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Correlation is not causation though, so it could be the other way round: reported anti-Muslim crimes lead to a spike of interest in the subject, not necessarily

by V-2 11y ago

Correlation is not causation though, so it could be the other way round: reported anti-Muslim crimes lead to a spike of interest in the subject, not necessarily the other way round. Or both are caused by a third factor (say, Boston bombings), but don't affect eachother directly.

coldtea 11y ago
>Correlation is not causation though, so it could be the other way round: reported anti-Muslim crimes lead to a spike of interest in the subject, not necessarily the other way round. Yeah, but my point is we could just use mere prior knowledge of how the world works to rule that out. I wouldn't expect many people to be typing "kill muslims" in order find muslim related hate-crime reports, especially in the aftermath of an terrorist attack attributed to muslims (and I wouldn't expect reality to be counter-intuitive to such an expectation either).
- V-2 11y ago
  But "wouldn't expect" isn't really knowledge, is it? It's just a presumption. It may or may not be valid. It could be based on a false premise, too. Apart from searching for hate-crime reports, there are many other possible reasons why someone would be googling for "kill muslims" that don't assume hateful emotional involvement. Curiosity, boredom; having read about a rise of anti-muslim comments. In what proportion? I don't know, and I don't claim to know, and if someone claims they do, I'm really sceptical about it. That's why I see these findings as rather useless. Too many unknowns for drawing conclusions.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >But "wouldn't expect" isn't really knowledge, is it? It's just a presumption. Yes, and my point is that presumption is enough in lots of cases -- and especially enough to be sure that "kill muslims" as a search term shows negative "emotional involvement" and not a desire to find out about muslim hate crimes...
    - V-2 11y ago
      Well, it's still not based on anything, which is why I remained unconcinved. Let's agree to disagree.

by V-2 11y ago

coldtea 11y ago

>Correlation is not causation though, so it could be the other way round: reported anti-Muslim crimes lead to a spike of interest in the subject, not necessarily the other way round. Yeah, but my point is we could just use mere prior knowledge of how the world works to rule that out. I wouldn't expect many people to be typing "kill muslims" in order find muslim related hate-crime reports, especially in the aftermath of an terrorist attack attributed to muslims (and I wouldn't expect reality to be counter-intuitive to such an expectation either).

V-2 11y ago
But "wouldn't expect" isn't really knowledge, is it? It's just a presumption. It may or may not be valid. It could be based on a false premise, too. Apart from searching for hate-crime reports, there are many other possible reasons why someone would be googling for "kill muslims" that don't assume hateful emotional involvement. Curiosity, boredom; having read about a rise of anti-muslim comments. In what proportion? I don't know, and I don't claim to know, and if someone claims they do, I'm really sceptical about it. That's why I see these findings as rather useless. Too many unknowns for drawing conclusions.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >But "wouldn't expect" isn't really knowledge, is it? It's just a presumption. Yes, and my point is that presumption is enough in lots of cases -- and especially enough to be sure that "kill muslims" as a search term shows negative "emotional involvement" and not a desire to find out about muslim hate crimes...
  - V-2 11y ago
    Well, it's still not based on anything, which is why I remained unconcinved. Let's agree to disagree.