[Link] A rational response to the Paris attacks and ISIS

Gleb_Tsipursky

Here's my op-ed that uses long-term orientation, probabilistic thinking, numeracy, consider the alternative, reaching our actual goals, avoiding intuitive emotional reactions and attention bias, and other rationality techniques to suggest more rational responses to the Paris attacks and the ISIS threat. It's published in the Sunday edition of The Plain Dealer, a major newspaper (16th in the US). This is part of my broader project, Intentional Insights, of conveying rational thinking, including about politics, to a broad audience to raise the sanity waterline.

Anecdotal reports by terrorists is the best data we have available. Weak evidence is still evidence. We should update on whatever evidence we have, and avoid dismissing it out of hand and calling it ridiculous. As aspiring rationalists, we need to orient toward the truth, and avoid confirmation bias.

Anecdotal reports by terrorists is the best data we have available.

Which explains why you ignored all the reports that didn't fit your conclusion, e.g., the ones about how ISIS is planning to conquer Europe and considers this a war. You don't win a war by worrying about not offending the other side.

0brazil8410y

If you had said that Western activities "risk" radicalizing more Muslims, you might have a point. Instead you came to a firm conclusion based on spectacularly weak evidence. [...] Unfortunately, it seems you have fallen into exactly that trap. It looks like you gave a few self-serving anecdotal reports far far more weight than they deserved because it fit your pre-determined Leftist conclusion. Not only that, but it seems that, having been informed about social desirability bias, you are not updating your confidence in your conclusion. You still believe that generally speaking we can trust terrorists to accurately report their motivations. If you were serious about investigating your hypothesis, you would compare measures of radicalization in Iraq to other countries like Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, etc. If the Sipursky Rage hypothesis has any validity, one would expect lots of radicalization in Iraq and far less in Syria. But I doubt it ever occurred to you to do that, since you seem mainly interested in finding evidence to support your pre-determined Leftist beliefs than in actually investigating them.