posted
So, what, I guess you were also full of crap with your little declaration about ignoring posts, eh?
Anyway, I'd love to know how you knew at that point in the story he had those injuries (and he didn't, I believe but could be mistaken, seek medical care then, rather waiting awhile after his 'savage beating').
Of course you didn't. And of course Zimmerman having or not having those injuries doesn't do much at all to answer the most important couple of questions about this case. And of course those injuries are consistent with quite a few kinds of violence, not all of them in line with Zimmerman's story-no mention of that from you, though. And of course witness reports can often be misleading, especially when there are changes in story.
I count at least two fundamental, major problems mentioned in that last paragraph-what amount and kind of violence might've caused those injuries, and changeable witness reports-but you've still got the nerve to claim to be the one fairly arguing and reasonably examining things.
You, who claims it is all but proven Zimmerman was right. Meanwhile over on this side there is no such certainty, yet you've more than once claimed otherwise. If it happened once, I would think misunderstanding. Twice or even three times, stubbornness or poor mutual communication. Four or five times, though, yeah, I'm no longer assuming honesty and kindness of thought from you on this subject-not that you ever did really, of others.
Oh! Another convenient not-mentioned on your part: hey, what's the probability that Zimmerman would've put his back to Martin?
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There needs to be less discussion about who is full of crap, lying, playing dumb, etc. If it doesn't stop, individuals are going to start being called out.
I can't imagine any of the parties involved in this latest discussion are even enjoying the conversation.
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quote:Anyway, I'd love to know how you knew at that point in the story he had those injuries
Divine inspiration.
Either that, or I properly evaluated the evidence at hand. We had video that showed officers looking at the back of Zimmerman's head, and we had police reports of said injuries. The people that *did* have access to the evidence (namely the police department) all claimed that Zimmerman had been injured, and given how many cops had seen Zimmerman or had access to photographs from his day of arrest, it would have taken a conspiracy in the entire department for Zimmerman to *not* have been injured; nor was it a sustainable conspiracy, since photographs would have to be produced sooner or later; and the supposed conspirators would have known that, and therefore they wouldn't have bothered with the conspiracy in the first place, and certainly wouldn't have persisted with it if they had been foolish enough to begin it.
I don't remember what further pieces of evidence we had at that point, but I think we had that much at least. So, yeah, we knew it.
If it was bad reasoning, it wouldn't so often take me to the right conclusions.
As a personal sidenote, when I was predicting Greece's bankruptcy to my family 4 years ago, none of them believed me then either.
And when I predicted to myself that a certain child-murder case in Greece back in 1995 (or so) had been committed by the father, because his reactions afterwards wasn't making sense to me if he was innocent, why I was right then too.
And I actually made a small amount of money recently, out of predicting HPMoR plotpoints
My "bad" reasoning tends to lead me so often to right predictions. When I say we know something, it tends to be true.
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Aris, perhaps your position would receive less strife if you labeled it an opinion or a prediction instead of a fact.
The case -isn't- over, and when the trial begins and all evidence is brought to light we will have much better ability to judge Zimmerman's guilt or innocence.
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quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: I think you're most definitely playing dumb when you demand absolute certainty (something that never exists in our universe for *any* event) for Zimmerman to be innocent of wrongdoing, while the slightest remotest chance otherwise is given credibility by you. That's called
... it's called ... what? The inability or unwillingness on your part to understand my position is not 'demanding absolute certainty for Zimmerman to be innocent of wrongdoing' as opposed to casting doubt on your own plainly erroneous claims of certainty?
You have descended into a level of irrationality which isn't even really worth contemplating. Go back to my last two posts before this one and see if you can come up with a real response to them.
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I ... actually, as I catch up with this thread
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: And I actually made a small amount of money recently, out of predicting HPMoR plotpoints
My "bad" reasoning tends to lead me so often to right predictions. When I say we know something, it tends to be true.
I just wanted to catch this part here just in case you delete your posts in the future or something; I want to have it forever. Aris Kataris on Why We Should Accept Aris Kataris is Right, ladies and gentlemen.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: I ... actually, as I catch up with this thread
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: And I actually made a small amount of money recently, out of predicting HPMoR plotpoints
My "bad" reasoning tends to lead me so often to right predictions. When I say we know something, it tends to be true.
I just wanted to catch this part here just in case you delete your posts in the future or something; I want to have it forever. Aris Kataris on Why We Should Accept Aris Kataris is Right, ladies and gentlemen.
And I'll just quote your post, here, Samprimary just in case you ever claim you aren't selectively choosing what bits to quote and which not. Ofcourse you would choose the silliest bit and then claim it's a fair representation of the whole. For some strange reason you failed to quote the bit about previous points in this case, or about the previous murder case, or about the Greek bankruptcy.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and *won't* assume you're misrepresenting my post out of mere malice. But the alternative (that your brain unconsciously and automatically edits out anything that you don't want to hear, so that you aren't even aware of the misrepresentations you're making) isn't that much better.
quote:Go back to my last two posts before this one and see if you can come up with a real response to them.
Samprimary, be silent. Much more so than Rakeesh and Orincoro, you've performed moral sins in this thread, starting from the very first post. Your rush to false judgment, your unthinking repetition of lies; even the shameful title of this thread -- morally you made yourself the internet equivalent of a lynch mob participant; while all the while being aware enough of what it was that you were doing because the very first comment of yours actually mocks this by saying "Whoa now, put the pitchforks down."
The "mysteriously invisible" injuries you talked about, turned out to be real after all, didn't they? While my "irrationality" keeps taking me to right conclusions. And yet you dare accuse *me* of erroneous claims to certainty? What about your erroneous certainty in the very first comment of this thread, have you acknowedged that?
