General Discussions

[ElwoodBlues1]

Wonder how the Coon family are going?

Think the name is Scottish but may have German origins ie Kunz(need to be careful how you say that too), the process of ripening cheese invented by Edward William Coon  was called " cooning" which is also unfortunate terminology if applied in Australia.
As I have said before my wife has a friend with the surname Coon and at the height of this fiasco it wasnt an enjoyable name to have from then on and they considered changing it.
Id imagine getting a personalized number plate for your car with the family name  " Coon" wouldnt be on given  racial content is one of the criteria Vicroads and the other authorities use to vet applications.
I know they had issues with an insurance application because the company software had a business block on the name.
I can see both sides of the story with Coon being a legitimate surname but I also grew up with Coon being used as a derogatory racial slur for coloured folk and seeing that on a supermarket shelf keeping alive that term isnt what you want either.

[Mav]

It seems his first name was Edward. And just how relevant he was to Coon cheese sold in Australia is very much in dispute. His process didn’t involve pasturisation. It involved live bacteria. Pasteurisation was required for all cheese sold in Australia until 1998. It seems that the Coon process couldn’t have contributed to Coon cheese, unless there was some dispensation of which I’m unaware.

The research from Steven Hagen suggests Kraft didn’t justify the name by saying it was named after the “creator” until 1988 when criticisms were intensifying. In any event, they should have acted to water down the name by adding context rather than leaving it as was. Indeed, it looks like it had been Red Coon or Kraft Red Coon previously.

[cookie2]

Apologies to Mr Coon for getting his first name wrong, my memory is not what it was, should have double checked.

[Baggers]

I didn’t say market research was the be all and end all. That’s a straw man argument. I said making up theories without evidence is the sin. After evidence is obtained by, you know, talking to actual people, then you can draw inferences from the facts. If the Liberals drew the wrong inferences from their focus groups, then that’s on them. In reality, what the Liberals did is what LP is doing. Everyone hates Dan because we do and a small number of cookers do, and Rupert as well, so that means we should run a whole campaign on Get Rid of Dan. If they’d actually done the work rather than going off gut instinct, maybe they would have done a bit better.

I understand that you may find my hypothesis (straw man argument) irrelevant. I get it. But you did seem to base much of your response on the validity of market research over gut... market research being a reliable expertise (and right) but gut (intuition) open to ridicule and to be demeaned/invalidated. I find that a limiting characterization of intuition. And somewhat snide comments toward another's thoughts (Spotted One) that are not evidence based, as off putting.

[Baggers]

The thing is Shane, Coon/Cheers cheese is a minuscule component of a very large range of products manufactured, imported and sold by the various arms of Calendar Cheese/Warrnambool Cheese and Butter Company/Saputo.  I listed some of their brand names in a previous post and they cover everything from caviar to chocolate.  As I said before, it is ludicrous to suggest that rebranding one of their products caused such a drop off in sales across the board that they had to close plants in Victoria. 

The only "evidence" that the change from Coon to Cheers had an impact on Saputo's profitability are some throw away references to the name change in the Murdoch media's reporting of the closure of Saputo's Maffra plant.

Completely agree, David. When I saw their rebranding efforts my first gut response (sorry Wingman MAV  ) was that it was half-@rsed and the reasons were perhaps a lack of interest, or lack of funds or a company overall problem. Or maybe a combination of these and more. Personally, once they realized the offensiveness of the Coon Cheese name, I saw it as an opportunity to rebrand in a strong manner that may have actually boosted their sales... ambitious, perhaps, but when you're in the news and getting lots of free publicity that does present the opportunity to turn a problem into a gem of an opportunity. I had a similar situation when rebranding a radio station that had a very ordinary reputation, and the rebranding was a success because we went the whole hog.

[Mav]

What evidence do you say LP was using, Baggers? Intuition or gut instinct is great if it is based on evidence. But intuition or gut instinct which isn’t based on evidence is just prejudice or bias.

To me intuition is the opposite of evidence-free assumptions. It is very useful when the decision-maker is flooded with observations or information, perhaps some of it contradictory, and trying to analyse each piece of information and weigh it formally will lead to decision paralysis. The decision-maker synthesises all of the information in a rational way although he or she might not be able to explain how to an observer. For example, someone might feel that they’ve entered a dangerous environment because they have observed certain things that they might not register on a conscious level or be able to articulate. That’s the classic, “I have a bad feeling about this” moment.

[kruddler]

What evidence do you say LP was using, Baggers? Intuition or gut instinct is great if it is based on evidence. But intuition or gut instinct which isn’t based on evidence is just prejudice or bias.

Not specifically related to this scenario, but a philosophical question has reared its head here.

What if an intuition or gut instinct is in line with evidence. Is it still prejudice and/or bias?

[Thryleon]

Not specifically related to this scenario, but a philosophical question has reared its head here.

What if an intuition or gut instinct is in line with evidence. Is it still prejudice and/or bias?

I like to think of myself as a philosopher, and generally speaking, your gut instinct is usually formed based on some sort of evidence formed by observation of real world practises.

Usually, your gut, will lead you to an observable likelihood.  This may not always be true, but thats where you form a hypothesis then test it.  If it stands up to rudimentary tests, then it effectively has already a basis in fact, not just a wild assertion.

You could expand that to any mode of thinking really and then it becomes a testable hypothesis.  Your gut instincts are in my experience formed from prior experience in similar situations.

[kruddler]

I like to think of myself as a philosopher, and generally speaking, your gut instinct is usually formed based on some sort of evidence formed by observation of real world practises.

Usually, your gut, will lead you to an observable likelihood.  This may not always be true, but thats where you form a hypothesis then test it.  If it stands up to rudimentary tests, then it effectively has already a basis in fact, not just a wild assertion.

You could expand that to any mode of thinking really and then it becomes a testable hypothesis.  Your gut instincts are in my experience formed from prior experience in similar situations.

I agree gut comes from past experiences, largely, but that not exactly the question i was posing.

The negative connotations that come with the words prejudice and bias infer being incorrect.

Prejeduce: preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.
Your gut can count as past experience to a certain degree, but if your gut is correct, are you still prejudice?

It's a similar line of thinking to "If a stereotype is true, is it really a stereotype?"

In both circumstances you could perhaps put it down to a figurative vs literal use of the same words and/or phrases?

[Mav]

You beat me to it, Thryleon, and much more concisely than my edit ;D

A prejudice or bias may lead to the correct conclusion on the odd occasion but then again a broken clock is right 2 times a day. Maybe someone who believes all black people will rob you on the streets may benefit by avoiding a particular black person who intended to do so but that doesn’t mean the prejudice is proved even if it’s in line with the observations of suspicious behaviour in that one instance.