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The statement 'the Shariah says...' is thus automatically misleading, as there is almost always more than one answer to any legal question.
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Jonathan A.C. Brown
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There are many ways in which journalists can mislead a reader with science: they can cherry-pick the evidence, or massage the statistics; they can pit hysteria and emotion against cold, bland statements from authority figures.
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Ben Goldacre (Bad Science)
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forces. What utter treachery!” Hitler then makes misleading statements about how he and Mussolini had agreed to defend Sicily. The Fuehrer also offers a backhanded apology to the Japanese for allowing a large amount of the Italian Navy to fall into Allied hands. However, it is Hitler’s current plan for the defense of Italy that interests Washington. Oshima quotes him on this as saying: “[The Allies] have two courses: either they will go north in Italy or they will try to land in the Balkans. I am inclined to believe they will take the latter course. I
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Bruce Lee (Marching Orders: The Untold Story of How the American Breaking of the Japanese Secret Codes Led to the Defeat of Nazi Germany and Japan)
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The Old World science found in the Bible would not be considered “wrong” or “false” as much as it would just offer a perspective from a different vantage point. Even today we can consider it true that the sky is blue, that the sun sets and that the moon shines. But we know that these are scientifically misleading statements. Science, however, simply offers one way of viewing the world, and it does not have a corner on truth. The Old World science in the Bible offers the perspective of the earthbound observer.
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John H. Walton (The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate)
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THE ORGANIC FOODS MYTH
A few decades ago, a woman tried to sue a butter company that had printed the word 'LITE' on its product's packaging. She claimed to have gained so much weight from eating the butter, even though it was labeled as being 'LITE'. In court, the lawyer representing the butter company simply held up the container of butter and said to the judge, "My client did not lie. The container is indeed 'light in weight'. The woman lost the case.
In a marketing class in college, we were assigned this case study to show us that 'puffery' is legal. This means that you can deceptively use words with double meanings to sell a product, even though they could mislead customers into thinking your words mean something different. I am using this example to touch upon the myth of organic foods. If I was a lawyer representing a company that had labeled its oranges as being organic, and a man was suing my client because he found out that the oranges were being sprayed with toxins, my defense opening statement would be very simple: "If it's not plastic or metallic, it's organic."
Most products labeled as being organic are not really organic. This is the truth. You pay premium prices for products you think are grown without chemicals, but most products are. If an apple is labeled as being organic, it could mean two things. Either the apple tree itself is free from chemicals, or just the soil. One or the other, but rarely both. The truth is, the word 'organic' can mean many things, and taking a farmer to court would be difficult if you found out his fruits were indeed sprayed with pesticides. After all, all organisms on earth are scientifically labeled as being organic, unless they are made of plastic or metal. The word 'organic' comes from the word 'organism', meaning something that is, or once was, living and breathing air, water and sunlight.
So, the next time you stroll through your local supermarket and see brown pears that are labeled as being organic, know that they could have been third-rate fare sourced from the last day of a weekend market, and have been re-labeled to be sold to a gullible crowd for a premium price. I have a friend who thinks that organic foods have to look beat up and deformed because the use of chemicals is what makes them look perfect and flawless. This is not true. Chemical-free foods can look perfect if grown in your backyard. If you go to jungles or forests untouched by man, you will see fruit and vegetables that look like they sprouted from trees from Heaven. So be cautious the next time you buy anything labeled as 'organic'. Unless you personally know the farmer or the company selling the products, don't trust what you read. You, me, and everything on land and sea are organic.
Suzy Kassem,
Truth Is Crying
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Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
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A carefully crafted evasion pays homage to the duty of truth-telling in a way that an outright lie does not. Anyone who goes to the bother of concocting a misleading but technically true statement when a simple lie would do expresses, however obliquely, respect for the moral law.
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Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do)
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The nurse looked surprised. 'You're a bit high on the totem pole to be taking statements.' Carol debated momentarily how to describe her relationship with Tony. 'Colleague' was insufficient, 'landlord' somehow misleading and 'friend' both more and less than the truth. She shrugged. 'He feeds my cat.
