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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
Let's suppose the year is 1880, and someone who is not a member goes to a KKK meeting and tells them all about how their black neighbor is a rapist. They have no proof or evidence, they just make up a story about it and get everyone riled up. They do not literally advocate for violence, but they went there on purpose and told this story on purpose in this location to these people.
Some of the members, but not the storyteller, go and lynch the accused man.
Is the storyteller merely guilty of slander, equal to anyone else who makes any false rape accusation? Are going to the KKK and telling them in particular this story neutral acts which do not change the moral culpability of the action? Because that seems decidedly non-consequentialist. I agree with Scott that we can't really outlaw stochastic terrorism because it's too easily confused with regular criticism to avoid false positives.
But nobody is ever going to apologize for accidentally committing stochastic terrorism because it is almost by definition not an accident. It's primarily a crime of intent. If someone literally wants to someone to die but wants to skirt around legal prohibitions against inciting violence then all they have to do is carefully moderate their words to just fall short of the boundary and phrase them in a way that wink wink, nudge nudge everyone they're talking to knows mean "please commit violence". Adding "in minecraft" after wishing death on someone does not fool anyone that you literally mean you hope their character dies while playing minecraft but the person lives. Celebrating after someone gets assassinated is not consistent with an ordinary person who didn't realize their words might inspire a psychopath. If the death of the person is an intended outcome of the speech, a feature not a bug, then the people who encouraged it are morally guilty of stochastic terrorism, even if the law can't pin them down.
I'd argue the defining line is that you know exactly who the KKK are and how they are likely to react. You aren't casting mistrust into the void and maybe eventually it leads to something via butterfly effect. I agree with magicalkittycat that incitement exists and has a high bar. People already misuse "bad faith," "just asking questions", and/or "dogwhistle" to mind-read (read as "fantasize") what their opposites really believe. I think a relatively good and objective bar is the line between simply publicly wishing bad things on your enemies and specifically trying to convince someone to commit criminal acts.
They don't know every single individual member of the KKK, they're still casting mistrust into the void, it's just a smaller void. If they speak in the public streets of a town with 10% KKK membership is that suddenly acceptable? Is it 1%? I'd argue the KKK meeting is a more egregious example in degree, but not in kind. We live in a society where you know mentally ill schooler shooter wannabes are a non-negligible fraction of the population and how they are likely to react. They want the fame and martyrdom that the media implicitly promises them, and if it didn't give them that attention then most of them wouldn't bother. Nobody was surprised that there have been multiple assassination attempts at Trump. This was expected behavior. I argue that, for a subset of the media, bloggers etc, this was literally intended behavior. That they deliberately incited anger and hatred in the public with the hope that it would inspire literal violence against Trump. And that most of these people did not meet the legal requirements for "incitement to violence" and got in no legal trouble and kept their jobs.
For legal purposes that is the best we can do. For moral purposes the bar is much much further into ambiguous territory.
I want you to imagine, for a moment, an ideal stochastic terrorist. A person (or AI agent) who has two main goals:
That is, stochastic terrorism is literally their goal and intended behavior, not an accidental side effect. What sorts of behaviors would you expect this person to engage in? What sorts of words would they use? How does this compare to prominent left-wing media and blog posters in the real world? And more importantly, is this behavior morally good? Are you actually unironically arguing that this hypothetical ideal stochastic terrorist has done nothing wrong because they avoided breaking the law? Or are you arguing that they don't exist and every single person inspiring violence in the real world is doing it accidentally (and that this makes it perfectly acceptable)? I disagree with both of those, but I'm not sure how to focus my arguments because I'm not really sure where you're coming from.
I'd argue the defining point isn't just the makeup of the crowd, it's the nature of the accusation combined with the target. You gave the example of accusing a black man of being a rapist to the KKK. That's identifying a specific target, creating a reason to specifically respond with violence, and identifying someone likely to carry it out.
For contrast, if I tried to rile up people by saying illegal immigrants are gang members, people can reasonably infer that I have no specific knowledge, and that there are perfectly legal means to try and combat illegal immigration.
Possible, but I guess I'd ask if you'd give equal credence to your enemy's accusations, for instance that the right is trying to incite violence against trans people.
As above, I would expect this person to be taking actions more focused and likely to get the expected results than throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.
I'm arguing that, could you reliably identify this person without falsely flagging people who sincerely disagree with you?
Trump and Charlie Kirk are specific people, and reasons have been given to specifically respond with violence. The only difference that you might argue about is the "identifying someone likely to carry it out" and that's subject to the objection MW just gave--if you go to a town with 10% KKK members, should that count like going to the KKK? What if you go to a larger town with 1% KKK members, but which still has the same total number of KKK members who will hear what you say?
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