Thanks! I try to always have data-supported posts. With that in mind, let's look at the rest of your comments:
No probs, always enjoyed your posts on other topics. So allow me to try and question some of your points :)
The graphs do include 9/11. I mean, it's not included in the first because the first shows deaths in Western Europe. It's included in the second as an event, but that chart doesn't show number of deaths. There aren't citations because this sort of data is everywhere - I just picked a few relevant ones from Google searches.
I have to be honest, and I think you can also admit, that pulling a few graphs from a Google Search wouldn't really be considered scholarly work worthy of publication nor a good investigation or report. Although I'm not expecting any of us to do a lot of data digging when even authorities don't have much data in the field.. And the graphs can still be debated. I think in terms of data analysis, best to leave to authorities in this field explain than have amateurs try and analyze.
My point is that the actual dangers of terrorism are orders of magnitude lower than other types of risks. I didn't do a good job explaining this, but my thinking is that:
1) Violent crime is rare
2) Violent crime due to terrorism is a tiny fraction of overall violent crime
3) Any trends in terrorism seems to be down over the last few decades
4) Because of 2, any trend in terrorism doesn't really change the likelihood of being a victim of violent crime
100% agree except 3 can be explained by multiple reasons as I'll mention. I'm not trying to overblow terrorism and the times article you linked briefly alludes to the point that lesser known, smaller scale incidents have occurred that don't garner attention. And the choice of what makes good sensationalism isn't your typical crime of passion, murder, robbery, etc. But people who live in communities that are safe, and who can only experience violence through what the media says, will feel what the media says is dangerous, IS dangerous. But there are those who say they are more fearful of bad neighborhoods, accidents, drinking & driving, drugs, etc and which they should.
Violent crime is rare depending on who you ask. Those in violent neighborhoods say they are more afraid of neighborhoods than jihadists, and that's sensible. Mustachians are likely to have enough $$ and education that we can avoid that.
You're able to list these because they're recent and because:
Forgive me but I can only remember events that I have been alive for. But I'm not sure how much citing the past does about future trends. Past doesn't predict future right? ISIS and its structure is a new phenomenon to us. The world is different than what it was before. Comparisons can't be made because tactics change and evolve. What worked before doesn't always work later. I only know Waco and Kent State. But otherwise in my history books, I don't know of any noteworthy shootings/mass murders/terrorism that occurred. When I ask older people they don't think its the same, they think it's more violent today.
If there are any Mustachians here who are 60-70 years old w/sharp memory and able to compare/contrast and provide insight that'd be great...I just don't think you'll find many
And the Internet/mass media is increasing these events and making it feel like it's increasing.
It would be just as easy to list terrorist attacks that occurred in the 80s.
There was no CNN back in the 70s/80s. Older people tell me there were no copycat crimes like today where people are "inspired" by Columbine or V Tech or 9/11. Media inspires future attackers by showing the fear they could instill in people through clamoring for people like Trump. And if there are attacks in the 80s, please list them, their scope, motivations, and have a clear definition between what terrorism is versus maybe riots, gang shootings, and so on. The media is designed to make the world be more chaotic. This was discussed in the other threads in MMM forums. "Fear Fear Fear!" "Ad Ad Ad!" repeat. It doesn't matter to people if there was an increase or not, it matters if it feels like they're in danger and that there is fear all around. To breed distrust, racism, etc.
Possibly. But the overall death rate is also lower (with 9/11 again being the outlier).
Terrorism isn't about just death but
fear and intimidation. Would you say people are more afraid today than before? What role does media and technology have in enhancing the fear of terrorists? I can and have seen HD high quality pictures of real sick brutality by ISIS (immolations, beheadings) and that Asian woman getting beheaded in Saudi Arabia for sticking a broomstick up a kid's butt or something...(I wouldn't recommend viewing to others)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrorist_plots_in_the_United_States_post-9/11If you look, and this is probably incomplete but tell me, what is the major group involved? What's a common thread?
