Thursday, May 1, 2008

"You can't" and "I can"

What are the differences between these two phrases: "You can't get good score" and "I can get good score"?

The former focus on "you" and what you "can't" achieve, while the latter focus on "I" and what I "can" achieve.

What is the reason to make the first type of statement? When it is more likely to focus on "you" then "I" and "can't" than "can". What kind of situations could that be? ...
When there isn't much to say about "I" and/or about "can".

When a person can achieve something, would he be interested in telling people that who are the people who can't achieve it? I don't think so. Thus, when someone is telling the world who can't achieve something, I bet the unmentioned fact is that this person also can't achieve it.

Thus, when we read news such as Abstinence [programmes] 'not effective', I bet the opponents also didn't achieve effectiveness, else shouldn't they mention it? Also, it should suggest that there are growing number of supportive people and beliefs that abstinence programmes work, which typically imply there are evidence that abstinence programmes work. Furthermore, by conducting studies targeting on some selected abstinence programmes, but none of other programmes, is quite a bias approach.

More importantly, the results only suggest that the situation is quite bad, and I don't think they are showing that the situation is getting worse. In addition, abstinence programmes are not controlled experiments where the subjects are not allowed to be influence by many other things that they are exposed to in their daily life. I would say that common sense should point towards the argument that when abstinence programmes are not effective yet, shouldn't we reinforce them, and tune down other counter influences, especially in media and adults' behaviors, that are undermining the effectiveness of such programmes.

E.g. "Have sex without love is wrong, or isn't ideal" should be a better and correct message than "Have sex before the age of 16 is not allowed" which is obviously a way for adults to hide from guilt.

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