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The comments on my last post have helped me better understand my reaction to the mosque protests, so I thought I'd promote some of that to a followup post. (But this will be the last one, really!)
First, an important point that I hadn't thought about when writing my last post: whatever their ultimate cause, some people have very real feelings of pain and anger at the thought of a mosque anywhere near Ground Zero. Sure, the basis for those feelings is probably an irrational but very human generalization of negative feelings toward "Muslim terrorists" to "all Muslims" (much as I described before), but we all find emotions clouding our logic at times. Looking at it that way, some of my earlier comments were harsher than they ought to have been.
And in fact, I'd be more sympathetic to the folks objecting to this mosque if their emphasis were on their own feelings and their own limitations rather than on the "offensive" actions of the Muslims involved. I'd feel much more comfortable if everyone who objected simply said, "I'm sorry, I hate to admit this, but in this place I still have strong negative associations with the Muslim terrorists who caused me such pain. I know it's unfair, but I'm not ready to cope with a Muslim community center so close just yet." But that's not the majority of what I've heard.
What I've heard (as previously quoted) is that building a mosque there would be "offensive", as if the Muslims planning it were the ones responsible for the pain. They're not! It might be more sensitive of them to refrain from building there (particularly if the objections had mostly been made in the way I described above), but the underlying problem is not of their making. Holding rallies to tell the Muslims they're not wanted (to the extent of driving away fellow Christian protesters if they happen to be Arabs) isn't a way of saying, "This is about my feelings." And it certainly isn't a way of saying, "...and I know those feelings aren't fair and I'm working to get over them."
That is why all these protests and objections bother me so much (and, I think, why I don't accept the word "offensive" as remotely appropriate in this context). If there is a valid reason to ask that the mosque not be built near Ground Zero, it must be made clear by everyone that even making such a request is an imposition on the innocent Muslims who are entirely within their legal and moral rights planning the project. But I don't think that's the spirit behind these protests. (And backing that up, the NY Times just published an article about opposition to new mosques all over the nation, most in "far less hallowed locations" than the general vicinity of Ground Zero.)
As a final thought, it's important to remember that the unfair mistreatment of Muslims in our society causes pain and humiliation and harm, too. We have to balance two types of undeniably real pain: the feelings of those for whom Muslims evoke the specter of terror, and the feelings of those innocents who face daily suspicion because of it. I don't know the best way to handle that. It may or may not be right, but I tend to have more sympathy with those who are being unjustly vilified than with those whose (real!) feelings are based on a flawed generalization.
False associations like "the terrorists were Muslim, so all Muslims are terrorists" are responsible for some of the darkest aspects of human nature. I think it's healthiest for everyone if we as a society work to recognize and reject them. And that's why I find it so upsetting when public figures who make these statements are taken seriously by society and the media rather than being condemned.
First, an important point that I hadn't thought about when writing my last post: whatever their ultimate cause, some people have very real feelings of pain and anger at the thought of a mosque anywhere near Ground Zero. Sure, the basis for those feelings is probably an irrational but very human generalization of negative feelings toward "Muslim terrorists" to "all Muslims" (much as I described before), but we all find emotions clouding our logic at times. Looking at it that way, some of my earlier comments were harsher than they ought to have been.
And in fact, I'd be more sympathetic to the folks objecting to this mosque if their emphasis were on their own feelings and their own limitations rather than on the "offensive" actions of the Muslims involved. I'd feel much more comfortable if everyone who objected simply said, "I'm sorry, I hate to admit this, but in this place I still have strong negative associations with the Muslim terrorists who caused me such pain. I know it's unfair, but I'm not ready to cope with a Muslim community center so close just yet." But that's not the majority of what I've heard.
What I've heard (as previously quoted) is that building a mosque there would be "offensive", as if the Muslims planning it were the ones responsible for the pain. They're not! It might be more sensitive of them to refrain from building there (particularly if the objections had mostly been made in the way I described above), but the underlying problem is not of their making. Holding rallies to tell the Muslims they're not wanted (to the extent of driving away fellow Christian protesters if they happen to be Arabs) isn't a way of saying, "This is about my feelings." And it certainly isn't a way of saying, "...and I know those feelings aren't fair and I'm working to get over them."