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Val McDermid (Beneath the Bleeding (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan, #5))
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Kessler is a tireless and fair journalist who does not shy from calling out untruths uttered by either Democrats or Republicans. By mid-2019, Kessler’s team had documented more than ten thousand false or misleading statements by the president—an ignominious record unlikely to be matched by any other public figure.
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Jonathan Karl (Front Row at the Trump Show)
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At the time of the 1 996 terror bombing in Oklahoma City, I heard a radio commentator announce: "Lenin said that the purpose of terror is to terrorize." U.S. media commentators have repeatedly quoted Lenin in that misleading manner. In fact, his statement was disapproving of terrorism. He polemicized against isolated terrorist acts which do nothing but create terror among the populace, invite repression, and isolate the revolutionary movement from the masses. Far from being the totalitarian, tight-circled conspirator, Lenin urged the building of broad coalitions and mass organizations, encompassing people who were at different levels of political development. He advocated whatever diverse means were needed to advance the class struggle, including participation in parliamentary elections and existing trade unions. To be sure, the working class, like any mass group, needed organization and leadership to wage a successful revolutionary struggle, which was the role of a vanguard party, but that did not mean the proletarian revolution could be fought and won by putschists or terrorists.
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Michael Parenti (Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism)
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[T]he enigma of the continuum arises because language misleads us into applying to it a picture that doesn’t fit. Set theory preserves the inappropriate picture of something discontinuous, but makes statements about it that contradict the picture, under the impression that it is breaking with prejudices; whereas what should really have been done is to point out that the picture just doesn’t fit…
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Ludwig Wittgenstein
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there are no enlightened individuals, there is only enlightenment. Enlightenment wakes up. Not you or I. You and I are rendered insignificant and nonexistent. Enlightenment wakes up. That’s why it is said that everybody is inherently enlightened. But that statement is misleading because it implies that everybody is a separate, special, unique little somebody who is inherently enlightened, and that misses the point. An illusion can’t be enlightened. So it’s not really true that everybody is enlightened. It’s only true that enlightenment is enlightened.
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Adyashanti (Emptiness Dancing)
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It is an unfortunate fact that proofs can be very misleading. Proofs exist to establish once and for all, according to very high standards, that certain mathematical statements are irrefutable facts. What is unfortunate about this is that a proof, in spite of the fact that it is perfectly correct, does not in any way have to be enlightening. Thus, mathematicians, and mathematics students, are faced with two problems: the generation of proofs, and the generation of internal enlightenment. To understand a theorem requires enlightenment. If one has enlightenment, one knows in one's soul why a particular theorem must be true.
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Herbert S. Gaskill (Foundations of Analysis: The Theory of Limits)
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In a representative statement from 1963, he claimed, “Man does not know most of the rules on which he acts; and even what we call his intelligence is largely a system of rules which operate on him but which he does not know.”60 This deference to the precognitive or the pre-rational is what separated him from the rational choice and rational expectations models of Chicago School economists, who professed much more faith in the possibility of both formal mathematical modeling and forecasting. As he explained in his Nobel speech, Hayek saw such efforts as not only presumptuous but misleading. The best one could hope for was pattern prediction.
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Quinn Slobodian (Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism)
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It remains to mention some of the ways in which people have spoken misleadingly of logical form. One of the commonest of these is to talk of 'the logical form' of a statement; as if a statement could never have more than one kind of formal power; as if statements could, in respect of their formal powers, be grouped in mutually exclusive classes, like animals at a zoo in respect of their species. But to say that a statement is of some one logical form is simply to point to a certain general class of, e.g., valid inferences, in which the statement can play a certain role. It is not to exclude the possibility of there being other general classes of valid inferences in which the statement can play a certain role
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Peter Frederick Strawson (Introduction to Logical Theory (Routledge Revivals))
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On the American desert are horses which eat the locoweed and some are driven made by it; their vision is affected, they take enormous leaps to cross a tuft of grass or tumble blindly into rivers. The horses which have become thus addicted are shunned by the others and will never rejoin the herd. So it is with human beings: those who are conscious of another world, the world of the spirit, acquire an outlook which distorts the values of ordinary life; they are consumed by the weed of non-attachment. Curiosity is their one excess and therefore they are recognized not by what they do, but by what they refrain from doing, like those Araphants or disciples of Buddha who are pledged to the "Nine Incapabilities." Thus they do not take life, they do not compete, they do not boast, they do not join groups of more than six, they do not condemn others; they are "abandoners of revels, mute, contemplative" who are depressed by gossip, gaiety and equals, who wait to be telephoned to, who neither speak in public, nor keep up with their friends, nor take revenge upon their enemies. Self-knowledge has taught them to abandon hate and blame and envy in their lives, and they look sadder than they are. They seldom make positive assertions because they see, outlined against any statement, as a painter sees a complementary color, the image of its opposite. Most psychological questionnaires are designed to search out these moonlings and to secure their non-employment. They divine each other by a warm indifference for they know that they are not intended to forgather, but, like stumps of phosphorus in the world's wood, each to give forth his misleading radiance.