Plus there's nothing saying that better medicine is saving lives that would've been lost cases decades ago. Or if this is an issue of gun control and easy access to info on how to wreck carnage compared to 80s when it was harder w/less information to enable those ideas to become reality. You have to think of ways to poke holes in this argument and saying "Oh decrease in deaths/incidents" isn't a reason to not worry about terrorism. It's what terrorism can do for our politics, actions, and potential war that's the problem. Plus the media tells us what to worry because people are sheep.
And how do you know that less terrorism isn't because of better law enforcement and surveillance w/a lot of focus on Muslims? Like the wiretapping of Mosques w/Fed and NYPD? Or better investigations (your link provided)? Maybe they focused more on Muslims so it lessened what impact they could've had. Less terrorism isn't necessarily less people committing acts, could be better prevention. I've read a number of articles over the years about enforcement and undercover agents trapping wannabe terrorists in the name of Islam. I don't see that type of enforcement on white extremists or at least any publicity, if there is data on the number of terrorist incidents foiled or prevented similar to the wiki link I provide, that would be interesting to have (You gotta think, not be drone to media, too bad I aint smart tho so I'm pretty limited, is why I'm here, learn from you guys)
I don't really care the religion of who commits crime. Knowing someone's religion isn't predictive of whether or not they'll commit a violent crime, so why should I care?
Focusing on terrorism committed by Muslims just ignores that people of other religions have also committed terrorism.
This point could be disproven. It actually is in the very source you
cited so I'm not sure you even looked at the full numbers. If Muslims commit or (attempt) terrorism that is above the normal % for a particular group, then you could infer that Islam can be a factor that influences future terroristic acts. Muslims as a whole in the US are a very small segment. But they maybe (I don't have hard data but your graphs don't show which is a point of debate) have also attempted more acts of terrorism as a % for their group.
http://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/deadly-attacks.htmlAny statistician will immediately say the news article you cited that based its conclusion on the link above as completely erroneous (this is one of my chief complaints about yellow journalism).
First, 45 by jihadists, 48 by white extremists. If the sample size or size of population from which those groups come from was the same then it's NOT statistically significant!
Now you know where I'm going next...there are 2.7 million Muslim Americans and
240ish million Whites (different years so I couldn't pick but you get the point). As a sheer %, I'm gonna go and guess Muslims are more likely as a % to become jihadists and commit acts of terrorism and this is supported by the data you (not me) provided. If you can find data on the population of Jihadists versus White extremists even being the same...still not significant. If there were more jihadists than white extremists by a factor of 100, then you'd be right. I'm gonna guess the chance of that is low but I don't have that data.
Example: if I compared a drug A to a control treatment's mortality rate and drug A killed 148 people and placebo killed 151, hey not much difference, placebo is worse right?! But if my sample size for those tested in drug A was 1000 and those in placebo 100,000, now it's a totally different story right?! Sample size is important, in clinical trials, %'s, not absolute whole numbers and counting, is what matters. This is Statistics 000. Not meaning to insult you, I'm pretty sure you know what I mean lol. This is a principle reason why I don't trust journalists. They aren't qualified experts to speak on important issues. They will twist and only glance and be reckless in analysis to support the interests of themselves and their readers for sake of sensationalism to get more revenue. There's Yellow Journalism everywhere in varying degrees and mixes of fact, exaggeration, and fiction. So there's a big potential flaw in your source that undermines your argument.
Technically then, religion does matter in terms of terrorism.
PKFFW perfectly addressed this: "Locking up innocent people because they might be radicalised by the internet or for any other dumb ass reason is just plain wrong."
I'd agree w/this 99% of the time. Again posters like to put words in my mouth. I don't support internment but any analogy to Japanese Americans is wholly, grossly incorrect because of the different cultures of the 2 groups, the history, and eras we are comparing to.
