Honesty doesn't pay :(

[Jack Simth]

Imperator Fyron said:
Jack:
Your percentages are unreal

Never said they were real.

Imperator Fyron said:
and don't properly reflect any sort of valid estimate

Never said they did.

Quit trying to imply a particular set of words to my behaf. It's annoying.

Imperator Fyron said:. A 99% effective system either means 99% of criminals are jailed (which says absolutely nothing about non-criminals, so isn't very interesting), or 99% of those jailed are criminals. It could also mean that 99% of innocent people accused are acquitted, but that probably isn't the intended meaning in context. It is a contortion of logic to assert that it means both that 99% of all criminals are jailed, and at the same time 99% of non-criminals are not jailed.

I stopped and defined my terms as I was using them. Going back and saying I used the wrong term is a void argument, as I chose the meaning to be used. Seriously, Fyron. You're assinging things to me I didn't say.

Seriously, though; if it were possible to go about ascertaining what portion of those who are found "no guilty" are *actually* guilty, or what portion fo those found "guilty" are *actually* not guilty, you could arrange to do so on an individual basis and get a 100% accuracy rating.

Imperator Fyron said:

The two are completely independent statistics that you can not validly roll into one called the overall accuracy and thus derive the rest of the assertions.

So you claim. I listed, quite blatantly, that what I was using were assumptions - which are pretty much by definition arbitrary. You're making claims about the real world. Can I get a source?

But then, if you actually read what I wrote, it doesn't apply to the math I used; I very clearly stated "You can play with the numbers some to get different results" - they vary; widely. There's a reason I pointed it out. Come on Fyron, if you're going to do this, do it right.

Switching from 99% on both sides (as you seem to think is silly) to a lop-sided set has a particular effect.

Imperator Fyron said:
From your 99% accuracy figure, it does not follow that 1% of the non-criminal population is jailed. At best, all you get is that 1% of the jailed population is non-criminal. At worst, you have absolutely no idea how many non-criminals are jailed, so you have no idea what percentage of those in jail are wrongly imprisoned.

The way I explicitly defined it, it actually does. When the defininition used does not apply, neither do the results of the math. So?

Read, Fyron. I'm reasonably sure you know how.

Imperator Fyron said:

You further compound the problem by asserting that 1% of all non-criminals are jailed; this is not a valid metric when assessing the accuracy of a legal system.

I didn't assert that they are; I said with the way I defined 99% accuracy, they were. There's a difference, Fyron, that you appear to be missing. As I defined my 99% accuracy, 1% of the non-crimal population does, indeed, end up getting punished.

Oh, and I didn't use the term "jailed". Quit putting words in my mouth; it's not polite.

Imperator Fyron said:
A more valid metric would be what percentage of innocent people accused of a crime are acquitted, and what percentage of people in both groups are actually brought to trial. Only then could you hope to come up with percentages of people in jail being innocent or guilty.

Again, when one declairs their definitions of assumptions and terms for a mental excersize (which I did), saying it's silly because of definitions that don't apply to a particular situation is alternately a "Well duh" or "So?" situation. It logically follows (in the actual sense, not the one most people use) that where the definitions used in a proof don't apply that neither do the results of the proof (if A -> B under C circumstances (which translates to A & C -> B under all circumstances), but C is false, the statement says nothing at all is said about B - this is basic logic, Fyron; you're nearly forcing me to spoon-feed it to you here). For example, the pythagorean theorm doesn't apply in a non-euclidean geometry (although there's patches for it, for certain ones) as you need a non-euclidean geometry to have a proper right triangle as defined for the proof.

But you've sufficiently demonstrated that you don't actual read the other side of the debate (or don't comprehend - if english is not your native language, the above doesn't apply, as it is purely a misunderstanding, and I apologize); there's no point in a debate. Have fun, I'm done.

[Fyron]

The point was that the math you used is incorrect and based on invalid, illogical assumptions. It is a faulty thought experiment that doesn't show anything as a result. It is not clear to me why you are asserting I put words in your mouth, since I didn't do so.

[geoschmo]

Gee I really hope this doesn’t turn into another Fyron vs someone else smack down.

Jack, I see what you were trying to do with your thought experiment there. What it really demonstrates is how piss poor a 99% success rate is with things that are really important. I’ve seen similar stats regarding air travel, how if only 99% of our planes made it safely millions of people would be dead. We even had a poster up where I worked at a fast-food restaurant as a teen. “99% isn’t good enough” or something like that.