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Cyril Connelly
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By the end of the year 2000, Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza numbered 225,000. The best offer to the Palestinians—by Clinton, not Barak—had been to withdraw 20 percent of the settlers, leaving more than 180,000 in 209 settlements, covering about 10 percent of the occupied land, including land to be “leased” and portions of the Jordan River valley and East Jerusalem. The percentage figure is misleading, since it usually includes only the actual footprints of the settlements. There is a zone with a radius of about four hundred meters around each settlement within which Palestinians cannot enter. In addition, there are other large areas that would have been taken or earmarked to be used exclusively by Israel, roadways that connect the settlements to one another and to Jerusalem, and “life arteries” that provide the settlers with water, sewage, electricity, and communications. These range in width from five hundred to four thousand meters, and Palestinians cannot use or cross many of these connecting links. This honeycomb of settlements and their interconnecting conduits effectively divide the West Bank into at least two noncontiguous areas and multiple fragments, often uninhabitable or even unreachable, and control of the Jordan River valley denies Palestinians any direct access eastward into Jordan. About one hundred military checkpoints completely surround Palestine and block routes going into or between Palestinian communities, combined with an uncountable number of other roads that are permanently closed with large concrete cubes or mounds of earth and rocks. There was no possibility that any Palestinian leader could accept such terms and survive, but official statements from Washington and Jerusalem were successful in placing the entire onus for the failure on Yasir Arafat. Violence in the Holy Land continued.
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Jimmy Carter (Palestine Peace Not Apartheid)
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Wittgenstein came to believe that a great many philosophical puzzles arise out of people misusing language in this way. Take, for example, the statement ‘I have a pain’, which is grammatically akin to ‘I have a hat’. This similarity might mislead us into thinking that pains, or ‘experiences’ in general, are things we have in the same way that we have hats. But it would be strange to say ‘Here, take my pain’. And though it would make sense to say ‘Is this your hat or mine?’, it would sound odd to ask ‘Is this your pain or mine?’ Perhaps there are several people in a room and a pain floating around in it; and as each person in turn doubles up in agony, we exclaim: ‘Ah, now he’s having it!’
This sounds merely silly; but in fact it has some fairly momentous implications. Wittgenstein is able to disentangle the grammar of ‘I have a hat’ from ‘I have a pain’ not only in a way that throws light on the use of personal pronouns like ‘I’ and ‘he’, but in ways which undermine the long-standing assumption that my experiences are a kind of private property. In fact, they seem even more like private property than my hat, since I can give away my hat, but not my pain. Wittgenstein shows us how grammar deceives us into thinking this way, and his case has radical, even politically radical, consequences.
The task of the philosopher, Wittgenstein thought, was not so much to resolve these inquiries as to dissolve them – to show that they spring from confusing one kind of ‘language game’, as he called it, with another.
