Most non-Muslims support terrorism

[Augustus]

There's and certain sample size and randomization that confer a scientific validity. Better pollsters do this, and you may notice they offer a "sampling error" of 2-3% ? That's done for a reason, sir.

Do you see the problem with this graph and your statement about 'scientific validity'? These can't all be scientifically valid with margins of error at <3% at 99% confidence.

Can you spot the unscientific ones?

 

[Augustus]

In what way do the recent immigrant terrorists in - say - the UK fit into the categories in the OP?

????

We were discussing why some polls should be believed and others shouldn't.

Do you trust the poll in the OP now you know it meets all of the criteria you set out for being a reliable poll?

 

[Augustus]

I think of them like tools. When used properly, they can be used to achieve good things, or they can be misused and suddenly everyone's a terrorist because pretty much everyone intents to defend themselves, which often includes varying degrees of violence.

These are all situations in which the designation 'terrorist' is commonly used.

The study these polls were from was about the misuse of polls anyway, rather than anything overtly political:

The first one is that Muslim public opinion on terrorism is often presented in the light of an implicit assumption that the general consensus around terrorism would be one of zero tolerance. This however, is not true, as we see the general public opinion in Britain expressing statistically significant and substantively non-negligible levels of support. The second one is that Muslims and non-Muslims alike share a hierarchy of terrorism causes and targets, which means that a lot of questions supposedly measuring tacit support for terrorism actually tap into a consensus that some terrorist actions are more justifiable than others. Finally, measurement of support for terrorism is sensitive to the question wording and format- something that is rarely reflected upon in the reporting of these items in the press and academic research alike.

 

[Augustus]

Any organized group that seeks overthrow of a government or state by violent means is an insurgency. And as far as I know, they did use terrorism targeting civilians.

For me, terrorist attacks focus on influencing an audience whereas an insurgency focuses on defeating an enemy militarily (but may also use terrorist tactics).

But this makes no difference to the OP anyway which is about the inaccuracy and subjectivity of such polls and the deficiencies of narratives constructed off them.

That terrorism is such a nebulous and controversial concept only adds to this.

 

[Grumpuss]

Do you see the problem with this graph and your statement about 'scientific validity'? These can't all be scientifically valid with margins of error at <3% at 99% confidence.

Can you spot the unscientific ones?

Indeed the polls are accurate, albeit with error. Your gripe about sampling error suggests a representative study has no value.

The food you eat, the drugs you take and the car you drive all undergo a similar process with quality control testing: if such destructive testing sampled a true 100%, there would be no product left to sell.

 

[icehorse]

????

We were discussing why some polls should be believed and others shouldn't.

Do you trust the poll in the OP now you know it meets all of the criteria you set out for being a reliable poll?

I wasn't asked for an exhaustive, perfect poll veracity checklist, I gave a few examples. In this case, it seems to me that almost all of the terrorism that folks on this forum are concerned about is perpetrated by immigrants. So I wonder what the results would have been to the question:

Do you believe it's valid for immigrants to kill civilians in order to spread to spread their religion?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

These are all situations in which the designation 'terrorist' is commonly used.

When it comes to defending your homeland, no one except the invaders are going to consider you terrorists. Fighting back against a foreign military, international law, political sciences, no one of reasonable and sound mind will consider that terrorism. But yet this poll does.

Do you see the problem with this graph and your statement about 'scientific validity'? These can't all be scientifically valid with margins of error at <3% at 99% confidence.

You can't spot an "unscientific one" just by looking at an image like that. What we can tell by the sources of these polls is they come from a variety of sources. That the first give are pretty close and from different sources indicates the pollsters may have had a decent poll. But we need the actual questions and sample base to know for sure. It could also explain why the last two are such outliers.

 

[Augustus]

When it comes to defending your homeland, no one except the invaders are going to consider you terrorists. Fighting back against a foreign military, international law, political sciences, no one of reasonable and sound mind will consider that terrorism. But yet this poll does.

Israel/Palestine, post-invasion Iraq, etc.

It would not be a useful control figure if you didn't take these issues into account.

Whether you agree it should be the correct definition or not, it is in common usage.

You can't spot an "unscientific one" just by looking at an image like that. What we can tell by the sources of these polls is they come from a variety of sources. That the first give are pretty close and from different sources indicates the pollsters may have had a decent poll. But we need the actual questions and sample base to know for sure. It could also explain why the last two are such outliers.

The point is none of them are scientific (and even if one was you couldn't identify it from outside)

What you can spot is that the MOEs cannot be correct on all of them, despite the MOE being 'scientifically correct' as per the methodology of the compiler of each individual poll. The 'outliers' were actually the most accurate btw.

Research has shown that comparing the MOE on polls should be significantly higher (perhaps double) than what is stated and political polls are far easier and more accurate than 'tacit support for terrorism' polls.

More scientific polling would have a larger MOE, and wouldn't draw conclusions based on anything with this MOE.

 

[Augustus]

Indeed the polls are accurate, albeit with error. Your gripe about sampling error suggests a representative study has no value.

The point is that some of them are still wrong even accounting for the MOE otherwise all of them would overlap.

A political poll that says Trump = 50% really means more like Trump = 43%-57% if you factor in a more realistic MOE.

Any narrative based on anything more specific than that is fake news: using information that you know could be false to construct a narrative.

The narrative for almost every Presidential Election should be 'race too close to call' rather than 'Candidate X leads by 4%'

 

[Augustus]

I wasn't asked for an exhaustive, perfect poll veracity checklist, I gave a few examples.