Learn some humility and shut up about this case, or you'll be adding to your sins.
As for your last two posts, I've already answered it, so let me repost your question, and my answer here:
quote:
quote: Do either of these create a situation wherein when they shoot and kill me, they are guaranteed not to be at fault as long as they have injuries when they get around to showing up at the doctor?
No event in the real universe is "guaranteed" 100%, nor can be assigned a 0% probability either. But at some point people of reasonable minds realize what is a reasonable and credible scenario and what is an unreasonable and non-credible one. That's why the courts use the phrase "beyond all reasonable doubt".
You are effectively demanding Zimmerman to be 'guaranteed' "not at fault" for him to be declared innocent, and indeed you're demanding for each piece of evidence to *individually* guarantee him innocent, instead of noting the cumulative effect of several different pieces of evidence.
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Dude, the bragging about your predictions was ridiculous because that means precisely nothing about your predictive skill unless we have some idea how many predictions you got *wrong*.
And anyway, even without that those examples are far from compelling. In a murder case, you predicted the husband did it-very often a good bet. You predicted Greece's bankruptcy, which is fine, except for Greece having been infamous for poor economics long before the crash anyway-so not a really difficult get either.
But even if it was, still not worth much alone. The fanfic example, though, that was laughable. Anyway, hey, it'd be cool if you'd stop insisting people have made up their minds Martin is innocent, as you continuously and falsely claim. Or if you will, quote someone directly.
But you can't. We all know what *that* is.
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quote:Dude, the bragging about your predictions was ridiculous because that means precisely nothing about your predictive skill unless we have some idea how many predictions you got *wrong*.
Thankfully I didn't have to reach beyond this thread to find some implicit wrong predictions *you* all made, back when you were all making fun of the supposedly "invisible" injuries.
quote:The fanfic example, though, that was laughable
That's just because fanfic is low-status. It's respectable to show interest (and make predictions) in murder cases, or about how economies go, because murder-cases and economies are high-status -- it's less respectable to show interest in sport championships and TV shows, because they're just entertainment (lesser status) -- and it's even lower status to show interest in *fringe* entertainment associated with teens, like fanfics/fanvids/comics, etc.
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Dude, if you read the Hatrack thread on that story, you'd see why that dismissal doesn't really apply to me.
So your response to 'how many wrong predictions have you made?' is 'you guys were wrong about stuff too'? Well, I can't say that sort of response is a surprise.
So far of the predictions you showcased to highlight your predictive skill, *only* the fanfic example carried much weight-the others weren't hard gets at all, from your description. So...ummm, well done, I guess?
Yeah, Zimmerman did in fact have some injuries. Some people were wrong about that, myself included, and said so. Unsurprising you'd gloss over that, though.
Just to get another example of how you dodge a direct question, what if anything do you have to say in response to: the injuries could've been caused by a wide range of violence, witness accounts have changed, there have been some claims of witness coaching, and why ought we think of Martin as a drug dealing thug based on his history but not consider Zimmerman a wife beating arrest-resister? Oh, and why DID Zimmerman turn his back on Martin anyway?
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quote:So your response to 'how many wrong predictions have you made?'
I didn't recognize it for a question. I thought it was just a remark that you can't be sure that I've not made a hundred other predictions that I got wrong and am hiding away.
To respond to your question: Right now I don't remember making a high-certainty prediction (one I e.g. assign > 90%) and being proven wrong. But then again I don't often make such predictions.
quote:Oh, and why DID Zimmerman turn his back on Martin anyway?
I can imagine several reasons: Perhaps he dismissed Martin as a potential threat (which would itself be an insult). Perhaps he considered him a threat, but was momentarily careless about how to deal with such threat. Perhaps Zimmerman actually lied about this bit.
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So Zimmerman deemed Martin sufficiently threatening and suspicious to call the police, follow him, and exit his car...but in just a brief nonphysical encounter determined he *wasn't* a threat...and then Martin just snapped?
Huh. It's strange. It's *almost* like when there's an event that doesn't support your conclusion, there are a lot of maybes and can't be sures and such, but they don't seem to make much of an impact on your (self) vaunted predictions. When something *does* happen to lend weight, though, it gets nearly tabulated and held forward as an example.
That's...huh. There's a word for that kind of thinking, isn't there?
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It wouldn't be surprising: Some people consider turning your back on them to be an insult. Especially if Zimmerman sneered at him or looked him with contempt or anything like that, it wouldn't be surprising at all.
But just tell me which alternative scenario do you consider more likely than all three possibilities I suggested (dismissing Martin as threat, misjudging how to deal with his threat, Zimmerman lying about turning his back).
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It wouldn't be surprising: Some people consider turning your back on them to be an insult. Especially if Zimmerman sneered at him or looked him with contempt or anything like that, it wouldn't be surprising at all.
I only agree with you because we're talking about black people. As a white man, of course, I have control over myself, and I can countenance the deep insult of having a stranger sneer at me and turn his back without attempting to murder him in the street. But black people... I think you're on to something there.
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quote:And I'll just quote your post, here, Samprimary just in case you ever claim you aren't selectively choosing what bits to quote and which not. Ofcourse you would choose the silliest bit and then claim it's a fair representation of the whole.
At least you seem to be catching on to the fact that it's ridiculously silly. That's a start.
quote:And yet you dare accuse *me* of erroneous claims to certainty? What about your erroneous certainty in the very first comment of this thread, have you acknowedged that?
Learn some humility and shut up about this case, or you'll be adding to your sins.