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Terry Eagleton (The Meaning of Life)
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Then if it is denied that the unity at that level is the interconnection of the plurality or dissimilarity of religions as of parts constituting a whole, rather that every one of the religions at the level of ordinary existence is not part of a whole, but is a whole in itself-then the 'unity' that is meant is 'oneness' or 'sameness' not really of religions, but of the God of religions at the level of transcendence (i.e. esoteric), implying thereby that at the level of ordinary existence (i.e. exoteric), and despite the plurality and diversity of religions, each religion is adequate and valid in its own limited way, each authentic and conveying limited though equal truth. The notion of a plurality of truth of equal validity in the plurality and diversity of religion is perhaps aligned to the statements and general conclusions of modern philosophy and science arising from the discovery of a pluraity and diversity of laws governing the universe having equal validity each in its own cosmological system. The trend to align modern scientific discovery concerning the systems of the universe with corresponding statements applied to human society, cultural traditions,and values is one of the characteristic features of modernity.
The position of those who advocate the theory of the transcendent unity of religions is based upon the assumption that all religions, or the major religions of mankind, are revealed religions. They assume that the universality and transcendence of esotericism validates their theory, which they 'discovered' after having acquainted themselves with the metaphysics of Islam. In their understanding of this metaphysics of the transcendent unity of existence, they further assume that the transcendent unity of religions is already implied. There is grave error in all their assumptions, and the phrase 'transcendent unity of religions' is misleading and perhaps meant to be so for motives other than the truth. Their claim to belief in the transecendent unity of religions is something suggested to them inductively by the imagination and is derived from intellectual speculation and not from actual experience. If this is denied, and their claim is derived from the experience of others, then again we say that the sense of 'unity' experienced is not of religions, but of varying degrees of individual religious experience which does not of neccesity lead to the assumption that the religions of inviduals who experienced such 'unity', have truth of equal validity as revealed religions at the level of ordinary existence. Moreover, as already pointed out, the God of that experience is recognized as the rabb, not the ilah of revealed religion. And recognizing Him as the rabb does not necessarily mean that acknowledging Him in true submission follows from that recognition, for rebellion, arrogance, and falsehood have their origin in that very realm of transcendence. There is only one revealed religion.
There is only one revealed religion. It was the religion conveyed by all the earlier Prophets, who were sent to preach the message of the revelation to their own people in accordance with the wisdom and justice of the Divine plan to prepare the peoples of the world for the reception of the religion in its ultimate and consummate form as a Universal Religion at the hands of the last Prophet, who was sent to convey the message of the revelation not only to his own people, but to mankind as a whole. The essential message of the revelation was always the same: to recognize and acknowledge and worship the One True and Real God (ilah) alone, without associating Him with any partner, rival, or equal, nor attributing a likeness to Him; and to confirm the truth preached by the earlier Prophets as well as to confirm the final truth brought by the last Prophet as it was confirmed by all the Prophets sent before him.
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Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas (Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam)
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Trump’s many “mistakes” can be misleading. For example, he knows that saying provocative and often untrue statements will attract energy—which is good—but it comes with a high cost. You can’t evaluate the costs of Trump’s persuasion systems independently of the benefits. You have to look at the net.
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Scott Adams (Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter)
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Today Chanya is kikiat and won’t be doing any work of any kind. Kikiat is usually translated as “lazy,” which is misleading because of the disfavor into which this vital component of mental health has fallen in the work-frenzied Occident; over here kikiat is not a fault so much as a frank statement of the human condition. To fail to lend a helping hand because you have something more important to do may provoke anger in others, but to fail to perform a chore because you are feeling kikiat will, in all but the most extreme circumstances, meet with an understanding sigh; indeed, the word itself has a kind of pandemic effect, so that one person declaring themselves kikiat can cause a whole office to slow down. You may spend a lot of time over here, DFR, learn our customs, know our history better than we do ourselves, and even speak our language, but until you have penetrated to the very heart of indolence and learned to savor its subtle joy, you cannot claim really to have arrived. Naturally,
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John Burdett (Vulture Peak: A Royal Thai Detective Novel (5) (Sonchai Jitpleecheep))
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He made at least one false or misleading public statement every single day of his first forty days in office. No lie is too obvious.
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Steven Levitsky (How Democracies Die)
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But to call that statement ‘dualistic’ (or to regard a belief in the existence of hostile powers as ‘dualistic’) can mislead us into forgetting that most Jews, Paul included, regarded the present world as, none the less, the good creation of the good creator, and the present time as under the creator’s sovereign providence. Part of the point of many actual apocalypses is to affirm this very point, in the teeth of apparently contradictory evidence.