That is why all these protests and objections bother me so much (and, I think, why I don't accept the word "offensive" as remotely appropriate in this context). If there is a valid reason to ask that the mosque not be built near Ground Zero, it must be made clear by everyone that even making such a request is an imposition on the innocent Muslims who are entirely within their legal and moral rights planning the project. But I don't think that's the spirit behind these protests. (And backing that up, the NY Times just published an article about opposition to new mosques all over the nation, most in "far less hallowed locations" than the general vicinity of Ground Zero.)
As a final thought, it's important to remember that the unfair mistreatment of Muslims in our society causes pain and humiliation and harm, too. We have to balance two types of undeniably real pain: the feelings of those for whom Muslims evoke the specter of terror, and the feelings of those innocents who face daily suspicion because of it. I don't know the best way to handle that. It may or may not be right, but I tend to have more sympathy with those who are being unjustly vilified than with those whose (real!) feelings are based on a flawed generalization.
False associations like "the terrorists were Muslim, so all Muslims are terrorists" are responsible for some of the darkest aspects of human nature. I think it's healthiest for everyone if we as a society work to recognize and reject them. And that's why I find it so upsetting when public figures who make these statements are taken seriously by society and the media rather than being condemned.
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How? Tough question.
--Beth
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True love of freedom is found when you support the right of other's to offend you. Anything less is hypocracy.
Building a mosque at ground zero is offensive. Not because the building of a mosque in the US is offensive, but because choosing that site is obviously going to be hurtful, to continue to chose that sight shows a disregaurd for those feelings. The disregaurd for those feelings is offensive.
None-the-less I fully support the right of any group to build a mosque in the vacinity of ground zero. I fully oppose any effort to stop them on legeal grounds.
You want to stop them? Buy all the land close to ground zero and fill it up with successive buildings so their is no room for a mosque.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXm_fUDfJZQ
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It is much simpler to just live through tragedy than to observe it. Humans are built that way.
Hamlet finds release; the playgoer, angst. In massive disasters of earthquake, fire, flood --- the locals tend to band together and re-build, while our journalists fly in on helicopters to scream about looting and rioters. Pornography is rooted in observation not participation; hence beware people who wants to forbid something to you because they forbid themselves.
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Things that have actually offended WTC survivors: Air Force 1 doing a low-fly pass over the area without warning New Yorkers ahead of time (gave people flashbacks and reactivated various PTSD) and voting against health benefits for WTC first responders ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AG0ddWf9TQ ).
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Really? So then you don't believe in gun restrictions? Or campaign finance reform or hate speech codes or sexual harassment codes that violates free speech rights? Or any of the 98% of stuff our government does which is contrary to the Bill of Rights? I didn't know you were a constitutionalist, this really doesn't sound like your political beliefs as I've heard them...
So ranty I had to use two comments...
With respect to gun rights, I believe that the subphrase, "a well regulated militia" means that the militia can be regulated a bit. I am pro concealed carry when it is accompanied with safety training, for example. Like a driver's license, but showing you know how to practice safe gun handling. Like a driver's license, the test and course should be both passable and failable by anyone. The NRA's course is apparently quite good in this regard. (I am an eagle scout and military brat - I actually both know and care quite a bit about gun laws. The right-wing fetishization of guns gives me the howling fantods. Guns won't make you free, and they do a poor job for anything except stupid intimidation and last-ditch personal defense against incompetent attackers, which happens far less than people think. But I do like shooting trap, although I haven't in many years).
Campaign finance reform I am conflicted on, because while money and speech are not equivalent, but I recognize that they are mildly correlated. I am pretty comfortable with maximum limits of personal giving, however. I also support radical transparency in funding. Everyone should be able to find trivially out who gave money to whom and who got money from whom, and non-humans (i.e. corporations, PACs, etc) should be entirely barred from donating money.
Hate speech codes are done by private entities, presumably you mean existing hate-speech laws. Hate-speech laws have, as far as I know, never been used except when combined with an actual crime committed. I am fine with using hate-speech as a penalty multiplier. If I threaten an entire community and then act upon that threat on one person, then the crime I have committed is extra bad, as it negatively effects more people than just the most-victimized person. Another example of criminal speech: If I give an abortion doctor's home address and then someone reads it, finds him, and murders him, my speech would rightly make me an accessory to the crime and put in in legal trouble.
