“The kinetic nature of the first attack on her life was indicative of the kinetics more likely to be found in the Gap, but neither her death nor the tactics in the successful attack are.”

Is “Assassinations of major political figures are not more likely to happen in the Gap than the Core” the point you are making?

“I didn’t see a rebuttal from you on the severity of attacks in a core country like Mexico that would break your scientific analysis.”

How would you measure this? By percentage of recent leaders who died from political violence? Percentage removed by a coup?

“You should be more precise in your analysis while at the same time understanding that buckets, or bins, of categorization are more than pourous, but blended in with others when you look at the details.”

Agreed, of course. Such is trivially true. The traits the categories describe are continuous (if not smoothly continuous).

MR + DHM,

“Categorization is also linked I presume to our favorite topic of late: working memory. If we couldn’t think in terms of buckets (bins if you prefer), we’d be overwhelmed with complexity.”

“The devil is certainly in the details and makes for messy analysis but have the ability to enlighten us to different trajectories, and thus counters and solutions. Overly broad statements for convenience mask the facts, limiting choices, and confuse unnecessarily.”

Both of these statements are true, and they complement each other.

I didn’t see a rebuttal from you on the severity of attacks in a core country like Mexico that would break your scientific analysis.

You should be more precise in your analysis while at the same time understanding that buckets, or bins, of categorization are more than pourous, but blended in with others when you look at the details.

The devil is certainly in the details and makes for messy analysis but have the ability to enlighten us to different trajectories, and thus counters and solutions. Overly broad statements for convenience mask the facts, limiting choices, and confuse unnecessarily.