Yes. I accuse you of erroneous claims to certainty, because you have made them. It's why I ask you to go back to the prior posts and come up with real answers to them, and it's also why I suspect you don't bother to do it and continue to try to harp on the OP as though it is perfectly analogous.
quote:You are effectively demanding Zimmerman to be 'guaranteed' "not at fault" for him to be declared innocent, and indeed you're demanding for each piece of evidence to *individually* guarantee him innocent, instead of noting the cumulative effect of several different pieces of evidence.
No, I have not even remotely done this, and you would be unable to quote me doing this, either. You have just crafted a conflated argument of my own in your head and are sticking to it when defending yourself from the ridiculous claim you made earlier about the certain proof of Zimmerman's innocence.
I'm actually sort of noticing a pattern! Whenever you're called on this, you have repeatedly made sure to try to distract the issue to talking about others. It's VERY telling. Please continue!
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And just so that it doesn't get to go away, I just want to keep it fresh in everyone's mind exactly what kind of plainly, obviously erroneous thinking we're talking about here:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:If before the shooting, only Zimmerman suffered injuries, then we already know who was the assailant, and who wans't
*sigh*
no. no you do not. this is getting stupid. I'm sorry, but this has gotten incredibly, incredibly stupid.
I assure you, I have been directly and criminally assailed by individuals who have ended up with 100% of the injuries, merely through me reactively defending myself. I'm amazed to hear that, according to aris kataris Legal Logic™, said individuals then could have shot me dead, and the presence of said injuries on them and not me (prior to the gunshot wound in the chest, of course) will have conclusively proven that the act could not possibly have been anything other than self-defense on their part.
Jesus
H
Christ.
please back up and severely reanalyze your position. It is so invalid it is boggling me.
"If before the shooting, only Zimmerman suffered injuries, then we already know who was the assailant, and who wans't (sp)"
You actually said this. You really, really said this. And you (so far) resist admitting that it is painfully false logic on its face.
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quote:"If before the shooting, only Zimmerman suffered injuries, then we already know who was the assailant, and who wasn't"
You actually said this. You really, really said this.
Yes, I actually said this, I really really said this. More even, I really really *really* said it. It may have even been "really" four or five times even, but it was most definitely "really" three times at least.
How many reallys do you need to add to signal something to be ludicrous, without actually having to *argue* that it was ludicrous?
You're not arguing, you've been playing a status game.
Sidenote: Amusingly enough the supposed (and quite false) lack of injuries on *Zimmerman* was quite sufficient for Samprimary to judge Zimmerman as not having been assaulted, back in the first comment of this thread.
The *actual* lack of (non-gun) injuries on Martin is somehow not sufficient to judge *Martin* as not having been assaulted.
posted
Martin's having been assaulted to the point of noteworthy bruising isn't necessary to incriminate Zimmerman. While you go on at length about his injuries, though, isn't it at least strange that from this 'savage' beating he gave him, Martin's hands showed almost no damage at all so far as we know so far?
Anyway. As to which is more likely: I think it is likeliest that Zimmerman, having noted, followed in his car and then on foot the suspicious character Martin, approached him and began to demand he account for himself, with a shove or two or a good turn around by Martin's arm for emphasis. Martin retaliates, and being stronger and better at physical violence than Zimmerman, quickly begins to win, and in Zimmerman's panic and wounded pride is shot for his trouble.
This accounts for Zimmerman's past behavior of general suspicion, nigh-vigilantism, and overreaction. It is also consistent with his choice to exit the car and confront Martin, who was it's true 'no angel' but for whom there is also nothing so far to suggest he would simply begin to start whaling on a total stranger who asked some rude questions. Should more about Martin's history come forward, my thoughts will change.
As for witnesses, they seem to be almost uniformly unreliable to me-some accounts have changed, some accounts may reportedly have been coached, and even in a reasonably intelligent observant human, memory in quick emergencies can be suspect. IS suspect. This also accounts for the peculiar claim by Zimmerman that he turned his back on Martin-because he wouldn't have.
I don't know where you get your notions of adolescent masculinity, but while turning one's back on someone can often be an insult, by far the most common reaction is to mouth off, not simply charge the guy and start whaling on him.
This would also account for the (as far as we know) very minor injuries on Martin's hands: the violence wasn't as extreme and brutal as Zimmerman suggests, because he overreacted, which also fits quite well with his known history re: neighborhood watch-filled with overreactions (again, the 911 calls, and exiting the car at all).
From what we know of both of them, it just seems much more likely to me for those and other reasons that Zimmerman, overzealous in his self-appointed duty, started a confrontation that he then made (probably mildly) physical, such as a shove or a yank, and then when Martin reacts to this with violence, Zimmerman continued his pattern of overreaction and shot him. The reactions I described here are consistent with Zimmerman, but for Martin to have suddenly and without physical provocation bullrushed and tried to beat the crap out of someone who had only spoken to him? That requires new things thus far unhinted at in his history.
As for the witnesses, you can believe it or not as you like, but I tend to wariness of human senses and memory for things like this. That's not to say I mistrust by default, but then when changed stories and reports of coaching are heard too? Then I am highly skeptical-it needs much more than its own weight to hold weight.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:YOU don't get to decide if my fears are real or not. If I am licensed, and own a gun, I have every right to carry it. And the fact that I am carrying it does not mean I waive all my other rights.
It's not about rights, it's about obligations and responsibilities. If you choose to carry a gun, you have an obligation to minimize the danger it poses to other people. If you carry a gun, you have a greater obligation to avoid creating situations where that gun is likely to be used.
Second degree murder is defined as " a non-premeditated killing, resulting from an assault in which death of the victim was a distinct possibility." An assault is defined as a threat of violence. If you threaten someone when you are carrying a gun, the chance that the threat will result in a death are vastly increased. When you threaten someone while you are carrying a gun, the chances that another person will suffer serious consequence are much greater so it's only fair that the consequences for you should also be much greater.
