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Kilkrazy wrote:How many church spires and towers are there?

How many tall office buildings?

How many buildings of more than five stories?

These are examples of facts and evidence.

It depends on area doesn't it? As long as the rules are equally enforced then its kind of a too bad situation.

A ban on tall buildings in general would address that issue. As Switzerland banned minarets specifically this can be regarded as an issue of aesthetics, but I consider the ordinances involved to be a much larger political statement. That is why it made such a splash when the story got picked up by the larger media.

Frazzled wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Orlanth wrote:

Wrexasaur wrote:
I understand that you have a very strong opinion on this subject. You are telling me to re-read the thread because you supposedly proved your point so clearly that I am supposed to regard your statements as fact. I disagree with you, and you take offense to that so much that you feel forced to insult me in one way or another.

Disagree would be one thing, but you claimed I had supporteed my case with no evidence, which could only mean you hadnt read the thread. Disagree with the evidence is one thing, saying I posted none is somehing else.

How many minarets are there in Switzerland?

How many in Japan?
I know many areas that have historical or building restrictions. They don't care about religion, just keeping the area homogeneous in aesthetic. You couldn't have minarets or a steeple there either, but you could still have a church or mosque.

That's the point. The Swiss didn't ban the building of tall buildings, they banned the building of minarets. It wasn't to do with keeping a homogenous aesthetic, it was to do with stopping the building of minarets.
57, but it's irrelevant, as Japan hasn't banned the building of minarets.

Kilkrazy wrote:It wasn't to do with keeping a homogenous aesthetic, it was to do with stopping the building of minarets.

One can easily fall back on the concept of cultural aesthetics, but it doesn't make for a very compelling reason to take such action as Switzerland did.

I am not saying that they had no right to do so, and I consider action on Switzerland's part to be a pretty bad thing in the long term. There are likely people in power that looked upon this issue as a way to exert their opinion internationally. We are having this discussion because of it. From what I have read in the past it seems relatively obvious that specific groups of people took it upon themselves to bring minarets into the national spotlight. I doubt they were actually working towards an international story, but they sure as hell got one.

It really isn't an opaque message. There was purposeful intention that went far beyond the preferred skylines. Perhaps it started as a few people not liking the look of those new buildings, but it would be a lie for me to say that I believe this isn't a politically charged issue.

They had the right.

That doesn't stop it being a petty, mean, un-neighbourly attack on another religion, motivated by fear, ignorance and xenophobia.

Yep.

In general Europe is locked into a contentious issue regarding immigration. It has been painted many different ways, but a duck is a fething duck.

Kilkrazy wrote:They had the right.

That doesn't stop it being a petty, mean, un-neighbourly attack on another religion, motivated by fear, ignorance and xenophobia.

Agreed. I'm not going to defend Switzerland unless it involves protecting the greatness of Swiss Chocolate...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Orlanth wrote:

Wrexasaur wrote:
I understand that you have a very strong opinion on this subject. You are telling me to re-read the thread because you supposedly proved your point so clearly that I am supposed to regard your statements as fact. I disagree with you, and you take offense to that so much that you feel forced to insult me in one way or another.

Disagree would be one thing, but you claimed I had supporteed my case with no evidence, which could only mean you hadnt read the thread. Disagree with the evidence is one thing, saying I posted none is somehing else.

How many minarets are there in Switzerland?

How many in Japan?
I know many areas that have historical or building restrictions. They don't care about religion, just keeping the area homogeneous in aesthetic. You couldn't have minarets or a steeple there either, but you could still have a church or mosque.

That's the point. The Swiss didn't ban the building of tall buildings, they banned the building of minarets. It wasn't to do with keeping a homogenous aesthetic, it was to do with stopping the building of minarets.
57, but it's irrelevant, as Japan hasn't banned the building of minarets.

More importantly, have they banned the epic song "Rock the Casba!"

To be honest, I find myself asking the question 'what if Switzerland had banned the building of church steeples'. Personally, I wouldn't give a toss because I am not in the least religious but surely even the most swivel eyed fanatic would think such a ban were about discrimination and discrimination alone?

Edit: It's Kasbah....

Just kidding!

/pedantry

Frazzled wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Orlanth wrote:

Wrexasaur wrote:
I understand that you have a very strong opinion on this subject. You are telling me to re-read the thread because you supposedly proved your point so clearly that I am supposed to regard your statements as fact. I disagree with you, and you take offense to that so much that you feel forced to insult me in one way or another.

Disagree would be one thing, but you claimed I had supporteed my case with no evidence, which could only mean you hadnt read the thread. Disagree with the evidence is one thing, saying I posted none is somehing else.

How many minarets are there in Switzerland?

How many in Japan?
I know many areas that have historical or building restrictions. They don't care about religion, just keeping the area homogeneous in aesthetic. You couldn't have minarets or a steeple there either, but you could still have a church or mosque.

Thankyou Frazzie, this is the very point. Though there is a lot of anti-Islamic feeling in Switzerland (understandable as its the nearest thing they have had to a genuine threat since the 15th century), however the minaret ban was not motivated by racism.
I didnt know there were as few as four minarets in Switzxerland, but then the statistics arent actually necessary or relevant to the value of the arguments. To those living nearby who remember their town before a minaret one minaret is too many. The only guaranteed way to securing their heritage in this manner is a minaret ban. Thus moslems must seek and exception to the ban rather in a situatiion if and where the local population welcomes a minaret, rather than have the 'right' to be build a minaret as the default.

Orlanth wrote:... but anyone who is not deliberately blinkered can see there is a marked distinction between radicalised Islam to Islamic demographic compared to other religions.

I like how you preemptively classified anyone who might disagree as 'blinkered'. Nice touch.

Orlanth wrote:
Unless the CIA at al springs a leak we wont get figures, and even those figures could be planted.

If that's the case, then there really isn't a point in having the conversation. If you don't believe observation can be regarded as valid, then you're really just engaging in idle speculation.

Orlanth wrote:
Sometimes you just have to see there is a problem by opening ones eyes and seeing it.

What are you seeing? You just noted that any figures that we might possess could be the result of distorted information, what makes your informal observation any different? After all, any set of figures can be checked, regardless of its source.

Unless you're postulating that your opinion is not the result of observation, in which case I'm left wondering what it is based on.

Orlanth wrote:
I wonder what percentage of Al-Quaeda are Christians? Just because we don't have the answer, doesnt mean we cannot make an educated guess with enough safety to have some level of authority.

Yes, that's exactly what it means. If you cannot test your hypothesis, then your hypothesis is irrelevant outside those circumstances in which it is forced to be. Given that you probably don't work for the MoD, I can't see how your hypothesis is being forced into relevance.

Now, if you had stated that there is support for terrorism in the Muslim world, I wouldn't have a problem with your statement. But when you want to suppose, on a purely qualitative basis, that there is more in the Muslim world than anywhere else, then I call foul. Stronger claims require stronger cases, and your aesthetic analysis isn't a strong case.

Kilkrazy wrote:They had the right.

That doesn't stop it being a petty, mean, un-neighbourly attack on another religion, motivated by fear, ignorance and xenophobia.

It doesnt necesasry make it petty, mean, or un-neighbourly either. Switzerland exists BECAUSE of its status quo. This kept the bankers and the money in, but kept Napoleon and Hitler out. they dont have much of an economy other than banking, neutrality and chocolate. They don't have much of a military either, but noone attacks them.

For a nation that owes its own existence to political neutrality, this means that the banking code is kept and the nartion remains the same. Continuity is stability, stability makes Switzerland the safest place for ther real wealth of the world to be stored. This safety is so strong that even dictators do not violate it, even Hitler could be releidupon not to violate Switzerland, Islamic fundamndalists, they are not so sure about.The Swiss want to open their doors to an potentially intolerant and beligerent religion like Islam like they want a dose of the plague.

dogma wrote:

Orlanth wrote:... but anyone who is not deliberately blinkered can see there is a marked distinction between radicalised Islam to Islamic demographic compared to other religions.

I like how you preemptively classified anyone who might disagree as 'blinkered'. Nice touch.

Why not? Its takes very big blinkers to deny the threat of fundamentalist Islam. Dubya went too far the other way.

dogma wrote:

Orlanth wrote:
Unless the CIA at al springs a leak we wont get figures, and even those figures could be planted.

If that's the case, then there really isn't a point in having the conversation. If you don't believe observation can be regarded as valid, then you're really just engaging in idle speculation.

Your conclusion on what you think I think is illogical. Several posts have been along the point that we observe what is happening. I even showed pictures, observation is valid. You see the evidence before you, 9/11 7/7, Madrid, Bali etc etc etc.

Like Wrexasaur you are trying to misrepresent me by saying I am saying things that I am not, let us assume this is not deliberate

dogma wrote:

Orlanth wrote:
Sometimes you just have to see there is a problem by opening ones eyes and seeing it.

What are you seeing? You just noted that any figures that we might possess could be the result of distorted information, what makes your informal observation any different? After all, any set of figures can be checked, regardless of its source.

You are being illogical again. I dont need statistics to validify my commentaries. the evidence is there for all to see. Repeat again for the hard of thinking 9/11 7/7, Madrid, Bali etc etc etc. I dont need to go into the minuitae of what is going on. I dont need to know the exact stength of Al Quaeda etc, the threat can be called real without that detail. It is enough to know that those admittedly important questions are being asked, by the security services of western nations.