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N.T. Wright (Interpreting Scripture: Essays on the Bible and Hermeneutics (Collected Essays of N. T. Wright Book 1))
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As the George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard, a powerful Washington insider and advisor to two Republican presidents, Martin S. Feldstein was accustomed to being taken very seriously. He taught Ec 10, the introductory economics course at Harvard, for twenty years and this made some of the most powerful people in the USA his former students. So it might have come as a rude shock for Feldstein to be told in Spring 2003, not merely by a bunch of rebellious students but some of his fellow faculty, that his course was not only not good enough, it was misleading. This disturbance was triggered by Students for a Humane and Responsible Economics (SHARE), a Harvard-based off-shoot of the Post-Autistic Economics Network. But significantly, the actual petition demanding changes in Ec 10 was drafted by one of Feldstein’s colleagues, Prof. Stephen A. Marglin, himself a Harvard graduate and a veteran member of the faculty. The petition asked: If this course is meant to be an introduction to basic economic principles and methods, why is its content limited to the neo-liberal variety of economics? Why does it create the impression that there are no other models in the field of economics? Why isn’t there a plurality of approaches adapted to the complexity of objects analysed? By not providing a truly open marketplace for ideas Harvard failed to prepare students to be critical thinkers and engaged citizens, alleged SHARE. Its mission statement went on to argue that the standard economic models taught at Harvard were loaded with values and political convictions which inevitably influenced, if not defined, the students’ worldview as well as their career choices. Above all, said the petition, ‘ . . . by falsely presenting economics as a positive science devoid of ethical values, we believe Harvard strips students of their intellectual agency and prevents them from being able to make up their own minds.
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Rajni Bakshi (Bazaars, Conversations & Freedom: for a market culture beyond greed and fear)
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Few industries have enough cash to cover their debt without having to count on selling inventory or converting receivables to cash. A healthy cash ratio is considered to be between 0.5 and 1. Liquidity ratios are helpful way to measure if a company is at risk of not being able to pay its debt. However, some critics point out that those ratios are past-oriented and cannot predict future cash problems. Also, such ratios can be misleading because of creative accounting practices (a topic we will cover later on), especially because accounts receivable might be inflated or inventory could be wrongly estimated.
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Georgi Tsvetanov (Visual Finance: The One Page Visual Model to Understand Financial Statements and Make Better Business Decisions)
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For another thing, people's notions of the really big scriptural Subject can be quite beside the point. Suppose, by way of illustration, they were to decide that the Bible is a book about God. Harmless enough,
you think? Look at how many difficulties even so apparently correct a statement can give them - and how many otherwise open scriptural doors it forces them to close. Such a position can easily lead them to expect that on every page they will find the subject of God addressed - or if it is not, that they will find there some other subject that is at least worthy of him (as they understand worthiness, of course). But that is a tricky proposition. In the Gospel of John, we read, "No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son [many texts read God], who is in the bosom of the Father, he has said the last word about him" (1:18). Only Jesus, apparently, is the full revelation of what God is and does; any notions we come up with are always partial, frequently misleading, and sometimes completely off the mark.