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I have for a question for any one who thinks that Zimmerman is definitely not guilty of any wrong doing.
If you saw a young man wandering around at night in the rain and you thought he was on drugs and planning to commit a crime, under what circumstances would you choose to get out of your car and follow him on foot? What would you expect to be the likely outcome of following someone you thought was involved in criminal activity of some sort? As several people have pointed out, it's not uncommon for young men to react violently to provocation. How would you expect a suspicious young man to react to being followed? If you confronted him, what do you think the chances are that he would fight back?
Zimmer patrolled the neighborhood looking for anything suspicious. He reported minor things to the police. He carried a concealed hand gun. What do you think the chances are that he was oblivious to the potential dangers of following a young "thug"?
What are the odds that a guy like that would underestimate the probability that his actions would lead to a fight?
What are the odds that someone like Zimmerman would have gotten out of his car to follow Martin if he been unarmed?
[ May 28, 2012, 07:03 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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quote:How many reallys do you need to add to signal something to be ludicrous, without actually having to *argue* that it was ludicrous?
How many times do we have to argue (fairly completely, I might add) that it's ludicrous, before you exceed your capacity to pretend that no such argument was ever presented?
quote:You're not arguing, you've been playing a status game.
... said the guy who tried to talk up how he guessed a few things correctly here and there to demonstrate how correct he is obviously assured to be here. Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:said the guy who tried to talk up how he guessed a few things correctly here and there to demonstrate how correct he is obviously assured to be here
Yes. Says that guy.
If in our world status was earned by making right predictions and lost by making wrong predictions, the world would be a far better place.
So, that's the sort of status game I would support, in which you lose status when you're proven wrong in your predictions, and gain status when you're proven right.
Not happening in our universe, of course.
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you guys should have recognized that Aris wasn't really worth engaging back when the issue was over statistical certainty measurements he didn't want to include in his irrationally certain conclusion that martin HAD to be at fault.
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quote:As to which is more likely: I think it is likeliest that Zimmerman, having noted, followed in his car and then on foot the suspicious character Martin, approached him and began to demand he account for himself, with a shove or two or a good turn around by Martin's arm for emphasis. Martin retaliates, and being stronger and better at physical violence than Zimmerman, quickly begins to win, and in Zimmerman's panic and wounded pride is shot for his trouble.
And though Zimmerman is the one panicking and losing, it's Martin who's shouting for help?
I'm sorry, but I could almost imagine the scenario you depict, if it was not for the detail that Martin who's "quickly beginning to win" and retaliating against being shoved, is also supposed to be shouting for help.
With that last detail added I can't visualize this at all.
quote:As several people have pointed out, it's not uncommon for young men to react violently to provocation.
I'm the person here who agrees with that and believes that it would therefore not be surprising for Martin to have reacted violently to provocation.
Orincoro above instead seemed to argue that it was racist of me to claim that Martin may have reacted violently to being offended, and Rakeesh argues that mouthing off would be much more likely that a violent reaction (and I agree with him that it is more likely, but we don't hear of the cases where people just mouth off at each other).
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Ahh, yes, the shouting for help. Well, you arrived at the conclusion that it must have been Zimmerman shouting based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the methods used to determine that in the first place, pivoting initially between it being bad reporting or bad science, and have now landed safely in the 'they're quacks' nest. You'll dispute almost all of that, of course, but anyone who is interested may go back a half dozen pages or so and see your initial reaction: this is junk because the math is bad, and you stuck to that even after if was explained to you that, no, the math wasn't bad. You're more credible than experts (well, no, they're not experts, they're quacks, right, I forgot) and people here on Hatrack actually trained in the kind of math you renounced.
The other thing necessary for you to believe it must have been Zimmerman's voice is...ear witness testimony. Some of which has changed, some of which reportedly may have been coached, but hey. You're totally arriving at your conclusion based on objective analysis, and in no way because you made up your mind quite awhile ago what 'must' be true, and now of course all of the evidence that comes out supports this. Don't even admit the possibility of bias on your part, because after all, your analytical ability is to be trusted. You predicted Greece's bankruptcy, plot points in a story, and the correct suspect in another murder investigation. Iron-clad reliability there!
Just for fun, too: you agree with me that we don't hear of the cases where people just mouth off to each other-you agree it's more likely that's what Martin did, rather than abruptly going berserk on a total stranger. But...you just can't seem to take the next step. We don't hear about cases where they just shout at each other, because this time Martin went berserk, and one of the reasons we know that is because turning one's back is a provocation...
Yeah, no misfiring there.
Oh, and before I forget: there is another very simple explanation as to why Martin may have been the one screaming for help: because he saw Zimmerman had a gun and was trying to get it! But you skip over that other option, for no other reason than because it doesn't make sense for Martin to have screamed in a fight he was winning. It's a completely plausible, totally sensible possible explanation that just...I'm not sure, really. Never even gets into your vetting process.
Because, really, for all your talk of probabilities, you've made up your mind. It wasn't Martin screaming because Martin was winning the fight. We *know* that, and this leads to only one possible conclusion, because we know Martin was at fault...apparently.
I've said it before, and others have as well: there's something very wrong with this country if when a kid armed only with skittles and tea is shot to death by a self-appointed armed neighborhood watchman, there are a lot of us who say to ourselves, "Well maybe he had it coming," or a kinder, gentler, more civilized, "Maybe he provoked the shooting somehow." I'm not talking about 'Let's wait until all the facts are in before we decide what to do with the shooter', I'm talking about the idea that kids packing skittles and tea are so dangerous that we need to make sure we've got the right to be ready with lethal force against them.