Your questions would be very valid if we were all spooks. This sort of data is needed, to people like them, and they arent sharing it with us unless it is to their advantage. I feel no need to ask or know. Seeing the planes fly into the twin towers on TV is enough for any rational person to know that something unpleasant is up, if we were not aware of that before from other examples.

dogma wrote:

Orlanth wrote:
I wonder what percentage of Al-Quaeda are Christians? Just because we don't have the answer, doesnt mean we cannot make an educated guess with enough safety to have some level of authority.

Yes, that's exactly what it means. If you cannot test your hypothesis, then your hypothesis is irrelevant outside those circumstances in which it is forced to be. Given that you probably don't work for the MoD, I can't see how your hypothesis is being forced into relevance.

If we were discussing physics theory then the type of 'test for the hypothesis' would stand out, but we arent we are discussing politics. All political data is subjective, and possibly erroneous or biased. you have to take a reasonable look, this is not based on statistics, statistics only value in politics is propoganda. You should be more sceptical of piolitical theories is percentages are added not less.

Now the Islamic fundamentalist threat is sufficiently real that anyone baring a complete moron, a diehard Islamic apologist or someone with zero access to the international media can see it. Denying that would be like denying that American tanks can reach Baghdad, you need a lot of charisma to pull it off and even then it shouldnt really convinces anyone.

However back to your half baked attemopt at a rebutal. I do not know how many Christian are in al quaeda, I have no statistics for it. However if we know something about Al Quaeda, such as the philosiophy it follows we can reasonably assume there are none or next to none. In fact any Christian (or Jew) in Al Quaeda will likely be a very well disguised infiltrator, you would also say they are thus not real Al Quaeda.
there we are logical, but without a single percentage to back it up. All we need to know to reach this logical cojnclusuon is that Al Quaeda is Islamic Fundamentalist (check) and Islamic fundamentalism doesnt accept members of other religions without conversion (check).

This is how you do political analysis. Elave equations to science and statistics to propoganda.

dogma wrote:
Now, if you had stated that there is support for terrorism in the Muslim world, I wouldn't have a problem with your statement. But when you want to suppose, on a purely qualitative basis, that there is more in the Muslim world than anywhere else, then I call foul. Stronger claims require stronger cases, and your aesthetic analysis isn't a strong case.

You call foul. Ok. Which other religion does all that we have described here and now?
Where are they, Basques and the Troubles dont count that is actually more 'tribal' than relgious. I am certain you will find a few, but compared to the storm of crap Islamic fundamentalists are throwing out its a light rain.

http://pan.oxfordjournals.org/

Statistical analysis is an extremely important part of political analysis. Quantitative arguments require quantitative data.

I'll quickly add that there is a reason that someone would be regarded as a political scientist, and not a political speculator. Science is the process of discerning fact from fiction.

Orlanth wrote:
Why not? Its takes very big blinkers to deny the threat of fundamentalist Islam. Dubya went too far the other way.

In what sense is it a threat? It isn't as though terrorism is going to topple any Western nation anytime soon.

Moreover, you didn't claim that fundamentalist Islam was a threat. You claimed that there was broader support for terrorism in the Muslim world than in any other religiously demarcated portion of the world.

Orlanth wrote:
Your conclusion on what you think I think is illogical. Several posts have been along the point that we observe what is happening. I even showed pictures, observation is valid. You see the evidence before you, 9/11 7/7, Madrid, Bali etc etc etc.

Like Wrexasaur you are trying to misrepresent me by saying I am saying things that I am not, let us assume this is not deliberate

Then why are you denying the ability of people to obtain statistical evidence? I mean, you already took the first step by creating a list of terrorist incidents that might be analyzed through statistical means.

Orlanth wrote:
You are being illogical again. I dont need statistics to validify my commentaries. the evidence is there for all to see. Repeat again for the hard of thinking 9/11 7/7, Madrid, Bali etc etc etc. I dont need to go into the minuitae of what is going on. I dont need to know the exact stength of Al Quaeda etc, the threat can be called real without that detail.

I disagree. Again, threat to whom?

Orlanth wrote:
It is enough to know that those admittedly important questions are being asked, by the security services of western nations.

Didn't you just suggest that those same security services might plant information in order to produce a desired effect?

Orlanth wrote:
Your questions would be very valid if we were all spooks. This sort of data is needed, to people like them, and they arent sharing it with us unless it is to their advantage. I feel no need to ask or know. Seeing the planes fly into the twin towers on TV is enough for any rational person to know that something unpleasant is up, if we were not aware of that before from other examples.

Something unpleasant is always up, so that realization doesn't get us anywhere. I mean, take your example of the plane. First you have to see the plane hit the building. Then you need to ask who flew the plane. The ask if they flew it into the building on purpose. Then ask why they flew it into the building on purpose if they did so, and so on. You have to get quite a bit further from seeing a plane hit a building in order to conclude that there is a terrorist threat from a large chunk of the world.

Orlanth wrote:
If we were discussing physics theory then the type of 'test for the hypothesis' would stand out, but we arent we are discussing politics. All political data is subjective, and possibly erroneous or biased. you have to take a reasonable look, this is not based on statistics, statistics only value in politics is propoganda. You should be more sceptical of piolitical theories is percentages are added not less.

I disagree entirely, and so do the vast majority of political scientists. The discipline is based on statistical analysis and mathematical techniques couched within logic-based data associations. Taking a 'reasonable look' is what people do in their spare time.

Orlanth wrote:
However back to your half baked attemopt at a rebutal. I do not know how many Christian are in al quaeda, I have no statistics for it. However if we know something about Al Quaeda, such as the philosiophy it follows we can reasonably assume there are none or next to none. In fact any Christian (or Jew) in Al Quaeda will likely be a very well disguised infiltrator, you would also say they are thus not real Al Quaeda.
there we are logical, but without a single percentage to back it up. All we need to know to reach this logical cojnclusuon is that Al Quaeda is Islamic Fundamentalist (check) and Islamic fundamentalism doesnt accept members of other religions without conversion (check).

The thing about reason is that its fundamentally blind. Anyone with half a brain can concoct a logically valid argument for any possible conclusion given nearly any possible set of premises. You can sit around in your house and tell us all you want about what Al-Qaeda should do ggiven what you think you know about them, but until you actually take the time to observe their make-up and behavior, then you're incapable of knowing.

You're making a prediction, not claiming a truth regarding reality; ie. we shouldn't see many Christians in Al-Qaeda, given what we know about their ideology. At least that's what you should be doing.

Orlanth wrote:
This is how you do political analysis. Elave equations to science and statistics to propoganda.

Again, that's not how the discipline works these days. Political analysis hasn't been meaningfully qualitative for about 40 years. Just pick up a copy of the American Political Science Review if you don't believe me.

Orlanth wrote:
You call foul. Ok. Which other religion does all that we have described here and now?
Where are they, Basques and the Troubles dont count that is actually more 'tribal' than relgious. I am certain you will find a few, but compared to the storm of crap Islamic fundamentalists are throwing out its a light rain.

Hinduism. Look into the Tamils, and the Hindutva movement.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wrexasaur wrote:
I'll quickly add that there is a reason that someone would be regarded as a political scientist, and not a political speculator. Science is the process of discerning fact from fiction.

Exactly.

I think a lot of the hostility to quantitative looks at political behavior arises from a nominal lack of understanding when it comes to statistical analysis. Admittedly, that is understandable, some of the statistics present in journal articles are fairly complicated.

He's been let off on all counts.

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2010/10/wilders_not_guilty_of_inciting.php

Wilders not guilty on all counts - Update

Friday 15 October 2010

The public prosecution department on Friday afternoon stated that Geert Wilders is not guilty of discriminating against Muslims. Earlier on Friday it announced he should also be found not guilty of inciting hatred.

Prosecutors Birgit van Roessel and Paul Velleman reached their conclusions after a careful reading of interviews with and articles by the anti-Islam politician and a viewing of his anti-Koran film Fitna.

They said comments about banning the Koran can be discriminatory, but because Wilders wants to pursue a ban on democratic lines, there is no question of incitement to discrimination 'as laid down in law'.

On the comparison of the Koran with Mein Kampf, the prosecutors said the comparison was 'crude but that did not make it punishable'.

Dealing earlier on Friday with incitement to hatred, Van Roessel and Velleman said some comments could incite hatred against Muslims if taken out of context, but if the complete text is considered, it can be seen that Wilders is against the growing influence of Islam and not against Muslims per sé.

On Tuesday, the prosecutors said the MP should not be found guilty of group insult.

The public prosecution department was forced to take the case by the high court after anti-racism campaigners protested at its refusal to prosecute Wilders.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:He's been let off on all counts.

Thank the Man Jesus. Say true, say thankya.

I really don't think I would have been able to bear it if he'd be really sanctioned for making those statements.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:He's been let off on all counts.

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2010/10/wilders_not_guilty_of_inciting.php

Wilders not guilty on all counts - Update

Friday 15 October 2010

The public prosecution department on Friday afternoon stated that Geert Wilders is not guilty of discriminating against Muslims. Earlier on Friday it announced he should also be found not guilty of inciting hatred.

Prosecutors Birgit van Roessel and Paul Velleman reached their conclusions after a careful reading of interviews with and articles by the anti-Islam politician and a viewing of his anti-Koran film Fitna.

They said comments about banning the Koran can be discriminatory, but because Wilders wants to pursue a ban on democratic lines, there is no question of incitement to discrimination 'as laid down in law'.

On the comparison of the Koran with Mein Kampf, the prosecutors said the comparison was 'crude but that did not make it punishable'.