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Robert Farrar Capon (Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus)
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Notwithstanding the remarkable progress that has been made in the science of nutrition for the last thirty years, diet-reform is progressing slowly. We are living in an age of commercialism and millions of dollars have been invested in the manufacture of demineralized and devitalized food products, for which a large demand has been created by shrewd, misleading advertisements often supported by statements of chemists, evidently hired for the occasion. The general public, devoid of exact knowledge concerning food values, buys these impoverished products, unaware of the fact that they undermine health and vitality
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Anonymous
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Do not assume that a source agrees with a writer when the source summarizes that writer’s line of reasoning. Quote only what a source believes, not its account of someone else’s beliefs, unless that account is relevant. 2. Record why sources agree, because why they agree can be as important as why they don’t. Two psychologists might agree that teenage drinking is caused by social influences, but one might cite family background, the other peer pressure. 3. Record the context of a quotation. When you note an important conclusion, record the author’s line of reasoning: Not Bartolli (p. 123): The war was caused … by Z. But Bartolli: The war was caused by Y and Z (p. 123), but the most important was Z (p. 123), for two reasons: First,… (pp. 124–26); Second,… (p. 126) Even if you care only about a conclusion, you’ll use it more accurately if you record how a writer reached it. 4. Record the scope and confidence of each statement. Do not make a source seem more certain or expansive than it is. The second sentence below doesn’t report the first fairly or accurately. One study on the perception of risk (Wilson 1988) suggests a correlation between high-stakes gambling and single-parent families. Wilson (1988) says single-parent families cause high-stakes gambling. 5. Record how a source uses a statement. Note whether it’s an important claim, a minor point, a qualification or concession, and so on. Such distinctions help you avoid mistakes like this: Original by Jones: We cannot conclude that one event causes another because the second follows the first. Nor can statistical correlation prove causation. But no one who has studied the data doubts that smoking is a causal factor in lung cancer. Misleading report: Jones claims “we cannot conclude that one event causes another because the second follows the first. Nor can statistical correlation prove causation.” Therefore, statistical evidence is not a reliable indicator that smoking causes lung cancer.
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Kate L. Turabian (A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers)
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The comparison is neither wrong nor awkward since it can enlighten and fragrance life journey if one understands that as the context of knowledge and insight of education, but not as competitive or complex.” — E.S
Quotes by Bertrand Russel and Ehsan Sehgal
“Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.”
— Bertrand Russell
“Humans are born with incredible knowledge of the six senses; worldly education is the creation of humans based on the six senses. Education may be untrue, but it does not make anyone stupid.”
— Ehsan Sehgal
27–06–2024
Note: Adding the content of ChatGPT will enlighten the comparison of both quotes.
“The quotes by Bertrand Russell and Ehsan Sehgal both critique the impact of education on human intellect, but they come from different perspectives and imply distinct understandings of education and human nature.
Bertrand Russell:
“Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.”
Russell’s statement reflects a critical view of formal education systems, suggesting that these systems can mislead and dull human intellect rather than cultivate it. Russell was known for his philosophical skepticism towards established norms and institutions, and this quote aligns with his broader critique of how education can sometimes propagate conformity, dogma, and uncritical thinking, rather than fostering genuine understanding and critical reasoning.
Ehsan Sehgal:
“Humans are born with incredible knowledge of the six senses; worldly education is the creation of humans based on the six senses. Education may be untrue, but it does not make anyone stupid.”
Sehgal’s perspective acknowledges an inherent, almost instinctual knowledge in humans, related to their sensory experiences. He seems to argue that while education is a human construct built upon these senses and might be flawed or even incorrect, it does not fundamentally impair human intelligence. Instead of making people stupid, education is portrayed as a potentially misguided but still valuable attempt to structure and expand upon the innate understanding people have through their senses.
Comparison:
Innate Knowledge vs. Learned Ignorance:
Russell: Suggests that ignorance is natural, but stupidity results from flawed education.
Sehgal: Suggests that humans are born with an innate form of knowledge and that education, though potentially flawed, doesn’t diminish this intelligence.
Critique of Education:
Russell: Directly critiques education as capable of making people less intelligent.
Sehgal: Critiques the truthfulness of education but separates this from the impact on intelligence.
Nature of Human Intellect:
Russell: Implies that human intellect can be compromised by poor education.
Sehgal: Implies that human intellect remains robust despite the imperfections of education.
Both quotes invite reflection on the purpose and effects of education. Russell warns against complacency and the acceptance of flawed educational paradigms, urging reform to foster true critical thinking. Sehgal, while acknowledging the fallibility of educational systems, seems to maintain a more optimistic view of human intellect’s resilience.
