Sam Harris

[Frenger]

A few on the forum have mentioned this already, but I thought I would bring in the article for everyone to see.

I find it odd, I had always rather liked Sam, perhaps it was the fact he was Ben Stiller's twin, perhaps it was his cool black shirts and black jacket, or maybe it was that his hands seem to say more than his mouth does.

This recent article however, is completely horrible. (You can see the whole article here) in summery it is basically "how can I be a threat? I'm white?"

We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it. And, again, I wouldn't put someone who looks like me entirely outside the bull's-eye (after all, what would Adam Gadahn look like if he cleaned himself up?) But there are people who do not stand a chance of being jihadists, and TSA screeners can know this at a glance.

Needless to say, a devout Muslim should be free to show up at the airport dressed like Osama bin Laden, and his wives should be free to wear burqas. But if their goal is simply to travel safely and efficiently, wouldn't they, too, want a system that notices people like themselves? At a minimum, wouldn't they want a system that anti-profiles,applying the minimum of attention to people who obviously pose no threat?

What do you guys think?

 

[Laurens]

I think he's a fucking disgrace.

I mean a small child could realise that if you start profiling for people wearing turbans and big beards, all it would take for those whom this method of profiling seeks to capture is for them to look as little like that as possible. Either Harris is really fucking stupid, or he assumes that Islamic terrorists are really fucking stupid, personally I think its the former.

It won't work. The only conceivable way that it might work is to profile all Arab-looking peoples, but this is fucking racist, and I would sincerely hope that Harris would not stoop that low.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again; for a neuroscientist, you'd have thought that Sam Harris would have a few brain cells to rub together.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

I think it is a sure sign of an immature movement that such a weak thinker like Sam Harris gets to be one of the leading lights. His anti-Muslim bigotry makes him a fool. He proposes something that is both racist and deeply, profoundly stupid and unworkable. Profile everyone who is Muslim OR "looks Muslim"?!?! The fuck does that even mean. There's white, black, Asian and Hispanic folks who are Muslims, Arabs who are not Muslim, non-Arabs who are not Muslim but look like the Muslim/Arab stereotype... someone who isn't blinded by deep, irrational bias sees the problem within about 30 seconds, and Sam Harris can't see it when people draw him a big-ass fucking map.

 

[Frenger]