Dealing earlier on Friday with incitement to hatred, Van Roessel and Velleman said some comments could incite hatred against Muslims if taken out of context, but if the complete text is considered, it can be seen that Wilders is against the growing influence of Islam and not against Muslims per sé.

On Tuesday, the prosecutors said the MP should not be found guilty of group insult.

The public prosecution department was forced to take the case by the high court after anti-racism campaigners protested at its refusal to prosecute Wilders.

He's not of the hook yet, the judge will decide that in November.

Orlanth wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:They had the right.

That doesn't stop it being a petty, mean, un-neighbourly attack on another religion, motivated by fear, ignorance and xenophobia.

It doesnt necesasry make it petty, mean, or un-neighbourly either. Switzerland exists BECAUSE of its status quo. This kept the bankers and the money in, but kept Napoleon and Hitler out. they dont have much of an economy other than banking, neutrality and chocolate. They don't have much of a military either, but noone attacks them.

For a nation that owes its own existence to political neutrality, this means that the banking code is kept and the nartion remains the same. Continuity is stability, stability makes Switzerland the safest place for ther real wealth of the world to be stored. This safety is so strong that even dictators do not violate it, even Hitler could be releidupon not to violate Switzerland, Islamic fundamndalists, they are not so sure about.The Swiss want to open their doors to an potentially intolerant and beligerent religion like Islam like they want a dose of the plague.

So is it about religion? Are the minarets being banned as a protection against Islam?

I am still confused about this issue.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:He's been let off on all counts.

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2010/10/wilders_not_guilty_of_inciting.php

Wilders not guilty on all counts - Update

Friday 15 October 2010

The public prosecution department on Friday afternoon stated that Geert Wilders is not guilty of discriminating against Muslims. Earlier on Friday it announced he should also be found not guilty of inciting hatred.

Prosecutors Birgit van Roessel and Paul Velleman reached their conclusions after a careful reading of interviews with and articles by the anti-Islam politician and a viewing of his anti-Koran film Fitna.

They said comments about banning the Koran can be discriminatory, but because Wilders wants to pursue a ban on democratic lines, there is no question of incitement to discrimination 'as laid down in law'.

On the comparison of the Koran with Mein Kampf, the prosecutors said the comparison was 'crude but that did not make it punishable'.

Dealing earlier on Friday with incitement to hatred, Van Roessel and Velleman said some comments could incite hatred against Muslims if taken out of context, but if the complete text is considered, it can be seen that Wilders is against the growing influence of Islam and not against Muslims per sé.

On Tuesday, the prosecutors said the MP should not be found guilty of group insult.

The public prosecution department was forced to take the case by the high court after anti-racism campaigners protested at its refusal to prosecute Wilders.

Good, a victory for reason and freedom of speech.

I am not suprised, the decision to prosecute was a PC kneejerk, and those are getting questioned more of late.

Kilkrazy wrote:
So is it about religion? Are the minarets being banned as a protection against Islam?
I am still confused about this issue.

No they are banned because they change the Swiss architectural culture, its a large scale planning decision.

dogma wrote:

Orlanth wrote:
Why not? Its takes very big blinkers to deny the threat of fundamentalist Islam. Dubya went too far the other way.

In what sense is it a threat? It isn't as though terrorism is going to topple any Western nation anytime soon.

Moreover, you didn't claim that fundamentalist Islam was a threat. You claimed that there was broader support for terrorism in the Muslim world than in any other religiously demarcated portion of the world.

Wrong on both counts.

The word 'Threat' doesnt necessarily mean 'something able to topple a whole society'.
Fundamentalist Islam is a threat because it threatens lives and freedoms. They may well intend to topple our society, and the goal uis unrealistic, but what they do while trying to achieve the goal is still more than enough to be a threat.

I did call fundamentalist Islam a threat quite frequently in fact. I also said there was a broader support for fundamentalist Islam in the western world that prevents it from being isolated as a small minority.

dogma wrote:
Then why are you denying the ability of people to obtain statistical evidence? I mean, you already took the first step by creating a list of terrorist incidents that might be analyzed through statistical means.

True but the statistics Wrex was looking for are nort commonly avalaible, they are intelligence data. Our inability to find them does not mean we have no evidence. You could count the known bombings as a rough 'statistic', but that is too crude. Better to look at what the extremist mullahs are saying, the pamphlets they give out (also now largely suppressed) and what the victims were killed or issued fatwahs for.

dogma wrote:
I disagree. Again, threat to whom?

Why should I need to quantify that. If you were on a bus on 7/7 in the word trade center or on a Spanish train when the attacks occured the person attacked could have been you. Islamic terriorsism does go for some profile targets such as the Pentagon, Worldx Trae Centre too, but often a bombing is to catch any infidel who happens to be in the blast radius. The 7/7 bombers didnt know who would be on the buses they blew up, likelwise I very much doubt they took a look at who worked in the World Trade Centre.
I will leave out kidnappings here because while there is good evidence to suggest any westerner in Iraq or Afghanistan is liable to be kidnapped there is an intention to target those connected to nations supporting the invasions or War on terror or working for an organisation linked to either. However indivisdual culpability is irrelevant, so aid workers who may well be true pacifists (many are) are targets on account ofv their passports or their not being Islamic.

dogma wrote:

Orlanth wrote:
It is enough to know that those admittedly important questions are being asked, by the security services of western nations.

Didn't you just suggest that those same security services might plant information in order to produce a desired effect?

Yes. Not just the security services but any political body. The more you work with statistics the closer you come to propoganda. Very little statistical data is reliable, only thwe braodest cover data like censuses haver any validity, and even thern as raw information. Once data is processed unhelpful precentages might not be given the same profile as helpful percentages. Also stats often openly lie, you can massage statistics so easily by tailoring catchment of the data, and changing creiterai for an answer.

You could for instance find an Afghan village where no shooting had occured for three months, and research data on the last three months only, compare it to the crime rate in New York and thus claim that Afghamnistan is a safe place to live compared with the USA. It would technically be true in a very round about way, but still complete bollocks.

Best way to look at this is the percentages used in advertising. Remeber advertss where a product on tests is x% more effective than its rivals, and you wondered, what were the exact test conditions. Normally due to advertising standards the percentage is accurate, but wont tell you the whole story. Only very specific positively comperable features would be included.

dogma wrote:
Something unpleasant is always up, so that realization doesn't get us anywhere. I mean, take your example of the plane. First you have to see the plane hit the building. Then you need to ask who flew the plane. The ask if they flew it into the building on purpose. Then ask why they flew it into the building on purpose if they did so, and so on. You have to get quite a bit further from seeing a plane hit a building in order to conclude that there is a terrorist threat from a large chunk of the world.

Yes you can ask all these questions. But then you get people doing so and coming to the conclusion that its all a big Jewish conspiracy. From our own desks we cannot prove it isnt, but that doesnt mean we have to give these crackpots credence.

Remebmer how law courts work. to prove a case it most be proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Dogma what you are doing its putting in what ifs that are not exactly reasonable. No we were not on the planes at the time, but it is wldely believed that Mohammed Atta and co were. Can I prove that with 100% certainrty, no. Is it physically possible that the planes werre taken over by Al Quadea but at the last moment they chan ged their minds but two rabbis and a catholic priest flew a plane into a building. Yes that is physically possible. Is that a valid reasonable doubt, no it isnt.

Again you are coming back to the old bugbear odf demanding levels of absolute proof in opposing arguments which would be very valid if we were discussing a new physics theorem. In hard science something is either proven absolutely or not at all. Politics, even the type of politcs call politcal science doesnt work that way. Its human data, we have to look at likelihoods and accept that there are margins of error in everything.

dogma wrote:
I disagree entirely, and so do the vast majority of political scientists.

Do you haver this audience you claim to speak for you to do so.

Prety much the first rule of poltical science is regarding the fallibility of humna data. Everything is an educated guess, some guesses are more educated than others. Statistics only really help if they are large scale and thorough, these sorts of statistics are nort commonly available. Market datas is confidential to the company which reeasrched the data, intelligence data is common to the services.

dogma wrote:
The discipline is based on statistical analysis and mathematical techniques couched within logic-based data associations. Taking a 'reasonable look' is what people do in their spare time.

A very poor philosophy, particularly with data stemming from poltical or intelligence sources. The US used this technique to base their intel on. HumInt is far superior to statistical intelligence. It is because of poor philosophies like that that Al Quaeda caught the US with their pants down. Al Quadea had none of the % to be a threat in the USA, insifficient % orf radicalised US passport holders, insufficient % of funds, etc so 'it cannot happen here'. Thed flights werev taken over by a handful of fanatics with craft knives. The only part that cost were the flying lessons.

You haver to think outside the box to keep up with people like that.

The reasonable look is the first and best line of defence. Collect data by all means, but statistics lost Vietnam, body count didnt matter, envelopment did. There was no statistic for envelopment, you could get a body count, so if the body count was good Westmoreland thought he was winning. Didnt work out that way though. Statistics are supporting evidence at best and at worst horrid misdirection. Purposeful misdirection through propoganda is the best use of statistics.

dogma wrote:
The thing about reason is that its fundamentally blind.

Again you are looking at scientific reason not poltical reason. Political reason is subjective and malleable because you are trying to unsderstand people groups.
What you are hoping for is psycho-history, which is still science fiction I am afraid.

dogma wrote:
You're making a prediction, not claiming a truth regarding reality; ie. we shouldn't see many Christians in Al-Qaeda, given what we know about their ideology. At least that's what you should be doing.

