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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 agree with @Opt-out that stochastic terrorism is real, but what do we (society) do about it?
A problem specifically with stochastic terrorism (and what Scott explains in his article) is that it can consist of innocuous expressions that are OK on their own. For example, consider the game Wolfenstein 3D, which has you killing Nazis. Is this video game immoral? Now, let's say there's a politician who's very curt, dresses very sharply, and has very conservative policies; he's not a Nazi, and his policies aren't that cruel, but he resembles one. Is it wrong to say "this guy really looks like a Nazi"? Or, back to Charlie Kirk, it's factually true that some of his policies were shared by Nazis (the Nazis had some moderate and good policies even to liberals, like establishing some national youth program, not the part where it taught Nazi ideology). Is it OK to point that out?
There are insane people, and if we try to make laws against insane people, we create a nanny state where normal people can't do things that wouldn't cause problems among normal people. I can use fancy labels too: I call that "stochastic regulation". Of course sometimes it's justified, like banning the average joe from building a nuclear bomb, but I think only when the potential negative consequences are much worse than the positive ones (what good reason would the average joe build a nuke? On the other hand...) Nobody sane would look at Wolfenstein 3D and a sharply-dressed politician and think "I need to kill that guy". But moreso, nobody sane would break into a random person's house claiming to be Harry Dresden from The Dresden Files, yet here we are. Certainly movies like The Dresden Files that depict heroes saving people from kidnapping shouldn't be condemned, and probably Wolfenstein, the Nazi appearance allegory, and pointing out facts shouldn't either. Where do we draw the line?
Also, general arguments against speech laws: the infrastructure can be used against innocent speech, and they create a general vibe-killing effect that affects uncontroversial expression.
To be clear, I do think some of the rhetoric against Charlie Kirk, specifically "Charlie Kirk is a Nazi" was not innocous and should be discouraged. The point is that other "stochastic terrorism" can arise from completely innocuous expression, like violent fictional media and pointing out obvious allegories and facts, which should barely if at all even be discouraged.
Yes I do not see the issue here. The US is not discussing banning, imprisoning, torturing etc people who do the very real thing of stochastic terrorism.
People making accusations of stochastic terrorism seem to be doing it to recruit people to their side for things like let’s all vote together. It’s basically saying “the other side is evil and their rhetoric leads to a destruction of the political commons and death of opposing politicians”.
How is this any different than what the ADL did for decades by keeping lists of people who did bad speech and labeled them all “White Supremacists”. And the ADL is correct that my “Nazi” speech against mass migration HURTS all the people who want to migrate to America by in this case causing politicians to vote against mass migration. So yes the left has published lists of stochastic terrorists for decades.
This would be a different topic if Trump was going thru social media posts and sending 2k people who posted mean things about Charlie Kirk to the Gulag. But we aren’t doing that and it’s just normal century old political games of labeling your enemy tribe as bad people.
The point of accusations of stochastic terrorism is to establish certain speech as a taboo that the other sides politicians can’t say because the bulk of the electorate view it as wrong think and basically push certain rhetoric outside of the Overton Window.
To be fair to Scott, he’s opposed to things like thé SPLC list too Im pretty sure.
Perhaps. Being a realists we live in a world where this rhetorical device exists. Maybe it would be better if everyone chilled things out. But I am not going to agree to not use a useful weapon when my enemy has not disarmed.
But I also do think the left pushes the line on rhetoric that does increase violence. Using this device though is political mostly used to convince neutrals the left is a problem and tar all leftists with the actions of their crazies. This is likely why magical kitty doesn’t like it because it is in fact an effective rhetorical tool.
To Magical Kitty I take his view as translating “It’s not fair you use this kind of rhetoric because it works and wins you votes….i don’t want you to do it anymore”
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