One sec I am still confused by dates, are you sure you and him are referencing the same thing? Heck, he may well not even have been quoting from a primary source, but from some other news source that referenced the 1.6 he rounded from and the report. I am super glad you put rounded up on your list since you hypocritically did the exact same thing.

Keep in mind the key issue here: he is not doing science here. He is making a rhetorical point and makes this quick scientific argument as an exemplar of that larger rhetorical point. So the standard of accuracy should be incrediably low and, especially since it doesn't change his argument one iota, whether he says 1.6 or nearly 2 or puts the full range or anything else is just silly nitpicking. Ya I deduct marks if my students do that, but I don't give a crap here.

I'm fairly confident that the paper I linked is the source of his claim, given the structure of the sentence quoted from the paper, and Harris' phrasing in his article.

The paper cited refers to a 2002 WHO report, and Harris reported this as a 2000 WHO report, which is an error on his part.

The 2002 WHO report does not count up lost lives by rather DALYs.

WHO report:
http://www.who.int/entity/whr/2002/en/whr02_ch4.pdf

Definition of DALY: http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global...trics_daly/en/

I presume (without doing any further research) that the linked article (not the original report) has some means of calculating the number of deaths, which is why the error on the estimate of lives is so large.

Context is key. He's fine with rounding up if they had only given him the 1.6 million figure. But they gave him a range. If we assume that the range given is a +-2-sigma range with a normal distribution, that would mean he's saying that the actual value is nearly the 84th percentile*. That's a bad use of statistics.

*68% of the data falls within 1 sigma of the mean.

I stated earlier that I believe Harris is prone to overstating positions. I think this provides a clear example.

Right. He's making a rhetorical point. As you note, there's no value in him exaggerating. So why would he round up 1.6 million to 2 million and emphasize it with "nearly"? Is he being charged by the character by his web-host? I claim it's because he's overstating his position. I think he's so accustomed to doing that sort of thing that he doesn't even try to be careful.

I don't care if you give a crap or not. You didn't have to respond. And I've already stated that I'm aware that this has no bearing on the point he's making.

My point with this is that I believe this exaggeration fits a pattern of Harris' rhetorical style. This is also a contributing factor as to why I don't think he's much of a thinker. If he's really all for evidence and careful thinking and all that stuff, then why isn't it reflected in his rhetoric? Again, I think he's more of a hack.

There was a sneering tone to Harris' article, an implied put down of religious people and an implication that he and his BRIGHTS should be above all that. I was simply pointing out that religious people think they are just as biased.

You said this:

That goes beyond a bare assertion of bias. Why "of all people"? Like he's the scum of the earth or something. Which doesn't seem to leave much room for honest discussion. But if you want to make Hume's case, go ahead.

This is what I think really gets me feeling like he's a hack. Who takes 1.6 and calls it "nearly 2"? There are ten 2-sig-fig numbers that round to 2. Who takes the second from the bottom and says it's "nearly" the rounded figure?

We'll recontextualize as a poker statement.

My EV is 1.6 +- 0.8 BB/100. That's nearly 2 BB/100!

I'm pretty sure anyone making that claim would be told that he's being extremely optimistic given the data, even if that person is not even trying to be scientific.

I think that if you don't think that this counts as an exaggeration of the information, you're smoking wood fumes and feces.

That's a pretty bizarre reading of that, IMO. And even if it were correct, still a pretty bizarre reaction It's almost like you took that personally for him

Aaron: on my iPad which is sufficiently obnoxious at multiquoting that i will more less not push back on your post. Let me just say you are being incrediably nitty on something that is of absolutely zero relevance...we don't even know if Harris ever even read the primary source that gave the range or some secondary source that just quoted the 1.6 number which you seem to have no problem with running up to two. Surely we must have something more interesting than this to tangle on.

To the first paragraph, it is a bit silly to suggest Harris is being elitist when he overtly goes out of his way to say that people in his movement are guilty of the exact same thing and is making the point of illustrating exactly such a case.

To the second paragraph, the "scum of the earth" stuff is all on you. I do think WLC is very biased and can elaborate on why if you like, and am just amused you bring this up right after this discussion of Harriss being biased.

Sorry... we already agreed with the actual point of the article. And we almost certainly both disagree with OP's characterization:

So... we're in a happy place now.

Lol yes that truly is a horrific cliffs

On a totally separate issue, am I correct to say that you, like me, are also doing a math phd? If so I would love to chat in PMs or some more relevant thread sometime in the future... I may be way off here but I thought I recalled something of this nature.

You're 5 years too late. I earned my PhD in math in 2007. I am working as an assistant professor of math at a teaching focused public 4-year right now. PMs are fine with me, but there are a number of science PhDs floating around SMP that might have something to contribute if it's not too math-centric (Jason1990 is a statistician -- though he hasn't posted in a while -- Max and Masque in Physics, RLK has in chem, and I feel like I'm missing a Biology PhD as well).

I quite liked the article. Even if it turns out the actual grounds for his specific claim is dubious I still think it has some worth.

For what it's worth I took his claims at face value when I read it and discovered that I did resent being told that a log fire was in some way harmful. My first response was something along the lines of "sod him and his evidence, I likes my log fire."

I'm also pretty sure that my attachment to a log fire is pretty small compared to, say, a devout Muslim's attachment to Allah.