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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 mostly agree with this, but also notice that most of the largest discussion forums fall into two categories: no moderation (which is rare and often temporary). Or partisan moderation. Where the other side is held to the strict standard but not the side the moderators like. This is the case with reddit, where you can find plenty of posts happily celebrating Luigi and defending ICE is probably grounds for a ban in most subreddits.
Where I disagree with this is that you are allowed to have an occasional exception where you start spitting vitriol. The rule should be no vitriol ever, and eat the consequences of a ban if you think it is worth it that one time.
My hope is that no one on this forum could even be accused of stochastic terrorism (regardless of whether its 'real' or not).
As far as I know, the reason multiple leftist subreddits either got banned or decided to go private themselves was that the grossly partial mods absolutely refused to moderate commenters calling for mass murder, political assassinations, gulaging, doxxing, violence, wishing for the suicide of political enemies etc even after multiple warnings from above, and the central leadership of Reddit (whatever the heck they are called) eventually decided to act even though they are mostly leftists themselves because it was clear to anyone what a big liability the entire situation is.
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