The Importance of Personal Experience (+Facts, Statistics and Opinions)

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The problem, here, is that no one has actually brought up any verifiable evidence of welfare abuse. In a discussion of how more black people abuse welfare, you would think this would be the first thing cited to defend such a specious argument. In fact, without any verifiable evidence, than what you have is nothing more than opinion that isn't based on actual data. To argue that more blacks abuse welfare, you create the following burden for yourself:

First, you have to come up with a plausible definition of welfare abuse that, for the sake of discussion, everyone can agree on. This is important because there are a lot of folks out there arguing that receiving any benefits at all constitutes abuse of the system. Then, you must determine what percentage of welfare recipients are black, white, latino, etc.

After getting those percentages straight, you must then subdivide that number into households (or some similar measure), since around 80% of all welfare recipients are children...and children are obviously not the ones abusing welfare. After that, it's time to actually look at the percentage of blacks, whites, latinos, etc who are abusing welfare and see how they compare to each other. Since all this data is readily available from the government, it's just a simple matter of looking it up from there.

If you aren't willing or able to meet the burden you've set for yourself in proving such an argument, then you shouldn't be making it.

Now, I know we all love our anecdotes, but how, pray tell, does one determine whether or not a household is abusing welfare without taking a look at their finances? You don't. You can't. Unless someone has either a) been arrested for bilking the system (it happens from time to time) or b) actually admits to defrauding or otherwise abusing it, there is no way to determine, short of guesswork-making a judgment without any of the actual facts-whether or not a family is abusing welfare. In making such a half-cocked judgment without all the facts, prejudice and other pre-concieved notions automatically comes into play.

 

The problem with statistics is that they can be subjective too, often faulty. Paradoxically, it's life experience which helps you know which research is credible and which is bogus. You can obviously conduct some analysis, but there's always a personal judgement involved and experience comes into play at that point. Now, experience can be misinterpreted and misunderstood by the "owner", sure, and it's largely subjective because of its nature, so there's always trouble verifying it. Have to use a measure of common sense.

 

You are the one who is attaching the burden here, no one else. I'm not out to prove anything -- just sharing my opinions. And who are you to say who should put forth his OPINIONS or not? Since when do you hold court here in this forum and judge for someone or advise someone that their opinion isn't worthy to be typed here? FFS, man, get a grip. The fact that you find my opinion irrelevant is actually beginning to seem like a relief to me, an association that I'm thankful for.

 

So you're saying you were posting your opinion with no desire to convince or sway other people? OK. That's...a bit weird, but OK. Sorry for challenging your world view by suggesting that opinions of other races should be based on verifiable fact instead of unverifiable anecdotes with no hard data to back them up. I guess I'm just eccentric.

 

Because we all know that 'statistics' are accurate, objective and not open to interpretation, whereas anecdotal evidence and personal experience are the exact opposite. Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. And in the absence of statistical data, we must rely on personal experiences to formulate opinions. One must be very careful when making inferences from personal experiences, and ensure that one does not 'over-extrapolate'. But to dismiss such experiences outright for not being 'objective' data is absurd.

And wouldn't research into black welfare fraud be politically incorrect? I mean, doesn't the mere hypothesis of the research project have implications of racism? The bleeding heart liberals would never allow such research, no doubt because it would demonstrate that in a significant number of cases, Affirmative Action and handouts fail dismally in achieving equality between blacks and whites.

 

Drew:

Interesting.

Do you believe that all races are equal, Drew?

 

Firstly to quickly and simply address Drew's post above this one. We are not addressing Welfare Abuse in this thread that is a different thread.

Now on to my rebuttal of Splunge's rebuttal.

I have sat and thought hard about early experiences. My early experiences? A fascinating, unusual, unique, aggravating family that created a person that can mystify people. "Are you from England, Italy, the near East?" A grandmother who was college educated, editor of the Women's page of a large city newspaper and a member of the WAACs. Several artists in the family and I am a 'hillbilly' to boot. I envied nice normal families when I was a child but now I look back with nostalgia and gratitude. Blessed was I though I ranted and raved like many a 'normal' child.

Biased? Who me? Of course I am. I am a human being. I learned from my early experience that there is a great big wonderful world out there and you can't experience it by hidding behind figures. You can only get to know it by living it, experiencing it, meeting people, talking to them, listening to them. I expand my knowledge by participating on these boards, by reading what others have posted and thinking about what they say. Even if I disagree with someone it makes me think, makes me question my own opinions and refine them.

Experience, common sense and statistics all have their proper place. They are tools we use to function in this world and how well we use oft times decides how well we relate to the rest of the world.

 

spellbound, look at the description of drew under his name. he is all that and more. you could provide him with signed, notarized, Uncontrovertible proof and he would still deny it. i've learned not to argue with him & just ignore anything he posts.

 

I never said the things you are attributing to me.

Yes, yes, you form an initial opinion based on your experiences--and then you go investigate to see whether or not that opinion is valid. At least, you investigate if you actually care about the topic.

