Re: @ Trevor_Pott re @ Big John
"I see you've had some kind of lessons in this "logic" subject. Very good!" -- Big John
You said: "That's a lot of killing by a smallish world minority. So let's not hear any more guff about "everyone does it." By and large, it's Muslims who do it to themselves and the rest of us."
You either (a) intended people to form a conclusion from this or (b) you didn't.
In the latter case (b) it is a correction of previous statements. I have nothing against pedantry --- I am probably one of its foremost proponents! Perhaps it is harsh to call such a correction pedantry, but that is a subjective assessment I made concerning the relative import of the statement to the current argument.
In the former case (a) there is a problem. Given that there are 1.5e9 Muslims in the world, the numbers of both victims and perpetrators of terrorism are proportionally so small that no conclusions can be made from this statement without affirming the consequent.
If you were encouraging the simple-minded to form a conclusion by affirming the consequent, despite your own knowledge of it being a logical fallacy, that would make you worse than simple minded -- it would make you a person using your superior intellect, or at least logical ability, to exploit those with less impressive capabilities.
So, I'm going to apologise for calling you a pedant and thank you for supplying the information, whilst considering the same to not advance us materially in the matter of dealing with terrorism.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
