{"id":3982,"date":"2016-09-20T17:58:02","date_gmt":"2016-09-20T22:58:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/?p=3982"},"modified":"2016-09-21T18:25:49","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T23:25:49","slug":"poison-candy-innumeracy-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/2016\/09\/20\/poison-candy-innumeracy-fear\/","title":{"rendered":"Poison Candy and the Innumeracy of Fear"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>And now for something completely different:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">So. Much. Wrong. Here. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/fR7CUjZqmj\">https:\/\/t.co\/fR7CUjZqmj<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jen Doyle has left this app (@thepoisontart) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/thepoisontart\/status\/778285323763617792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 20, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>It turns out feminist androphobia can be readily repackaged as nativist xenophobia. Who knew?<\/p>\n<p>(<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/staks\/posts\/10153843650161570?pnref=story\">Staks<\/a>, probably.)<\/p>\n<p>Leaving out the various transitional digital fossils\u2014of which there are many\u2014here are the starting and ending points of the memetic evolution from fear of men to fear of refugees:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/NotAllMen?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#NotAllMen<\/a>? Imagine a bowl of M&amp;Ms, 10% are poisoned. Go ahead, eat a handful. Not all M&amp;Ms are poison. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/YesAllWomen?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#YesAllWomen<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/6VFMxWdhuf\">pic.twitter.com\/6VFMxWdhuf<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Janina Sj\u00f6holm (@RowanLake99) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RowanLake99\/status\/471715156612091904?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 28, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">This image says it all. Let&#39;s end the politically correct agenda that doesn&#39;t put America first. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/trump2016?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#trump2016<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/9fHwog7ssN\">pic.twitter.com\/9fHwog7ssN<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DonaldJTrumpJr\/status\/778016283342307328?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 19, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>To my understanding, the<em>\u00a0least uncharitable<\/em> interpretation of the junior Trump&#8217;s meme is that three out of [bowlful] of refugees are jihadists. But how big would the bowl really have to be for that to hold true?<\/p>\n<p>According to Table 2 of this <a href=\"http:\/\/object.cato.org\/sites\/cato.org\/files\/pubs\/pdf\/pa798_1_1.pdf#page=8\">recent CATO study<\/a>, only 20 out of 3,252,493 refugee immigrants turned out to be terrorists, over the course of four decades. Dividing both sides of that ratio by 6.66 (repeating) gives us three out of\u00a0487,874 refugees, which would make for mighty huge bowl of Skittles, indeed.<\/p>\n<p>The folks over at Vox.com have an alternative view, based on individualized annual risk:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Donald Trump Jr.&#39;s terrorist-Skittle analogy is completely wrong <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/k62mWjFRib\">https:\/\/t.co\/k62mWjFRib<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/QV7HMNusEQ\">pic.twitter.com\/QV7HMNusEQ<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Vox (@voxdotcom) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/voxdotcom\/status\/778277599361499136?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 20, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>This goes waaaaaay too far in the opposite direction, from my perspective. The most\u00a0salient policy question here is <em>how many terrorists<\/em> we are letting in to the country, rather than\u00a0whether any given American living in the United States is at risk of death over the course of any given year. Think about it: How would it sound for someone to argue that\u00a0<a title=\"Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rizwan_Farook_and_Tashfeen_Malik\">Tashfeen Malik<\/a>\u00a0killed quite a few Americans, but at least she\u00a0didn&#8217;t kill anyone you happen to\u00a0know?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m going to give the last word to moral philosopher Alonzo Fyfe, who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/alonzo.fyfe\/posts\/10209279649281236\">reminds us<\/a> that refugees are not candy, they are people worth saving in and of themselves:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Actually, what it gets wrong is that skittles are not people.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s say that a pleasure cruise ship has sunk. You come upon the sight of the shipwreck and there are 4000 people in the water. You know that one of them is a killer. Do you refuse to rescue any of them?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>No, of course you don&#8217;t. Unless you have an heuristic which allows you to dehumanize them as members of an outgroup beyond moral concern. (Which Marxists might, given the nature of pleasure cruises.)<\/p>\n<p>Your thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And now for something completely different: So. Much. Wrong. Here. https:\/\/t.co\/fR7CUjZqmj &mdash; Jen Doyle has left this app (@thepoisontart) September&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":3983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-events","category-damned-lies-and-statistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}