Sexual harassment codes are by private entities. Presumably you mean sexual harassment laws. Could you enumerate one that you object to so that I am not fighting a straw man?
I get pretty frustrated with the stuff that our government does that is contrary to the bill of rights, but I suspect that I am not as dogmatic about things as you are. For example: 98% of the stuff our government does is contrary to the Bill of Rights? No. It's only contrary to a hardcore libertarian fingers-in-ears lalalala not-listening interpretation of the Constitution. You equate money with power with speech, and so when I talk about being for regulating the flow of money (via taxation, subsidies, and government spending on infrastructure and research) and stemming the power of corporations (which are not people) you hear me talking about regulating speech. If you don't think those three things are equivalent, then I am pretty easy to understand.
I also strongly believe that the free market doesn't work well when things get too sparse (previous conversation about pharmacies being required to sell things applies here) or when the entities involved get too big and too concentrated (net neutrality worries and my support of anti-trust laws goes here) or when important information is allowed to be hidden (support for labeling laws and the FDA goes here) or when there are negative externalities (environmental causes go here), which, when combined with the fact that money does not equal speech, makes me okay with and support lots of things to which you object. You believe that a completely unfettered free market will find the most efficient way the fastest, and the most efficient way is also the right way. I disagree on both counts. I also think of the government as changeable and fixable.
Re: So ranty I had to use two comments...
Sounds good to me!
Hate speech codes are done by private entities...Hate-speech laws have, as far as I know, never been used except when combined with an actual crime committed.
Public universities are the main place where codes, not laws, are inflicted on people. And the libertarian echo chamber frequently reports stories on abuses of hate speech codes. Here's a libertarian propaganda documentary:
http://www.indoctrinate-u.com/intro/
Presumably you mean sexual harassment laws. Could you enumerate one that you object to so that I am not fighting a straw man?
That certain forms of speech ("Hey baby, you are hot, I would like to make sexy time with you") are banned in offices nationwide by the federal government, rather than set on a company-by-company basis. More generally, the idea that saying true things (unlike slander/libel) would be illegal just because someone doesn't like hearing them seems blatantly against free speech. I mean, as a workplace policy to make a good working environment, I am all for it, I would voluntarily have it in my companies, and I really like the standard which I believe is the law which I was taught at Google "You can ask someone out once. Twice is harassment". That seems very reasonable. But not mandating it nationwide.
For example: 98% of the stuff our government does is contrary to the Bill of Rights? No. It's only contrary to a hardcore libertarian fingers-in-ears lalalala not-listening interpretation of the Constitution.
We disagree. The interstate commerce clause was never meant to cover the federal government regulating everyone, that much is very clear. Now, I do believe in political self-determination as the most fundamental right, and I have no problem with all America voting to tear up the Constitution. But I do think it is an objective truth that judges have made erroneous "interpretations" which have drastically changed the enforced meaning of the constitution from the original intent.
I also strongly believe that the free market doesn't work well...when the entities involved get too big and too concentrated
But government is much bigger and much more concentrated than almost any private sector corporation almost all the time! You are fixing a fire by draining an oil well onto it. Libertarians hate big concentrated power, that's a fundamental part of who we are. To say you like government over the free market because you don't like large concentrated entities is the kind of insane cognitive dissonance that I judge liberal philosophy as incoherent based on. (I consider most libertarian philosophy incoherent and cognitively dissonant too, I will add).
I don't believe a free market is perfect or definitely the best or definitely perfect & I have never said that, it is a simple and false caricature of my beliefs (sadly, a true statement about some libertarians). I simply believe that there is strong empirical & theoretical evidence that it is the least imperfect in almost all cases, and that regulation makes things worse much more often than better. And I think that efficient is the closest, most consistent metric we have to utilitarianism & net social good.
Re: So ranty I had to use two comments...
