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Correlation != Causation If we examine the background of anyone who has ever committed terrorism, every major race and religion would be covered. And so much o
by everdev 9y ago
Correlation != Causation
If we examine the background of anyone who has ever committed terrorism, every major race and religion would be covered. And so much of crime comes from social context, so at what point could you ever say: it's safe to assume that anyone with X ethnic background is not a threat. You can take any race and put them in a hostile, violent context and see them either continue the violence or die.
Or, if you say the majority of terrorists are men, so let's stop profiling women, I'm sure you would find more women committing terrorism. Then are women the greater threat or is it simply that we've made it harder for men to be terrorists?
I don't see a way to profile without affecting the statistics.
- sooheon 9y agoI agree with the gist of everything you've written here. And I think you're slightly missing the point. > "so much of crime comes from social context" Agreed. This is why I advocate taking that context into account. Not profiling would mean treating every single individual the exact same way, removing all social context from consideration. > at what point could you ever say: it's safe to assume that anyone with X ethnic background is not a threat This is not the point of profiling. The point is to build probability distributions, and hone them. > I don't see a way to profile without affecting the statistics. This is literally the point! You want to profile on such an exacting superset of factors (behavior, history, autonomous responses, forensics...) that you cause the incidence rate of terrorism to go down, across the board. A brittle policy like "only screen middle eastern men" will of course get gamed, but that is terrible profiling. It builds a one-dimensional "profile"--you want a profile that is harder to fool, and based on actual behavioral cues.