I think the conclusion I've come to is that I was picking this information. And part of it was irrational fear. I admit that.I wouldn't have put so much time into it if I hadn't been afraid. I think the fear just kind of fed on itself. I mean, I told you before, I try to be unemotional about this stuff, but the more I think about it, the more I think that I may-- that I was more emotional than I like to let myself believe. And it skewed my thinking.
confirmation bias
A lot of that he chalks up to him being such a novice to news.
attribution theory
He thinks he was wrong in his conclusion that immigration makes places more unsafe. Ben meant so well, tried so hard to be skeptical, to be fact based, to find the truth, and still he feels he was led astray.
confirmation bias?
It included a video of supposed Islamists chanting in the streets nearby and celebrating. Damien remembers seeing that story appear on the internet and then trying to run it down with other journalists, only to find that the church was not Germany's oldest. It had not been set on fire. A stray firework had briefly ignited some netting on some scaffolding, but that was it. And the men celebrating in the video were not Islamists, but actually anti-Islamist. They were Syrian refugees celebrating a ceasefire in the war back home.
base rate fallacy
The Breitbart article does say that many of these crimes were border crimes. They don't leave that information out completely. But in reality, that's all that 400,000 number is-- immigration infractions like border crossing or overstaying a visa. It doesn't include any other type of crime.
loss aversion
The data reveals that without migrants considered, crime rate in Germany would have remained roughly static since 2014...
anchoring and adjustment?
I'm not just going to willy-nilly make generalizations about an entire group of people based on my feelings.
for others: availability heuristic
You bring in illegals, OK, by definition, they're criminals. OK, they live in the underworld. They don't have a stake in the game as we do. About the first time somebody gets raped or killed, I hope they come straight after the Homer City Council and sue the City to the point of bankruptcy. If you make this a magnet for that type of people, then, you know, shame on you.
schema of illegal immigrants