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I've written a few times before here that I don't believe stochastic terrorism is a reasonable concept, so it's nice to see Scott Alexander come out with a similar argument in his recent post. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/against-stochastic-terrorism
And hey, it actually mirrors me quite well!
As I've said before
Meanwhile he says
It's basically the same thing! No one ever uses it for themselves, despite that by the same standards it often could be!
It's hard to add too much to this since I think he covers the general issues I normally would argue pretty well, but I do think he missed something key. Stochastic terrorism breaks a fundamental rule of humanity, we are not a hivemind and people only control themselves. I can not brainwash someone else to kill for me, and I can not brainwash them to not kill either. No matter how similar that person may be to me. They could be my neighbor, they could be a twin, and I would still lack that ability. We are individuals responsible for ourselves.
I often quote Reagan on this.
Reagan of course was speaking against the idea that criminals shouldn't be held responsible for their actions because "society" but the logic works the other way around too, society should not be held responsible for the criminal. The lawbreaker is the one who makes the choice to break the law.
Stochastic terrorism is just another part of one sided demand for the "enemy" (those who the speaker disagrees with) to mind control other "enemies" from bad behavior, and to blame them when they fail to do so.
This is something I've also argued before. https://www.themotte.org/post/2899/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/360516?context=8#context
I know people hate it when I reply to multiple of them with a similar point so I'm gonna stick mainly to this comment to address the common points.
1: "Stochastic terrorism is real, what about X situation where someone calls for the death of another for instance"?
2: "Stochastic terrorism is real, here's some historical events where it has happened"
These two are together because they both get addressed by the same general answer.
We already have a term for such things, it's called incitement. The issue however, and the reason why stochastic terrorism was made up to begin with, is that incitement already exists and therefore has pre established standards and a long history of neutral discussion about it. Those historical examples weren't called "stochastic terrorism", they would have been called incitement. Playing partisan and biased blame games is a lot harder with an established term with established generally agreed upon standards. Any parts that are real are already covered!
That's why stochastic terrorism was made up, it's a very modern phrase retreading old ground because the previous word isn't an effective weapon.
3: "Well what about insert example from group I don't like?"
No, I'm more interested in examples from groups you do like and are a part in. For the general conservative Motte user, we have quite a few to pick from, in part thanks to the president himself. He's celebrated the death of "enemies" such as Mueller, made jokes about attacks against people he doesn't like such as Paul Pelosi, called for the death penalty of "traitors" like with the illegal orders video, and Jan 6 is right there where he didn't just passively take action but actively pardoned people who are on video beating up officers.
There's plenty to pick apart and denounce for a MAGA supporting conservative who genuinely believes in stochastic terrorism.
If you don't like that, Scott actually included other examples you can work with too regardless of your political "side".
You don't have to use those either, the sky is your limit!
Pick something somewhere of a group that matches your beliefs, and then explain how you still believe it's stochastic terrorism and how you, or your "close allies", have done this terrorism before and are according to the phrase a form of terrorist and you aren't just using it as a tool against "the enemy" and I'll accept that maybe you're the rare one who actually believes in it as a real concept.
And that will still, only apply to you and not the other tons and tons of people who clearly and blatently engage in one sided usage.
And also by doing so, as Scott points out, you might be ironically engaging in stochastic terrorism.
Sure, people constantly make up words and abstractions to over-extend their argument. I accept that stochastic terrorism is just a broad form of incitement that can be applied to the most mundane rhetoric, that only a crazy person would interpret as an order to commit violence, because among >8 billion there are crazy people who will interpret mundane rhetoric as violence. And your examples demonstrate this: regardless of anyone's views on immigrants, saying they are dangerous and untrustworthy does not imply they should be brutalized or executed. And that there are only a couple instances of most of these, always by insane people who may have commit violence regardless, demonstrate that a significant effort to police mundane rhetoric isn't worth it.
Labels are intrinsically meaningless. I can invent a term "akjsdha terrorism" and classify anything I want, it doesn't make whatever I classify any more or less moral. And morality only matters for policy: are you deciding whether to commit "stochastic terrorism", how will you act and how will you advocate others to act against it?
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