[Hitch]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I am still trying to figure out who said anything about Ferguson before you, that you think you caught them in a contradiction (going back to your first post on the matter).

Sorry--what makes you think that I thought that? I never said anyone said ANYTHING about "Ferguson," (which I'll use herein to describe all the protests, etc.), nor contradicted themselves about it. Where do you see that? If I implied it, I'll retract it, but I never thought anyone had said, or contradicted something they'd said, ABOUT Ferguson. It was, in fact, @Barcey who said:

It's interesting that you automatically assume that all employees are responsible for the actions of a few. If a convenience store is robbed in your neighborhood are all the residents at fault because they didn't report it. Is it ok for the store owner to setup a barricade and search everyone's car when they leave the neighborhood? I don't believe it's ok to inconvenience the masses.

To which I had, simply, replied that using that logic, the protestors were "wrong" because they were protesting about the entire SET of "all police officers" when the acts were committed by a few. That's all I said. That logically, if the subset of "some cops" can have an effect on the set of "all cops," that "some bad employees" can have an effect on the set of "all employees." It's LOGIC.

Regardless -- they have every right to protest, and do all that is in their (legal) power to pin the blame on all cops. Not because they have an intrinsic right to blame all for the actions of the few (which they actually aren't saying at all) but because as taustin said, they have a special constitutional override that allows peaceful protest regardless, so you cannot bring anything from there.

Why does everyone here think I said anything to the contrary, about "rights to protest?" Or, for that matter, about Ferguson, AT ALL, in that context? I realize that not everyone took L&L, but I thought I'd explained what I was doing, fairly clearly.

Whether they have a right to blame all cops under the idea of blaming all for the actions of the few, is an entirely separate issue and bringing in Ferguson adds no relevance whatsoever (because that isn't what Ferguson is about).

Again--you're misconstruing my entire POINT. I simply used the SETS of All Cops and All Amazon Employees as equivalents. I used the SUBSETS of "cops who did bad things" and "Amazon employees who did bad things" as equivalents. I used the protestors as a causative effect, upon the SET of "All Cops" and the bad acts of the thieves as the causative effect, upon the SET of "all Amazon Employees." I then said, if the protestors have an effect, that affects the set of ALL COPS, it will be no different, LOGICALLY, than the effect of "theft screening" on the set of ALL AMAZON EMPLOYEES.

And I had hoped--wrongly, it turns out--that they would realize that the sets/subsets comparison simply showed that the acts of SOME (some cops, some bad employees) affect the outcomes for MANY (possibly all cops, all Amazon warehouse employees). That's it. How ANYONE here got to, I was condemning the PROTESTORS, or anything like it, I'm damned if I know.

And again, they are actually saying that all cops are complicit in the matter, so it's a rather funny proof to bring. (Actually, maybe not. You could and did say the same thing about Amzon employees, right? )

It might be better if you brought a logical argument that was logical as opposed to covered in a haze of emotions...

Instead you lost yourself utterly in the aether.

Note: Your original post was far more confusing, and you seemed to assume everyone else would instantly know exactly what was going through your mind when you referenced a highly emotional issue in a logical argument without any explanation.

At what point, exactly, did I NOT explain that I was talking about SETS AND SUBSETS? What "haze of emotion," other than those who read it, and read it incorrectly? AT no time--never--did I say ANYTHING about the people who were protesting. I never said that they were right, wrong, that they had NO right to protest (how did any of you come up with THAT, other than filtered through an emotional haze?), or that rioting and protesting were the same/different. Honestly, I'm GOBSMACKED that any of you could even derive that.

I'll give up on this now, because it's obvious to me that some of the readers here aren't able to divorce their emotions about a topic to simply look at it as cause/effect or action/reaction, or as logical corollaries. I thought it was a fairly simple logical case, that would--simply because it IS so emotional--demonstrate sets/subsets actions/consequences. I didn't realize that the emotional impact of whether or not "all cops are BAD," (nor the irony that making THAT leap, from the acts of some, over the lifetime of the existence of the set of "all cops," simply PROVES my exemplar corollary.) would make it impossible for some of the readers of the forum to follow it. I am, apparently, the only one who sees this: it's "Okay" to blame ALL COPS, for the actions of a subset of theirs, but it's NOT OK to blame "all Amazon warehouse employees," for a subset of theirs, all determined by how someone FEELS about cops or Amazon--as ironic.

Done now. Since the blindly emotional reaction to both Ferguson AND Amazon have completely wrecked the discussion, I see no purpose in continuing it.

Hitch