Note: goldie's original statement wasn't that he was statistically likely that he was a Muslim, it was that he (while only citing the fact that Abdulazeez was born in Kuwait) was definitely a Muslim.

"Let's say that 87% of the people in Kuwait are Muslim. Let's say that I know that person X is from Kuwait, and I know nothing else about him. Not even his name. I am right to conclude that he is Muslim with 87% probability.

True or false? If false, why false?"
If you're talking about this particular scenario, false. Because he's not in the statistic. He's not part of the measured Kuwaiti population because he's an American citizen.

American citizen living in the United States*

"If you're talking about this particular scenario, false. Because he's not in the statistic. He's not part of the measured Kuwaiti population because he's an American citizen. "

I'm not. You can tell this, because I said that "I know person X is from Kuwait, and I know nothing else about him." Since you know something else about this guy, obviously it's a different scenario. You might also have guessed this from the fact that I said it was an example.

Now please answer the scenario I posted.

TrPrado - that second bit is about how finding something with a tiny probability over a large sample size is actually significantly more likely than the odds would make it appear. That means testing the entire sample size to find a match.

So, to make the comparison, that says that if you take 100 random Kuwaitis, you're actually very likely to find a non-Muslim among them. What it doesn't say (and what I'm trying to say) is that if you take 1 random Kuwaiti - what will he more likely be?

So, again your fallacy doesn't match up. But keep em coming! I like learning about these.

Okay, he lived in Tennessee. Based on religious statistics of Tennessee residents, he actually is only .24% likely to be Muslim.

even for a USA citizen from kuwait, i think there is a high probability of that person being muslin (+50%) i mean

Reiteration of your quote for your convenience:
""NBC News reported that Abdulazeez was a naturalized American who was born in Kuwait." So, he is a Muslim."
This does not say "So, he is STATISTICALLY LIKELY to be a Muslim." Not that he PROBABLY is a Muslim. No, it says that he is definitively a Muslim. How is that NOT a fallacy?

"Okay, he lived in Tennessee. Based on religious statistics of Tennessee residents, he actually is only .24% likely to be Muslim."

OK, this was really just a simple exercise in statistics. Please try to focus.

Let me change the facts so you can focus better.

Let's say that 80% of the graduates of Dogwood High have taken chemistry. If I know NOTHING ELSE about somebody than that he is a graduate of Dogwood High, am I right to conclude that there is an 80% chance he took chemistry?

semck: I'm not arguing about likelihoods based on statistics, I'm arguing against using statistics to guarantee and define an individual based on them. Not as a likelihood, but as an assertion of fact.

TrPrado - I was trying to concisely answer. Must I spell it out for a judge and jury to pass it and make sure its politically correct to say? Jeez. No matter how you say it, the sentiment is the same and the sentiment is what I was trying to get across. jmpool said "how do you know he's Muslim" so I countered with "He's from Kuwait". People should be able to read in between the lines there.

That's not a question of political correctness, it's a question of logical validity.

OK. Well the only fallacy to be concerned with here is the conflation of 100% probability with a very high (say ~90%) probability. The extent to which it's a fallacy is really context-dependent, though. Goldfinger seems to have been pretty up front with the statistics.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion.

What was more frustrating about it, for me, was that goldie had at his disposal a better way of making the same conclusion, but used that evidence to make a separate conclusion, the validity of which I'm not going to bring into question.

So again you guys are just trying to muddy up the discussion on pointless semantics, in the process subtracting relevant information from the discussion for determining the shooter's motive.

I don't understand the end goal of the leftists in this thread, but it appears to be "make sure no one can talk about the root cause of a tragedy that left innocent people dead." The decline is real.

ITT instead of actually discussing the attack on our armed forces and what it means in the larger scope of things. Leftists attack the wording of a single individual to distract the issue.

Classic.

Now back on topic, I honestly think we need to abandon the whole "policing action" mindset that's part of our policy toward ISIS/ISIL. They are AT WAR with us. For us to effectively ignore that is a potentially catastrophic blunder. The first thing I would want to see is all on-duty military personnel armed. Especially in the wake of this attack and the list of targets ISIS posted. If we're not going to be able to catch these kind of attacks before they happen, then the least we can do is ensure that they end with the least loss of life. I honestly find it ridiculous that military recruitment centers are among many "gun free zones".

goldfinger0303: You seem to be confusing population and number of citizens resident at home.