I understand that this is how it is done, in broad strokes, in US offices. But the bigger issue is that I have never seen cited any law or bill which mandates this, so all I have to go on is caricatures of it from people with your politics. So I have no idea whether I am okay with the law, because I don't know whether the law and the caricature match up. In the past, I have seen too many examples of the law and the caricature being orthogonal, that I no longer trust the caricatures.
Also, I fundamentally mistrust the Indoctrinate-U people. I have seen the most revolting crap, on both sides of the aisle, get a free pass at every public university I have visited. They seem like they want to pee in the pool, and are angry because "pee" is ill defined in the "don't pee in the pool" rule (Can I ship urine TO the pool? What about if I have a drop of pee from last going to the bathroom? Why are you letting that little baby off the hook for its purported "accident" when I would get arrested if I did that?).
Re: So ranty I had to use two comments...
So I am not referring to a "caricature" and it has nothing to do with "my politics", this is what I was taught by a giant liberal corporation. I don't know much about this, but it appears you know even less.
They seem like they want to pee in the pool and are angry because "pee" is ill defined in the "don't pee in the pool" rule
There are liberals I get along well with. They genuinely welcome alternative viewpoints, including libertarian ones. They do not interpret "people with dissenting views" as "people who want to urinate in the pool". Since when is expressing minority, unusual political opinions equated to pissing publicly? That's fucking disgusting, dehumanizing, and completely intolerant. How can you consider yourself tolerant when you view things that way?
The Indoctrinate U people are propagandists, finding the worst cases and painting the worst picture, no doubt about that. But their propaganda is about toleration of minority views.
Re: So ranty I had to use two comments...
The only propaganda I like is the quaint posters and films from long-ended conflicts. I find them retroactively charming in a sinister kind of way. Duck and cover! When you ride alone, you ride with HITLER! As long as magic tricks like this ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg ) still work, propaganda on current emotionally-charged issues is fundamentally evil and wrong.
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Right now, the two things which make me most angry with various members of the government right now are the existence of Guantanamo Bay, and the continued whack-a-mole game being played among senior military and civilian leaders who keep asserting that we are at war with Islam, which is also the devil, and we need to win this war for Jesus (and then these people are eventually fired - but what kind of messed up culture could make them think that was okay in the first place?). Domestic problems can be fixed, but foreign relations mixed with fundamentalist christian bullshit starts wars, recruits terrorists, and leaves wounds which take decades to heal.
Domestically, the continued existence of the TSA makes me angry (have they EVER stopped ANYONE?), and every time I see a sign saying "no photographs" I get furious. Laws about marijuana and other drugs are stupid, but I don't think they are unconstitutional, although if you asked me to point out the exact hack on the constitution which makes them okay, I doubt I could. Probably something involving "blah blah blah interstate commerce blah blah". Our treatment of immigrants bothers me muchly, too, as does our treatment of gay people (although less, because we don't have prison-without-trial for gay people like we do with immigrants). Also, the existence of secret laws or laws you must pay to see makes me froth at the mouth.
Basically, I think government should look out for the little guy to make sure they get a square deal, and you don't. You think of me as some radical communist because I only chime in when I disagree with you, and then I vigorously defend myself instead of walking away with my tail between my legs. If I agree with something you express or simply don't care, then I don't bother joining (or reading) the circle-jerk that usually results when people start praising your stuff on the Internet. I will point out again that you blog in an echo chamber, however. Everyone does (blog in an echo chamber), but it's important to be aware of it and to actively take steps to counter its negative effects on your own thinking.
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Note that one of the main reasons I don't is I think the government is ineffective at ensuring square deals - it is much better at giving more privilege to the privileged, because the political marketplace is a marketplace of influence just like any other, and as many smart economists have argued both empirically & theoretically, in the political marketplace poor people are usually at an even greater relative disadvantage than in the economic marketplace. I also don't think pointing guns at people to tell them what kinds of deals they have to offer or accept is moral, but I would be much less bothered by it if I thought it actually achieved it's purported aims. It is easy to stigmatize libertarians as uncaring and ignore their substantive critique of whether government actually helps poor people. Just look at Social Security, which taxes the poor to give retirement benefits to the middle class to see how government programs redistribute in practice rather than in theory.