A good response from Bruce Schneier, although he doesn't focus on the sheer stupidity of Harris's original post and instead concentrates on it's actual practical value.
[showmore=Bruce Schneier]Why do otherwise rational people think it's a good idea to profile people at airports? Recently, neuroscientist and best-selling author Sam Harris related a story of an elderly couple being given the twice-over by the TSA, pointed out how these two were obviously not a threat, and recommended that the TSA focus on the actual threat: "Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim."
This is a bad idea. It doesn't make us any safer,and it actually puts us all at risk.
The right way to look at security is in terms of cost-benefit trade-offs. If adding profiling to airport checkpoints allowed us to detect more threats at a lower cost, then we should implement it. If it didn't, we'd be foolish to do so. Sometimes profiling works. Consider a sheep in a meadow, happily munching on grass. When he spies a wolf, he's going to judge that individual wolf based on a bunch of assumptions related to the past behavior of its species. In short, that sheep is going to profile"¦and then run away. This makes perfect sense, and is why evolution produced sheep,and other animals,that react this way. But this sort of profiling doesn't work with humans at airports, for several reasons.
First, in the sheep's case the profile is accurate, in that all wolves are out to eat sheep. Maybe a particular wolf isn't hungry at the moment, but enough wolves are hungry enough of the time to justify the occasional false alarm. However, it isn't true that almost all Muslims are out to blow up airplanes. In fact, almost none of them are. Post 9/11, we've had 2 Muslim terrorists on U.S airplanes: the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber. If you assume 0.8% (that's one estimate of the percentage of Muslim Americans) of the 630 million annual airplane fliers are Muslim and triple it to account for others who look Semitic, then the chances any profiled flier will be a Muslim terrorist is 1 in 80 million. Add the 19 9/11 terrorists,arguably a singular event,that number drops to 1 in 8 million. Either way, because the number of actual terrorists is so low, almost everyone selected by the profile will be innocent. This is called the "base rate fallacy," and dooms any type of broad terrorist profiling, including the TSA's behavioral profiling.
Second, sheep can safely ignore animals that don't look like the few predators they know. On the other hand, to assume that only Arab-appearing people are terrorists is dangerously naive. Muslims are black, white, Asian, and everything else,most Muslims are not Arab. Recent terrorists have been European, Asian, African, Hispanic, and Middle Eastern; male and female; young and old. Underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab was Nigerian. Shoe bomber Richard Reid was British with a Jamaican father. One of the London subway bombers, Germaine Lindsay, was Afro-Caribbean. Dirty bomb suspect Jose Padilla was Hispanic-American. The 2002 Bali terrorists were Indonesian. Both Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber were white Americans. The Chechen terrorists who blew up two Russian planes in 2004 were female. Focusing on a profile increases the risk that TSA agents will miss those who don't match it.
Third, wolves can't deliberately try to evade the profile. A wolf in sheep's clothing is just a story, but humans are smart and adaptable enough to put the concept into practice. Once the TSA establishes a profile, terrorists will take steps to avoid it. The Chechens deliberately chose female suicide bombers because Russian security was less thorough with women. Al Qaeda has tried to recruit non-Muslims. And terrorists have given bombs to innocent,and innocent-looking,travelers. Randomized secondary screening is more effective, especially since the goal isn't to catch every plot but to create enough uncertainty that terrorists don't even try.
And fourth, sheep don't care if they offend innocent wolves; the two species are never going to be friends. At airports, though, there is an enormous social and political cost to the millions of false alarms. Beyond the societal harms of deliberately harassing a minority group, singling out Muslims alienates the very people who are in the best position to discover and alert authorities about Muslim plots before the terrorists even get to the airport. This alone is reason enough not to profile.
I too am incensed,but not surprised,when the TSA manhandles four-year old girls, children with cerebral palsy, pretty women, the elderly, and wheelchair users for humiliation, abuse, and sometimes theft. Any bureaucracy that processes 630 million people per year will generate stories like this. When people propose profiling, they are really asking for a security system that can apply judgment. Unfortunately, that's really hard. Rules are easier to explain and train. Zero tolerance is easier to justify and defend. Judgment requires better-educated, more expert, and much-higher-paid screeners. And the personal career risks to a TSA agent of being wrong when exercising judgment far outweigh any benefits from being sensible.
The proper reaction to screening horror stories isn't to subject only "those people" to it; it's to subject no one to it. (Can anyone even explain what hypothetical terrorist plot could successfully evade normal security, but would be discovered during secondary screening?) Invasive TSA screening is nothing more than security theater. It doesn't make us safer, and it's not worth the cost. Even more strongly, security isn't our society's only value. Do we really want the full power of government to act out our stereotypes and prejudices? Have we Americans ever done something like this and not been ashamed later? This is what we have a Constitution for: to help us live up to our values and not down to our fears.[/showmore]

 

[CosmicJoghurt]

I've always admired Sam's attitude towards such controversial topics, even considering that I didn't agree with some points he made.
But this is just low.

A comprehensive 2009 demographic study of 232 countries and territories reported that 23% of the global population, or 1.57 billion people, are Muslims. Of those, it's estimated over 75-90% are Sunni and 10-20% are Shi'a,[11][26][182] with a small minority belonging to other sects. Approximately 50 countries are Muslim-majority,[183] and Arabs account for around 20% of all Muslims worldwide.[184] Between 1900 and 1970 the global Muslim community grew from 200 million to 551 million;[185] between 1970 and 2009 Muslim population increased more than three times to 1.57 billion.
The majority of Muslims live in Asia and Africa.[186] Approximately 62% of the world's Muslims live in Asia, with over 683 million adherents in Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.[187][188] In the Middle East, non-Arab countries such as Turkey and Iran are the largest Muslim-majority countries; in Africa, Egypt and Nigeria have the most populous Muslim communities.[10]
Most estimates indicate that the People's Republic of China has approximately 20 to 30 million Muslims (1.5% to 2% of the population).[189][190][191][192] However, data provided by the San Diego State University's International Population Center to U.S. News & World Report suggests that China has 65.3 million Muslims.[193] Islam is the second largest religion after Christianity in many European countries,[194] and is slowly catching up to that status in the Americas, with between 2,454,000, according to Pew Forum, and approximately 7 million Muslims, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), in the United States.[11][195]

I'd like to know how exactly Sam Harris defines the look of a Muslim. Perhaps there's some sort of common denominator between all of these muslims around the world - maybe all of them have the same chakra alignment. We can start from there and progress in a quest for ultimate bigotry.

 

[Laurens]

I'd like to know how exactly Sam Harris defines the look of a Muslim. Perhaps there's some sort of common denominator between all of these muslims around the world - maybe all of them have the same chakra alignment. We can start from there and progress in a quest for ultimate bigotry.

I'd imagine he has a cartoon Muslim in mind, with a turban, a huge beard and bombs strapped to their waist...

