Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to Thanks for catching TB in such a deliberate attempt at deception

To be fair,
ER — (archived)

I don't think it was a deliberate attempt at deception. We've all been baffled by some of TB's positions, but I don't think he has ever been maliciously dishonest.

Someone once caught him quoting a statistic based on home foreclosures based on monthly averages that implied the problem was trivial--just media hype. Of course, when it was multiplied by 12 to give the yearly average, the problem was revealed to be as serious as it has since been shown to be. What is instructive about this incident is that the source he was quoting supported a position totally opposite to his, it is clear he was so eager to find supporting data he did not properly evaluate it. When it was pointed out, he promptly acknowledged his error. Stilll, this is the sort of mistake anyone can make, myself included. When you are desperate to make a point, you sometimes make honest errors of interpretation, or even fool yourself into seeing what isn't there. I've caught myself doing it, as I'm sure we all have.

There is a lesson we can all profit from here: when you really believe, when you desperately want to believe, you will tend to exaggerate what favors your view and tend to ignore what contradicts it. Unfortunately, it is usually the case that the really important decisions we all need to make are often based on insufficient and contradictory data. Remember WMDs in Iraq?

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