I will point out again that you blog in an echo chamber, however
Definitely. Although I like & encourage people who disagree with me while speaking my language and sharing my values. That is in itself a filter which removes many people and some true points of view, but it's not like I just filter for agreement. I am not open-minded enough to be able to communicate effectively and learn from people who don't speak my language and have very different values, so I am fine with filtering them out.
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The most successful of the great society programs? The one which has single-handedly largely solved the problem of extreme poverty among the elderly? Yeah, I think it sucks. No. Wait. The opposite is true. I think it rocks! The only problem, near as I can tell, is that only the first X amount of income is taxed as social security income. That's a stupid loophole for the rich. Other than that, I am a big fan.
Of course the government helps poor people - not enough, and not in the right ways, but it helps them nonetheless. Government help for the poor and government rules are a large part of why poverty in America is distinct (and better than) poverty in, say, Mumbai or the large cities in the -stans. We have a better rule-set, better infrastructure, less corruption, and we have a strong enough safety net that people feel safe in taking risks. Nobody starves to death in the USA. They go hungry sometimes (and that's a bad thing which should be fixed), but starvation is a non-issue. The reason people don't starve to death is, in large part, government programs to prevent starvation. Food stamps, WIC, and many other programs have helped many people and saved many lives. Unfortunately for your point of view, the lives it saved were those of economically unproductive citizens - those people are often still a drain on the system. The question is whether we have a duty to help others not starve simply because they are human and we are human - I say yes, and I have never met a libertarian who says anything other than no.
Government also helps rich people! More than it should, but one of the main reasons for having a civilization is that it allows rich people to keep their toys. Protecting the haves from the have-nots has always been the point of government - that's what rules *are*. Rules don't protect people who have nothing. The amazing thing is not that government helps rich people, but that in America we first figured out how to make it help everyone else some as well.
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Nope, that's just part of the problem. Also, it is not means-tested, so the rich get paid. Also, it is based on lifespan, and the poor (particularly the poor & black) live shorter lives. The overall result is that Social Security is a HIDEOUSLY bad deal for poor blacks, who pay much more in taxes than they get in benefits. It's a miserably bad implementation of the desired goal, even if you don't count the whole generational ponzi scheme collapsing under shifting demographics time bomb.
This is an objective fact that economists agree on, not an ideological statement. If we had the goal of "stopping extreme poverty among the elderly", and you submitted Social Security as a proposal, it would get a D.
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The bigger issue, however, is that by saying "blacks and the poor die young" you are stating it as if *Social Security* is the problem. The problem is that these people are *dying young*. Let's fix *that*.
As far as I have heard from economists, I have never heard of another proposal which actually provided a guarantee the way social security does. There certainly are ways to make more money. But not any which provide guaranteed security. It's a matter of goals. Social security provides extremely low returns and extremely low variance. This is a *good thing* for a program which is the last resort for many many people. If it gets an economics D, in the absence of a creditable alternative I'll blame the economists. This D-grade program is working well, and looks like it will keep working. Let's keep it.
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Merriam-Webster: "Offensive: (3) causing displeasure or resentment"
To describe the Muslim's actions as "offensive" is to state that they are causing displeasure or resentment. Which, they obviously are! The Muslims planning the mosque are responsible for the displeasure and resentment they cause in the same way that anyone else taking an action which causes a result is responsible for the result, whether or not the result "ought" to exist or the reaction is fair. It may be their right to be offensive. It may be good for a free society for them to be offensive. But anyone who notices that they are gonna piss people off is accurate in calling them offensive.
If you act and it makes people mad then your action is, by definition, offensive. That is the definition of the word "offensive". Stop resisting it - you have good points to make that will work just fine without trying to redefine the word :).
False associations like "Not all Muslims are terrorists, so we should ignore the huge correlation between "terrorist" and "Muslim"" leading to irrational security measures will let more terrorists kill more people. There is always a price to ignoring the truth, however unpleasant it may be. The mathematically optimal way to devote resources to reducing terrorism is to pull Muslims out of line in airports more often, to pull them over in cars more often, etc. If you choose not to do that b/c you don't want innocent Muslims to feel bad, you are choosing more terrorism. I'm not saying that choice is unreasonable, but you seem to be ignoring that it is a tradeoff.