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Ehsan Sehgal
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Some Acid Tests to Be Made in Separating Facts from Mere Information or Inference Scrutinise with great care everything you read in books, regardless of who wrote them, and never accept the conclusions of any writer as being conclusive without asking the following questions and satisfying yourself as to the correctness of the answers: 1. Is the writer a recognised authority on the subject on which he writes? 2. Did the writer have an ulterior or selfish motive other than that of imparting accurate information? 3. Is the writer a paid propagandist whose profession is that of organising public opinion for a price? If he is, weigh his conclusions with unusual care. 4. Has the writer a profit interest or other personal interest in the subject on which he writes? If so, make allowance for this in the acceptance of his conclusions. 5. Is the writer a person of sound judgement, and not a fanatic on the subject on which he writes? Fanatics are inclined to exaggerate, even when stating facts, and to colour facts so they may convey misleading impressions. 6. Are there reasonably accessible sources from which the writer’s statements may be checked and verified? If so, consult them before accepting his conclusions. 7. Ascertain, also, the writer’s reputation for truth and veracity. Some writers are careless concerning the truth. Half-truths are frequently the most dangerous truths. 8. Be careful about accepting as facts the statements of overzealous persons who have the habit of allowing their imaginations to run wild. Such people are known as ‘radicals’ and their conclusions may be misleading if relied upon. 9. Learn to be cautious and to use your own judgement, no matter who is trying to influence you. If a statement does not harmonise with your own reasoning power (and you should train your reason to function clearly), if it is out of harmony with your own experience, hold it up for further examination before accepting it as fact. Falsehood has a queer way of bringing with it some warning note, perhaps in the tone of one’s voice, or in the expression on one’s face, if it comes through the spoken word. Train yourself to recognise this warning and to be guided by it. 10. In seeking facts from others, do not disclose to them what facts you expect to find, as many people have the bad habit of trying to please, even if they have to exaggerate or falsify in order to do so. 11. Science is the art of organising
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Napoleon Hill (How to Own Your Own Mind)
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We also know that natural selection of an adapted species in a stable environment tends to select against the extremes, the very ones that would be necessary to effect any change in the species. Some of the statements made in textbooks and elsewhere in the origins debate do not take this into account and are therefore misleading.
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Gerald Rau (Mapping the Origins Debate: Six Models of the Beginning of Everything)
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have some damned standards: Traditionally, language is used to make specific points and convey information. In the age of driving web traffic, usage is increasingly vague and misleading. Whether they’re acts of clickbaiting or dumbness, internet headlines routinely mischaracterize quotes, inaccurately paraphrase statements, and misuse specific terms, all to make readers click. Editors say they’re doing what they need to do, or they argue it’s a valid way to interpret the facts; I call it “lying.
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Marc Woodworth (How to Write About Music: Excerpts from the 33 1/3 Series, Magazines, Books and Blogs with Advice from Industry-leading Writers)
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I would like for us to dwell on the notion of “dictators killing their own people,” which is quite problematic and misleading.
First, the notion presumes that killing one’s own people is only done by directly using weapons and prisons, as commonly cited when referring to Arab dictators, but it overlooks the many other indirect ways through which a state can kill its own people, like denying them decent, livable wages; healthy, chemical-free, non-cancerous foods; access to decent basic healthcare and good education; and many other basic human rights that are a privilege not a right in the US. Never mind that the US doesn’t even come close in providing these basic needs whose lack can easily make any state responsible for “killing its own people”, I am not disclosing a secret when I say that the US equally fails in the test of not directly killing its own people through imprisoning and shooting blacks, immigrants, and Muslims.
The second serious problem with the statement of dictators “killing their own people” is the failure of many so-called academics and intellectuals who contribute to knowledge production in interrogating it in an honest manner, which, to me means that the starting point is always to look at how the US kills its own people. Once that is determined and confirmed, it would be hard to make the case that the US is in a position to go around the world hunting other authoritarian regimes who do kill their own people. This fact makes many academics and intellectuals—unless willing to pay a high price for speaking the truth—complicit with the agendas of the warmongers who have been exterminating the people of the Middle East for many decades now. As a result, one can’t help wondering whether the real job of many feeble and co-opted intellectuals and academics in America is to simply aid the establishment in promoting itself as a “free democracy”, and consequently aiding it with its false mission of “democratizing” other nations.
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Louis Yako
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The statement should be brief because brevity forces you to get to the very heart of what you want to say without larding up your description with empty words or superlatives. Make every word real. Make every word count. Long sentences and vague language can obscure your effort to describe what’s really important. At best, they’re unhelpful; at worst, they’re potentially misleading and distracting.