And for all of you responsible gun owners out there-and I really do think there are quite a big lot of them-I just wish y'all would tell the NRA about your views on things like background checks, waiting periods, restrictions on kinds of guns owned, so on and so forth. Because they sure as hell ain't listening to us.
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posted
So you've again returned to insulting me, instead of actually discussing evidence and scenarios. Insult, insult, and some more insults.
Well fine. Soon enough I'm guessing it'll proven even in the minds of idiots that the voice was Zimmerman's -- and I know this for the same reason I had known Zimmerman was injured on the back and the front of the head, while all you oh-so-very-reasonable-people were all making fun of the supposedly "invisible injuries"; and are still unapologetic about how without real cause you slandered both the man and the police department that supposedly lied about said injuries.
And then, after even idiots will have to admit that the voice is Zimmerman's, in the best case scenario you'll perhaps again say that new evidence has convinced you otherwise, while you'll be making fun of the idea that if you had evaluated all evidence properly in the first place you would have been convinced long before.
The bottomline, is that I'll have reached a true conclusion, and you'll again insult me for reaching it before you.
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posted
Yeah, certainly I wasn't discussing any real scenarios and evidence. Nope. You haven't again seized on the option of talking about someone else rather than what they've said.
The funny thing is, my personal belief that Zimmerman is probably at fault has little to do with whether or not he was injured-he could have received injuries either having started or responses to a fight, after all. No, instead it's based mostly on his history, and Martin's reason for being there, with an admittedly stiff dose of wariness for a rampant 911 caller who patrols his neighborhood on his own and wears a gun to go grocery shopping.
Your responses on the issue of what kind of violence was necessary to injure Zimmerman in that way, how Martin's hands came to be so undamaged, and why Zimmerman turned his back on Martin have been either consistently evasive, or nonexistent, or simply unsatisfying in terms of reason. Quite a long time ago in this discussion, yeah, I didn't add in scorn for your reasoning process, because I didn't think it would be so profoundly biased and lazy. But time has shown different.
The funny thing about this is, for me, I can easily imagine several scenarios where Martin really MAY have been at fault-and not just in academic hypotheticals, but real possibilities. My stake isn't in lynching Zimmerman, but rather highlighting how dangerous and stupid some of our gun laws and thinking about guns can be. I deplore Zimmerman's behavior-his abuse of 911, his method of patrolling, his going about armed-but none of this means, to me, that he's guilty.
But we're talking about *likelihoods* here which is a different discussion, and it's not surprising that the examples you gave of your predictive ability were 2/3s very easy gets: the process by which you predict things is, if this thread is an example, quite bad. So you don't predict, say, the fate of blind Chinese activists or the outcome of closely contested elections or the specific stocks, but rather much broader things.
And then when you predict those easier things, why, that leads to an unwarranted trust in your own process. Challenges to it must be stupid, because your process is so reliable.
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quote:YOU don't get to decide if my fears are real or not. If I am licensed, and own a gun, I have every right to carry it. And the fact that I am carrying it does not mean I waive all my other rights.
It's not about rights, it's about obligations and responsibilities. If you choose to carry a gun, you have an obligation to minimize the danger it poses to other people. If you carry a gun, you have a greater obligation to avoid creating situations where that gun is likely to be used.
Second degree murder is defined as " a non-premeditated killing, resulting from an assault in which death of the victim was a distinct possibility." An assault is defined as a threat of violence. If you threaten someone when you are carrying a gun, the chance that the threat will result in a death are vastly increased. When you threaten someone while you are carrying a gun, the chances that another person will suffer serious consequence are much greater so it's only fair that the consequences for you should also be much greater.
Depends on what you are threatening them with, doesn't it? And we have no proof that Zimmerman did anything other than follow someone he thought looked suspicious while he called the police about it, up to that point.
If, after that, he was physically assaulted, he has every right to use any amount of force necessary to stop that assault, up to and including deadly force.
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Aris...I agree wiht SOME of what you said, and I've been taking a lot of crap here for defending the possibility that Zimmerman is innocent, or at least won't be convicted....
...and even I think that 80% of your arguments are poorly reasoned, and that you are not presenting them well.
And even if you are telling the truth about the other case, I'd hardly say that that supports poor logic simply because once and a while you might be right. Because you are right on those occasions DESPITE yourself and your reasoning, not because of them.
You have some decent points, but they get lost in all your blustering. People are mainly taking issue with your boasting that you will be right, even if your logic is wrong, so that they should just take you at your word.
I am looking forward to hearing what the other evidence is, and the picture it paints. It will be far more interesting than that horrible Casey Anthony case was for sure.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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The decent points don't get lost in the blustering so much as they get lost in intractably wrong and useless analyses, such as the one above about zimmerman's injuries proving trayvon's guilt as an assailant; nor do they surpass painfully obvious selective "methodologies."
At this point though I want to make sure that Aris doesn't poison my position with his repeated failure to even comprehend it — that there was enough of a murky situation in this case that the police department's behavior was deeply and profoundly disturbing.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:People are mainly taking issue with your boasting that you will be right, even if your logic is wrong, so that they should just take you at your word.
My logic is right, even if beyond your puny Earth logic. :-)
Thankfully, I don't claim that I'm a good presenter of cases. I don't claim a high occurrence of managing to *convince* people of anything. Only a high occurrence of being right.
Rakeesh wants me every single time to dig through the mountain of his insults in order to find and answer his arguments, while ignoring his name-calling and insults and insinuations -- same way that Samprimary wants us all to dig through the mountain of his initial post in which he portrays Zimmerman as a rabid killer purposefully stalking and murdering black kids, in order to just find his supposed position that it was a "murky situation".
