More Muslim Marvelousnous

The BBQ Pit
1221

Nonsense. You are assuming that I advocate applying the first filter—Muslimness—and then will be spending an inordinate and unjustifiable amount of time scrutinizing each and every one. As I’ve stated numerous times now, yet for some reason you choose to ignore, I do not advocate that at all. That is just the FIRST filter. The only action I advocate after we sort for Muslimsness and identify that subset is to apply additional filters. Probably the very filters you deem wise.

Now (and this time perhaps you can trouble yourself to answer what is asked of you) how is it how is it more efficient to do whatever further filtering or scrutinizing the authorities would do after filtering for, say, travel to the ME then it would be if their were two filters applied: travel and Muslimness. The two filters result in a smaller group of people than just the one. So whatever further filtering or scrutinizing YOU advocate would be applied to a smaller group. In what world is it MORE efficient to apply those additional filters and investigative actions (again, whatever filters and investigative efforts you deem wise) to a larger group? That makes no sense.

What does make sense is to seek to shrink the group you’re going to expend resources on to make it as small as possible.

As far as you’re little ad hominem game. It is telling that even amid the completely rational argument I’m making for having one of many filters be for Muslimness (wrong or right), you insist on having that on the table. It’s comical, and suggests a blindness due to political correctness on your part. Now, if you wouldn’t mind please answer the questions I’ve put to you in this and my last post.

1222

And why that seems completely irrational is that instead of spending so much time “identifying that subset”, a subset of which only a tiny percentage will actually be in your target category, we could just jump to the “additional filters” directly.

That is, we don’t have to waste time sorting the entire population for “Muslimsness”. We can just go directly to the key filters that you mistakenly call “additional”, such as:

  • Who in the US is involved with radical extremist mosques whose leaders endorse the teachings of radical Islamists in the Muslim world?

  • Who is donating money to radical organizations supporting terrorism?

  • Who is distributing, and who is receiving, radical-Islamist propaganda material currently widespread among prison populations?

  • Who are the proponents and adherents of extreme Muslim-fundamentalist communities in educational institutions?

  • Who is a recent immigrant with a background of radical-Islamist or insurgent-group connections overseas?

  • Who is a close associate of persons in the above five categories?

All those questions and many like them involve applying scrutiny only to Muslims, but they don’t waste time filtering for Muslims qua Muslims.

1223

While you’re refusal to answer questions that have been asked of you is an answer in itself, until you deign to answer the specific questions I have asked you in a straightforward manner—as I have done for you—we are done.

1224

Actually, magellan01, I have in fact answered the questions you asked. Still, if you want to see your actual question marks quoted from the previous two posts you specified, I’m happy to oblige you.

Because, as I keep saying, “Muslim-ness” by itself is such a broad category and so weakly correlated with terrorism that it’s a waste of time and resources to look at it per se, as distinct from particular virulent subcategories of it.

What it makes sense to look at are the characteristics that correlate more closely with actual radical Muslim extremism, like the specific activities/affiliations I listed in my last post.

Nothing I’ve said here is an ad hominem argument. An argumentum ad hominem is a logical fallacy based on attacking the argument due to an unrelated characteristic of the person propounding it. For instance, if I said “We can’t take magellan01 seriously on debates about Islam because he’s over 50”*, that would be an ad hominem.

Accusing or suspecting somebody of prejudice about a subject related to their arguments, on the basis of the content of their arguments, is not an ad hominem attack. There’s nothing illogical or unfair about noting that if you persistently try to justify irrational criticisms of Islam per se as a proxy for specific dangerous groups within Islam, it’s reasonable to wonder whether that might be motivated by anti-Muslim prejudice.

As I said, I’ve been answering this all along. It is more efficient to skip the “Muslimness” criterion as a separate filter altogether, for the reasons I’ve repeatedly stated.

Skipping the separate, over-broad “Muslimness” filter doesn’t require applying the narrower filters “to a larger group”. As you can plainly see from the examples I listed, filtering by characteristics specifically associated with radical-extremist Islam automatically filters out almost all non-Muslims in the same step. Applying a general “Muslimness” filter separately is from a practical standpoint redundant, superfluous, and a waste of time and resources.

