Bible Thumpers Fight For Right To Discriminate

[Anonymous]

I didn't mean to insult anybody with my prior statement, silky and smx surmized it perfectly.

Didn't you mean "summarised"?  ^_^

Freud also happens to be the most debunked scientist in history so....

I really don't know where you got that from. Psychology is a difficult field, but most -- if not all -- of his theories are still valid. Got any examples of old Sigmund being wrong? 

 

[Anonymous]

Freud also happens to be the most debunked scientist in history so....

I usually prefer Jung too

Onhell, I really liked your reasoning in that post about normality. Keep it up.

 

[LooseCannon]

To hell with Freud.  Go read Kinsey, that's where I got my stats, SMX.  And when I sit here and think about it, about 1 in 10 or 1 in 9 of the people I know identify as gay or bisexual.  It certainly varies from place to place, depending on social pressures and the willingness of people to reveal their sexualities.  Even so, 5% is a minority, but not an abnormality.  Like I said, it's the same as blond hair.  Or red hair.  Blue and green eyes.  We consider these things normal even though they occur in much less concentrations than brown hair and brown eyes.

 

[Onhell]

LC, I hate to break it to you man, but Kinsey greatly exagerated his reports. It is very difficult to know who is homosexual, as many people lie, others live in heterosexual marriages and others plain don't want to tell people. I have the articles to back it up if you want them (mav, I got the ones for freud as well).

 

[Anonymous]

To hell with Freud.

Fair enough.

What I meant was that there may be other criteria for normality besides statistics. But maybe it just has to do with the fact that I hate being a number. :-[

 

[Anonymous]

Hmmm... will I be flamed for saying: Kinsley states the facts, Freud states the truth?

 

[Anonymous]

Interesting, the difference between the truth and the facts... Is something normal just because it's done by the majority?

 

[Raven]

Interesting, the difference between the truth and the facts... Is something normal just because it's done by the majority?

Not wanting to sound cliched, but 'History is written by the victors'.  Minorities are discriminated against because they are easy targets, not being able to speak up for themselves in force.  Look at the amount of oppression done by (say) the Catholic Church through the years against various minorites, cults and 'heretics'.

Facts can't lie, but they can be misinterpereted, and manipulated to give false impressions (or they can just be made up... ).  An historian can never have too many sources, and often the 'truth' is different, depending on who you ask....

 

[Anonymous]

What I wanted to say is, facts and numbers are worthless by themselves. They only say something when they are interpreted; and almost any fact and any number can be interpreted in more than one way. They only say what is and not why it is so or what it means. And that's where the manipulation can be and is done. People love to carry statistics and averages anywhere they want to to make a point. For example, a statistic says that anywhere between 35 and 50% of the internet users are female. That would have to mean that roughly half of the members at Maidenfans.com are female. However, the number of ladies I know who post here reguarly can be counted by the fingers of one hand, and I suppose that the total of registered female members is at maximum 200, of over a thousand. If we compared that to other statistics, we could come to the wackiest conclusions without having to care about any sort of background. And that's what most people who work with stats and facts do.

 

[Anonymous]

I'm too tired to reply properly, so just have a praise for now, Perun.

 

[Albie]

People love to carry statistics and averages anywhere they want to to make a point. For example, a statistic says that anywhere between 35 and 50% of the internet users are female. That would have to mean that roughly half of the members at Maidenfans.com are female. However, the number of ladies I know who post here reguarly can be counted by the fingers of one hand, and I suppose that the total of registered female members is at maximum 200, of over a thousand. If we compared that to other statistics, we could come to the wackiest conclusions without having to care about any sort of background. And that's what most people who work with stats and facts do.

Well, not really because even if the stats are correct that 35%-50% of all internet users are female, does not transpire that upto 50% of maidenefans.com are female. At the end of the day, most people that listen to Maiden are male. Seeing them live and the audience they attract is testament to that.

I guess if you were to look at the male-female ratio on a HIM/MCR forum we may find a stat that may prove the theory...maybe.

However, we do get bogged down in stats...even though I love 'em.

 

[Anonymous]

You're right, Albie. But the stats don't know that this board is about Maiden, and they don't know the majority of Maiden fans is male. The stats only know that roughly half of the internet users are female. The problem is, most people who work with stats don't know or don't care that the stats don't know that.

 

[Albie]

You're right, Albie. But the stats don't know that this board is about Maiden, and they don't know the majority of Maiden fans is male.

I guess that is what I was saying.

