"Your SE is something ANYONE with a philosophy or political predeliction could be accused of, so it's a content empty accusation, i.e. et tu Brute."

Absolutely!! Now, just because the pot IS black doesn't mean the kettle ISN'T black, too.

And, we're almost back to an old saying not used in this context but appropriate, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". One person's "freedom fighter" is the next guy's "terrorist". That, by the way, isn't mutually exclusive. BOTH can be right.

We can look at the measurments made by Mariner. From their standpoints, from their epistemologies, there are continuing to be differences of opinion, generated from identical data.

"As an aside, I would hazard that your opinions on issues would correlate mush more closely with what's classed as liberal than mine would correlate with conservative."

Oh, please, please, please let that be true! The weight, accuracy and relevance of information is gauged by our experience (otherwise known as prejudices and attitudes) against our differing views of an ideal. There are many ideals. Your shorter term ideals are quite different from my shorter term ideals.

The way we accumulate and organize knowledge, the importance we give it, which is what I understand epistiemology to be, is affected by our differing standpoints AND by our differing ideals.

There's no doubt in my mind that if we were looking at matters from enough of a distance we'd see the same thing, have the same ideals. As we get closer we differ.

Arf