On Thu, Apr 15, 2021, at 02:26, Salz, Rich wrote:
> So, as there is no consensus even in US
It is erroneous to make a consensus call based on who comments on a newspaper's website.
Obviously that's not enough to make a "pro" case for consensus, but I am interested in your reasoning for not treating the 800+ comments which seem fairly spread between pro and con for this work as a "there's not consensus".
Particularly comments like these two which both have about the same number of recommends (just over 100 for each at the point that I cherry-picked them, which places them together in the "Reader Picks"):
They seem to cover the two main views:
a) "I'm a black engineer and I think this is misguided and not relevant to my needs"
b) "Doing small things to accommodate the concerns of others is pretty basic in a civil society"
... it seems pretty clear to me that there's not consensus in the comments section of the New York Times. If there WAS consensus then I'd agree that extrapolating that to all of US society would be an error, but I don't see the opposite case - the fact that even among readers of a single newspaper there is clear disagreement would seem a pretty strong argument for there not being broad consensus.
Bron.
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Bron Gondwana, CEO, Fastmail Pty Ltd
