Simpler Question to Avoid PrayingMantis's Wrath

[PrayingMantis]

First, it might look strange to most of you, but I know very very little about the specifics of OJ trial, so this example doesn't mean much to me (if it matters to anybody), but of course I perfectly understand the context and therefore understand the structure of your question/argument here.

Anyway, here are a few specific thoughts with regard to this question/argument and the previous, "less simple", one (I'll show you in a minute that your new question is in fact more complex than the other one, and not more simple as you have titled it).

In your previous question you were asking a question that can be described as this:
If a person believes in A1, how good will he be as a P1?

For A1 you have used all kinds of religious traditions and "beliefs", and for P you have used a certain job.

Now you are asking:


If a person who is R, AND believes in A2, how good will he do as P2?

Now why the need to introduce that new variable R, which here is "white", into the question/argument? Couldn't you ask it without the R? Does it serve to confuse the readers, by giving them a piece of "irrlevant information", that is, an information that is not relevant to the core point you're trying to make here, or does it have anything to do with the question?

However, the more interesting thing in this structure is your assumption with regard to the nature of "belief", and the "exchangeability" of different variety of cases for A1 and A2, for which you assume your 2 questions are equivalent.

The problem with this, is in using the word "believe" (or more accurately, _thinking_ in terms of "belief") for cases where "belief" might mean very different things, and this without being aware, or not admitting those critical differences.

For instance, in (at least!) 2 cases out of the 10 possible cases you give in the first question, there's often no need in the assumption about "belief". These are (again, at least) "devout jew" and "buddhist". To be more specific (for the case of "devout Jew"): the question of belief is mostly _irrelevant_ for the practice of "being a devout Jew". This is a deep issue which I won't get into here, but the role of "belief" in one's religious life is in many senses an "invention" of Christianity. It is absurd to take this model and to impose it on other religions and practices, without considering the possibility that it might not "work" at all.

Another aspect (which is completely different) of this is in thinking about those structures as if "I think that X is true with very high probability, (OR: "I assign 'high probability' to X") is equivalent to "I believe in X", while in fact this is far from being necessarily true.