Prediction & likely truth are the same thing here. Political analysis is a very human artform, I dont think it should be considered a sceince really.


Lets take a step back and try to work on something less controversail and thus more open, but very similar to what you want.

Stock control.

In stock contro,l there is a lot of statistical data, this datas can be relied upon because it is sales data from the tills, its accurate, its volumous, its consitently recieved over time and its easy to analyse. Thus for any existing retail outlet or distributor can see how much a product sells. Even so the amount of milk a supermarket orders in should be manually assessed by a good stock controller who knows his trade. To account for such things as a slow or fast day, time of year, holiday season and spillage. Now a supermarket stock controller working with short shelf life refrigerated goods needs to be more on the ball than a colleague working on ambient goods who can afford to overorder the tins of beans.
This bit is easy because the job is routeine repetetive and the data reliable.
Let us muddy the waters a bit.


Market research.

So we move to another set of statistical data, that raised from a study of 2000 people over two succecutive weekday afternoone in a town centre regarding a product. The data here might be accurate if you assume everyone is telling the whole truth. however some arent, they might say they like a brand more than another or smoke when they do not in order to be eligible for the survey and the 45 voucher given away at the end. Also the afternoons crowd will not be truly cross representative, large number of people shop elsewhere, or are working at that time. You will mainly be cancvassing those who happen to be on the streets at a particular time, housewives, homeless, kids bunking off etc. This may or may not represent your true customer base.
Even from the start we have problems, unlike the highly reliable sales data you have subjective data. Then it comes to the questions themselves. Do you prefer product A or B, you pick A but a third of the time you like to buy B. The questions are too simple to properly cut in. This is wghy shops like loyalty cards, they provide not only very accurate sales data but also reasonably accurate sales grouping data, which is only partly accurate only because some dont carry loyalty cards, leve them behind or give thier 'points' to the next person in the queue.
In any event the less reliable the data becomes the more it becomes only a starting pouint for reaonable guesses and assumptions.


Now let us move to political data. We will start with internal poltical data. Best example is a census, people lie on census forms, normally if they have somethng to hide. Sometimes the lie can save their lives: such as the several hundred cautious Polish Jews who lied on their census forms and were thus spared targeted persecution when the Germans and Russians invaded.
Censuses are normally fairly accurate and very important, the big lies over census occur afterwards, when the government hides or sometimes even flat out lies about census data for its own ends. In any event censuses are mandatory by law, are fairly carefully carried out and provide good data, if accurately and honestly disseminated and distributed. Which sadly is a big if. Compound the if with large gaps in the data, most nortable of all time gaps. Supermarkets get their sales feed data constantly, census data is accumulated every ten years or so in most western countries. Electoral role and tax return data is better, but it assumes people are paying their taxes properly, and even then that sdata might be annual in many cases, and late to feed into the system. It wont necessarily tell you what you need to know either.

When we are talking about hostile political data things change. Its one thing to have fairly good statistics froman enquiry or a census, the data you get from ihostile sources, that is going be be very patchy. All you really have is what you bug and what you capture/iinterrogate, and you have to hope you arent being fed BS from the other side while doing so. Any attempt to take a stats first outlook here is fraught with danger. You need to think more about the opponents nature and less about the numbers you find.

You diont need to be a spook or general to notice this. You will have experienced this the first time you play a double blind game, on or off the computer. Anyone can get a small taste of how it works yourself at some level if they play a game of multiplayer Starcraft with the fog of war on.

dogma wrote:
Again, that's not how the discipline works these days. Political analysis hasn't been meaningfully qualitative for about 40 years. Just pick up a copy of the American Political Science Review if you don't believe me.

Ahh propoganda.

dogma wrote:
Hinduism. Look into the Tamils, and the Hindutva movement.

True, I said you will find a few. However is the problem of Sri Lanka truly religious, it isnt exported, and it focuses on different people groups who happen to be more easily defined by their religions.

dogma wrote:

Wrexasaur wrote:
I'll quickly add that there is a reason that someone would be regarded as a political scientist, and not a political speculator. Science is the process of discerning fact from fiction.

Exactly.

I think a lot of the hostility to quantitative looks at political behavior arises from a nominal lack of understanding when it comes to statistical analysis. Admittedly, that is understandable, some of the statistics present in journal articles are fairly complicated.

Exactly wrong. Political science is more art than science, big numbers dont necessarily lead to big success in business or in politics, they odften lead to big failures. Over concentration on the statistical ruins military campaigns, it also damages busineses and whole economies. The statistics forst culture is what is behind tartget based management and target based management has fethed over a lot of businesses. Barings Bank was brought down by target based thinking, Leeson would not have got away with what he did if the safeguards were not removed because their removal offered an immeidate term benefit of cost reduction. A manager who is making targets might statstically appear to be doing good, but in reality 'target based' means 'short term thinking'. The long term true approach must be person managed first, this applies to government as well as business, and twice in warfare. Political science is best served by reasonable deductive approaches not by statistical anaysis. This is ultimately what is falsely read as a 'feel for the data'. Those who have this gift are not actually reading the data in isolation, they are adding their own cognitive analysis, often the data just clouds matters, and the further away you get from the cashpont till and the neareryou get to the mess of datas gained from hostile interrogations the worse it gets.

Orlanth wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:
So is it about religion? Are the minarets being banned as a protection against Islam?
I am still confused about this issue.

No they are banned because they change the Swiss architectural culture, its a large scale planning decision.

It's just that you wrote

Orlanth wrote:The Swiss want to open their doors to an potentially intolerant and beligerent religion like Islam like they want a dose of the plague.

So it seems as though banning minarets might be connected with that, and the planning law idea is just an excuse.

Orlanth wrote:
You call foul. Ok. Which other religion does all that we have described here and now?
Where are they, Basques and the Troubles dont count that is actually more 'tribal' than relgious. I am certain you will find a few, but compared to the storm of crap Islamic fundamentalists are throwing out its a light rain.

As the troubles are the most recent part of an overall continuity of Catholic violence against England from the creation of Anglican church in the 16th century I'm not sure it's as easy to separate the two as you've just tried to do.

The actions have ranged from
Assassination attempts (Elizabeth survived multiple attempts on her life from Catholic assassins)
Wars
terrorism (Remember the fifth of November)

And I'm sure there's more then enough other examples that other people could pull from other areas, including India.

Orlanth wrote:
Wrong on both counts.

Both counts? How can I be wrong in asking a question?

Orlanth wrote:
The word 'Threat' doesnt necessarily mean 'something able to topple a whole society'.

Nor did I say that it did.

Orlanth wrote:
Fundamentalist Islam is a threat because it threatens lives and freedoms. They may well intend to topple our society, and the goal uis unrealistic, but what they do while trying to achieve the goal is still more than enough to be a threat.

By that standard we live among many threats, including those presented by people driving cars, by the nature of our society, Why is fundamentalist Islam special?

Orlanth wrote:
I did call fundamentalist Islam a threat quite frequently in fact. I also said there was a broader support for fundamentalist Islam in the western world that prevents it from being isolated as a small minority.

Alright, but the thing you said that I responded to is not what you're saying here, or what you may have said elsewhere. If you want to admit that you spoke in err, which is perfectly fine (we all do it), then please do so. If not, then this conversation isn't worth my time.

Orlanth wrote:
True but the statistics Wrex was looking for are nort commonly avalaible, they are intelligence data. Our inability to find them does not mean we have no evidence. You could count the known bombings as a rough 'statistic', but that is too crude.

No, its actually what statistics are based on; counting and relationships. You seem to have a very odd understanding of what constitutes statistical evidence.

Orlanth wrote:
Better to look at what the extremist mullahs are saying, the pamphlets they give out (also now largely suppressed) and what the victims were killed or issued fatwahs for.

People lie all the time, particularly in order to motivate others, why should we then attribute more to what leaders say than what they actually do?

Orlanth wrote:
Why should I need to quantify that. If you were on a bus on 7/7 in the word trade center or on a Spanish train when the attacks occured the person attacked could have been you.

Sure, but it wasn't. What places me at risk given that others were attacked? At least more risk than I incur by being alive? That's why you need to quantify your position. It isn't enough to say that a threat exists, because a threat always exists. You must show why one particular threat is more important than other existential threats. That requires quantitative data.

Orlanth wrote:
Islamic terriorsism does go for some profile targets such as the Pentagon, Worldx Trae Centre too, but often a bombing is to catch any infidel who happens to be in the blast radius. The 7/7 bombers didnt know who would be on the buses they blew up, likelwise I very much doubt they took a look at who worked in the World Trade Centre.

So? Drunk drivers don't think about who they might kill either, but they kill more people each year than Islamic terrorists. Why are Islamic terrorists special enough to deserve more resources than those allocated to the prevention of drunk driving?

Orlanth wrote:
Yes. Not just the security services but any political body. The more you work with statistics the closer you come to propoganda. Very little statistical data is reliable, only thwe braodest cover data like censuses haver any validity, and even thern as raw information.

I'm guessing you've never actually worked with statistics, because that is false on its face. Look into the concepts of confidence and standard error.

Orlanth wrote:
Once data is processed unhelpful precentages might not be given the same profile as helpful percentages. Also stats often openly lie, you can massage statistics so easily by tailoring catchment of the data, and changing creiterai for an answer.

It would be far easier to simply lie without doing the statistical analysis, which is what changing the criteria for an answer involves. Good statistics don't do that, and its relatively easy to tell what constitutes a good statistics given that you understand statistics at even a basic level.