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Cynthia Montgomery (The Strategist: Be the Leader Your Business Needs)
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Dedicate to President of the United States, Donald J. Trump
Mr. President your, poorly sourced blame that,
"The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!"
It is the conduct of self-disregarding, and you also dishonour your former presidents' policies; whereas, the Armed Forces of Pakistan fought the war on terror, scarifying the thousand of its beloved soldiers and Generals, and the loss of civilian lives and resources of the country, for the United States. You feel sorry for 33 billion dollars in aid, which have been spent on your motives, while you are forgetting and ignoring the voluntary sacrifices of the sons of those mothers, who still deserve to have more than 50 billion dollars in reward, even though that will not bring back their beloved ones. Pakistan still suffers from the results of the war on terror. You do not realize the sacrifices of the lives, but you trigger 33 billion dollars to misguide and mislead the American people and the nations of the world. It is disgusting; your statement holds not the soberness and wisdom, except cheap blame and politically exploiting that does not match as the President of the United States. The State of Pakistan expects trust and confidence; otherwise, Pakistan does not depend on the United States.
Ehsan Sehgal
Chairman
Muslim United Nations
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Ehsan Sehgal
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Mr. President your poorly sourced blame that, "The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!"
It is the conduct of self-disregarding and even dishonouring your former presidents too, whereas The Armed Forces of Pakistan fought the war on terror, scarifying the thousand of its beloved soldiers and Generals, and the loss of civilian lives and resources of the country, for the United States. You feel sorry, for 33 billion dollars in aid, which have been spent on your motives, while you are forgetting and ignoring the voluntary sacrifices of the sons of those mothers, who still deserve to have more 50 billion dollars in reward, even though that will not bring back their beloved ones. Pakistan still suffers from the results of the war on terror. You do not realize the sacrifices of the lives, but you trigger 33 billion dollars to misguide and mislead the American people and the nations of the world. It is disgusting; your statement holds not the soberness and wisdom, except cheap blame, and politically exploiting that does not match as the President of the United States. The State of Pakistan expects trust and confidence; otherwise, Pakistan does not depend on the United States.
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Ehsan Sehgal
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Mikhail? Raven was there in his mind, instantly flooding him with warmth and comfort. Do you need me?
He would always need her, but right now, more than anything, he had to know she was safe. Stay close to Jacques. Both of you stay alert for any danger. Do not trust anyone. Scan around you continually.
Are you in danger? There was the merest quiver in her voice.
Gregori is with me. He wasn’t altogether certain that didn’t fall under the heading of misleading her, but she’d been through enough.
What of Gregori, is he hurt? You’re very upset. She could feel Mikhail’s grief and wondered at it.
He is well. Do as I ask, little one. It is important.
Mikhail felt her acceptance. Just to be doubly safe, he sent a quick message to Jacques, warning him of possible danger and alerting him to what they had found.
“She is well?” Gregori asked.
“Jacques knows to watch over her. She asked about you.”
Gregori’s eyebrow shot up. He doubted that anyone had inquired about his health, not in centuries, other than Mikhail. He didn’t respond to the statement, unsure of what to think about another being including him in their circle.
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Christine Feehan (Dark Prince (Dark, #1))
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In 2020, for example, SpaceX’s internet service provider, Starlink, released a Terms of Service agreement that declared that “no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities.” This clause is like many statements about outer space settlement: it was promoted by a powerful advocate, widely shared and commented upon, and profoundly misleading. Earth-based governments do have authority over Mars activities—Mars is regulated by long-standing treaties and is an international commons. Admittedly, the treaties are weird and vague, but they do exist and can’t be de-existed via a Terms of Service agreement.
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Kelly Weinersmith (A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?)
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The adage that says "You fight fire with fire,” is misleading—you fight fire with water. But every firefighter knows there is truth in the statement. Regarding weight loss, replace the word “fire” with fat! “You fight fat with fat!
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Annette Bosworth (ketoCONTINUUM: Consistently Keto Diet For Life)