"But to be clear then - are you agreeing with my original statement? That since he's from Kuwait, it's safe to assume he's Muslim?"
As I said, I don't know very much about this case. I was simply calling out your generalizations. But from what I have read, I am not convinced that "he's from Kuwait". John McCain is not Panamanian, even though he was born in Panama and Panamanians are also American.

President Eden: I'm not talking about the tragedy at all. goldfinger0303 made several unfortunate statements in a row which I felt right to address in the same thread that he posted them.

As for what follows "Classic.", I would like to kindly point out that you're not talking about the tragedy either.

JamesYanik:
'Islam' means submission to God. Why this phrase is seen as extremist by Christians is beyond me. Most Christian sects I know of demand that followers believe in an omnipotent sentience (or else accept eternal damnation). If you believe in something so powerful, doesn't it make sense to submit to its will? I don't see many Christians running about saying 'sorry, Lord, but I don't agree with you on this one'.

JamesYanik: That's a quote from my first post in the thread.

i actually had no idea that was the case. i guess you're just really smart JECE :P

Sorry, if you take issue whether Muhammed youssef abdulazeez originally from Kuwait is Muslim you are just a quibbler. Not that being a Muslim isn't even anprerequisit for being an Islamist terrorist in the first place. Somehow we as a country got the idea that an Islamist terror suspect is more likely to be devout in religion, this is not necessarily the case, over and over terrorists have come from secular well educated backgrounds. Whether he was a practicing Muslim is largely immaterial. I remember reading that the most ordered book from Amazon before a person leaves to join Isis are beginners books about Islam

I mean are we honestly saying if a non practicing Jew shot up a PLO political center that we wouldn't see him as a "jewish extremist" of course we would.

You think I'm a leftist? That's pretty funny.

Also, I did post something relevant to that discussion, but no one else commented on it in any way.

@James ... I study religion. I know what Islam is. It's not a "way of life" unless the follower chooses to make it a way of life, just like the other Semitic brands of religion, most notably Christianity and Judaism. You also fail to differentiate between branches of Islam, which are often no less different from one another than Orthdox Judaism and Reform Judaism, the most prevalent branch of Judaism in the country and the one you are probably most familiar with. It is so much more complex and intricate than you make it and you have no right to be judging such a massive chunk of the world's population over their religion when you don't even know what it is.

Holy shit. You people are trying to argue that a guy named Mohammed Yussef Abdubaleez or however you spell it, from Kuwait, who shot a U.S. military facility, and has recently been to ISIS lands, ISNT A MUSLIM TERRORIST?

Jesus Christ people.

I'm not sure there's enough straw in that man. You might want to add more to get a sufficient scarecrow.

I'm not sure why you think being born in Kuwait is relevant to him. That's the only connection Abdulazeez had to that country. He had Jordanian citizenship, and visited there a couple times. Not Kuwait.
A couple relevant points to be made. First, why do you guys seem to assume through implication that Abdulazeez was necessarily part of ISIS? Aside from the fact that investigators have found no link between him and any group, he could very well have been part of any terrorist group that wasn't ISIS. It's not like they're the only group in the area that could have gone for him. Next, he wasn't as devout as a Muslim as you would think. Sure, there's the blog post, but in light of other information, that seems to be at least partially an online persona. A few months ago, Abdulazeez was arrested for a DUI, and police, who noticed that he definitely was NOT sober, smelled alcohol and marijuana on him. This is not very devout in my mind. That's not even to go into the whole murdering innocents thing (during Ramadan, no less). Cast in this light, he is not as devout as everyone once believed. I assume the ire and cause of this attack had more to do with a political distaste of the United States and its military.

Really, Chaqa, read what people are saying. We find inflammatory and false statements like that Jordan is part of "ISIS lands" idiotic, unhelpful and dangerous. If you unjustly categorize huge swaths of people as terrorist suspects, you can only expect disdain and mistrust from the Muslim community, which in turn creates conditions ideal for radicalization. Hell, I just Googled 'radicalization' to make sure that I spelled it correctly and was confronted with an article titled "'Path to Radicalization'? Start with His Name". What shit is that?

And I say all this as someone who is very critical of religion. We cannot allow for hate speech to further isolate and radicalize the Islamic community. When turn someone paranoid, you risk them becoming an extremist.