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Edited on Thu Jul-23-09 03:23 PM by rudy23
Twice this week in my office, an incident with a conservative clearly illustrated something I'd been noticing and trying to articulate for years.
What I've noticed is that conservative-minded people will often confuse a debate between quantitative and qualitative data with the debate over thinking vs. feeling.
In one situation, my boss said since he was a "data minded" person, he couldn't take action against a slothful coworker unless there were some numbers showing her to be ineffective (even though anyone with two eyes can see her slacking off, being rude, blaming others, etc.)
I asked him, "What color is my shirt? (brown) Is that a fact or a feeling? (fact) Well, there were no numbers involved. How could that be a fact by your definition?"
I've noticed that Repukes love to write off qualitative data as "feeling" or "opinion" anytime it benefits them to take those abstractions like "human empathy" off the table. If they can reduce everything to cold numbers, they take the sin out of selfishness.
I think most do this unknowingly (or instinctively they just know they're framing things in a way that helps them), but I think some have mastered the art of this, and are using it to game the political debate. They do it to move the debate away from human empathy, or anything observed with the intuitive part of the brain. They can mock, and emasculate anyone who brings anything besides numbers into the debate, if it benefits them.
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