If we lived in a society where people were randomly locked up, where the cops went around and picked up 1 out of every 100 people and threw them in jail for no reason I don’t think we’d tolerate it. What we have to hope is that our justice systems are way more accurate than 99%.

[Fyron]

sigh...

[Atrocities]

Well lets see now, to date Fyron has won at lest 11 smack downs and lost none. My money would be on Fyron to win number 12.

No offense Jack, its just that Fyron is really good at smack downs.

[Jack Simth]

No, he doesn't win so much as everyone gets bored of him continuing to say the same things over and over in the face of clear contradiction; giving all appearences of not fully reading what he responds to. Here, let me show you:

He posted this (among other stuff)

Imperator Fyron said:
It is not clear to me why you are asserting I put words in your mouth, since I didn't do so.

with a timestamp of 06/16/07 10:07 AM.

In response to a post of mine, timestamp 06/16/07 08:59 AM where I said (among other things)

Jack Simth said:
Oh, and I didn't use the term "jailed". Quit putting words in my mouth; it's not polite.

Having very recently quoted a a portion of a post of his, timestamp 06/16/07 01:30 AM, which included (again, among other things - I'm trying to boil it down to just a single, highly specific point for ease of reading, and in the process cutting out a lot of stuff not directly relevant to the analysis of the tactic used in the specific example)

Imperator Fyron said:
You further compound the problem by asserting that 1% of all non-criminals are jailed;

When he'd been responding to my initial post on this topic, timestamp 06/15/07 09:27 PM, where I never once used the term "jailed" - Narf did. Yet Fyron very explicitly stated that I asserted "that 1% of all non-criminals are jailed" (Emphasis added). There's plenty of other examples in the discussion above if you want to look for them; I'm not going to spoon-feed them out further, but that one is easily demonstrated, if merely picking nits in and of itself (choice of terms).

There is no point in debating against people who use such tactics - any argument will effectively fall on deaf ears - they either don't hear, ignore, or don't understand the actual arguments used. But they "win" because most people don't examine the "debate" closely enough to realize what happened, and understand why the other person stopped responding.

It took me a while to figure out why I didn't like Fyron's posts. Sometimes emotional gut reactions get there faster than reason. Now I'm there by way of reason, too.

[Fyron]

It seems to me that "jailed" and "punished" are interchangeable synonyms here that don't change the meaning of anything. There was no "tactic" involved, merely an innocent switching of the two words in my mind. Hence no, I was never trying to put words in your mouth.

I'm not sure why you have decided to take such a simple debate so personally... Gotta love the baseless ad hominem attacks.

[Ludd]

Imperator Fyron said:
It seems to me that "jailed" and "punished" are interchangeable synonyms ...

Paris Hilton may disagree with that.

[Jack Simth]

Imperator Fyron said:
It seems to me that "jailed" and "punished" are interchangeable synonyms here that don't change the meaning of anything. There was no "tactic" involved, merely an innocent switching of the two words in my mind. Hence no, I was never trying to put words in your mouth.

I'm not sure why you have decided to take such a simple debate so personally... Gotta love the baseless ad hominem attacks.

And you give yet another example of not fully reading, understanding, or processing what you're responding to; you missed a sentence:

Jack Simth said:
There's plenty of other examples in the discussion above if you want to look for them; I'm not going to spoon-feed them out further, but that one is easily demonstrated, if merely picking nits in and of itself (choice of terms).

I already admitted that the specific example used was meaningless when I made it. There are others if you care to find them, they are just marginally more subtle. That one is simply very easy to demonstrate.

Now, to be fair, I did make that post in anger; most of your posts don't do that. When you're helping someone with the game, or discussing the game, you do an excellent job. I apologize for not putting that caveat in earlier.

I'm attacking your debate behavior and tactics, not you personally. The meat of it is not an attack against you, personally. Granted, in my anger, I did use negative-connotation words in relation to you mixed in with the actual arguements. I apologize for that aspect. The meat of the point still stands, and you demonstrate it yet again.

[Fyron]

The only "tactic" used was to say that the basic assumptions used in the thought experiment (mental exercise) were wrong. Anything else was either an innocent switching of synonymous terms, or imagined on your part. Isn't the meat of an argument far more important that sitting there and nit-picking every little word used? We obviously disagree on the merits of the initial assumptions; going into some point-by-point pissing match doesn't accomplish anything.

Ludd said:
"Paris Hilton may disagree with that. "

Well, I wouldn't expect her to understand the subtleties of context.