Locked doors and guns are one thing, and a pretty solid argument imo but... 20 american joe publics vs. any small number of arabs, maybe even just one?
Fear of death is not such a great motivator as you imagine I think.
have you seen people react to threats in the wild? especially from the first-world white middle class background? its just not a part of their life and generally they do really stupid things like freeze or panic wildly, shoot first and ask questions later...
a lot of these terrorist guys come from very tough environments with aggressive cultures that make the south of USA look tame... if they panic or freeze up when death is imminent they are likely die and leave no offspring - and these situations occur much more frequently so that there is a very strong selection pressure to compete in that regard which is absent from most of western society, modulo wars, for at least three or four generations now...
Thank you. Equally could have called them
American allies (Saudi). I can distinctly remember the feeling in late 2001 that people would look back at the reaction to events in a similar way to how we look at the McCarthy era or other such witch hunt and demonization type events. I don't think we have reached that place yet, but it's closer than it was.
i strongly disagree with the sentiment that we can't use races, sexes etc. to discriminate (we shouldn't use it to privilege or under-privilege people for sure, and thats the real issue with racism, sexism etc.) - there is real measurable data there.
p.s. i am an arab. i can understand why arabs in particular would be inclined towards becoming anti-US terrorists too... its not very complicated or deep, and certainly not racist.
It's a good thing evolution doesn't work that quickly. Selection has less of an effect than you portray in this case. If it were true, it would be all middle-eastern countries winning the olympic events.
Fear of death is not such a great motivator as you imagine I think.
have you seen people react to threats in the wild? especially from the first-world white middle class background? its just not a part of their life and generally they do really stupid things like freeze or panic wildly, shoot first and ask questions later...
a lot of these terrorist guys come from very tough environments with aggressive cultures that make the south of USA look tame... if they panic or freeze up when death is imminent they are likely die and leave no offspring - and these situations occur much more frequently so that there is a very strong selection pressure to compete in that regard which is absent from most of western society, modulo wars, for at least three or four generations now...