I somehow don't think he has people that look like this in mind:

(These are the 7/7 bombers in case you were wondering)

 

[Epiquinn]

I don't quite agree with Harris, but I do enjoy him being able to get a rile out of the users of this forum.

He's also written a follow-up post addressing some of the criticism he's received. It's a well-thought response in my opinion and a good read whether you agree with it or not.

The reason Bruce Schneier wrote a response to Sam Harris was because Harris invited him to do so, after seeing his name popping up in the comment section. Afterwards they had a lengthy and heated debate, which can be found here, for anyone with the time and interest to read.

 

[televator]

I've mostly been conflicted by Harris' stance on Islam before, but the whole profiling thing is the straw that broke the camel's back for me. It is after all an issue that's become a real direct threat in my life as I live in AZ. It's cool if people wanna be part of an atheist movement and make people mindful of rationality when it comes to public policies, but if you insist on trampling over rights that should be given equally with laws that enable irrational scum of the earth racists...well fuck you. We aren't holding hands and singing together because we call ourselves atheists after that.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

I don't quite agree with Harris, but I do enjoy him being able to get a rile out of the users of this forum.

... which makes you kind of dumb. Of course, you'll probably prove to be way dumber than that in 3... 2... 1...

 

[Epiquinn]

Of course, you'll probably prove to be way dumber than that in 3... 2... 1...

You'll have to wait a little longer than that, but I promise to deliver eventually.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Of course, you'll probably prove to be way dumber than that in 3... 2... 1...

You'll have to wait a little longer than that, but I promise to deliver eventually.

I've got very little doubt of that.

Do you understand why getting a rise out of people isn't an automatic win?

 

[CosmicJoghurt]

It would only be a win if the whole purpose was to have a big effect on people/make them think, like John Cage's 4'33'' (which I highly recommend you listen to on youtube). Saying something stupid and causing a reaction is... well.. nothing more than... saying something stupid and causing a reaction.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

For those unaware of the chronological sequence, here it is:

In Defence Of Profiling - Harris' original article which caused the storm;
On Knowing Your Enemy - his follow-up in answer to the storm;
The Trouble With Profiling - a guest article by the security expert, Bruce Schneier, in answer to Harris' two articles;
To Profile Or Not To Profile - a debate between Harris and Schneier.

They're well worth reading.

For myself, I thnk Harris' suggestion is a clear indication that he's fallen into a "Tortucan Trap".

Apart from the racist nature of profiling a group of people based on their appearance being synonymous with their being "terrorists", there is the practical issues invovled, as Schneier points out.

For example, how many times have you seen, in a movie, where the "terrorist" on a plane goes to the toilet and takes a weapon from the cistern - which has been placed their by ground crew ...who don't pass through scanners?

The only way you could profile terrorists - regardless of ideology - is through brain scans as they pass through scanning machines, which would have to include all personnel at airports, etc.

A recent article discussed a method of detecting changes in brain wave patterns indicating a 80-90% likelihood of a person intending an act of terror. How this could be turned into a practical - ie, real world - solution, is the question.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Even the TV show "24" which was hugely right-wing and pro-torture, made the point of showing that the terrorist infiltrator could be an almost-albino white woman, and that terrorists are smart enough to fight the NEXT war, while idiot Americans are defending against that LAST war.

 

[Dogma's Demise]

Okay, I disagree with Sam Harris' suggestion.

The main reason this will fail is because the terrorists will simply get around it by not "looking Muslim" (whatever the fuck that means, I mean even I would probably qualify by just letting my beard grow more). They can even recruit whites (it's not like there have never been white extremist Muslims), shave them, and put them in a suit. Doesn't do much good does it?

I suppose though you should take extra caution when someone is clearly acting suspicious such as being nervous around security.


Besides, aren't trains still vulnerable?

 

[Noth]

Okay, I disagree with Sam Harris' suggestion.

The main reason this will fail is because the terrorists will simply get around it by not "looking Muslim" (whatever the fuck that means, I mean even I would probably qualify by just letting my beard grow more). They can even recruit whites (it's not like there have never been white extremist Muslims), shave them, and put them in a suit. Doesn't do much good does it?

I suppose though you should take extra caution when someone is clearly acting suspicious such as being nervous around security.


Besides, aren't trains still vulnerable?

If we'd step away for a moment from the obvious impossibility of what Harris proposes, do you also feel that there is something ethically wrong with Harris' suggestion?

Airport security tends to always be cautious around people that act suspicious. That they might feel more uneasy when it's someone "Arab looking" (for lack of a better term) is, I think, a personal issue that they'll have to deal with. To enforce this feeling by regulating it in the way that Harris suggests will do little good, and probably a lot of harm.