First, before Japanese were interned, there wasn't any real incident of Japanese Americans attacking American civilians prior to entrance to WWII. If there was, it must've been so irrelevant to the nations' psyche that it literally meant nothing that it doesn't show up in any history textbook. Japan wasn't at war w/America prior to America's entrance. They were at war in Asia (not USA). There was no track record of nationalistic Japanese Americans screaming "Banzai" and murdering American civilians, was there? And bombs were pretty big back then. And weapons not as powerful. And no internet to train anyone on how to destroy. And no internet to inspire Japanese to take arms against America.
(interestingly, Japanese-Americans took internment as a way to prove their loyalty and go above and beyond, almost a perverse, opposite, beneficial effect in America's war effort that endures today as an inspiration, just an observation, not saying it's good)
Muslims, OTOH, have a pretty decent (and exaggerated to an extent) track record of hating, killing Westerners and us Americans. They've made that clear 14 years ago. So it's completely natural and evolutionary to be wary of previous threats and draw connections. If we didn't have that instinct, we'd be extinct. It would be even scarier in a way if we weren't. Then there's social media recruiting that is available now that wasn't around during WWII. That means anyone can be a threat. Even whites or blacks that convert to Islam and join ISIS (which has happened). And it doesn't have to be on American soil like it wasn't in Kenya, Mali, Tunisia, Indonesia, Phillippines, Middle East, France, UK, Spain, Australia.
You cannot use the analogy of Japanese-Americans to support or oppose rounding up Muslims, it just doesn't work. Interning is wrong, but not because it was wrong to do that to Japanese, it's just not the smart path. It's also the hardest path sadly.
The big concern about Syrian refugees is the mix of religion, potential lack of integration (as shown in Europe) and welfare (not knowing language, unskilled, inability to read/write, mostly young single men, lack of fingerprinting, tracking, screening which we do in the US).
Violence has a detoxifying effect for any radical. It restores pride in them (how they see it, not us), after being or feeling oppressed. Accept refugees only if you're gonna make serious efforts to try and integrate but know that there will always be a huge potential security risk and is that risk worth it? So screening is important.
I agree w/you that in the grand scheme, we shouldn't worry about Syrian refugees and overall crime/terror they might bring. Overall, it's ridiculously small. Sure as a % they likely are to commit more acts that are defined as terrorism but also they don't drink (positive), do illicit drugs (positive), abort children and lack of family planning perhaps due to religion (idk), hate homosexuals (ask Muslims in Europe and there are some (idk the number) you'll get very conservative opinions) and are more in line w/RP philosophy (not good). So there's a lot of things potentially can't agree on. Is all this potential toxic mix something to worry? W/proper screening I don't think so, what we see in Europe, probably a big worry. Sure 500,000 aint a lot, but 0.1% is still 500 baddies you have to chase and devote resources to hunt and catch. And then they become domestic and then radicalized like French youths (marginalized, degraded, poor self-esteem, wandering, lost). Not a lot, but enough to shut down France, scare people, and forced or compelled to retaliate and get drawn into a conflict. bin Laden made very good notes on dragging the US into conflict (he understood this very well and was pretty smart) though I hate to say it.
Overall numbers, deaths, isn't what we should fear, but it's the fear their acts can potentially bring that is important. This isn't stats where we can throw outliers away; NSA/Uncle Sam know this. Because even one outlier, can completely throw us off course (like 9/11). Honestly, San Bernadinho isn't that big a deal. We're so used to shootings the shock and fear it had is pretty blah now. It would be more shocking, fearful, if terrorists attacked and killed large numbers of Americans in an unforeseen, unconventional method that exposes a weakness in our security measures and spaces that we once took to be completely safe. And it only takes 1. That's the fear of terrorism and why people are so afraid they are acting irrationally. Which distracts us from the more important goals of climate change, space exploration, food security, income/wealth inequality, etc.