blooman

I am not at all trying to "disprove your statement", but rather inviting you to prove yours.

Dovster originally claimed that "most terrorists are muslim men", to which you countered that most terrorists are NOT muslim men, and people who make statements to the contrary do so out of bigotry (rather than fact).

My point was that both of these statements are bandied about regularly everywhere in the MSM and elsewhere, yet from what I can tell, no one has actually bothered to prove either one with actual facts.

One of these statements is true and based on fact, and the other is rhetoric. From what I can tell, all you can offer is rhetoric charged with words like "bigotry" and "racism", and no real facts.

GUWonder

Obviously. Perhaps you should try before asking someone to do again what you have not even done once with the reports (and certainly not with the underlying data).

It is an invitation I decline. I am not going to get into proving again and again the same thing and do work for people who are too lazy to even compile data from a referred series of reports. I don't get paid enough to do your research or dig through boxes in another country.

People have actually bothered to go through the reports and the underlying data for not only State but for other parts of the USG too.

I offered real facts about how to use a public domain source -- that I mentioned -- to compile one proxy measure of blood-spilling incidents besides those in active military conflict zones involving outside military forces. I mentioned the public domain information to make it easiest for you to try to disprove my statement. Try to disprove my statement if you believe that all I can offer is charged rhetoric. I offered a fact, but I am not going to re-invest in doing work for lazy people who want to be spoonfed information only to get dragged deeper into a debate with those who are on an agenda to more broadly increase the acceptability of racist profiling.

There is nothing rhetorically charged about my identifying bigotry where bigotry exists -- rather it is a mention of fact to inform those who are making judgments based on what is read.

Given that you had trouble reading what I said and go with one "report" when I mentioned reports, it is not surprising that you misunderstand other basic items that I posted too in this thread.

oneant

How did this thread escape OMNI?

blooman

And where am I supposed to get this "underlying data", especially since you conveniently assert that "not everything is on the internet"

I don't care that you decline. But I find it odd that if you have already done the research and compiled the data, in the attempt to prove "again and again" what you claim to be true, that it isn't easy to neatly and cogently summarize these findings. Instead, you task someone else to repeat the work so that you can keep stating claims as fact. I also note that you never answered the question what years of the reports you compiled the data from, and exactly which numbers you used. If I were actually interested in replicating your work, I would at least need that.

And if this were true, then where is the report of the findings?


The fact of the matter is, I don't believe that either statement can ever fully proven to be true, which is why I never make either statement, nor do I bother with trying to disprove either one. But when I do see someone making either statement, I generally find that the reason for making it is based on more on intuition, empirical observation, emotion, or something other than actual, citable fact. I find your arguments consistent with this observation.

GUWonder

I made it easier for you than just that (i.e., you do not need "underlying data") to try to disprove what I stated. You do not need even that to try to disprove what I stated, since I made it easier for you to try to disprove my statement.

I neatly and cogently summarized the finding in making my statement. You don't accept my statement so I ask you to try to disprove it using the referred to public domain material. You refuse.

Your "so that" section is a fiction. The reason I suggested that you try to disprove my statement is because you do not believe the statement and I do not care to repeat the work or go about digging through boxes, and go through the rest of the hoops to prove something I already know to be the case.

If you think what I said is incorrect, I gave you a rather simpler way to go about to try to disprove what I said. You are not willing to try to disprove something you doubt to be true. That is your issue. I am not going to be any less lazy than you to satisfy your curiosity.

I have answered that question before and you don't "at least need that" to try to disprove my statement -- I already provided you an easier way to try to disprove my statement, but you refuse to try to disprove my statement even using that more accessible set of data to which you were referred.

It doesn't matter, for I gave you a way to try to disprove my statement with a public domain reference. See above.

What is this standard of "fully proven to be true"? Is there now "partly proven to be true" as well?

You have posited a false contrast. Empirical observation is fact, yet you position them as if empirical observation and fact are mutually exclusvie -- they are not mutually exclusive by nature.

I gave you a reference to use to try to make your own empirical observation to try to disprove my statement using a data-based approach, but you refuse. For me to invest time in trying to disprove myself would be foolish. If I say I was on a flight from ATL-GRU earlier this month, why would I then go about to try and disprove that I was on such a flight? Short of having to gain from lying to some party after actually having taken the flight, I would have nothing to gain from trying to disprove myself. You expect too much. I gave you a way to try to disprove my statement, but you refused. I am not going to help you more on that matter of trying to disprove myself. This attempt to push the burden on me to disprove myself is ridiculous.

Lazy minds obviously don't care about empirical observation in the form of data -- including to that which you were referred -- but provide for a lot of veiled "charged rhetoric" pretending as if they care. Perhaps you care enough to be spoon-fed, but I am not in that business.

blooman

Then explain your reference to "not everything is on the internet" when you implied that at least some of your findings are based on non-public sources. As I mentioned before, I am uninterested in disproving your statement, only interested in how you can back the claim that "Most terrorists are non-muslim" (the positive form of "Most terrorists are not muslim")

Again, as I have stated before, whenever someone wants to make a sweeping, unqualified claim such as
"Most terrorists are Muslim" or
"Most terrorists are non-Muslim" or
"Most smokers will get cancer",

I question how it is that one can make such a statement and have it believed to be true, unless there is hard, irrefutable evidence that proves it to be true.

Now, if you had said "It is my belief that most terrorists are not muslim", then we'd be square. But a sweeping statement of any nature stated as fact invites inquiry, because such a statement implies that it should be accepted as true for a very good reason.


