View Single Post
Old 12th December 2012, 02:17 PM   #140
gnome
Penultimate Amazing
 
gnome's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2001
Posts: 14,574
@smartcooky:

I side with the Israelis almost every time, I'm just not willing to say that anything they do is beyond reproach.

As far as the list of terrorist incidents you described, it does not get you any closer to a good answer on risk management when dealing with a randomly selected Arabic (or Muslim, for that matter). You are making a fundamental error in conditional probability.

Given someone you already know is a terrorist, the chances are currently quite high that they are a Muslim extremist.

However, compare the probability that randomly selected Muslim A and randomly selected non-Muslim B are terrorists, then the difference is so small as to be a waste of time worrying about. There are far more likely risks worth your concern.
__________________

gnome is online now   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top