Orlanth wrote:
You could for instance find an Afghan village where no shooting had occured for three months, and research data on the last three months only, compare it to the crime rate in New York and thus claim that Afghamnistan is a safe place to live compared with the USA. It would technically be true in a very round about way, but still complete bollocks.

No, it wouldn't be true. It would be true that a particular Afghan village was safer over the last three months than New York over the same period. It would not be true that Afghanistan was safer as a whole, because the sample did not deal with all of Afghanistan.

This is the sort of thing I'm talking about when I note that you don't appear to understand statistics.

Orlanth wrote:
Yes you can ask all these questions. But then you get people doing so and coming to the conclusion that its all a big Jewish conspiracy. From our own desks we cannot prove it isnt, but that doesnt mean we have to give these crackpots credence.

How does asking questions lend credence to crackpots?

Orlanth wrote:
Remebmer how law courts work. to prove a case it most be proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Dogma what you are doing its putting in what ifs that are not exactly reasonable. No we were not on the planes at the time, but it is wldely believed that Mohammed Atta and co were. Can I prove that with 100% certainrty, no. Is it physically possible that the planes werre taken over by Al Quadea but at the last moment they chan ged their minds but two rabbis and a catholic priest flew a plane into a building. Yes that is physically possible. Is that a valid reasonable doubt, no it isnt.

No, what I'm doing is explaining the logical progression that must be satisfied in order for any particular conclusion to be reached. I'm doing this in order to show how it isn't a simple matter of going by your gut.

I don't actually believe that there is a reasonable doubt in regards to the nature of the perpetrators of 9/11.

Orlanth wrote:
Again you are coming back to the old bugbear odf demanding levels of absolute proof in opposing arguments which would be very valid if we were discussing a new physics theorem.

No, that's not what I'm doing. Please re-read my post.

Orlanth wrote:
In hard science something is either proven absolutely or not at all. Politics, even the type of politcs call politcal science doesnt work that way. Its human data, we have to look at likelihoods and accept that there are margins of error in everything.

W have to accept margins of error in hard science as well. I'm pointing out that your margins of error are far too large. Please don't try and make this an argument from category, not only is it boring, but also trite.

Orlanth wrote:
Prety much the first rule of poltical science is regarding the fallibility of humna data. Everything is an educated guess, some guesses are more educated than others. Statistics only really help if they are large scale and thorough, these sorts of statistics are nort commonly available. Market datas is confidential to the company which reeasrched the data, intelligence data is common to the services.

I'm not going to argue this point with you. I'm just going to direct you to the American Political Science Review, and let you decide for yourself.

I'm not claiming that there is no margin for error, I'm claiming that theory must have a quantified basis in reality in order for it to have notable weight.

Orlanth wrote:
A very poor philosophy, particularly with data stemming from poltical or intelligence sources. The US used this technique to base their intel on. HumInt is far superior to statistical intelligence. It is because of poor philosophies like that that Al Quaeda caught the US with their pants down. Al Quadea had none of the % to be a threat in the USA, insifficient % orf radicalised US passport holders, insufficient % of funds, etc so 'it cannot happen here'. Thed flights werev taken over by a handful of fanatics with craft knives. The only part that cost were the flying lessons.

Actually, Al-Qaeda stood out as a significant threat due to it extensive funding network. This was pointed out in the assessment of quantitative data in the 9/11 report. To say that 9/11 happened because there was too great an emphasis on statistics is absolutely false, 9/11 happened because no one thought that any terrorist network could carry out a significant attack on the US; regardless of the data available.

Orlanth wrote:
You haver to think outside the box to keep up with people like that.

Statistics aren't a box.

Orlanth wrote:
The reasonable look is the first and best line of defence. Collect data by all means, but statistics lost Vietnam, body count didnt matter, envelopment did. There was no statistic for envelopment, you could get a body count, so if the body count was good Westmoreland thought he was winning. Didnt work out that way though. Statistics are supporting evidence at best and at worst horrid misdirection. Purposeful misdirection through propoganda is the best use of statistics.

Actually, what lost Vietnam was the lapse in domestic political support, for which there is statistical evidence.

There are also statistics for envelopment, by the way.

Orlanth wrote:
Again you are looking at scientific reason not poltical reason. Political reason is subjective and malleable because you are trying to unsderstand people groups.
What you are hoping for is psycho-history, which is still science fiction I am afraid.

No, I'm looking at reason in general. Reason is blind for exactly the reasons you're discussing above. Thank you for illustrating my point.

Also, no, I'm not after psycho-history. Please don't distort my argument. I'm merely pointing out that without any kind of quantitative basis your reasoned argument is irrelevant because you cannot show that it applies to reality.

Orlanth wrote:
Prediction & likely truth are the same thing here.

No, they're really not. Predictions deal with what you might find, likely truth deals with what you believe to be present.

Orlanth wrote:
In stock contro,l there is a lot of statistical data, this datas can be relied upon because it is sales data from the tills, its accurate, its volumous, its consitently recieved over time and its easy to analyse. Thus for any existing retail outlet or distributor can see how much a product sells. Even so the amount of milk a supermarket orders in should be manually assessed by a good stock controller who knows his trade. To account for such things as a slow or fast day, time of year, holiday season and spillage. Now a supermarket stock controller working with short shelf life refrigerated goods needs to be more on the ball than a colleague working on ambient goods who can afford to overorder the tins of beans.
This bit is easy because the job is routeine repetetive and the data reliable.
Let us muddy the waters a bit.

Variable rates of change (holidays, fast and slow days, etc.) can be built into statistical metrics. The easiest way is integration by substitution.

Orlanth wrote:
So we move to another set of statistical data, that raised from a study of 2000 people over two succecutive weekday afternoone in a town centre regarding a product. The data here might be accurate if you assume everyone is telling the whole truth. however some arent, they might say they like a brand more than another or smoke when they do not in order to be eligible for the survey and the 45 voucher given away at the end. Also the afternoons crowd will not be truly cross representative, large number of people shop elsewhere, or are working at that time. You will mainly be cancvassing those who happen to be on the streets at a particular time, housewives, homeless, kids bunking off etc. This may or may not represent your true customer base.
Even from the start we have problems, unlike the highly reliable sales data you have subjective data. Then it comes to the questions themselves. Do you prefer product A or B, you pick A but a third of the time you like to buy B. The questions are too simple to properly cut in. This is wghy shops like loyalty cards, they provide not only very accurate sales data but also reasonably accurate sales grouping data, which is only partly accurate only because some dont carry loyalty cards, leve them behind or give thier 'points' to the next person in the queue.
In any event the less reliable the data becomes the more it becomes only a starting pouint for reaonable guesses and assumptions.

Obviously, but you aren't talking about including data at all. You only did that after I pushed you to do so. What you've been talking about is excluding data in order to include feeling, which is nonsense.

Orlanth wrote:
Now let us move to political data. We will start with internal poltical data. Best example is a census, people lie on census forms, normally if they have somethng to hide. Sometimes the lie can save their lives: such as the several hundred cautious Polish Jews who lied on their census forms and were thus spared targeted persecution when the Germans and Russians invaded.
Censuses are normally fairly accurate and very important, the big lies over census occur afterwards, when the government hides or sometimes even flat out lies about census data for its own ends. In any event censuses are mandatory by law, are fairly carefully carried out and provide good data, if accurately and honestly disseminated and distributed. Which sadly is a big if. Compound the if with large gaps in the data, most nortable of all time gaps. Supermarkets get their sales feed data constantly, census data is accumulated every ten years or so in most western countries. Electoral role and tax return data is better, but it assumes people are paying their taxes properly, and even then that sdata might be annual in many cases, and late to feed into the system. It wont necessarily tell you what you need to know either.

When we are talking about hostile political data things change. Its one thing to have fairly good statistics froman enquiry or a census, the data you get from ihostile sources, that is going be be very patchy. All you really have is what you bug and what you capture/iinterrogate, and you have to hope you arent being fed BS from the other side while doing so. Any attempt to take a stats first outlook here is fraught with danger. You need to think more about the opponents nature and less about the numbers you find.

The numbers are indicative of the nature, even if they are intended to be deceitful. Again, this is not grounds to dismiss statistics.

Moreover, all things taken as given, people tend to lie in predictable patterns when subjected to random questioning. Ultimately this follows from the absence of a clear 'opponent' in the data set.

Again, you don't seem to understand statistics.

Orlanth wrote:
Ahh propoganda.

Ah, propaganda.

Any statement intended to convince is inherently propagandic. All argumentative statements are propagandic. Simply saying that something is propaganda is not really a forceful criticism.

Orlanth wrote:
True, I said you will find a few. However is the problem of Sri Lanka truly religious, it isnt exported, and it focuses on different people groups who happen to be more easily defined by their religions.

The Hindutva movement ships a lot of money to Sri Lanka, and the Tamils send a lot of operative to the Hindutva movement.

Orlanth wrote:
Exactly wrong. Political science is more art than science, big numbers dont necessarily lead to big success in business or in politics, they odften lead to big failures. Over concentration on the statistical ruins military campaigns, it also damages busineses and whole economies.

That's how science works. Most of the scientific method involves spectacular failure. You seem to have an odd understanding of science in general.

Orlanth wrote:
The statistics forst culture is what is behind tartget based management and target based management has fethed over a lot of businesses. Barings Bank was brought down by target based thinking, Leeson would not have got away with what he did if the safeguards were not removed because their removal offered an immeidate term benefit of cost reduction.

That's not a matter of statistics first, that's a matter of placing the wrong statistics first.

