The Real Reason so many rich white men got out of service

by SixofNine 68 Replies latest jw friends

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  Yerusalyim

  BTT
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  shamus

  Yeru,

  Wanna rock?

  I don't have one dammed interesting thing to say at the best of times, nevermind right now... working all night, and watching the snow outside.

  Call me Braindead.
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  SixofNine

  God knows the folks at MIT are rank amatuers at numbers and statistics...they can't be trusted...right?

  Yes, in this case, their methodology was shown to be poppy-cock. Nice try though on their part, after all, they managed to "prove" that what everybody (including David Halberstam, James Webb, Donald Rumsfeld, William Broyles, Christopher Buckley, and some friends of mine who were there) could see with their own eyes was not what they were really seeing at all, and they managed to give fodder to people-like-you to revise reality to suit some odd fuck-em-all-let-god-sort-it-out agenda. In other words, they got alot of attention, and they've managed to bullshit/bad science their way into the course of history.

  It turns out that that the percapita death rate in these affluent communities was HIGHER than the country as a whole...how does Fallows account for that?

  He spoke about that in his article Yeru. In fact, he spoke about most of what you've gone on about. For instance:

  Let me make this specific: My home town, Redlands, California, had in those days a median income about 14 percent above the national average. The people I knew from Redlands who died in Vietnam included one Mexican-American who did not go to college, one white who went briefly to junior college, another who went into the army after high school, and a third who, anomalously for our town, went to an Eastern prep school and then to Harvard on an ROTC scholarship. Their stories illustrate both the chanciness of life -- the ROTC student was one of only twelve from Harvard College to die in Vietnam -- and certain larger sociological patterns. But for the purposes of the MIT study, these four people are all the same person, and each of them is 14 percent above the national average in income.
  
  The MIT scholars would wave away this argument as "anecdotal," the kiss-of-death term social scientists use to dismiss any evidence that can't be reduced to mathematical models. The question is, What violates reality more grossly: my memory of one high school in one small town, which other people can test against their own experience and information, or the MIT model, which purports to be scientifically accurate while systematically misclassifying people like the ones I knew?

  Frankly, I think he's being over modest in calling that anecdotal, but either way, his point is well made.
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  frenchbabyface

  
  Sixo : his point is well made.

  Yes I think too ... (you can't deny that)
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  Yerusalyim

  Sixo : his point is well made.

  Yes I think too ... (you can't deny that)

  You can deny it...and you can challenge for a scientific study to be presented. Like I stated before...Fallows had a vested interest in this for two reasons...it debunked his original article AND being a "rich white boy who dodged the draft" he wants to justify himself. The guy presents ZERO evidence other than anecdotal, and we know how reliable anecdotal evidence is.
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  frenchbabyface

  
  
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  funkyderek

  The guy presents ZERO evidence other than anecdotal, and we know how reliable anecdotal evidence is.

  I have to pull you up in this, Yeru. Fallows doesn't rely on anecdotal evidence, he uses an anecdote to show why the method used by MIT is flawed. If he is correct that they use the town average, then the people he mentions in his anecdote will have been misclassified. There is no reason to believe that this example is highly unusual. If Fallows' interpretation of the method MIT uses is correct, then his conclusions are inevitable, with or without the anecdote. And it seems that, flawed as the MIT study was, it still supported his claims that there was a significant class bias among those who died in Vietnam.

  Surely, though, that much is obvious. Those with fewer prospects are far more likely to join the army, especially at the "cannon fodder" level. Why would somebody who could go to Harvard go to Vietnam instead? When drafted, who is more likely to be on the front line, those with a college education or those without?
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  SixofNine

  What Funky said.

  AND being a "rich white boy who dodged the draft" he wants to justify himself.

  As he pointed out, yet I don't see how this "justifies" him, though it would give him a solid frame of reference from which to speak. If he could avoid the draft in such manner, it stands to reason that others with privilege could too.
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  Yerusalyim

  Six,

  If he "proves" everyone else was dodging the draft too, then he isn't a little cowardly worm. MIT used science...he uses anecdotal evidence....which should we trust...HMMMMM.