Posted by AG on January 31, 2004 at 09:39:37
Miguel, I accidently posted my response re: ecological error before I had time to complete my thinking about its relationship to Bell's Theorum.
If I follow your explanation correctly, Bell's Theorum is really talking about rules of generalizablity fromt the aggregate to the particular and vice versa. That is, you cannot take what's true in the aggregate and generalize it to the particular? Maybe I got it wrong, but that's more or less how I understood ecological error...what's true on a macro level is not necessarily true for the micro systems that aggregate or factor into the macro system.
For example, you cannot take what is true for American culture as a whole and assume it applies to urban, African-American culture in particular. Never-the-less, what is true for urban, African-American culture in particular is a factor in what determines the makeup of American culture as a whole.
But I think your definition of ecological error is probably more correct, inasmuch as you can't generalize from one population to another if the two groups do not share significant environmental controls.
There's lots of things I don't know or understand particularly well, btw.
I'd like to chat a little more about what you said on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, but I gotta go right now. BBL.