Orlanth wrote:
Political science is best served by reasonable deductive approaches not by statistical anaysis.

In order to deduce something you must first establish a general truth, in order to do that without simply making something up, you need statistical evidence. We don't need any more copies of Ken Waltz.

Orlanth wrote:
This is ultimately what is falsely read as a 'feel for the data'. Those who have this gift are not actually reading the data in isolation, they are adding their own cognitive analysis, often the data just clouds matters, and the further away you get from the cashpont till and the neareryou get to the mess of datas gained from hostile interrogations the worse it gets.

It clouds matters if you don't understand how to read the data.

efarrer wrote:
As the troubles are the most recent part of an overall continuity of Catholic violence against England from the creation of Anglican church in the 16th century I'm not sure it's as easy to separate the two as you've just tried to do.

The actions have ranged from
Assassination attempts (Elizabeth survived multiple attempts on her life from Catholic assassins)
Wars
terrorism (Remember the fifth of November)

And I'm sure there's more then enough other examples that other people could pull from other areas, including India.

Ye olde examples dont count for anything. Or we would still be at war with the French.

Orlanth wrote:

efarrer wrote:
As the troubles are the most recent part of an overall continuity of Catholic violence against England from the creation of Anglican church in the 16th century I'm not sure it's as easy to separate the two as you've just tried to do.

The actions have ranged from
Assassination attempts (Elizabeth survived multiple attempts on her life from Catholic assassins)
Wars
terrorism (Remember the fifth of November)

And I'm sure there's more then enough other examples that other people could pull from other areas, including India.

Ye olde examples dont count for anything. Or we would still be at war with the French.

So because something happened in the past it no longer matters.

Orlanth wrote:

efarrer wrote:
As the troubles are the most recent part of an overall continuity of Catholic violence against England from the creation of Anglican church in the 16th century I'm not sure it's as easy to separate the two as you've just tried to do.

The actions have ranged from
Assassination attempts (Elizabeth survived multiple attempts on her life from Catholic assassins)
Wars
terrorism (Remember the fifth of November)

And I'm sure there's more then enough other examples that other people could pull from other areas, including India.

Ye olde examples dont count for anything. Or we would still be at war with the French.

You tried to discount the factor of religion in the conflict. It is a major factor and has been part of an ongoing campaign of religious violence that has spanned literally hundreds of years. The troubles are part XVII of the same religious conflict that has been playing out on those islands for hundreds of years in a large number of formats including both open war and terrorism. To dismiss the religious elements as tribal is simply put ridiculous.

Indeed it strikes me you discount any non Muslim violence as being tribal in nature to allow you to continue to attack the Muslims. The fact of the matter is Europe has a long history of religious terrorism against other faiths particularly the Jews. Now you can choose to ignore these actions or define them as something other then terrorism, but the pogroms against the Jews continued well into the 20th century. And the acts by Christians against other Christians in the Yugoslavian conflict put the lie any thought that Muslims are the only one violent about their religion.

The title of this thread made me

dogma wrote:
Both counts? How can I be wrong in asking a question?

You were wrong on both:

a) In what sense is it a threat? It isn't as though terrorism is going to topple any Western nation anytime soon.

You strongly imply that only by being able to do major damage like toppling a Western nation does Islam become a threat. As it cannot (at least in the short/medium term do so) it is not a threat. This can only mean something else if you very badly wroded your post

b) Moreover, you didn't claim that fundamentalist Islam was a threat.

When I most certainly claimed it was.

On this note.

dogma wrote:

Orlanth wrote:
The word 'Threat' doesnt necessarily mean 'something able to topple a whole society'.

Nor did I say that it did..

I will give you fair opportunity to clarify your sttement then.

However

dogma wrote:
Alright, but the thing you said that I responded to is not what you're saying here, or what you may have said elsewhere. If you want to admit that you spoke in err, which is perfectly fine (we all do it), then please do so. If not, then this conversation isn't worth my time.

I said it quite frequently in the above posts, so frequently it would be a waste of time to copy paste more than a fraction of the occassions. Here are hopefully enough to set this straight:

1. I have been prefectly clear:
Militant Islam is a threat - the only ones trying to muddy that truth are the PC apolgoists who constantly ask for more proof.

2. People are pussy footing around beacause they dont know what to do, its the elephant in the room. Islam however is not here to share, it wants its way, all day and is willing to kill to get it.

3. The burkhas is a form of oppression, there is no cultural group that of its own volition secludes itself in this way, it mentally unhealthy for a start.


There is a recurring pattern with your posts dogma. You post denials with little logic behind them, and misread what your opponents say very heavily claiming they said something completely different (and illogical) in order to give yourself a thin vweneer of an excuse to critique. I doubt anyone else could read this thread and come to the conclusions you have on my opinion. At this point you might as well 'figure me out' to be a New Labour supporter.

Let move on now shall we.

dogma wrote:
By that standard we live among many threats, including those presented by people driving cars, by the nature of our society, Why is fundamentalist Islam special?

If I have to describe the moral difference between bad or unlucky driving and acts of terror that there is no hope for you.

dogma wrote:
No, its actually what statistics are based on; counting and relationships. You seem to have a very odd understanding of what constitutes statistical evidence.

I am more concerned witn the integrity of statistical data. You can count whatever you like, if you count lies you will get an erroneuos finding.

dogma wrote:

Orlanth wrote:
Better to look at what the extremist mullahs are saying, the pamphlets they give out (also now largely suppressed) and what the victims were killed or issued fatwahs for.

People lie all the time, particularly in order to motivate others, why should we then attribute more to what leaders say than what they actually do?

When organisations like Al Mouhajiroun (sp) call for jihad I take that at face value. So should or would the law.
If someone calls rape/murder/theif etc sees someone arrested then says 'only joking' the poolice take that seriously. People are respknsible for what they say as well as what they do. Its called instigating, and instigating mass vioollence or terorism is part of terrorism.

Besides you are really clutching at straws if you raise a defence that the militant preachers dont mean what they are saying. Some of them preached the same hate message rather a lot. In fact there was a move to extradite on Islamic preacher called Abu Hamza though that was blocked by the EU courts. Not only does he preachh hate but this guy went to Bosnia to practice what he preached and became an irregular fighter in a country where he had no connection other than a shared religion.

dogma wrote:
Sure, but it wasn't. What places me at risk given that others were attacked? At least more risk than I incur by being alive? That's why you need to quantify your position. It isn't enough to say that a threat exists, because a threat always exists. You must show why one particular threat is more important than other existential threats. That requires quantitative data.

It does not require quantitative data because:

1. Quantative data is not forthcoming, so stop asking me and ask the CIA or equivalent.
2. Attacks are stopped by the aforementioned agencies so the threat which they take seriously is defacto lessened by proactive engagement of the threat.
3. The number of attacks is no indication of their scale and vice versa.

So very few people in the US and UK have died as a result of terrorism. we have enough examples for any reaonable person to see there is a threat, but many more attacks are likely stopped by vigilence of those who protect us. we knows this happens because every now and then people go on trial on account of foiled attacks. The press only gets to see what is likely to be but a tiny bit of what the spooks are doing to protect our countries.

dogma wrote:
So? Drunk drivers don't think about who they might kill either, but they kill more people each year than Islamic terrorists. Why are Islamic terrorists special enough to deserve more resources than those allocated to the prevention of drunk driving?

I shoudnt bother answering this.
But for the benefit of any following this threat who might be hoodwinked into thinking you have a point:

- Its not an either or. Stopping terrorism doesnt mean that people have to go hungry (over here anyway), or traffic lights cannot be aforded or drunk drivers get let off by the police.
- Drunk drivers go to prison if convicted. So do terrorists.
- Anyone can be stupid enough to get drunk and drive in a car. This isnt a deliberate threat, its a danger yes, there is danger enough in crossing the road even with sober drivers. However the roads are not a threat. Threats are hostile. You cant threaten someone with an accident, not literally anyway.

dogma wrote:
I'm guessing you've never actually worked with statistics, because that is false on its face. Look into the concepts of confidence and standard error.

Sorry you dont understand what you are talking about. Statistics is only of use at a very broad sense in the majority of cases. Accurate data as good as supermarkets get for stock control is vvery rare. Concepts like standard error are just attampts to deal with the problem I mentioned, a patch if you will to keep statisticians employed. Most statisticans will admit that standard error itself is only an estimate. An estimate of an estimate of an error. The further you get from a complete set of data the worse it gets. Statistics can be useful to politicians mainly for hoodwinking the people or broad policy decisions, with the emphasis on broad. Most of the work and analysis has to be logical not statistical and based on informed opinion.

Taking it back to the root analysis of terror operations must be just bout the direct opposite to analysis of supermarket till data. The datas is very fragmented often late, patchy in its arrival (you dont know when you will get an intelligence scoop) possibly full of deliberate misinformation or maskirovka, inflated, reordered, mistranslated, latcherd upon by politicians or civil servants and doctored etc etc etc. Somehow you expect to find a magick wand and turn Al-Quadea studies into a neat pie chart. Sorry, not going to happen. Terror cells are small, traditionally optimised in groups of three, decisions are often made at a local level, organisations are nebulous, form and disband quickly flow into different categories and other confusions. If three people decided to turn Moslem and then turn terrorist they may well be called an Al-Quaeda cell. Al-Quadea isnt really an organisation anymore, its more a verb because it defines action. Membership is not based on who you know but what you do, any terrorist claiming to fight for jihad can effectively claim to be Al-Quaeda. This is why they are everywhere.