No, his position wasn't that it was a murky situation. His position was that there was no injuries on Zimmerman, and that Zimmerman was a rabid killer of black kids.
Read Samprimary's initial posts. And read his pointing-and-laughing at me in other posts of this thread. And read how I've been called obtuse and dishonest from the very first page of this thread. And how even simple clear-cut questions to Rakeesh haven't gotten a response since the very first page (back when I asked him whether his position would change if it turned out that Martin *was* bashing Zimmerman's head on the ground), while he keeps pestering me with a dozen different questions coached inside his insults and ridicule until I respond to them, at which point I must answer another dozen.
And though I've probably personally answered just him two dozen questions about my position in this thread, he keeps saying that I don't respond or evade his questions. Instead of just being *tired* of constantly needing to ignore more and more of his insults and answering more of more of his questions, which answers he then proceeds to misrepresent anyway.
At this point, I don't see why I should bother convincing Rakeesh or Samprimary of anything? I'm just making my position clear, so that you know I was unambiguously right when the unambiguous truth unambiguously comes out anyway.
At which point you will all probably still argue that I was just lucky or whatever. Same as I must have been lucky in believing that Zimmerman did have injuries on the front and the back of his head. Whatever.
Posts: 676 | Registered: Feb 2003
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That's fine. Having read your posts, I doubt you have a chance of being completely right, nor do I see any proof that you have a high rate of being right.
Should be an interesting trial.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Having read your posts, I doubt you have a chance of being completely right
For the purpose of summarization these are the two claims I assign high-level certainty in: - Zimmerman didn't initiate the violence. - Zimmerman was the one shouting out for help.
I do *not* put such certainty in things like "Zimmerman not lying about anything relevant to the case." or "Zimmerman not provoking Martin with words/insults."
Posts: 676 | Registered: Feb 2003
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One thing it mentions is that when we talk about witnesses changing their testimony, in one case it's something like going from ("heard no struggle, just a cry for help and a shot and went from "Selma, is it a black guy who got shot?" and "There's a black guy standing over him" on the 911 call") to (making press conferences with Team Crump and going on TV repeatedly insisting they both saw everything from the moment of the shot, it was the boy crying out for help and this wasn't self defense.)
So, tell me, does anyone here genuinely think I must believe both testimonies as *equally* likely to be true? If you had to bet your lives (or someone else's life) on which testimony to believe sincere, which would you *honestly* pick?
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quote:At which point you will all probably still argue that I was just lucky or whatever.
Zimmerman could be totally exonerated and there's absolutely no way it's going to be for the reasons you have stated detailing your position of certainty as to why this case is already concluded in zimmerman's favor. Which is what is being argued, not that you are just 'lucky' if you turn out to be 'right.' Sucks, but .. there you go?
quote:same way that Samprimary wants us all to dig through the mountain of his initial post in which he portrays Zimmerman as a rabid killer purposefully stalking and murdering black kids, in order to just find his supposed position that it was a "murky situation".
I do indeed desire for people to comprehend my posts correctly, yes. Otherwise they might start portraying my position with the kind of entrenchment and inflexibly erroneous certainty that you do, and that's bad.
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quote:"Zimmerman could be totally exonerated and there's absolutely no way it's going to be for the reasons you have stated detailing your position of certainty as to why this case is already concluded in zimmerman's favor."
My prediction wasn't about what reasons they would exonerate him for. I'm using logical evidence, prosecution and defense are limited to legal evidence.
I can e.g. allow myself to update on such minor pieces of evidence as whether Treyvon Martin called himself "NO_LIMIT_N*GGA" in twitter, and my personal intuition on whether such a nickname increases the probability of a confrontational attitude towards white people, and therefore increases the probability he initiated violence.
Both prosecution and defense will have to steer a thousand miles away from such -- the prosecution because it doesn't favour their side, the defense because bringing issues of race into this doesn't favour their side.
Posts: 676 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Depends on what you are threatening them with, doesn't it?
Not entirely. Certainly if you used the weapon to threaten the victim they would have greater justification for responding with deadly force. But using a weapon is not the only way to threaten to kill or seriously injure a person and what the victim knows isn't the only thing that matters. If you know you have a weapon, you know that making a threat creates the distinct possibility that you will use the weapon. That obligates you to avoid making threats that could reasonably lead to a situation where you would use the gun.
And that isn't something I just made up. It's something I've been told repeatedly by self defense experts including gun lovers and martial arts instructors. The more capable you are of defending yourself with deadly force, the more you are obliged to avoid situations where self defense might be needed.
quote:And we have no proof that Zimmerman did anything other than follow someone he thought looked suspicious while he called the police about it, up to that point.
Clearly we disagree about how threatening it is to be followed by a stranger on a dark rainy night. I am quite certain that an awful lot of reasonable people would apprehend being followed by a stranger at night as a serious threat of violence. It's something people are routinely taught to look for as a sign of imminent danger. I'm quite confident that Zimmerman knew that following someone he suspected to be a criminal was likely to lead to a violent confrontation.
We obviously don't know if Martin apprehended it as such or not. We won't ever know whether Martin hit Zimmerman because he though he was in danger or not. We never will know that because Martin is dead. What I do know is that a reasonable person in Martin's position could easily have believed they were in danger and needed to defend themselves. That doesn't mean Zimmerman would have no right to defend himself. It means he loses the presumption of innocense. Zimmerman was not just "standing his ground" so he has to prove that he exhausted all other options before choosing to shoot Martin.