I believe that denying true statistical correlations out of a concern for how the truth might be misused, rather than prioritizing truth & accuracy above all, is one of the darkest aspects of human nature. It is fundamentally an example of letting what ought to be influence your beliefs about what is, and that is one of the key aspects of irrationality, and irrationality leads to vast amounts of harm in the world.
We each have our buttons & priorities - mine are very different than yours. I'm much more concerned about we as a society working to recognize and reject political correctness than greater equality.
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You mean politeness? Who has lost their non-political job simply because they expressed "politically incorrect" positions? Mel Gibson doesn't count, as his job is essentially a grandiose form of public relations and being likable. Larry Summers doesn't count, because he lost the job of President of Harvard - a political job that involved asking people for money. Had he been a professor who lost tenure, things would be different. Different jobs have different protection levels. Everyone I can think of who has lost their job in this way has had a political or PR job, and they got caught saying something offensive or impolitic. That's a sign of incompetence, which is a firing offense.
"Political correctness" is a phrase created by right-wingers in response to lefties advocating for understanding and tolerance and awareness. Speech has consequences and no man is an island. Talk careful and don't piss people off without meaning to. Those on the right assumed (or simply disingenuously took the rhetorical position) that the lefties were advocating for speech codes, rather than advocating that people be aware when their speech was causing others pain, and not do it unnecessarily. Now it has morphed into this boogieman/strawman. Fighting against "political correctness" is stupid. You are fighting a strawman created solely to be torn down. Fight against misinformation of all kinds.
With respect to the muslim/terrorist correlation, you are asserting a true mathematical fact. But that model, when applied to the world, needs some error bars for peoples' perception filters and ability to usefully process information. I claim that in this instance the error bars are bigger than the received info (an empirical claim, but I think a true one). It's not that I want more terrorism, it's that I don't think that telling people to watch out for muslims will materially help prevent more incidents, while I think such a "watch out for muslims!" message would provide aid and comfort to our current enemies, as it would increase the number of muslim terrorists. So maybe it is true and useful, but only as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we decide to radicalize US muslims, I bet more of them will become terrorists!
If we decided to hunt and kill all red-haired people, I think that seeing red hair on a person would be a good sign that they were a terrorist. That's not the right way to deal with 1 billion muslims, however. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeMvUlxXyz8
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And "tolerance" is a phrase created by left-wingers to give positive connotations to the policies they advocate. And I think that some kinds of "tolerance" and "awareness" are harmful.
Speech has consequences
And I believe that weasel-wording and ignoring unpleasant truths has deep negative consequences for individuals and society, poisoning their minds against truth-seeking and preventing genuine authentic conversations about how to deal with unpleasant truths. That is a consequence of politically correct speech. Another consequence is that it doesn't hurt people as much. Maybe I'm wrong about the balance. But it is disingenuous to pretend that unpleasant truths - truths that potentially can lead to intolerant - don't exist and that this pretending has no consequences. What ever happened to being a "reality based community"?
I claim that in this instance the error bars are bigger than the received info (an empirical claim, but I think a true one). It's not that I want more terrorism, it's that I don't think that telling people to watch out for muslims will materially help prevent more incidents, while I think such a "watch out for muslims!" message would provide aid and comfort to our current enemies, as it would increase the number of muslim terrorists.
Again, I admit to this being a push button issue for me, but I am very wary of arguments that we should deny, shut our mouths on, or restrict truths because we think they will get misinterpreted and used poorly due to bias. There is bias in deciding which truths to restrict, and I would much rather that we were just open about the truth and then had good dialogue about how to use it than that we shut down the truth. And I never suggested or would suggest telling people to watch out for Muslims. I simply object to Stu saying that there was no association between Muslim & terrorist, and I object to people who respond to my pointing out there is a real, strong association by saying I may be right but we shouldn't talk about it. Objecting to a statement based on perceptions of how it might be used rather than arguments about whether it is true - essentially, giving normative value to factual statements, and letting beliefs about normative implications contaminate factual statements - makes my blood boil. We all have our issues.
