alt Hacker News> We can only talk about base rates if you stop trying to invalidate the data.
Exactly! You keep trying to deny the base rates by ignoring the billions of people who don't commit violence, and focusing entirely on the tiny number of outliers who do commit violence.
If "a small number of members are willing to commit violence" is taken as evidence that the whole group is violent, then every Hacker News reader is a terrorist, every Hacker News poster is DEFINITELY a terrorist, and everyone who disagrees with me is a radically violent nihilist that wants to destroy civilization.
I do not thing there is a single large group you could find that has never once had a radical carry out violence in their name - people commit violence for Christianity, for the Ethical Treatment Of Animals, for Peace.
> ignoring the billions of people who don't commit violence
> taken as evidence that the whole group is violent
Where did I say that?
I am not the one who put forward a categorical statement here. You're the one who appealed to a fantasy world where "the only people that reach your conclusion are ones that don't actually subscribe to the philosophy". The categorical claim is yours, and the error is yours, but rather than own it, you tell yourself a creative story about what I believe, and you continue saying all this inane stuff about how there's violence in every group.
As I have already told you, I am happy to consider all those inane, obvious points. It's important context! But first, I want to see evidence that you are capable of noticing and learning from your own sloppy, wishful thinking here. You have to actually admit that these ideas have consequences, before we can start relativizing them away.