4 ms·

As a programmer... in some ways I feel like it's an issue of abstraction. Naming variables is hard. Right? We have this 'Terrorism' abstraction. But that's not

As a programmer... in some ways I feel like it's an issue of abstraction. Naming variables is hard. Right? We have this 'Terrorism' abstraction. But that's not really what it is. You might have an instance of Terrorism, that affects two people. Then is it really Terrorism? Shouldn't it be something else? I'd say it's just Violence. The same happens all over the place. Child abuse, theft, piracy, etc. The battle seems to be fought and won by the media when we decide on how to categorise and name things. So we end up in some frankly absurd situations, because we think we're discussing Y, when actually we're discussing X. I don't know how to solve this, I just want to get it out of my brain, because it really frustrates me and stops me bothering with debate most of the time when people don't even seem to realise they've done it. If I thought that eliminating privacy would save 1 billion lives, I would do it. No euphemisms. That would be a sacrifice I'd feel sensible in making. But I don't want to talk about 'encryption' and 'terrorism' because it's just bollocks, really. It's an absurd simplification; it's a euphemism. You're not discussing anything real anymore, you're just giving platitudes.

njohnson41 11y ago
I think one of the common terms for this is a "motte and bailey doctrine", where people define their terms one way during an argument to make their statements super-defensible, but later redefine them to mean whatever crazy thing they actually meant. People seem to use this intentionally and unintentionally a lot. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bric...
zanny 11y ago
The real issue is that people are even talking about terrorism at all. By the state definition more people have died from tripping over their own feet than from terrorism in the last thirty years. It is not about degrees of abstraction, it is about composition. Terrorism is a wrapper function to obscure the true intent behind the militarization of the police, the expansion of the military, and the implementation of the surveillance state - as a politician, you fear uncertainty and a lack of control. The natural state of affairs is to trend towards totalitarianism - the centralization of power and authority in a society absolutely - and it takes the vigilance of participants to repel its advances. We have been doing a very poor job of that for quite a long time now, and the results of that gradual trend become more and more evident and indisputable.
- stegosaurus 11y ago
  Mmm. I think what I'd say about this is that essentially 'Terrorism' has been defined as some sort of catastrophic instance, of collapse of society, fear of going outside, whatever. But it's being applied to relatively trivial crimes (e.g. one soldier was stabbed in the UK, and that becomes 'terrorism', when really it's just premeditated murder). I agree that there seems to be some sort of campaign to deliberately misuse terminology in this way. I'm just not sure what we can do to stop it other than to educate people about these 'tricks'.
  - zanny 11y ago
    Terrorism is just the threat. The nebulous conceptual threat - in the same way the US thought declaring war on psychoactive recreational plants was a sane proclamation, declaring war on the fundamental idea of violent political dissonance through fear is also equally untenable but also equally effective in placating the population through fear of the "other" / "sin" just by the simple animal brain logic of different == dangerous == threat == destroy. You don't want to finely define your threat when you want the threat to be perpetual to justify your seizure of power. Is it sad that this is literally what the awful Star Wars Prequel's did? The evil sith lord orchestrated vacuous foes for the much larger, much stronger Republic to fear, and then used that fear to see himself given absolute power so as to seize total control of everything once the curtain was pulled back and he was revealed the ultimate puppet master. In much the same way, terrorism in the modern world is constructed with American arms and money, to create the strife that funds private defense contractors and military arms manufacturer's profit margins. It is a fabrication to instill fear, to enable the expansion of authority in exactly the same way - and everyone agrees those movies were terribly written because the Emperor's plot seemed so impossible with so many people around him to see it, yet we are living it out ourselves in much the same way today - and the super majority of people are entirely ignorant, or even protective, of the fear-mongering.
    - NotSammyHagar 11y ago
      I think declaring war against pot fit nicely into the puritanical history of America, and a few crazy controlling people like j edger hoover. We do seem to let those types get into power. Hopefully it won't happen with Trump. I would believe that some of those types of people would try things like that to control people. But I think there's a lot larger group of conservative law enforcement and politicians that just go along with those restrictions. Now I have even seen some republicans coming out against this national surveillance as they think about what it would be like if trump had access to that, instead of "their guy". It will be hard to reverse the national surveillance state. The first step is contacting your representatives and reminding them of your objection.

njohnson41 11y ago

I think one of the common terms for this is a "motte and bailey doctrine", where people define their terms one way during an argument to make their statements super-defensible, but later redefine them to mean whatever crazy thing they actually meant. People seem to use this intentionally and unintentionally a lot. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bric...

zanny 11y ago

The real issue is that people are even talking about terrorism at all. By the state definition more people have died from tripping over their own feet than from terrorism in the last thirty years. It is not about degrees of abstraction, it is about composition. Terrorism is a wrapper function to obscure the true intent behind the militarization of the police, the expansion of the military, and the implementation of the surveillance state - as a politician, you fear uncertainty and a lack of control. The natural state of affairs is to trend towards totalitarianism - the centralization of power and authority in a society absolutely - and it takes the vigilance of participants to repel its advances. We have been doing a very poor job of that for quite a long time now, and the results of that gradual trend become more and more evident and indisputable.

stegosaurus 11y ago
Mmm. I think what I'd say about this is that essentially 'Terrorism' has been defined as some sort of catastrophic instance, of collapse of society, fear of going outside, whatever. But it's being applied to relatively trivial crimes (e.g. one soldier was stabbed in the UK, and that becomes 'terrorism', when really it's just premeditated murder). I agree that there seems to be some sort of campaign to deliberately misuse terminology in this way. I'm just not sure what we can do to stop it other than to educate people about these 'tricks'.
- zanny 11y ago
  Terrorism is just the threat. The nebulous conceptual threat - in the same way the US thought declaring war on psychoactive recreational plants was a sane proclamation, declaring war on the fundamental idea of violent political dissonance through fear is also equally untenable but also equally effective in placating the population through fear of the "other" / "sin" just by the simple animal brain logic of different == dangerous == threat == destroy. You don't want to finely define your threat when you want the threat to be perpetual to justify your seizure of power. Is it sad that this is literally what the awful Star Wars Prequel's did? The evil sith lord orchestrated vacuous foes for the much larger, much stronger Republic to fear, and then used that fear to see himself given absolute power so as to seize total control of everything once the curtain was pulled back and he was revealed the ultimate puppet master. In much the same way, terrorism in the modern world is constructed with American arms and money, to create the strife that funds private defense contractors and military arms manufacturer's profit margins. It is a fabrication to instill fear, to enable the expansion of authority in exactly the same way - and everyone agrees those movies were terribly written because the Emperor's plot seemed so impossible with so many people around him to see it, yet we are living it out ourselves in much the same way today - and the super majority of people are entirely ignorant, or even protective, of the fear-mongering.
  - NotSammyHagar 11y ago
    I think declaring war against pot fit nicely into the puritanical history of America, and a few crazy controlling people like j edger hoover. We do seem to let those types get into power. Hopefully it won't happen with Trump. I would believe that some of those types of people would try things like that to control people. But I think there's a lot larger group of conservative law enforcement and politicians that just go along with those restrictions. Now I have even seen some republicans coming out against this national surveillance as they think about what it would be like if trump had access to that, instead of "their guy". It will be hard to reverse the national surveillance state. The first step is contacting your representatives and reminding them of your objection.