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As for ignoring unpleasant truths? Quoi? You are using "truth" here in a weird way which keeps flipping back and forth between mathematical truth, and the standard of truth we deal with in every day life. It is much like the word "correlated" that comes up in this conversation. Lots of things are correlated with lots of other things. And mathematical correlation is a distinct flavor from the more general term used in most conversation. I agree with you that the statistics are mathematically correlated. The question is are they correlated in the sense in which we use the word in every day life? You will find nothing in this world which is mathematically correlated at 0 (I am serious here). So when we use the word "correlated" in a non-mathematical conversation you are stating not just a mathematical statement (the correlation coefficient is nonzero), but also a value judgement that this correlation is large enough and useful enough and important enough to bring up. I disagree with the value judgement that you seem unwilling to recognize is occurring.
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I've felt a bit frustrated by your response to my comments (both here and on Facebook/Twitter). You've repeatedly suggested that I'm "ignoring the truth", "denying true statistical correlations", or succumbing to blind "political correctness". Maybe I've expressed myself poorly and given that impression, but such was not my intent and it is a highly inaccurate description of my views. I hoped that I had put those impressions thoroughly to rest in the long thread on Facebook, but perhaps you didn't follow that discussion so I'll repeat the gist here.
The mathematically optimal way to devote resources to reducing terrorism is to pull Muslims out of line in airports more often, to pull them over in cars more often, etc. If you choose not to do that b/c you don't want innocent Muslims to feel bad, you are choosing more terrorism.
I see your point, but I strongly suspect that your claim here is false (or at least considerably less obvious than you suggest), and I would guess specifically that you have reached this false conclusion because your model is oversimplified.
First, an aside: you claim there is a 'huge correlation between "terrorist" and "Muslim"', which I find misleading. I think you're computing "huge" in a relative sense but then using it in an absolute sense. That is, a huge fraction of anti-US/anti-West terrorists are indeed Muslim, but only a small fraction of Muslims are terrorists. (See your Facebook thread for a discussion with specific numbers, for the UK.) Your wording suggests that a large absolute fraction of Muslims are terrorists, and I believe that misleading statements of this kind tend to inspire unjustified levels of anti-Muslim sentiment.
And that gets at the reason I suspect your claim is false. Identifying and stopping attempted attacks is not the only way to reduce terrorism. Over the long term, it is important to mitigate the factors that motivate terrorism in the first place. Targeting Muslims for heightened scrutiny and mistrust unquestionably helps with that first approach, but it is also unquestionable that it does harm (both concrete and emotional) to the innocents it affects. I claim that it also encourages the broader culture to view Muslims with mistrust. I believe both of these negative factors will inevitably make Muslims around the world feel more threatened by America. I suspect that the most effective to reduce terrorism in the long term will be to reduce those feelings of division and mistrust.
In that Facebook conversation, I eventually asked two questions (based on numbers someone suggested there): '1. To what degree can a human mind distinguish between probabilities of 1/10^3 and 1/10^5 on an intuitive level? (That is, in everyday life without explicitly doing math.) 2. Do practical policies exist for which the incremental counter-terrorism benefit of increasing scrutiny on all Muslims (or some easily profiled subset like "young men") outweighs the incremental humiliation and harm to the ~99.9% who are innocent?' As I said there, I don't know either answer but my guesses would be '"very poorly" and "probably not".' If so, then although we should all keep the statistical reality in mind (because I too put tremendous value on Truth), I claim that on a practical level it is better in almost all cases to behave as if Muslims are no more likely to be terrorists than anyone else.
Just as important, terrorism is only one kind of harm. The harm that our society inflicts daily on the Muslims among us (in the form of humiliation and mistrust) is much less intense, but enormously more widespread. It's just Not Right to leave that accumulated harm out of your calculations when deciding on an optimal course of action, whether for governmental policy or individual behavior.
But hey, I've spent a lot of time on this discussion. I think this is it for me (unless something really significant comes up).
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Sorry! You pushed my buttons, I am unsurprised that this resulted in a frustrating response on my part :).
