I probably shouldn’t be engaging, but… Did you read my reply to your post? There was data and hard statistics there that disagreed with your interpretation of your other hard statistics, and confirmed my not-data driven initial assumption (which was lucky, since it was an assumption, like I conceded as I was making it, and could have been wrong). Or that at least showed the issue is far more complex that you were making it.
I agree that I sometimes assume personal anecdote to be extrapolable between Spain and Greece, but that’s something I do in earnestness. While data and statistics are important, statistics can also be not the end to all knowledge, specially if you only take part of the numbers (point in case is bringing up self-employment numbers without looking at how that self-employment is structured and what it really means on the ground). Let’s say that when looking at people and behaviours a purely numerical analysis might fall sort of properly explaining certain dynamics. I first came to realize this when I first moved to the USA. Even though I had read lots of data and being exposed (and avidly consumed) their media, once I got there I realized I had absolutely no idea what the experience of an American really was. After living there for 6 years I now think I had a better (albeit still wholly incomplete) idea, and can therefore understand much better where many people in this forum are coming from. Experience is an important part of human thought, and I can’t dismiss it so thoroughly in favor of data when we are talking issues of psychology, motivation and expected behavior (when we are discussing climate change, for example, then data rules). Numbers sometimes don’t allow us to understand people.
Statistics and data are an useful tool, but saying things like that Greeks are voting just because they don’t want to pay more taxes instead of being a more complex interrelation of personal wants and ideology is simplistic (I linked Donald Tusk before, when he raises his concerns on the rising of ideology you deny that exists). Similarly, saying that a huge number of self-employed means a huge number of struggling businesses is denying the Greek reality (looking at the data I brought up that confirms my initial intuition). Both of those assumption make an incorrect use of statistics and data, either refusing to look further in once they make your point (self-employment structure) or just using non-applicable data (saying that polls on ideological engagement I the UK in the 70s and 00s applies to the Greek situation).
Of course, intuition and/or observation has the pretty big drawback that you can get something wrong. And I do get many things wrong and im happy to be proven so. But our main points of contention (the rising ideological drive of voting in the EU and Greece and the work ethic of Greek people) are not something that can be resolved through mere hard statistical analysis. You need to decide what you feel is happening, because there’s just not good enough and not contradictory data out there. You are frustrated I’m not convinced, but to get me to your side you would need to prove it with either really good and recent data or with a more holistic argument. I’m not saying it can’t happen, just that it didn’t yet.
One thing I do ask, though. Read my posts before attacking me. You keep saying I don’t address Greece’s structural and industrial issues, or that things like tax evasion are not a huge problem, while I keep addressing them in many posts (we might disagree in what a small amount of those issues are, but not that they are there and are important). Similarly, don’t read in my posts more than what I actually really say. Like most people (all people) I hold somewhat complex and sometimes contradicting beliefs. Some of the stuff you imply I say I’m not saying at all. In a way, it seems you have formed in your head an image of what I think or I represent for you, and you are engaging that image instead of my posts.
What really baffles me is that your reply came from a reply I was doing to a post by Realmk, yet you focused on my posting style. That bothers me, the guy succeeded in his intention, it seems.
