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The reason for this cognitive disconnect is that we have evolved brains that pay attention to anecdotes because false positives (believing there is a connection between A and B when there is not) are usually harmless, whereas false negatives (believing there is no connection between A and B when there is) may take you out of the gene pool. Our brains are belief engines that employ association learning to seek and find patterns. Superstition and belief in magic are millions of years old, whereas science, with its methods of controlling for intervening variables to circumvent false positives, is only a few hundred years old. So it is that any medical huckster promising that A will cure B has only to advertise a handful of successful anecdotes in the form of testimonials.

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For example, here, recent reports about a woman arrested in Dubai for alledgedly assaulting a police officer when he alledgedly caught her having sex on a public beach, were parlayed world over, and particularly in the west and used as an example of the excessively repressive sexual morals of societies with a Muslim majority population. No real comparative study was done of how these kind of incidents might be handled in the rest of the world, either by the press that released these reports or by their consumers, or by the people who republished the reports, and it was just accepted on faith that there was something peculiar and exceptional about the arrest that was then associated with Islam, and Islamic states, religious prudery, etc.

Collection of further information from a variety of sources assembled from the world over, from a variety of states, organized along varying lines, with varying cultural tradision, showed that there was nothing out of the norm about the arrest or the prohibition of public sex acts, and that many societies, even ones supposedly organized along secular lines actually met out stiffer penalties than were be considered by the state of Dubai in this case of assault against a police officer.

Anecdotes can be seriously misleading and their presentation as "examples" supporting an arguement, are often a matter of reinforcing predisposed biases, rather than an examples of serious inquiry. This problem effects sociology and anthropology as much as any other discipline, particularly among lay people where they often assert, quite unwittingly, the norms of their own society as the standard by which they judge things they do not understand, happening far away, among cultures and people they have not studied with any great interest, and so are quite gullible when recieving the anecdotal information, and accept it at face value, when it conforms to the generally understood common-knowledge prejudices that form the underlying ideology of the dominant culture of the society they inhabit.

The anecdote remains, as one among many "press reports", that appear suddenly and then disappear, that aid in creating a general negative stereotypes by constant repetion of negative stories that are presented as exceptional and strange. The general impression now embedded in the discourse, will be referred to variously and contribute to the general pool of anecedotes and "impressions", used by the "hucksters" who will summon these "succesful anecdotes" in order to reinforce the prejudices of the dominant culture to forward the agenda of the "hucksters".

[ 24 July 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

You just can't admit that you bought into a sensationalized by-line "sun" newspaper "sex-pot" piece, and thought you were engaging in some kind intelligent debate about sexism, sexual prudery and religion. What a farce.

Not to mention it was a great OP, which direcly described some of the real political conudrums that exist in UAE. But no, lets talk about repressive Muslim morals and how some rich British woman night on the town was ruined by the intervention of the police, as if that is the real story, not the actual power politics of war, oil and power and its relationship to the real life world of men and women living in Dubai, and have no hope of being deported to a relatively nice place like England.

What was more astonishing was that you never even thought of protesting the fact that Palmer was summarily fired by her British Employer, when she had not even been officially charged, because you were so busy flaunting your liberal superiority complex over the unwashed.

Not even a peep out of you on that. So much for defending the rights of women, you'd rather slam Muslims.

[ 24 July 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

[ 24 July 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

[ 24 July 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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We know that the media are controlled by rich White adult males.

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As supported by anecdotal evidence....

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[ 24 July 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

How does a society learn things ?

Some ways:

It looks to leaders to frame problems, explain them, and lead them to solutions.

It informs itself in some way, often through narrative, and forms an opinion.

People talk and debate amongst themselves...

And.... we're all susceptible to bias, flaws in logic, subjectivity, simple mistakes and so forth.

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Narrative has a place, but it's overused today by political leaders.

I look to the 20th century as a time when society seemed to make some real social progress.

Some of the things that helped us learn:

Leaders that espoused dialogue and discussion.

Discussion of ideas, not personalities.

A desire in regular people to talk about difficult issues.

An arts community that confronted social issues in a way that called on people to come together to solve them.

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Originally posted by martin dufresne:
Cueball, repression of women IS a huge problem in the United Arab Emirates. That is the last point I made, and I am sure you don't "Well, no" that one.

[ 24 July 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

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This may be the case, but this case does not exemplify that. It does not show that Dubai is exceptional in comparison to Canada, or to almost any other country in the world.

However this story was framed in a manner that was both sexist, and racist. First of all, most of the attention of the press was focussed on the sexual antics of the acccussed, in the manner of a traditional "sex-pot" story, wherein the fact that Palmer was charged with "assault police" was burried in favour of stating that she was possibly facing six years in jail for having "sex on the beach." Additional to this, the fact that Palmer was summarily fired, before she had even been charged by her British employer was passed over without comment. This is the only punishment, she has thus far received. But for some reason this story was framed as being about repressive Muslims prudishly repressing public sex, and metting out overly harsh sentences for illicit sex.