I'm not saying that following Martin certainly was enough to justify anything Martin might have done, I'm saying it was enough to shift the burden of proof to Zimmerman. Because Zimmerman was following Martin, Zimmerman needs to prove that he tried all other means to end the fight by escaping or pleading for help. He needs to prove that he was in immediate danger of being killed and could not wait a few more seconds for the the police to arrive.
A lot of people act like requiring a killer to prove it was self defense is some sort of liberal agenda to deprive people of the right to self defense. Nothing could be further than the truth. For centuries, every person claiming that they were not guilty on the ground of self defense has been required to prove the claim in court. "Stand your ground laws" that shift that burden of proof to the state and allow a known killer to avoid even being tried are a very recent radical change in a legal tradition that is centuries old. In my opinion, its a horrid change that devalues human life and endangers civil society.
[ May 29, 2012, 12:27 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Both prosecution and defense will have to steer a thousand miles away from such -- the prosecution because it doesn't favour their side, the defense because bringing issues of race into this doesn't favour their side.
You really have no idea what kind of evidence the prosecution has on its side. The prosecution has not released all their evidence publicly. They legal can not do that. The evidence available to you and me is the evidence that has been released by Zimmerman's lawyers. There is a serious selection bias in that process. We have have only the evidence that Zimmerman's lawyers thought it would benefit their client to release. There is no way the defense would release information that hurt Zimmerman's case. In the US, that would be legal malpractice. The lawyers involved could be disbarred, fined and even sued.
If you think you any knowledge about the strength of the prosecutions case, you don't understand the US legal system at all. We won't see the strongest data against Zimmerman until it comes to trial --- that is why it is some critically important that it does go to trial.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Depends on what you are threatening them with, doesn't it?
Not entirely. Certainly if you used the weapon to threaten the victim they would have greater justification for responding with deadly force. But using a weapon is not the only way to threaten to kill or seriously injure a person and what the victim knows isn't the only thing that matters. If you know you have a weapon, you know that making a threat creates the distinct possibility that you will use the weapon. That obligates you to avoid making threats that could reasonably lead to a situation where you would use the gun.
And that isn't something I just made up. It's something I've been told repeatedly by self defense experts including gun lovers and martial arts instructors. The more capable you are of defending yourself with deadly force, the more you are obliged to avoid situations where self defense might be needed.
quote:And we have no proof that Zimmerman did anything other than follow someone he thought looked suspicious while he called the police about it, up to that point.
Clearly we disagree about how threatening it is to be followed by a stranger on a dark rainy night. I am quite certain that an awful lot of reasonable people would apprehend being followed by a stranger at night as a serious threat of violence. It's something people are routinely taught to look for as a sign of imminent danger. I'm quite confident that Zimmerman knew that following someone he suspected to be a criminal was likely to lead to a violent confrontation.
We obviously don't know if Martin apprehended it as such or not. We won't ever know whether Martin hit Zimmerman because he though he was in danger or not. We never will know that because Martin is dead. What I do know is that a reasonable person in Martin's position could easily have believed they were in danger and needed to defend themselves. That doesn't mean Zimmerman would have no right to defend himself. It means he loses the presumption of innocense. Zimmerman was not just "standing his ground" so he has to prove that he exhausted all other options before choosing to shoot Martin.
I'm not saying that following Martin certainly was enough to justify anything Martin might have done, I'm saying it was enough to shift the burden of proof to Zimmerman. Because Zimmerman was following Martin, Zimmerman needs to prove that he tried all other means to end the fight by escaping or pleading for help. He needs to prove that he was in immediate danger of being killed and could not wait a few more seconds for the the police to arrive.
A lot of people act like requiring a killer to prove it was self defense is some sort of liberal agenda to deprive people of the right to self defense. Nothing could be further than the truth. For centuries, every person claiming that they were not guilty on the ground of self defense has been required to prove the claim in court. "Stand your ground laws" that shift that burden of proof to the state and allow a known killer to avoid even being tried are a very recent radical change in a legal tradition that is centuries old. In my opinion, its a horrid change that devalues human life and endangers civil society.
Awesome post. Any time you carry a weapon, you DO have more responsibility. Any situation you find yourself in should be attempted to be resolved without anyone even knowing you have a firearm.
We don't know when Martin became aware that Zimmerman was carrying a firearm. He may have never known. I don't believe Martin would have rushed Zimmerman had he known Zimmerman was carrying a gun.
We don't know if Martin saw that Zimmerman had a gun or if he tried to wrestle it out of Zimmerman's control. Martin may have seen it and, fearing for his life, tried to get it away from Zimmerman. Zimmerman may have also seen this as a threat to himself, so he discharged the weapon.
There are simply too many variables to determine what exactly happened. Zimmerman now has the burden of proving his case since Martin is not around to tell his side of the story.
Zimmerman may be convicted and actually be completely innocent. Martin may have been an innocent kid that was shot. We will probably never know the whole story.
I think any time there is a shooting by someone who claims "self defense," there should be an investigation performed by a third party that is completely uninvolved in the case to determine that it was justified. The police may be the first responders, but it just makes more sense to me to have an independant entity do an investigation as well.
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Are the police not independent? I mean, they are looking for the truth, right? Not any particular agenda?
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: I can e.g. allow myself to update on such minor pieces of evidence as whether Treyvon Martin called himself "NO_LIMIT_N*GGA" in twitter, and my personal intuition on whether such a nickname increases the probability of a confrontational attitude towards white people, and therefore increases the probability he initiated violence.
