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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
A very appropriate topic for this forum because stochastic terrorism is also very often employed with a mote-n-bailey style. The way a college professor or editorial writer might employ the idea is certainly overly broad and highly partisan. But there is also a fairly defensible core truth that thought leaders and politicians do generate incentives, carrots and sticks if you will, for their followers. If you encourage and celebrate behavior you are going to get more of it, if you punish it less.
Some people take this concept too fair, IMO, and apply it to people like the Gabby Giffords shooter or the Charlie Kirk assassination. But it is real. We are seeing it today with the ICE interference. All the people who have been killed by ICE think they are heroes and are going to be socially and even financially rewarded for doing something that is incredibly stupid like following around law enforcement officials performing official duties while honking at them, blowing whistles, and using your car/body to impede their movement. This has inevitably led to several of these goaded on "heroes" intentionally, or unintentionally, placing the lives of officers in grave danger, with very unfortunate outcomes. We, of course, also saw this with BLM where politicians were literally paying bail for people who were burglars, arsonists, thieves, etc. On the right this sort of outcome has largely not led to politicians giving permission for (mostly) low level crime, but instead manifests as internet nastiness, but if the right gained more media power (particularly outside the 60+ age group) and NGO/Government Bureaucrat influence it could plausibly escalate into the BLM levels. Or not, prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future, moreso about a future that probably wont exist in any of our lifetimes.
I also would add that a thing about stochastic terrorism as a concept, is it does also appear to have a specific flavor of the modern day sort of discourse where everyone wants to portray themselves as, basically, the Rebel Alliance from Star Wars and portray the enemy as The Empire, or failing that, a faceless unflappable Borg threat. Your goal, even as an objectively powerful person like a tenured professor, NYT Op-Ed writer, or Congressman(woman more likely), to pretend you have little power and the forces you struggle against are unflappable and vast (meanwhile, they are 4chan posters and what were formerly known as twitter eggs). Its a sort of thinking not even worthy of being called a conspiracy theory, its one level stupider than almost even the stupidest conspiracy theories wherein you, again a professor at some place like Harvard, get into a twitter spat with some writer at a mid tier internet publication. And following you losing the debate and turning tail, one of the other guy's followers start DMing you butthole pictures you think its a good argument that he should be fired and banned from Twitter, because of the butthole pics from a rando.
I feel like I rambled a bit here, but these are my thoughts.
I actually think Tyler Robinson is likely a fair example of stochastic terrorism. I have not followed the early trial leaks, but there were a lot of signs pointing to him being radicalized by "trans genocide" rhetoric on Discord.
I'm open to being convinced, but I have not seen evidence connecting his actions to actual people of clout. Instead I've seen lots of evidence of a niche community of abnormals that radicalized him.
I'm not sure who would even qualify as a person of clout in this context. But if that's a requirement for the term, then sure, cross him off the list. I was thinking that a widespread meme with lots of violent rhetoric that occasionally fissions off lone wolves would count.
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