andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-17 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Aaron Swartz writes the following, as a lead-in to an argument in favor of vegetarianism: Imagine you were an early settler of what is now the United States. It seems likely you would have killed native Americans. After all, your parents killed them, your siblings killed them, your friends killed them, the leaders of the community killed them, the President killed them. Chances are, you would have killed them too . . . Or if you see nothing wrong with killing native Americans, take the example of slavery. Again, everyone had slaves and probably didn’t think too much about the morality of it. . . . Are these statements true, though? It’s hard for me to believe that most early settlers (from the context, it looks like Swartz is discussing the 1500s-1700s here) killed native Americans. That is, if N is the number of early settlers, and Y is the number of these settlers who killed at least one Indian, I suspect Y/N is much closer to 0 than to 1. Similarly, it’s not even cl
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 Aaron Swartz writes the following, as a lead-in to an argument in favor of vegetarianism: Imagine you were an early settler of what is now the United States. [sent-1, score-0.174]
2 It seems likely you would have killed native Americans. [sent-2, score-0.754]
3 After all, your parents killed them, your siblings killed them, your friends killed them, the leaders of the community killed them, the President killed them. [sent-3, score-2.944]
4 Or if you see nothing wrong with killing native Americans, take the example of slavery. [sent-7, score-0.21]
5 Again, everyone had slaves and probably didn’t think too much about the morality of it. [sent-8, score-0.256]
6 It’s hard for me to believe that most early settlers (from the context, it looks like Swartz is discussing the 1500s-1700s here) killed native Americans. [sent-13, score-1.381]
7 That is, if N is the number of early settlers, and Y is the number of these settlers who killed at least one Indian, I suspect Y/N is much closer to 0 than to 1. [sent-14, score-1.349]
8 Similarly, it’s not even close to the truth that “everyone had slaves” among whites in the pre-1860 South. [sent-15, score-0.046]
9 Sure, Mark Twain’s dad owned a slave, but the Clemenses were a pretty prosperous family. [sent-16, score-0.18]
10 As with my argument with Gary Becker’s “suicide” quote, you could say I’m missing the point . [sent-17, score-0.133]
11 Swartz’s reasoning doesn’t rely on a majority of white settlers being killers; all that it requires is that you imagine yourself to be one of those settlers who happened to be a killer. [sent-18, score-1.353]
12 Similarly, he doesn’t really ask that you picture yourself as a random prewar southern white; implicitly he’s restricting his claim to people like Mark Twain’s father. [sent-19, score-0.151]
13 Really I’m just spoiling the joke by taking it too literally. [sent-20, score-0.115]
14 What’s the point of using this sort of analogy if you don’t get it right? [sent-22, score-0.052]
15 I think that little would be lost in Swartz’s argument if he were to be more precise (for example, “many settlers killed Indians”). [sent-23, score-1.331]
16 The telling would be less dramatic, but maybe that’s good. [sent-24, score-0.04]
17 For one thing, it would put some focus on the choice of whose shoes to place oneself in. [sent-25, score-0.216]
18 If you start by considering people who lived in 1700 in what is currently the U. [sent-26, score-0.049]
19 My point is that getting the details right can sharpen the analysis. [sent-31, score-0.052]
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