Here, a number of persons, (in the first case) simply ignored the overt sexism of the British press and the behaviour of the Palmer's British employer that denounced her publically and then fired her, when she was technically not even charged with a crime. I highly doubt a male executive would have been fired summarily in this case, at least not until an infraction was proved -- but the "wicked woman" had to go.

Rather than these issues, commentary instead focussed on the proposed rigid and puritanical oddities of Muslim culture. This was absurd since you could easily end up being copped for sex on a public urban beach in almost any country in the world, and theoretically face very long jail terms for assaulting a cop. Regardless, the only portion of the story that seemed to be of interest was the Muslim spin on the story.

[ 24 July 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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This may be the case, but this case does not exemplify that. It does not show that Dubai is exceptional here in comparison to Canada, or to almost any other country in the world.

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So in fact the sexism, which you are asserting exists in the UAE (not evidenced by this case at all, except in how it was handled by the western press) may in fact exist in the way society is managed in the lower strata, but not in how relatively privileged expats are treated. So in fact, this story is probably far more about the expressed racism of power dynamics in the middle east than it is about latent or expressed sexism in Islamic culture.

This possible reading can easily be deduced by anyone who seriously engaged the OP story which outlined the “Cantonization” of the UAE very well. Why this reading of the Palmer story has not been examined in this context in favour of the anti-Muslim trope framed by the British press is beyond me.

ETA: And by the way, I didn't start bashing Remind, until she started trashing me, in her off topic rant about Olivia Chow, and various other things I have purportedly done to offend her.

[ 24 July 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by Cueball:
So much for defending the rights of women, you'd rather slam Muslims.

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And yes you did attack babblers all. Please do reread what you said, here ya go:

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We often see this kind of thinking on rabble, where "anecdotal" tales are used to reinforce culturally imbued biases, and used as examples to make it appear that those biases have a "rational" basis.

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All about Dubai

The Olivia Chow trilogy:
Vol. I
Vol. II
Vol. III

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Originally posted by remind:
You did appropriate Chow's voice, and I am still waiting for you to back up your claim that I was attacking Muslims.

And yes you did attack babblers all. Please do reread what you said, here ya go:

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"Often", is not all.I could be one poster who often posts, for example. Please go read a dictionary or something.

To be clear people asked me to back up my statement that the NDP is systemically racist, and includes people who say and do latently racist things. I made a critical analysis of racism in the NDP using a number of sources of material. These specifically related to things said about Chow by NDP staff to me, and by (purported) NDP'rs on this board. I provided various examples, some from my personal experiences, other verifiable by simple checking the record of this web site, and the records of other web sites I linked to.

I never suggested I was speaking for Chow, or in defence of her, I simply used her as an central example, given that many of the prejudiced things I hear from NDP'rs were said about her. For example commentary here saying that her "accent" made her unqualified for superior positions, were said about her, here on this web site.

Now do you have anything to say about what I said in this thread? Following me around displaying your "war wound" about the Chow threads is verging on stalking.

[ 25 July 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by Cueball:
"Often", is not all.I could be one poster who often posts, for example. Please go read a dictionary or something.

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To be clear people asked me to back up my statement that the NDP is systemically racist, and includes people who say and do latently racist things.

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I made a critical analysis of racism in the NDP using a number of sources of material.

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I never suggested I was speaking for Chow,

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Now do you have anything to say about what I said in this thread? Following me around displaying your "war wound" about the Chow threads is verging on stalking.

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1) The sexism of the British press
2) The sexism of Palmer's employers
3) The operative caste system in Dubai, of which Palmer is a beneificiary
4) The racism of the British press framing the Palmer case a "Muslim" issue.

Your only interest so far, has been slamming me with various personal attacks, and in the original thread finding ways to defend the framing of the issue as a Muslim issue as defined by the Tabloid press.

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No actually you expropriated her voice to use for yourself.

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I could say you were doing the same with Palmer. Whatever!

By the way there is plenty of room for you to contribute that thread further. This thread, after all, is supposed to be about the relationship of anecdotes to scientific inquirey.

[ 25 July 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by Cueball:
...If anything I would have put you in the gullible category, as your wholesale acceptance and reinforcement of the British Tabloid press framing of the Palmer incident indicates.

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I have provided several other possible framings of the incident, none of which seem relevant to you, either here, or in the previous thread.

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Your only interest so far, has been slamming me with various personal attacks,

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and in the original thread finding ways to defend the framing of the issue as a Muslim issue as defined by the Tabloid press.

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[ 25 July 2008: Message edited by: remind ]

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Nonsense, I made 2 whole posts in that thread, and in the very first post I stated I agreed with you. You really need to look before you accuse, eh?

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Really? You suggested that this would never have happened in Canada:

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Agree with you cueball, however here they most likely would not be charged with having sex on a beach, and definitely not charged with having sex outside of marriage.

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More or less: I agree with you other than the fact that it would not have happened here, and just look at the Muslim content.

B) Cueball didn't attack anyone in this thread in his opening post - he simply observed a pattern on babble when it comes to how certain types of news stories get discussed, and only responded in kind when he was attacked.