As I said, I’ve been answering these questions all along. You can still be done if you want to, of course, but I hope I’ve now made it clear why your insistence on conflating Islam in general with radical-extremist violent Islam in particular makes no rational sense. Except, of course, in the light of a rationalization of anti-Muslim prejudice.

  • Mind you, I have no idea whether magellan01 actually is over 50 or not, it’s just a random frinstance.
1225

Are you talking age or IQ?

1226

Sperm count.

1227

Chromosomes, maybe?

1228

Uh, I don’t think he’s in the second grade anymore, villa. Haven’t you missed him during all this time you’ve been repeating the class?

1229

Just to clear up your misconception underlying your joke there, Starving Artist: Measured IQ, unlike other characteristics such as height, weight, reading comprehension level, etc., doesn’t actually change that radically over a normal person’s lifetime.

For instance, no adult of normal intelligence (and whatever beef we may have with magellan01, I don’t think that any of us would argue that he’s actually of subnormal intelligence) would have had an IQ score of 50 when he was in the second grade.

1230

There is no underlying misconception, Kimstu. Or at least not on my part. I was simply referring to villa’s childish ‘age or IQ?’ joke, which is on about the same level as “I know you are but what am I?” I had given no weight to his assessment of magellan’s IQ at all, possibly for the reason that you state which is that his intelligence is obviously a good deal higher.

Plus there are people who would argue that IQ tests are flawed to begin with because they reward formal education and experience taking tests rather than assessing a person’s innate intelligence, which if true would likely result in a person scoring lower and lower as they grow older and further away from the experiences and classroom learning of their youth. So I don’t know that it’s accurate to say that a person maintains roughly the same IQ score as they grow older, although I think it’s perfectly possible that they maintain their same basic intelligence.

1231

Oh, I see.

Apparently it is accurate, depending on how you interpret “roughly”: IQ scores fluctuate only within one or two standard deviations over a subject’s lifetime. Like I said, nobody with a normal IQ level in adulthood would have tested with an IQ of 50 in childhood.

1232

Awwww, don’t pout, pumpkin! I think you are just as dumb as Magellan, if not dumber…

Feel better now?

1233

Hang on, this seems like an assumption in and of itself. We’re presumably after anyone who intends trouble, and you don’t need to be a Muslim to desire to aid radical Islamic extremists. You make the point that, by applying Muslim as your first filter, you ensure that we do not miss anyone; by that same standard, by applying Muslim as your first filter, you miss any potential non-Muslim leads. It’s not only an inefficient filter, as Kimstu argues, but also inaccurate. We’d miss out on non-Muslim knowing or unknowing confederates. In a sense it’s both too large and too small a filter.

1234

With a little tinkering, we can make it work. We just need to enlarge the filter a bit; since the vast majority of terrorist attacks on America are by immigrants, we can catch all the non-Muslim terrorists by putting all the immigrants up against the wall. But, dammit, there are still some non-immigrant, non-Muslim terrorists, so we need a larger filter. Hmmm, the terrorists are overwhelmingly male, so we simply treat all guys as suspects, and fewer terrorists will slip through our fingers. Unless, of course, they are CHICKS (you fiendish females!). OK, this is it; all humans are suspects, that is the perfect filter, no terrorist can elude that profile, and the rest is just good police work. They will never see us coming.

1235

I think I debated with magellan a while ago about whether, in terms of preparing oneself against the most likely threat, he should be prioritising against white males for most crimes and family members for others (as a rhetorical point), but I don’t think we came to an agreement on that one.

1236

I hear Rin Tin Tin recently converted to Wahhabi Islam, and was last seen crossing the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan.

1237

D’oh!!

1238

Well, dog gone!

1239

I just wanted to call this out for being awesome.

Just now? Really?

C’mon. Dude is clearly scared of brown people, which he equates Muslims to be.

Unfortunately, this is par for the course for mag. He’s just going to keep doing it over, and over, and over again.

Yeah, but *his *joke was funny, while yours was just kind of sad. Not surprising, coming from yet another poster whose age and IQ are a matched set.

1240

I dispute this. That would mean Starving Artist has gotten smarter over the years. Any review of his posting history would indicate how false that is.