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First, an aside: you claim there is a 'huge correlation between "terrorist" and "Muslim"', which I find misleading. I think you're computing "huge" in a relative sense but then using it in an absolute sense. That is, a huge fraction of anti-US/anti-West terrorists are indeed Muslim, but only a small fraction of Muslims are terrorists...And that gets at the reason I suspect your claim is false. Identifying and stopping attempted attacks is not the only way to reduce terrorism. Over the long term, it is important to mitigate the factors that motivate terrorism in the first place.
I am going to be very meta-here and verge on ad hominem, but I am skeptical when people find roundabout causations (uncertain, complex, long-term) which point to the solution they are comfortable with and say these causations outweigh simple, direct, first-order effects which point to the solution they are uncomfortable with. It smells like someone trying to find an argument to prove what they want to be true. I do it too, and I hate it when people disagree with me with the type of argument I just gave, but I don't think that means it is wrong.
But I will engage with your argument's details as well.
More correct than huge association is huge relative risk. A factor of 100 (the Facebook thread) is a massive relative risk factor. Medical studies often find relative risks like 1.5 or 2.2 If you are building a statistical model for the CIA, and you find a feature which increased by a factor of 100 the chance that someone is a terrorist, that is an INCREDIBLY GOOD feature. It will almost certainly be the best feature in your model. Working with data sets at Google, you almost never find features that good. This is a huge statistical effect!
Give me that feature alone, and put me against an expert at analyzing someone's background who has a statistical model based on countries traveled to and country of origin and many other features, but who cannot use religion (and must remove religion correlates from his model - ie must control for religion and be evaluated on the controlled set), and I can fare well in a contest of "Pick the 0.1% of the population we are going to put law enforcement resources into studying and maximize the %age of terrorists who are in that 0.1%."
And this example shows why your " 1/10^3 and 1/10^5 on an intuitive level? (That is, in everyday life without explicitly doing math...I claim that on a practical level it is better in almost all cases to behave as if Muslims are no more likely to be terrorists than anyone else." is the wrong way to think about things, because this info doesn't get used in everyday life. Law enforcement has very few resources, they can only examine a few people. So what matters is: how can they pick the best people to examine, those most likely to be terrorists? It's not about increasing scrutiny on all Muslims - we can't afford that! It's about correctly picking the 0.1% of the population who the FBI runs more thorough background checks on, looks at the bank accounts of, etc. And in building that statistical model, the feature "Muslim" is going to be very very powerful.
This somewhat addresses your worry about targeting Muslims for heightened scrutiny, because I am not suggesting that we do this do a very large proportion of Muslims, so it won't piss off very many people. Many of those who are scrutinized will be Muslims, but few Muslims will be scrutinized.
I certainly agree it will help the Muslim world feel more threatened and mistrusted by America. And this has some negative effects. It also has some positive effects - like increasing the pressure on the Muslim world to self-police, making moderate Muslims ashamed of their radical brethren and more likely to speak out in the Muslim world - which is where potential terrorists are - against terrorism. I think potential terrorists are much more likely to become actual terrorists in a Muslim world with less self-policing than they are to become actual terrorists because the US searches Muslims more often and that offends them.
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I am skeptical when people find roundabout causations (uncertain, complex, long-term) which point to the solution they are comfortable with and say these causations outweigh simple, direct, first-order effects which point to the solution they are uncomfortable with.
This is a Very Good Point(TM). I still suspect that I'm right, mind you, but there's an awful lot of psychology encouraging me to believe that whether rationally or not. Part of the problem is that I don't know how to quantitatively compare the expected harm of an increased probability of terrorism with the accumulating harm of discriminatory policies on Muslims that's happening every day. (And that's assuming that the net probability of terrorism actually does decrease as a result of greater scrutiny; you make a reasonable case for not going too far in the other direction.)
My final comment is that IF there's a way of increasing scrutiny on Muslims by law enforcement that doesn't substantially bleed over into increased hostility from the general population, and whose collective negative impact on the vast majority of Muslims who are innocent is clearly less than the expected benefit, then I'm fine with using religion in profiling data. But I'd want some sort of independent (and public!) study to verify those projections with high probability before each and every such use was approved. As you've pointed out, when I see a government institute this sort of policy I immediately start to worry whether there's a holocaust (or even just internment camps) waiting to happen.