You want statistics to cover all that, dream on.

dogma wrote:
It would be far easier to simply lie without doing the statistical analysis, which is what changing the criteria for an answer involves. Good statistics don't do that, and its relatively easy to tell what constitutes a good statistics given that you understand statistics at even a basic level.

A mistruth is not technically a lie, it becomes a lie by manipulation. A half truth or mistruth has a measure of deniability in it if found out that a flat lie does not have. So its safer because those who expose a mistruth need to find additional evidence to expose the falsehood as deliberate. Also as it adds as measure of security becausde a lie that is closer to the truth is often harder to find out. There is propoganda value in the opposite Big Lie, but that is psychological not statistical in root.

Good statistics do what a good statistician tells it to do. We cannot define good statistics because we cannot define goosd statisticians. For a supemarket till receipt based stock controll set up there might not ven be a good statistician. Going back to the old example if the data is good enough stock control is automated, the only reason stock controllers are involved at all is to double check and manually add based on personal managers discretion. It helps that stock controllers are cheap to employ. Professional government statisticians are looking for the stats their masters want, that includes those working in intelligence.

Statistics even nealry caused a nuclear war. During the mishandled Able Archer exercises in 1982 and following Reagans belligerent rhetoric the Soviet Union was expecting nuclear attack and sent agents to look for statistical signs of war plans. One such idea was to count military command offices at night. The reasoning being: office lights on > means military staff working late > which means invasion plans. The lights were on where expected, but only because cleaners and janitors were working at night.
Moscow got very close to launching based on data like that. It was stopped because their top spies at the time reported that no war plans were taking place. HumInt won through StatInt failed, possibly averting a nuclear holocaust.

dogma wrote:
No, it wouldn't be true. It would be true that a particular Afghan village was safer over the last three months than New York over the same period. It would not be true that Afghanistan was safer as a whole, because the sample did not deal with all of Afghanistan.

That is correct but you missed the point, the exact conditions of the test need not be conferred with the results. Most statistical results are published without the conditions of the test. Quick erpcentages are easy to read data, test parameteres arev harder to describe without a lot of prose. Thus it is tempting to omit even if you are being honest.
In ther example given ff course they would be defacto testing one picked village against New York, but the statistic could be made to read Afghhanistan vs New York or Afghanistan vs America.
Such an example is crude any shouldnt convince anyone, but stats like this are very common in some dodgy countries.

dogma wrote:
No, what I'm doing is explaining the logical progression that must be satisfied in order for any particular conclusion to be reached. I'm doing this in order to show how it isn't a simple matter of going by your gut.
I don't actually believe that there is a reasonable doubt in regards to the nature of the perpetrators of 9/11.

There are unanwered questions certainly, but I dont think culpability has been mis-established. Al Quaeda claimed responsibility, the passenger lists were scrutinised etc. There are unanswered question over the controlled demolition of some buildings thast were not structurally effected and many including myself beleive that United Airlines 93 may haver been shot down because it was approaching D.C. even though it was likely the passengers had succeeded in retaking control of the plane.

We can discuss this another time. though if you are raising the point that Islamic extermism is inflated that wouiold be a valid opne if there was anything to back it up. Assuming 9/11 was not the fault of who it was blamed on (and thats a big if) we still have a lot of ancilliary attacks and other major attacks prior to 9/11.




W have to accept margins of error in hard science as well. I'm pointing out that your margins of error are far too large. Please don't try and make this an argument from category, not only is it boring, but also trite.

Orlanth wrote:
Prety much the first rule of poltical science is regarding the fallibility of humna data. Everything is an educated guess, some guesses are more educated than others. Statistics only really help if they are large scale and thorough, these sorts of statistics are nort commonly available. Market datas is confidential to the company which reeasrched the data, intelligence data is common to the services.

I'm not going to argue this point with you. I'm just going to direct you to the American Political Science Review, and let you decide for yourself.

I'm not claiming that there is no margin for error, I'm claiming that theory must have a quantified basis in reality in order for it to have notable weight.

dogma wrote:
Actually, Al-Qaeda stood out as a significant threat due to it extensive funding network. This was pointed out in the assessment of quantitative data in the 9/11 report. To say that 9/11 happened because there was too great an emphasis on statistics is absolutely false, 9/11 happened because no one thought that any terrorist network could carry out a significant attack on the US; regardless of the data available.

Actually Mi6 and Mossad warned the USA of impending attack. The it cannot happen here possibly came about because Al Quaeda didnt compute under stat analysis, the warnings came from humInt basesd sources rather than looking at bank records.



Statistics aren't a box.

dogma wrote:
Actually, what lost Vietnam was the lapse in domestic political support, for which there is statistical evidence.

What lost Vietnam was the inability to deal with the NVA strategy which was to outlast the US based coalition. This was achieved by using non statistical vitory conditions which were highly fluid. The US could have beated the NVA prior to the breakdown of civil support had the strategy been based on a non-statistical model.

dogma wrote:
I'm merely pointing out that without any kind of quantitative basis your reasoned argument is irrelevant because you cannot show that it applies to reality.

This is clutching at straws. a reasonwed argument is valid because you can reason based not on statistical data but empirical data. Which I have repeatedly done. I am happy to leave the limited value of stats to the intelligence agencies. Knocing the Madrid bombings et al exists is enough of a reference to draw a healthy conclusion.

dogma wrote:
No, they're really not. Predictions deal with what you might find, likely truth deals with what you believe to be present.

And the pracitcal difference between the two is?
Let us take this topical please not raw theory. In theory you might be given one option for your preduction, the one with the highest probability, a practical reality looks at several options. What is the difference betwen what you might find and what you believe present in a mountain cave you are going to send special forces to investigate? You might find goats or terrorists, you believe that goatherds use the caves, you beleive that terrorrists use the caves.
For the record yes this is simplistic example still, and not necssarily indicative of real operations or real goatherds.

dogma wrote:
Obviously, but you aren't talking about including data at all. You only did that after I pushed you to do so. What you've been talking about is excluding data in order to include feeling, which is nonsense.
....The numbers are indicative of the nature, even if they are intended to be deceitful. Again, this is not grounds to dismiss statistics.

All, you are saying is only of flat value if the datas is reliable, usually it is less reliable than you might wish, this makes it dangerous.

I never claimed politcal statistics were not useful to the correct body, they are incredibly useful, but almost always to support what you want to find. Statistics are very easy to massage which makes them a very good propoganda rtool for use against the unwary. Deliberately bad statistics allowed Blair to join in the War on Iraq.

dogma wrote:
Again, you don't seem to understand statistics.

I understand it enough not to trust it for honest use in geo-politics.

It isnt a magick wand to find out what is happening except in very controlled circumstances, like stock control and similar functions with very good data sets.

If we take business a lot of money is poured into statistical analysis of the stock market, yet it doesnt do people much good. Real market reading works best in other ways, so much so that some other ways like insider trading were banned.

dogma wrote:
That's how science works. Most of the scientific method involves spectacular failure. You seem to have an odd understanding of science in general.

this is not how science works. Science works by deliberate method, bad science doesnt and that leads to failures. A theorem that is proven wrong by deliberate methodical sicence is not a failure, as something new is learned.

Politics doesnt deal with the same absolutes, human laws are not natural laws, they are subjective unfair, uneven and not evenly enforced. Societies are the same and individual people are even more random and unpredixctable, especially the radicalised.

dogma wrote:
That's not a matter of statistics first, that's a matter of placing the wrong statistics first.

You can t uput long term statistics first because they require a long l,oad in time. short term planning on short term statstics comes first and is thus applied first. Trying to find the right statistics is likely to be fraught with the same difficulties. Successful business keep to business principles first, targets second, tyhe former is not statistically based. Do the job right, determined empritically rather than statistically, and the business profile looks after itself. Hunt targets and the business profile may be abandoned.

dogma wrote:
In order to deduce something you must first establish a general truth, in order to do that without simply making something up, you need statistical evidence.

Patently untrue, empirical evidence works fine.

dogma wrote:
It clouds matters if you don't understand how to read the data.

Its not a matter of failure to understand reading data, at least not from this end, data is easy to read, but is it honest? that question the data itself will not tell you unless the percentages dont add to 100. To analyse you have to go further thasn just assimilating data, not all information is data, and not all data is statistical.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

youbedead wrote:

Orlanth wrote:

efarrer wrote:
As the troubles are the most recent part of an overall continuity of Catholic violence against England from the creation of Anglican church in the 16th century I'm not sure it's as easy to separate the two as you've just tried to do.

The actions have ranged from
Assassination attempts (Elizabeth survived multiple attempts on her life from Catholic assassins)
Wars
terrorism (Remember the fifth of November)

And I'm sure there's more then enough other examples that other people could pull from other areas, including India.

Ye olde examples dont count for anything. Or we would still be at war with the French.

So because something happened in the past it no longer matters.

Still got a Confederate problem, no? So its not relevant.
Likwise when fanatics blame the Troubles on what one side did to another centuries ago its just an excuse. The real reasons were in the here and now.

I am not saying ignore history, or ignore heritage, but do set a large gap between current problems and memories of ancient problems. The vast majority of the time those who dig up the past have a current problem and want to fuel hatred to deepen factional divide based on the current problem by reminding people of past issues. If the current issues is dealt with the past issues fade away.