 

[Laurens]

I think that people acting suspiciously should be stopped at airports, and I think all luggage should be scanned to check for suspect devices and so on. As far as that goes I'm all for heightened security.

However, Harris was suggesting profiling for people that look Muslim, which is impossible and stupid. Firstly he makes the mistake of ignorantly assuming that we can know a Muslim from looks alone, secondly I think it is wrong to place suspicion on an entire religion. Without entering into the debate over whether it is accurate or not to assume that most terrorists in the modern world are Muslim, I think it is not a good policy to single out one group of people over any other when it comes to security threats, whether implicitly or explicitly it is stating that they are more of a threat than other groups. Whether this is true or not (I'd say not, but I don't want to derail this topic by entering into that here), this will only serve to alienate them, and legitimise prejudice against them. In my opinion this is not what we need, in order to combat the Islamic radicals that do undoubtedly exist, we need to work with the majority of Muslims who are not terrorists, rather than persecute them.

 

[Inferno]

I think what should happen, and what interestingly isn't yet done, is to scan all personnel entering the airport. That's a large task, but currently they're not scanned and for menial jobs, there's not even any clearance required.

 

[Epiquinn]

Do you understand why getting a rise out of people isn't an automatic win?

Yes. But it is often rather funny, especially on a forum like this where one would expect to find a thorough point-by-point debunking of what Harris wrote instead of all this angry rambling about racism and bigotry posted by people who very obviously didn't read more than one or two sentences of his text.

The point about white-skinned terrorists is moot, because Harris explicitly said that white people should NOT be exempt from security checks. (The phrase "could conceivably be a Muslim" covers white people as well, including himself.) He implies that Adam Gadahn would look legit if he "cleaned himself up" and mentions in the follow-up post that a white person who understands Arabic is more likely to be a threat than a brown-skinned person who understands Arabic. One of his examples for people with whom the security could be looser would be an elderly woman from Okinawa.

I think Dragan Glas wrote a good post in this thread. Brain wave scanning should be an interesting idea to Sam Harris as well considering he's a neuroscientist. However, it would still have many of the same problems as the security methods that currently exist. In a way, allowing government officials to scan our brain activity would give them access to something much more private about us than simply letting them grope and take off our clothes.

I'll read the debate between Harris and Schneier later today and I may or may not share my thoughts on it afterwards. Should I return, let us hope that I shall be able to fulfill the Prophecy of Dumbness as foretold by ImprobableJoe.

 

[Laurens]

Do you understand why getting a rise out of people isn't an automatic win?

Yes. But it is often rather funny, especially on a forum like this where one would expect to find a thorough point-by-point debunking of what Harris wrote instead of all this angry rambling about racism and bigotry posted by people who very obviously didn't read more than one or two sentences of his text.

The point about white-skinned terrorists is moot, because Harris explicitly said that white people should NOT be exempt from security checks. (The phrase "could conceivably be a Muslim" covers white people as well, including himself.) He implies that Adam Gadahn would look legit if he "cleaned himself up" and mentions in the follow-up post that a white person who understands Arabic is more likely to be a threat than a brown-skinned person who understands Arabic. One of his examples for people with whom the security could be looser would be an elderly woman from Okinawa.

I think Dragan Glas wrote a good post in this thread. Brain wave scanning should be an interesting idea to Sam Harris as well considering he's a neuroscientist. However, it would still have many of the same problems as the security methods that currently exist. In a way, allowing government officials to scan our brain activity would give them access to something much more private about us than simply letting them grope and take off our clothes.

I'll read the debate between Harris and Schneier later today and I may or may not share my thoughts on it afterwards. Should I return, let us hope that I shall be able to fulfill the Prophecy of Dumbness as foretold by ImprobableJoe.

I think the problem is that he's basically changed his position from:

We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it. And, again, I wouldn't put someone who looks like me entirely outside the bull's-eye (after all, what would Adam Gadahn look like if he cleaned himself up?) But there are people who do not stand a chance of being jihadists, and TSA screeners can know this at a glance.

To basically saying we should stop people who act suspiciously - which most people would probably agree with. He talks about someone carrying a Koran disguised as The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo as an example of such behaviour - which I'll admit would draw suspicion, but its no longer predicated on 'looking like they conceivably might be a Muslim' to someone acting shady at the airport (and he just happens to use a Muslim in his hypothetical scenario). I'm all for stopping anyone who is behaving strangely at the airport... But its not really profiling for Muslims any more is it?