Hilarious. This is like my saying that I neatly and cogently summarized that I've concluded that space aliens exist. I've asked you to disprove it by giving you some public domain material.

And note that again, I am not interested in disproving anything, except that sweeping generalizations shouldn't be made unless you have irrefutable evidence to back it.

See above.



I mean that if you are going to make statements without qualifiers such as "in my opinion" or "based on my observation", then you had better have published study data to back it up, not some nebulous dataset for which you set your own qualifying bar. This is why, as I said before, neither statement about the terrorist demographics can ever be proven to the point where one can make such a sweeping generalization (again, without some qualifier)

For example, the 2003 Patterns report from the state dept that you cite offers much evidence that the opposite of what you propose is true, and actually supports Dovster. However, you cannot conclusively decide that "Most terrorists are Muslims" based on solely on the data in this report.

Now, let's suppose that I believed your statistics and took them at face value without actually verifying it to be true based on an irrefutable standard. Let's assume that it is entirely true. The problem arises with the age of the data. By your own admission, the data you supposedly culled and analyzed only applies to the years 2003 and prior. This raises the question of whether data that is at least five years old applies to the current situation, particularly given the dynamic nature of the problem. What about the current situation? How do you know that what was true five years and prior remains true today? This is why I say that yes, you can partially prove your point either way, but given the complexities of all that needs to be considerd, sweeping generalizing statements are simply not appropriate.


Here is an example of empirical observation (which, btw, is diffent from "empirical method" - look it up):
In my lifetime, I have observed 20 terrorist attackes, 15 of which were perpetrated by muslims, therefore, most terrorists must be muslims.

This is actually the argument I see most used to support the hypothesis opposite to yours, so I am surprised that you would attack it, IE "Just look at all the terrorists attacks by Muslims that you see reported in the media - it's obvious from this that most terrorists are Muslims"

Clearly, this logic is faulty because it only includes the pool of terrorist attacks actively reported in the media stream specific to the observer.

The bottom line is, you simply cannot make any of these statements:
"Most terrorists are Muslim" or
"Most terrorists are non-Muslim" or
"Most smokers will get cancer"

without qualifiers except for possibly the last case, for which there have been countless, long-term studies to prove this very statement. But I would argue that even in the last case, you would likely to have a qualifer such as "Most daily smokers will get cancer, for those who have a long history of smoking"

GUWonder

blooman, your argument above directed at me is not coherent. That is not a surprise as it includes errors and misrepresentations and barks up the wrong tree.

I am not here to waste my time to try to prove something (or anything for that matter which would inconvenience me more than I care to be materially inconvenienced). If you doubt the truth of my statement, then try to prove my statement to be false. You are clearly unwilling to try to disprove it using data from a public domain source to which you were referred. All you have to do is to prove from those reports that muslims perpetrated 50+% of listed blood-spilling terrorists attacks outside of active military conflict zones of the sort mentioned and then you'd have me screaming "uncle". Draft Dovster since he has a vested interest in it.

I am not going to spend more time trying to disprove myself. To require me to do that is a hilarious demand. You will have to try to do it on your own, if you really care to do that and go beyond your veiled "charged rhetoric".

Dovster

Nor should you -- you have already done an excellent job of that.

blooman

Interpretation: I have no further argument that can be based on actual facts and a logical progression of them. I will now have to obfuscate this apparent situation by attacking the credibility of the poster with misreprentation, re-direction, and accusation, rather than address the point that no published data actually exists to support my original, over-generalized assertion.

As a side note - GUWonder – My aim was not to take sides in this argument, as I view both to be wrong. At this point I have publicly scrubbed Dovster’s data (and I will note that at least he HAD actual data that could be referenced and scrubbed) and asserted my belief that he didn’t have any evidence to back up his original assertion either. This was an intellectual exercise that did not elicit personal attacks from him. Yet you seemed to take my scrubbing of your evidence as a personal attack from the beginning. If you actually had data that could support the making of sweeping, generalizing statements, it would speak for itself without having to make accusatory remarks about me or my motivations.

GUWonder

That would be another lie, as I have not disproved myself.

GUWonder

What it seemed to you is not what it was or is. More misrepresentation and misinterpretation on your part, both in the first and second paragraphs.

If you want to disprove that statement of mine, try. So far all you are doing is speculating above without presenting proof even using the public domain information to which you were referred.

You have not "scrubbed" the evidence to which you were referred -- you have so far refused to do that.

blooman

Okay, I'll play.

As I said before, my desire is not to disprove your assertion, but to prove mine, and that is, neither you nor Dovster can actually provide any irrefutable evidence to support either of the following statements without at least some sort of qualifier: a) Most terrorists are young, muslim men
b) Most terrorists are NOT young, muslim men

To prove my assertion, at least on your half of the equation, at this point, I don't even need to look at the details of the data you claim to have given me. As I've pointed out before, you claim to make your assertion based on information from State Department reports from 2003 and earlier. This means, that your claim is based on information that is at least five years old, and says nothing about the current situation with any certainty. Clearly, the nature of terrorist demographics is far from static.

So, even if one took your data analysis (which you have yet to provide) at face value, the very best that could be said is:

"If you accept and use GUWonder's selective method of collection and analysis of information and data taken from 2003 and prior state department reports, then you may be able to conclude that during the time period of data collection, most terrorists were not young, muslim men"

Now THAT is a statement I can agree with. ^

oneant

Women...can't live with them, can't strap a bomb to 'em.

alanR

Nor of any history at all - after all it was GWB himself who said we need to launch a Crusade against terrorists soon after 9/11.

That went down about as well as a fart in an elevator in the Middle East.