 

Absolutely. No one has ever found a correlation between potential and race. Being white doesn't automatically make you smarter. Being black doesn't make you dance better. Being Latino doesn't make you more gregarious. Being Asian doesn't make you quieter. These are functions of culture (and cultural priorities), not genetics. But this is off topic.

Research of welfare fraud already exists. The FLDS church (which is in no way connected to the modern LDS church), the most egregious offenders by far, are almost entirely white....but, as Nakia pointed out to me, this is off topic in this thread.

 

Drew:

Do you have any data, along with a statistical analysis, to support your opinion that all races are equal? Or is it merely an assumption based on the egalitarian axiom?

1. 'Absence of evidence =/= evidence of absence'

2. Can you you provide any studies which conclusively demonstrate that there is no correlation between potential and race? I'm looking for data, not anecdotal evidence and 'feel good' philosophy.

 

Actually, yes, I can.

Here's another.

 

Those articles are personal opinion. They fail to present any statistical data which conclusively demonstrates that 'all races are equal'.

However, if you genuinely feel that the concept of 'race' is ambiguous and worthless, would you argue that populations of varying biogeographical descent are equal?

 

Sure. The conclusions of these social scientists, however, are based on exactly that type of data. If you want to see the primary data and pore over their hours of research, go look for it yourself. I'm not going to waste my time arguing about something this ridiculous.

 

Please, this thread is not about race vs race it is about experience vs statistics. Try to stay somewhat on topic. It is very easy to start a new thread. Splunge and I did it almost simultaneously.


[Discussions about race can and should go: Here /dmc]

 

Let us get back to the original topic.

I agree with this post but waking up at the ungodly hour of 5:30 a thought popped into my mind.

Statistics prove that racial prejudice exists in the USA. However, how many people look at these statistics and are upset by them? Oh, we may say to ourselves "That is terrible, something should be done about it." But do we do anything? However, if someone I personally know is a victim of stereotyping then I react and will try do whatever I can. It may be a simple protest or it may take a stronger form. The Equal Rights Movement of the Sixties was born from personal experience not from statistics. So which has the greater impact on our lives, personal experience or statistics?

On the other hand statistics show that most wives are NOT abused by their husbands. Does this mean we should ignore the cases where wives ARE abused by their husbands?

 

Well, after giving this some more thought, I'll say this - personal experience is important for individuals in heir day to day lives (provided that that experience is not just an isolated event), but when making public policy, you better have the stats to back you up.

 

Once more I agree with Splunge. Lots and lots of verifiable facts and figures are needed before setting public policy. Back to personal experience it is also a good idea to check your experiences against others' and be willing to listen to what they have to say. Experience includes all kinds of things, including but not limited to: reading, watching TV, meeting people, playing, working and on and on.

It is how we react to these experiences and how open we are to new and different ones that decides how well we relate realistically to the world around us.

 

I think people here are really missing the point. We have both (and more) and use them for a reason. Experience is wonderfully detailed and can be used for an in-depth, qualitative analysis quite easily, but it is limited. Even in the most 'well-lived' life, you'll never experience more than a tiny fraction of the possibilities. Experience is like little snapshots of the relevant information, but very detailed snapshots. Statistics, on the other hand, can cover wide and varying topics relatively easily, but do so by boiling down the experiences of large numbers of people (and empirical data) and forming a simplified explanation.

As has been used before, lets look at the videogames X and Y. 80% of people play game X, while only 40% play Y (there are 20% who play both). Reading this, you think 'Yeah, but will I like game X, I mean, its 50 dang bucks!' Immediately, you go looking for personal experiences with game X, who liked it and why, how it plays, how it looks, etc. What about game Y? Well, if you decide you don't like the look of game X, then you'll probably look into game Y, but game X got priority just because of statistics. The end decision was based on experiences, but the order of priority came from the more vague statistics.

Again, look at diseases. You can say that more people die every year from, lets say, the flu, than any other disease in the world (or maybe just your nation, that's ok, too). Does that mean we should stop our research on AIDS or cancer until we have the flu wiped out? No, becuase experience tells us that the flu is little more than an annoyance for most of humanity, and the majority of those it does kill, it only kills because they have other problems as well. Aids can kill anyone, cancer can kill almost anyone, the flu is not a priority in comparison. (NOTE: I have no idea how many people the flu actually kills every year, or if it is more than AIDS or cancer, this was just an example.)

 

I think statistics helps when you are really clueless about a subject. I use statistics often(experimental design) -- yes, I am clueless often in my work (it comes with working on new things). In general I have found experience will find a solution much faster than statistics will. The main caveat being the experienced researcher must be able to set aside prejudices in order to find the optimal solution. Sometimes that is not an easy thing to do.

I believe this basis for statistics versus experience could be used universally. However, often our own experiences interfere with our ability to interpret the results accurately. I've seen this many times in various statistical assessments I've been involved in.