Does this selfsame "personal intuition" which has allowed you to intuit that Trayvon's twitter name is evidence to be submitted that Trayvon was confrontational towards whites (HINT: if the defense doesn't use this ~personal probability intuition~, it's not going to be for the reasons you think) have anything to do with the whole part where you are "using logical evidence" and conclude based on the distribution of (non-gunshot) injury between Trayvon and Zimmerman that Trayvon HAD to be assaulter liable for his own death?
Because that's the crux of what's at issue here: your "logical evidence" is anything but; it's direly illogical, and you have entrenched yourself in so deeply involving it that you refuse to budge even when it can be plainly shown on its face. To wit, it is fairly easy to apply a scenario fitting known data in which Zimmerman commits prosecutable manslaughter or murder 2 yet possesses 100% of the (non-gunshot-to-chest) injuries, but you won't back down from your ludicrous assertion that the distribution of injuries conclusively proves Zimmerman's innocence.
You are not being logical or fairminded in this case, and your position is direly tainted by your own evident bias. Part of the process of doing this while not being AWARE of it is to, I suppose, pathologically distract to talking about the bias you see in others when you have it pointed out in yourself. Apropos of which, it's probably about time for you to mention yet again how much you dislike the bias of what you perceive my position to be.
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Are the police not independent? I mean, they are looking for the truth, right? Not any particular agenda?
In this case, certainly not. Their treatment of the case results in a scenario in which they become one of the parties under investigation. They and their handling of this situation really the central issue here — alongside the SYG laws, upon which Zimmerman becomes a sideshow.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Are the police not independent? I mean, they are looking for the truth, right? Not any particular agenda?
One would hope so but sadly the police in the country are all to often not unbiased and independent.
I don't think the major problem lies with having the police do the investigation, I think the problem lies with allowing the police and prosecutors to decide guilt.
Even when you start without any bias at all, investigating something will usually generate a kind of bias. During the course of an investigation, you will start to put together a theory about what happened. And once you've come up with a theory, there is a very strong natural tendency to defend that theory. In science, this is a very well known phenomena. That's why we have to do double blind studies with proper controls and then have our methods and conclusions reviewed by an independent expert.
That's why decisions about guilt or innocence shouldn't be left to the police. If it is likely that you commited a crime, then your guilt or innocence should be decided in courts where the accused has a chance to dispute the theory put together by the investigators and present their own side of the story.
In first degree murder cases, we don't even let the investigators decide whether or not to bring charges -- it has to go before a grand jury. I think that any case where a person was killed by the voluntary acts of another is serious enough that the final decision should be made in court and not be an investigative team.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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Wah, people are mean, wah, except those two positions of yours *must rely* on witness testimony which has changed and for which there are reports of coaching, and basically Zimmerman's word and a supposedly higher likelihood that Martin would just snap and start a fight versus Zimmerman overzealously starting a fight.
These aren't just things I've said, either. Nearly half a dozen people have brought up those points, with rejections mainly centered on reliance on changeable witness reports, disbelief of expert reports, and an insistence that it's likelier that Martin went berserk in response to verbal offenses than it is Zimmerman started by getting a bit too physical and confrontational.
Your best piece, Zimmerman's wounds, do lend weight to your side of things, but not nearly as much as you suggest when you consider Martin's hands had almost no injury, Zimmerman's injuries could have been caused by many degrees of violence, and most of all: they do nothing to tell us who started things.
Frankly I'd still love to hear anyone tell me why it should be considered unlikely to an extent that Zimmerman, with his history, would have been too verbally aggressive and even thrown in a yank on the arm if Martin didn't give him the respect he felt due.
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quote:Because that's the crux of what's at issue here: your "logical evidence" is anything but; it's direly illogical
In the end the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If my reasoning consistently leads me to the right conclusions, it is proper reasoning. If it leads me to wrong conclusions, it is flawed.
If I'm wrong (more often than the percentage of uncertainty I allow in my predictions allows), I'll have to revise not just my position but adjust the reasoning that led me to said wrong certainty.
But what part of your reasoning process have you revised when you found out *you* were wrong about Zimmerman's injuries. What was the flawed logic you had succumbed to, which you afterwards determined you should not succumb to again?
Posts: 676 | Registered: Feb 2003
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I'd love to hear why people think it is so dramatically more likely that Martin went berserk with rage for no legitimate reason than that Martin was terrified of a stranger who seemed to be stalking him.
Clearly both are possible given the established facts.
Being followed by a stranger is the sort of thing that's likely to trigger any person's primal fight or flight response. A threat of violence triggers a general release of the sympathetic nervous system that causes a physiological response that is a powerful mix of fear and rage and energy. Being followed by a stranger at night is the kind of thing that is likely to trigger this physiological response in mammals.
Without knowing any more about Martin than that he was in fact a mammal, we can say that it is likely that Zimmerman's actions (getting out of the car and following him on foot) triggered this response. In humans, the fight or flight response tends to lead to aggression in males and flight in females. With out knowing anything more about this situation than the barest facts twe can say its likely that Martin would have experienced the release of chemicals known as the "fight or flight response" and this would very likely be manifested by aggression.
The other option, that Martin attacked Zimmerman because he went berserk for reason at all or because Zimmerman dissed him, requires that we presume a lot of things about Martin and the fight that are not in evidence. Why are people speculating that Martin was an angry, violent, short tempered kid with a bad attitude about adults and authority and race when his behavior is easily explained by the known facts? Why are people speculating that Zimmerman might have insulted Martin and pissed him off, when the things we know he did could very easily have triggered the fight or flight response in Martin?
[ May 29, 2012, 03:36 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Because that's the crux of what's at issue here: your "logical evidence" is anything but; it's direly illogical
In the end the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If my reasoning consistently leads me to the right conclusions, it is proper reasoning. If it leads me to wrong conclusions, it is flawed.
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