tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post2684144851690573972..comments2024-03-18T17:28:44.693-07:00Comments on Rondam Ramblings: How's the Muslim-hunt working out for you, Sam Harris?Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-7811771968639104622016-06-13T20:11:07.705-07:002016-06-13T20:11:07.705-07:00Update
International Security has updated their b...<b>Update</b><br /><br />International Security has updated their <a href="http://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/deadly-attacks.html" rel="nofollow">body count</a> after the Orlando massacre. The <b>Jihadists</b> are now 2X ahead of the <i>"far right wingers"</i>, even though they <a href="https://apholt.com/2016/01/11/Publiushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00647613579979908182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-74902153471766016032016-02-06T23:17:54.772-08:002016-02-06T23:17:54.772-08:00Another Day
Following up to my 6/30 comment, the ...<b>Another Day</b><br /><br />Following up to my 6/30 comment, the New American Foundation <a href="http://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/deadly-attacks.html" rel="nofollow">"study"</a> has been debunked. <br /><a href="http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/25885/" rel="nofollow">Popular press account of debunking.</a><br /><a href="http://apholt.com/2016/01/11/Publiushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00647613579979908182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-77608674594793785482015-07-06T22:23:42.050-07:002015-07-06T22:23:42.050-07:00George Orwell would be proud.
What would he think...<i>George Orwell would be proud.</i><br /><br />What would he think of the Democrat Party having the religion of every person in the United States in their database? Publiushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00647613579979908182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-42728250457190266592015-07-06T08:53:12.599-07:002015-07-06T08:53:12.599-07:00> It appears that Google has already solved the...> It appears that Google has already solved the problem.<br /><br />You're kind of making my point for me there.<br /><br />> you just build a database of every Muslim in the world<br /><br />George Orwell would be proud.<br /><br />> Or you could ask the person, "are you a Muslim?"<br /><br />Of course! Why didn't I think of that?<br />Ronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-66664033828287241572015-07-04T23:11:25.753-07:002015-07-04T23:11:25.753-07:00And none of this addresses the real issue: even if...<i>And none of this addresses the real issue: even if you concede that profiling "Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim" might be a good idea, how do you do it?</i><br /><br />It appears that Google has <a href="https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&q=muslim+man" rel="nofollow">already solved the problem.</a><Publiushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00647613579979908182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-86377422185662450852015-07-03T07:48:41.347-07:002015-07-03T07:48:41.347-07:00> Your lottery ticket example simply doesn'...> Your lottery ticket example simply doesn't capture the idea that one factor would indicate a 37x increase in probability, another a 50x increase, another a 12x increase, ..., such that all combined, the result is significant.<br /><br />First, this analysis tacitly assumes that all of these hypothetical factors would be independent of one another, and that is far from clear.<br /><br />Ronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-45371895676114882482015-07-02T10:31:35.733-07:002015-07-02T10:31:35.733-07:00Just FYI, I'm probably against profiling when ...Just FYI, I'm probably against profiling when the benefit is sufficiently low (but still extant), on the basis that we do not abridge the rights of the few for the benefit of the many. My concern here is that your reasoning, completely aside from such principles, is flawed.<br /><br /><br />> Because 37 times a number nearly indistinguishable from zero is still a number nearly Lukehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18395549142176242491noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-3633951368605723132015-07-01T22:12:57.387-07:002015-07-01T22:12:57.387-07:00> I don't know why you ignored my 37x figur...> I don't know why you ignored my 37x figure<br /><br />Because 37 times a number nearly indistinguishable from zero is still a number nearly indistinguishable from zero. If you buy 37 lottery tickets your odds of winning the lottery are 37 times higher than if you'd bought one ticket. But you still, with nearly 100% certainty, will not win the lottery. (If you buy one lottery Ronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-74915040983792437312015-07-01T19:46:33.820-07:002015-07-01T19:46:33.820-07:00I don't know why you ignored my 37x figure; di...I don't know why you ignored <a href="http://blog.rongarret.info/2015/06/hows-muslim-hunt-working-out-for-you.html?showComment=1435775278385#c8056284783523391199" rel="nofollow">my 37x figure</a>; did I make an error? As to your probabilities, you surely know that law enforcement will use a <i>number</i> of factors, many of which may be quite weak by themselves, but which can be significant Lukehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18395549142176242491noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-30941824437229509452015-07-01T17:50:37.909-07:002015-07-01T17:50:37.909-07:00> profiling need only be probabilistically corr...> profiling need only be probabilistically correct, not perfectly correct<br /><br />OK, fine, let's do the math:<br /><br />P(Terrorist|Muslim) = P(M|T) x P(T) / P(M)<br /><br />P(M|T) = 7/26 = 0.27<br />P(M) = 0.01<br />P(T) = 26/300000000 = 0.000000009<br /><br />P(Terrorist|Muslim) = 0.00000023<br />P(~Terrorist | Muslim) = 99.99998%<br /><br />So the probability of false negatives is Ronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-80562847835233911992015-07-01T11:27:58.385-07:002015-07-01T11:27:58.385-07:00@Ron:
> Ron: 1. You can't tell if someone ...@Ron:<br /><br />> <a href="http://blog.rongarret.info/2015/06/hows-muslim-hunt-working-out-for-you.html?showComment=1435769454592#c1957233960026713589" rel="nofollow">Ron</a>: 1. You can't tell if someone is a Muslim by how they look.<br /><br />Very true, but profiling need only be probabilistically correct, not perfectly correct. Of course, that is also where the injustice lies.<br /><Lukehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18395549142176242491noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-5753617294473248612015-07-01T10:08:33.056-07:002015-07-01T10:08:33.056-07:00@Publius
> whether you would support profiling...@Publius<br /><br />> whether you would support profiling of Muslims if the body counts were reversed<br /><br />No. What makes these numbers debunk the theory that "[Muslims] are overwhelmingly more like to commit acts of terrorism than non-Muslims" is not that the non-Muslim number is bigger (though that does help to drive the point home). It is that they are *comparable*. And Ronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-19572339600267135892015-07-01T09:50:54.592-07:002015-07-01T09:50:54.592-07:00@Luke:
I'm not against profiling. I'm ag...@Luke:<br /><br />I'm not against profiling. I'm against *stupid* profiling. And trying to profile *Muslims* based on how they *look* (which is what Harris originally advocated) is stupid because:<br /><br />1. You can't tell if someone is a Muslim by how they look.<br /><br />2. Even if you could tell if someone is a Muslim by how they look, there are a billion Muslims in the Ronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-78342258497292775082015-07-01T08:16:30.845-07:002015-07-01T08:16:30.845-07:00Nowhere in either article did I see:
(1) the...Nowhere in either article did I see:<br /><br /> (1) the population sizes each group is drawn from<br /> (2) profiling mechanisms in-place<br /> (3) thwarted plots with estimates of success and body count<br /><br />Without these data, it seems your thesis is on pretty iffy grounds. In particular, it seems notable that there hasn't been an explicit foreign terrorist attack on Lukehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18395549142176242491noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-82525987537387674392015-07-01T00:22:34.810-07:002015-07-01T00:22:34.810-07:00Ron's Brain vs. Ron's Writing
The "f...<b>Ron's Brain vs. Ron's Writing</b><br /><br /><i>The "fallacy" of relative privation is not actually a fallacy.</i><br /><br />Another name for it would be demagoguery. <br /><br /><i>In a world of finite resources, the question of which problems should have resources devoted to them and which should not is very much germane.</i><br /><br />Yes, absolutely. Hundreds of <i>Publiushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00647613579979908182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-66188322426449333542015-06-30T22:45:31.100-07:002015-06-30T22:45:31.100-07:00@Publius
Don't believe everything you read in...@Publius<br /><br />Don't believe everything you read in wikipedia. The "fallacy" of relative privation is not actually a fallacy. In a world of finite resources, the question of which problems should have resources devoted to them and which should not is very much germane.<br />Ronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-85172409808955631282015-06-30T22:40:18.991-07:002015-06-30T22:40:18.991-07:00You're moving the pea (fallacy of relative pri...You're moving the pea (fallacy of relative privation).<br />The question isn't should we prevent A or prevent B (or prevent both).<br /><br />The question is: how do we prevent A?Publiushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00647613579979908182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-92091930212776228472015-06-30T08:56:50.606-07:002015-06-30T08:56:50.606-07:00> The desire to prevent "A" has nothi...> The desire to prevent "A" has nothing to do with "B".<br /><br />Of course it does. The resources you put towards preventing A are resources you can no longer deploy to prevent B.<br /><br />Coincidentally, this came across the wires today:<br /><br />https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings/?hpid=z1<br /><br />461 people shot dead by police thisRonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-64592736947104391852015-06-30T01:20:22.287-07:002015-06-30T01:20:22.287-07:00Hard to Choose
The data* you present do not suppo...<b>Hard to Choose</b><br /><br />The data* you present do not support your thesis. You demonstrate the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation" rel="nofollow">fallacy of relative privation</a>, perhaps with a measure of red herring and false equivalence mixed in.<br /><br />The data* you discuss can be summarized:<br />A. 26 killed by self-proclaimed jihadists<br />B.Publiushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00647613579979908182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-16167742656989696752015-06-28T21:12:03.942-07:002015-06-28T21:12:03.942-07:00I think that is an inaccurate presentation of Harr...I think that is an inaccurate presentation of Harris and Chomsky, more so of Chomsky. I think it would be just as pithy, but much more correct, to say that Harris thinks the US has only good (moral) intentions and Chomsky thinks the US gives morality practically zero priority. Splitting that difference does not land you anywhere close to the reality.cobyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04042136876169040477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-12981045293095991412015-06-24T11:48:36.161-07:002015-06-24T11:48:36.161-07:00That's like asking if I prefer to beat with wi...That's like asking if I prefer to beat with wife with a ruler or a belt. Harris thinks the U.S. can do no evil and Chomsky thinks it can do no good, so they both run afoul of Ron's First Law. At least Chomsky can back up his arguments with actual data. It was fun watching Harris get smacked down by him, but it was also a little sad that Harris didn't seem to realize that that'sRonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-83988623565814896422015-06-24T11:19:42.243-07:002015-06-24T11:19:42.243-07:00A while ago, you sent me a link to Sam Harris'...A while ago, you sent me a link to Sam Harris' <a href="http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-limits-of-discourse" rel="nofollow">The Limits of Discourse</a>, where he attempts a conversation with Noam Chomsky. You didn't say whether you leaned toward Chomsky or Harris. :-pLukehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18395549142176242491noreply@blogger.com