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Apologies if this is blunt, but the western media obsesses over incidents of terrorism where relatively small numbers of westerners are the victims. Particularl

by shoo 11y ago

Apologies if this is blunt, but the western media obsesses over incidents of terrorism where relatively small numbers of westerners are the victims. Particularly if they die in unexpected and graphic ways. Far more people die all the time due to many other reasons that we could decide to care about. E.g. 1.5 million people died from tuberculosis in 2013 [1]. E.g. in 2014, 45% of deaths of children under five were due to malnutrition - 3.1 million deaths per year [2]. E.g. 15 people die in my wealthy western country - Australia - every day, due to alcohol [3] [4]. E.g. my hobby-horse issue political issue, climate change, will probably directly or indirectly lead to the deaths of billions over the next century or so, due to long-term lock-in decisions that have been made in the past, and are being made now. Unfortunately the changes are gradual, most of the victims haven't died yet, most of the victims won't be relatively powerful and rich westerners, and there isn't a clear "other" for our society to demonise and blame, and it would require the status quo to change, so there isn't much of a fuss about it in the media - nobody in a position of power particularly wants to hear about it, let alone do anything, and it isn't particularly newsworthy as nothing much changes - it's just consistently bad news, getting gradually worse over time. [1] - http://www.who.int/gho/tb/en/ http://www.who.int/gho/tb/en/ [2] - https://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats https://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats [3] - https://theconversation.com/australias-daily-alcohol-toll-15-deaths-and-430-hospitalisations-29906 https://theconversation.com/australias-daily-alcohol-toll-15... [4] - I am drinking a glass of wine as I write this. edit: to become even more drearily pragmatic, as a society i think it is for the best not to be concerned or distracted with relatively small losses due to terrorism or any other cause. we cannot be completely shielded from risk. we cannot bear the cost of being completely shielded from risk. the risks are probably going to ramp up over the next few decades, as population continues to grow, resource stocks decline and are exhausted, natural disasters increase, climate changes, and global society becomes increasingly interconnected, more efficient, and less resilient to damage.

bordercases 11y ago
In the case of Paris it's not just about the losses. It's at least partially about trust, meaning, can we trust millions of people who are profoundly like us to integrate smoothly or are we instigating risks of further attacks as a result. I don't particularly like it when terrorist attacks are contextualized in terms of deaths that are not political in nature at all. Everything you mentioned are close to being "random processes" in the statistical sense. Terrorist attacks may be somewhat chaotic in distribution (a brief arxiv.org search shows researchers trying to prove otherwise); but terrorists are adversarial, people who actively want to see you dead. On the other hand, tuberculosis, malnutrition and alcohol could only be construed as adversarial in a weak sense at best. A much more non-intentional perspective is better suited for the latter than the former.
- shoo 11y ago
  Fair comment. Can you go into more detail regarding why this classification matters? I note you've refrained from taking a position regarding climate change - fair enough, it is a gnarly subject. I don't think that it neatly falls into an adversarial or "random process" classification. I think it is reasonable to regard the consequences of climate change as both intentional, and highly political, with large doses of randomness and uncertainty. Here's a perhaps terrible analogy: for whatever reason, suppose people are willing to pay money to watch me shoot a gun into the air. Perhaps they find it entertaining. Occasionally bullets might fall in an unlucky place and kill someone or damage property. I certainly don't intend anyone or anything in particular any harm, but hey, I've got to earn some money to pay the bills.
  - bordercases 11y ago
    Don't read too much into me not saying "climate change is X". I refrained because it involves human agency, but I wouldn't call it truly adversarial either. Let's add "intentional" to the mix. ISIS/Da'esh is an organization that has intentions to kill people, and is essentially a singleton in that regard even if it influences people to kill in packs of autonomous cells ("autonomous" used loosely, they're on the Internet and talk to each other). Climate change, on the other hand, doesn't really have a central bureau that seeks to engineer more climate change. At best it's a nasty side-effect that some large organizations might chose to ignore, but they don't explicitly optimize for it and it's obvious it's not large organizations doing most of the damage. It's like a tragedy-of-the-commons problem, which once again you can construe as adversarial – I wouldn't. But if you continue to, I would implore you to consider that the attacks are adversarial-intentional while climate-change is adversarial-incidental. Terrorism isn't a tragedy-of-the-commons, it's a design. I think the classification matters because it alerts us to some facts that I'm afraid we might underrate: like the notion that the people Actually Believe This Stuff as the simplest explanation, rather than convoluting it with some hammy sociological explanation, or even a statistical one. Because I think that they Actually Believe This Stuff I continue to think that they are ideologically incompatible with the West and should be isolated rather than risk being welcoming to them (by accident). The deaths of the Parisians should, if not be avenged, then be taken seriously as a failure of our ability to protect ourselves from our enemies.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

by shoo 11y ago

bordercases 11y ago

In the case of Paris it's not just about the losses. It's at least partially about trust, meaning, can we trust millions of people who are profoundly like us to integrate smoothly or are we instigating risks of further attacks as a result. I don't particularly like it when terrorist attacks are contextualized in terms of deaths that are not political in nature at all. Everything you mentioned are close to being "random processes" in the statistical sense. Terrorist attacks may be somewhat chaotic in distribution (a brief arxiv.org search shows researchers trying to prove otherwise); but terrorists are adversarial, people who actively want to see you dead. On the other hand, tuberculosis, malnutrition and alcohol could only be construed as adversarial in a weak sense at best. A much more non-intentional perspective is better suited for the latter than the former.

shoo 11y ago
Fair comment. Can you go into more detail regarding why this classification matters? I note you've refrained from taking a position regarding climate change - fair enough, it is a gnarly subject. I don't think that it neatly falls into an adversarial or "random process" classification. I think it is reasonable to regard the consequences of climate change as both intentional, and highly political, with large doses of randomness and uncertainty. Here's a perhaps terrible analogy: for whatever reason, suppose people are willing to pay money to watch me shoot a gun into the air. Perhaps they find it entertaining. Occasionally bullets might fall in an unlucky place and kill someone or damage property. I certainly don't intend anyone or anything in particular any harm, but hey, I've got to earn some money to pay the bills.
- bordercases 11y ago
  Don't read too much into me not saying "climate change is X". I refrained because it involves human agency, but I wouldn't call it truly adversarial either. Let's add "intentional" to the mix. ISIS/Da'esh is an organization that has intentions to kill people, and is essentially a singleton in that regard even if it influences people to kill in packs of autonomous cells ("autonomous" used loosely, they're on the Internet and talk to each other). Climate change, on the other hand, doesn't really have a central bureau that seeks to engineer more climate change. At best it's a nasty side-effect that some large organizations might chose to ignore, but they don't explicitly optimize for it and it's obvious it's not large organizations doing most of the damage. It's like a tragedy-of-the-commons problem, which once again you can construe as adversarial – I wouldn't. But if you continue to, I would implore you to consider that the attacks are adversarial-intentional while climate-change is adversarial-incidental. Terrorism isn't a tragedy-of-the-commons, it's a design. I think the classification matters because it alerts us to some facts that I'm afraid we might underrate: like the notion that the people Actually Believe This Stuff as the simplest explanation, rather than convoluting it with some hammy sociological explanation, or even a statistical one. Because I think that they Actually Believe This Stuff I continue to think that they are ideologically incompatible with the West and should be isolated rather than risk being welcoming to them (by accident). The deaths of the Parisians should, if not be avenged, then be taken seriously as a failure of our ability to protect ourselves from our enemies.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]