As an example; I may sometimes go to a party thrown by a friend of my wife's. She is a, to want of a better word, a "lovie" in terms of who she invites and we mainly rub shoulders with theatre folk. It does not take a genius to work out that more often than not a male theatre actor may sometimes be gay. Subsequently, I would be in the midst of a higher ratio of gay to straight people as I would in other situations.

This would possibly lead us to surmise that stats can be sometimes, dare I say it, cherry picked to suit - perhaps.

EDIT: After re-reading the above, I'm hoping that an intake of a fair consumption of vino has not masked what I have tried to say.

 

[SinisterMinisterX]

For example, a statistic says that anywhere between 35 and 50% of the internet users are female. That would have to mean that roughly half of the members at Maidenfans.com are female. However, the number of ladies I know who post here reguarly can be counted by the fingers of one hand, and I suppose that the total of registered female members is at maximum 200, of over a thousand.

Perun, I just kicked you for this idiocy.

First of all, unless you have an actual accurate number for the percentage of Maidenfans members who are female, don't even try to use it as a statistic. "I suppose" doesn't mean jack.

Second, you tried to compare two different things against the same standard. Maidenfans is not the whole internet. You cannot compare any single site against the whole internet, as every site attracts its own specific viewers.

Your attempt at comparison was akin to the following:

About half the human race is female. However, when at my first college, I lived for a while on a dormitory floor with 100% male residents. If I tried to compare the residents of that floor against the whole of humanity, and expect them to show the same demographics, I'd obviously be wallowing in ignorance.

Yes, statistics can be manipulated and misinterpreted. While complaining about that very fact, you engaged in a horrible, ugly, dumb as hell demonstration of that very phenomenon. If you're going to use statistics to prove a point, please try to make sense next time.

 

[Anonymous]

While I understand that SMX has been touched in his sensitive spot, that being maths, and while I have respect for maths because most things in this universe can be expressed mathematically (was it Pythagoras who said that?), I still think that Perun was right, philosofically. And I'm glad that SMX was ready to admit that.

 

[Anonymous]

SMX, I'm sorry that my mushy example offended you. However, you did not get what I was trying to say. I said myself that statistics for the whole internet can not be carried to other websites. And I'm not saying that this is what is being done. I only used a random example to illustrate what I was trying to say: That statistics are often bent or twisted to fit. In fact, I wanted to extend my image to give some concrete examples, but I was too tired to do that at that time.
However, I admit that my example was poorly chosen and poorly executed. Since I currently don't have time or motivation to research a better one, I'll withdraw.

 

[LooseCannon]

What we seem to be discussing here is truthiness.

There's a difference between the truth and truthiness.  The Truth is something that is irrevokably correct.  For instance: The sun is 93 million kilometers away.  Something that is Truthy is a statement, statistic, or item who's truth is questionable, but the manner of statement of the fact makes it seem like the truth.  For instance, "There are WMDs in Iraq."

 

[Onhell]

There's a difference between a population and a sample which is what SMX was hinting at. If you are going to have stats for the entire internet (millions if not billions of people). Your sample has to be large enough to represent the population. If you are going to poll what president will win next election, asking four people is not going to give you a very accurate reading....

 

[Anonymous]

The sun is 93 million kilometers away.

Sorry, mate, but this is wrong. The Sun is 93 million miles away from the Earth, and that's about 150 million kilometres.  :mellow:  </smart-arse mode>

 

[Anonymous]

SMX, I'm sorry that my mushy example offended you. However, you did not get what I was trying to say. I said myself that statistics for the whole internet can not be carried to other websites. And I'm not saying that this is what is being done. I only used a random example to illustrate what I was trying to say: That statistics are often bent or twisted to fit. In fact, I wanted to extend my image to give some concrete examples, but I was too tired to do that at that time.
However, I admit that my example was poorly chosen and poorly executed. Since I currently don't have time or motivation to research a better one, I'll withdraw.

Just a little something I was reading on another forum that has something to do with this:

THE WORLD IN PERSPECTIVE:

If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:

There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western Hemisphere, north and south, 8 Africans. 52 would be female, 48 would be male. 70 would be non-white, 30 would be white. 70 would be non-Christian, 30 would be Christian. 6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States. 80 would live in substandard housing, 70 would be unable to read. 50 would suffer from malnutrition. 1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth, 1(yes, only 1) would have a college education, 1 would own a computer.

When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.

The following is also something to ponder...
1. If you woke up this morning with more health than illness...you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.

2. If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation...you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.

3. If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death...you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.

4. If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep... you are richer than 75% of this world!

5. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish somewhere .. you are among the top 8% of the worlds wealthy.