with a loving God. But reasonable people wouldn't claim that the fact of cancer survival is evidence of a loving God any more than they would say that the facts in the OP are evidence for especially high institutional racism in Milwaukee.
Nearly ever conceivable false idea has countless facts that are consistent with it. Thus, that mere consistency fails to favor an idea from being true over it being false. It must be shown to be more consistent with more of the facts than the alternative theories.

BTW, that doesn't even count the fact that the facts are not even consistent with any viable theory of racism, given that the facts include Asians faring better than the whites who have majority control charge of the institutions, and that differences between various racial groups is inconsistent across the different outcome measures being discussed. That is inconsistent with race itself playing a causal role, but rather more consistent with the causal role of some variable(s) that are correlated with race but variably related to the outcome measures.

 

[Toni]

Whatever imaginary axe you are seeking to grind, I would suggest that you find a different way to argue your point, if you have one. As regards the above post, you make as much sense and are as relevant as if you had suggested that elephants look better in pink tutus than they do in bowler hats.

Your inability to grasp logic or rational principles of evidence is the cause of your failure to see the sense and relevance of my post, which makes the valid point that a fact does not become "evidence" for a claim merely by being consistent with it, but only by also being inconsistent with possible realities where that claim is false.
That is why all valid science operates not by seeking evidence merely consistent with a given claim, but by eliminating alternatives than predict something other than the observed facts. Eliminating various alternative possible factors that could produce an observed fact is the purpose of the methods of sampling, control, manipulation, and statistical analysis in science. Without these you merely have a pile of facts with no value as "evidence".

Ah, the sound and fury, using up bandwidth and signifying nothing.

Actually reading an exchange could possibly improve your ability to respond. I'm not holding my breath, though.