This isc why Drogeda and Wexford are remembered but the massacre at Daventry is not, although the latter was far bloodier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_research

Wiki wrote:Accurate analysis of data using standardized statistical methods in scientific studies is critical to determining the validity of empirical research. Statistical formulas such as regression, uncertainty coefficient, t-test, chi square, and various types of ANOVA (analyses of variance) are fundamental to forming logical, valid conclusions. If empirical data reach significance under the appropriate statistical formula, the research hypothesis is supported. If not, the null hypothesis is supported (or, more correctly, not rejected), meaning no effect of the independent variable(s) was observed on the dependent variable(s).

It is important to understand that the outcome of empirical research using statistical hypothesis testing is never proof. It can only support a hypothesis, reject it, or do neither. These methods yield only probabilities.

Among scientific researchers, empirical evidence (as distinct from empirical research) refers to objective evidence that appears the same regardless of the observer. For example, a thermometer will not display different temperatures for each individual who observes it. Temperature, as measured by an accurate, well calibrated thermometer, is empirical evidence. By contrast, non-empirical evidence is subjective, depending on the observer. Following the previous example, observer A might truthfully report that a room is warm, while observer B might truthfully report that the same room is cool, though both observe the same reading on the thermometer. The use of empirical evidence negates this effect of personal (i.e., subjective) experience.

Ideally, empirical research yields empirical evidence, which can then be analyzed for statistical significance or reported in its raw form.

Orlanth wrote:

dogma wrote:
Both counts? How can I be wrong in asking a question?

You were wrong on both:

a) In what sense is it a threat? It isn't as though terrorism is going to topple any Western nation anytime soon.

You strongly imply that only by being able to do major damage like toppling a Western nation does Islam become a threat. As it cannot (at least in the short/medium term do so) it is not a threat. This can only mean something else if you very badly wroded your post

You cannot strongly imply something. Either something is implied, or it isn't. In this case I did not imply what you suggest that I did. Implication requires that a certain thing follow from what I said, and I deliberately took measures to insure that wasn't the case.

Try again.

Orlanth wrote:
b) Moreover, you didn't claim that fundamentalist Islam was a threat.

When I most certainly claimed it was.

Perhaps I was wrong to state this, but in the posts that I quoted you claimed nothing of the sort, I have no interest in reading the rest of your posts.

Orlanth wrote:
I will give you fair opportunity to clarify your sttement then.

What statement? I asked you a question, I made no statement.

Orlanth wrote:
I said it quite frequently in the above posts, so frequently it would be a waste of time to copy paste more than a fraction of the occassions. Here are hopefully enough to set this straight:

Again, I have no interest in reading the majority of your posts. That would imply respect.

Orlanth wrote:
There is a recurring pattern with your posts dogma. You post denials with little logic behind them,...

Why should I bother with logic when confronted with the deliberately illogical?

Orlanth wrote:
If I have to describe the moral difference between bad or unlucky driving and acts of terror that there is no hope for you.

Even so, please explain.

Orlanth wrote:
I am more concerned witn the integrity of statistical data. You can count whatever you like, if you count lies you will get an erroneuos finding.

And if you don't count lies, but believe them on their face you will still be left with nothing. Come now, you know better.

Orlanth wrote:
When organisations like Al Mouhajiroun (sp) call for jihad I take that at face value.

That was an organization? That wasn't a person who the intelligence services said was a member of an organization?

Orlanth wrote:
Besides you are really clutching at straws if you raise a defence that the militant preachers dont mean what they are saying.

I am? They're making political statements. You already said that political actors are bound to lie. Why wouldn't political preachers lie?

Orlanth wrote:
1. Quantative data is not forthcoming, so stop asking me and ask the CIA or equivalent.

Go to your local library. Read some political science journals.

Orlanth wrote:
2. Attacks are stopped by the aforementioned agencies so the threat which they take seriously is defacto lessened by proactive engagement of the threat.

Is it? Please, prove that relationship.

Orlanth wrote:
3. The number of attacks is no indication of their scale and vice versa.

Nor did I say so.

Orlanth wrote:
I shoudnt bother answering this.
But for the benefit of any following this threat who might be hoodwinked into thinking you have a point:

- Its not an either or. Stopping terrorism doesnt mean that people have to go hungry (over here anyway), or traffic lights cannot be aforded or drunk drivers get let off by the police.

I didn't suggest it was an either-or.

Orlanth wrote:
- Drunk drivers go to prison if convicted. So do terrorists.

Don't care, I care about relative resource distribution.

Orlanth wrote:
- Anyone can be stupid enough to get drunk and drive in a car. This isnt a deliberate threat, its a danger yes, there is danger enough in crossing the road even with sober drivers. However the roads are not a threat. Threats are hostile. You cant threaten someone with an accident, not literally anyway.

Deliberation matters? Ok, apparently we're getting somewhere now.

Orlanth wrote:
Sorry you dont understand what you are talking about. Statistics is only of use at a very broad sense in the majority of cases. Accurate data as good as supermarkets get for stock control is vvery rare. Concepts like standard error are just attampts to deal with the problem I mentioned, a patch if you will to keep statisticians employed. Most statisticans will admit that standard error itself is only an estimate. An estimate of an estimate of an error.

Standard error is simply an estimate of errror given a certain sample. It isn't an estimate of an estimate of anything. Please do your homework.

Orlanth wrote:
The further you get from a complete set of data the worse it gets. Statistics can be useful to politicians mainly for hoodwinking the people or broad policy decisions, with the emphasis on broad. Most of the work and analysis has to be logical not statistical and based on informed opinion.

You want to get into logic? Alright, prove your argument using symbolic formalism.

Orlanth wrote:
You want statistics to cover all that, dream on.

I'd rather be good at math than dream.

Orlanth wrote:
A mistruth is not technically a lie, it becomes a lie by manipulation.

You didn't mention lies in regards to your speculation. You referenced truth. The statement that you made would not be true given the stats you provided. That doesn't indicate that it would be a lie.

Orlanth wrote:
Good statistics do what a good statistician tells it to do.

No, not at all. Sorry. Stats don't work that way. You can always check my regression analyses if you don't believe me.

Orlanth wrote:
Statistics even nealry caused a nuclear war.

And qualitative governance caused the US to drop a nuclear bomb on Japan. Please, let us refrain from appeals to emotion.

Orlanth wrote:
That is correct but you missed the point, the exact conditions of the test need not be conferred with the results.

No conditions of any test need be connected to any results. For example, I can lie and say that Orlanth is an Atheist without ever making reference to your behavior. The fact that something can be manipulated is not sufficient to reject it.

Orlanth wrote:
Most statistical results are published without the conditions of the test.

No, that's false. Seriously, I cannot even disprove that statement because any example I proffer is going to be rejected as an exception. Suffice it to say that almost all stats are published with method analysis.

Orlanth wrote:
There are unanwered questions certainly, but I dont think culpability has been mis-established. Al Quaeda claimed responsibility, the passenger lists were scrutinised

Good god. I'm positing a thought exercise. That's all. I'm literally illustrating the questions you would have to answer in order to conclude that Al-Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Or any other set of attacks.

Orlanth wrote:
Actually Mi6 and Mossad warned the USA of impending attack. The it cannot happen here possibly came about because Al Quaeda didnt compute under stat analysis, the warnings came from humInt basesd sources rather than looking at bank records.

So you're no reduced to possibility? Not certainty?

Orlanth wrote:
What lost Vietnam was the inability to deal with the NVA strategy which was to outlast the US based coalition. This was achieved by using non statistical vitory conditions which were highly fluid. The US could have beated the NVA prior to the breakdown of civil support had the strategy been based on a non-statistical model.

Really? You already acknowledged that the NVA based its strategy on insensitivity to loss, so how would the US have won given an enemy that did not care for its casualties?

Orlanth wrote:
This is clutching at straws. a reasonwed argument is valid because you can reason based not on statistical data but empirical data. Which I have repeatedly done.

Statistical data is empirical data, so I don't know what you're trying to say.

Orlanth wrote:
And the pracitcal difference between the two is?

Predictions don't involve action on an implicit level.

Orlanth wrote:
Statistics are very easy to massage...

"Reasonable" looks aren't?

Orlanth wrote:
I understand it enough not to trust it for honest use in geo-politics.

It isnt a magick wand to find out what is happening except in very controlled circumstances, like stock control and similar functions with very good data sets.

When did I say that it is? I'm only suggesting that you are ridiculous in you skepticism.

Orlanth wrote:
this is not how science works. Science works by deliberate method, bad science doesnt and that leads to failures. A theorem that is proven wrong by deliberate methodical sicence is not a failure, as something new is learned.

No. Read Kuhn and Popper.

You speak like someone who has never set foot in a laboratory.

Orlanth wrote:
Politics doesnt deal with the same absolutes, human laws are not natural laws, they are subjective unfair, uneven and not evenly enforced. Societies are the same and individual people are even more random and unpredixctable, especially the radicalised.

That's nice, but they're still fundamentally human. Despite what we might pretend.

Orlanth wrote:
You can t uput long term statistics first because they require a long l,oad in time. short term planning on short term statstics comes first and is thus applied first.

Yes, if you emphasize the short term then the short term will come first. That's what I said.

Orlanth wrote:
Patently untrue, empirical evidence works fine.

Statistical evidence is empirical evidence.

Orlanth wrote:
Its not a matter of failure to understand reading data, at least not from this end, data is easy to read, but is it honest? that question the data itself will not tell you unless the percentages dont add to 100. To analyse you have to go further thasn just assimilating data, not all information is data, and not all data is statistical.

If you're differentiating between statistical data and non-statistical data then yes, all information is data.

Regardless, you seem to be assuming that people who do and read stats don't pay attention to method. That is a pathetic and insulting assumption.