What other factors do you consider pertinent before you decide to treat the polls as being trustworthy?

Do you consider the poll in the OP trustworthy?

In this case, it seems to me that almost all of the terrorism that folks on this forum are concerned about is perpetrated by immigrants. So I wonder what the results would have been to the question:

Do you believe it's valid for immigrants to kill civilians in order to spread to spread their religion?

Most haven't been immigrants.

It's also completely irrelevant to the topic as outlined in the OP. "Tl:dr, polls generally suck and have a high noise to signal ratio. Commentary based on polls often sucks even more than the polls themselves as the previous 2 examples show."

Just for fun, what would you guess the response to your question would be from a) Muslims b) non-Muslims [take as large a range as you like to make yourself reasonably confident]

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

The point is that some of them are still wrong even accounting for the MOE otherwise all of them would overlap.

... 19 times out of 20.

 

[Augustus]

... 19 times out of 20.

For those with a sample of <1000

99+/100 for the larger samples *in theory*

Even using the most generous numbers, they still never add up because humans have a habit of not behaving in the way that highly accurate surveys require and the 'science' assumes.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Terrorists Killed In Kashmir: Latest News, Photos, Videos on Terrorists Killed In Kashmir - NDTV.COM

Interesting. Pakistan keeps on sending terrorists into Kashmir. Indian forces keep killing them. Of course, sometimes we too suffer fatalities. It is a nice game that we are playing. Now we have stopped counting.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The point is none of them are scientific (and even if one was you couldn't identify it from outside)

Based on the chart alone, all we know is the sources of the studies and their results. We don't know if they sponsored a university to conduct the study, we don't know if they set it up scientifically, we don't know if they were baited to gain certain results. We can assume they probably weren't scientific, but we do not factually know this based on the chart alone.

Whether you agree it should be the correct definition or not, it is in common usage.

There is no "common" definition of terrorism, what civilians, military, and political scientist consider terrorism often varies, and there is much debate as to who exactly is a terrorist. Such as, some people consider Theodore Kaczynski a terrorist; some do not.

 

[icehorse]

What other factors do you consider pertinent before you decide to treat the polls as being trustworthy?

The first factor that comes to mind is context. If an established country is being attacked, invaded or occupied by a hostile force then it seems that terrorism against the invader is just an act of war, correct? On the other hand, the acts of terror we've seen in Europe recently don't fall into that category. Those acts don't seem justified. Your polling questions do not make this distinction clear.

 

[sayak83]

For me, terrorist attacks focus on influencing an audience whereas an insurgency focuses on defeating an enemy militarily (but may also use terrorist tactics).

But this makes no difference to the OP anyway which is about the inaccuracy and subjectivity of such polls and the deficiencies of narratives constructed off them.

That terrorism is such a nebulous and controversial concept only adds to this.

No, terrorism is not a nebulous concept. Deliberate targeting of civilians the violate the Geneva conventions is terrorism. Your poll makes it deliberately broad in order to manufacture its desired result.

 

[icehorse]

What other factors do you consider pertinent before you decide to treat the polls as being trustworthy?

The first factor that comes to mind is context. If an established country is being attacked, invaded or occupied by a hostile force then it seems that terrorism against the invader is just an act of war, correct? On the other hand, the acts of terror we've seen in Europe recently don't fall into that category. Those acts don't seem justified. Your polling questions do not make this distinction clear.

 

[sun rise]

In an army base, the civilians are the incidental target and fall under collateral damage category.
Tim McVeigh was a single person, and he would simply be a violent criminal. Similar to the guy who shot FDR.

Yes RAF was an insurgency. Any organized group that seeks overthrow of a government or state by violent means is an insurgency. And as far as I know, they did use terrorism targeting civilians.

So a "Muslim Tim McVeigh" single person who commits a similar crime would likewise be a violent criminal - just stating that individuals cannot be terrorists. That is not defensible to me.

 

[sun rise]

Indeed the polls are accurate, albeit with error. Your gripe about sampling error suggests a representative study has no value.

The food you eat, the drugs you take and the car you drive all undergo a similar process with quality control testing: if such destructive testing sampled a true 100%, there would be no product left to sell.

When it comes to polls, one question is the stability of opinion. A poll can be accurate when it was taken but the results different later. That's why the better organizations use polls as an indication of how opinions are changing over time and use aggregate polls to try to remove uncertainty because of the nature of the questions asked including the order of the questions and how random the sample truly is.

 

[Augustus]

The first factor that comes to mind is context. If an established country is being attacked, invaded or occupied by a hostile force then it seems that terrorism against the invader is just an act of war, correct? On the other hand, the acts of terror we've seen in Europe recently don't fall into that category. Those acts don't seem justified. Your polling questions do not make this distinction clear.

Acts of war are performed by states. If your country has been invaded and surrendered, an individual act could be considered an act of terrorism (see Iraq). Whether you agree or not that this counts as terrorism, it falls within a common usage of the term.

The purpose of the poll is to see how much society will accept terrorism in different circumstances. Each of these different circumstances is very clearly identified.

What is unclear about this?

"Muslim public opinion on terrorism is often presented in the light of an implicit assumption that the general consensus around terrorism would be one of zero tolerance. This however, is not true, as we see the general public opinion in Britain expressing statistically significant and substantively non-negligible levels of support."

So is the poll trustworthy?