--- James Heartfield <Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Big generalisations involved here. You really think
> that African cities
> have as a big a prostitution market than say,
> Amsterdam or London? Or
> that people are more mobile in Africa than they are
> in Europe? These are
> just your fears projected as generalisations.
>
No they aren't. First place, I'm not talking about "cities"; the vector of infection was the truck drivers and the smaller roadside towns. Second, the prostitution market in Amsterdam and London is not that large by third world standards.
And you seem to have a few projected fears of your own, in your generalisation that African hospitals are terrible places whose statistics can't be relied upon.
Both you and Chris seem to be of the opinion that you can't diagnose AIDS without performing an HIV test.
> 'Relative absence of truck drivers and prostitutes
> in Europe' ! Surreal.
> Even the 'itinerant workers' part is doubtful.
> Europe has considerable
> migrant labour and itinerant labour.
Truck drivers and itinerant workers in Europe are qualitatively different from Africa. They travel much shorter distances and return to their homes far more frequently. They also, typically, have some idea of where they're going when they set off. And finally, European itinerant labour is underpinned by a social welfare system. To compare them to African farmers being drawn toward cities is, well, surreal.
>
> Daniel further goes on to say that my factual
> statement of the
> divergence of predicted rates of AIDS infection from
> the actual was more
> than 100 per cent
>
> >
> >is pretty weak.
>
> Quite what that means, I'm not sure. Does he mean
> that it is not true?
No, it means that this one factoid is a pretty shallow foundation upon which to build such a towering theory about the malign influence of gay activists on everything.
> >In the first place, has it not
> >struck you that forecasting is difficult?
>
> Yes, and the forecasters covered their backs by
> giving a remarkably wide
> spread - but still the actual figures fell way below
> the lower limit and
> even much more below the upper limit by a factor of
> about ten to one.
"A factor of about ten to one" in this case is
suggestive that in fact, the forecasters used the
standard statistical 95% confidence interval, and that
the fact that the outcome was outside this interval is
something you'd expect to see one time in twenty. If
the model was valid. Which it both wasn't and
couldn't be.
> >
> >Finally, you and Chris are affecting a wounded-fawn
> >surprise at why the reaction to your assertions is
> so
> >vehement. I can't believe that this confusion is
> >wholly genuine. People are pissed off because you
> are
> >asserting that gay men are dying of AIDS because of
> >their behaviour rather than because of a disease.
> >Which is very close to saying that it's their
> fault.
>
> That's just rubbish. You impute some anti-gay
> motivation to me without
> any justification whatsoever.
No I didn't. I just set out the facts (that you are asserting that gay men are dying because of their behaviour), and you took offence at this. I rather hoped you would, because it gave me an opportunity to demonstrate this effect in practice. If I hadn't wanted to offend you, I would have put a caveat of the form "While I am not accusing you of an anti-gay motivation, you need to be careful with your language because ....". Which is what I was advising you to do.
> This just says more about your own weird prejudices
> than it does about
> anything else. If you really think that the facts
> should be suppressed
> to achieve a preferred moral result then you've lost
> it as far as I'm
> concerned.
Oh, get off your high horse, won't you? There are about a million cases when the facts should be suppressed in order to achieve a moral result, from the fact that the central bank is considering a devaluation to the fact that your sister has a fat arse. If you're going to go around bellowing "facts" that you know to offend people without taking some steps to accomodate their feelings, a lot of people are going to think you're being boorish for the hell of it. And that's a fact.
dd
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