6 ms·

The solution to the problem is not preventing people from communicating securely.

blowski 10y ago
So what is the solution? If we spend all our time arguing what the solution isn't, we leave a big vacuum which is then filled with even more garbage ideas.
- mtanski 10y ago
  It doesn't make the Politicians Fallacy anymore valid.
- bsder 10y ago
  The solution is to go on with your life. You cannot stop terrorism, but you can take out it's sting. We seem to have forgotten the lessons about the IRA, et al. In addition, when people say "solutions" what they mean is "something that doesn't inconvenience me or require me to do anything". However if you want "real" solutions, here are some: 1) Start denouncing ALL religion as the force for stupidity that it actually is. "I believe in an imaginary sky being with no evidence and you can't convince me otherwise" should be LAUGHED AT as the absurdity it is. 2) Get everybody off of petroleum so that there isn't any money for people to fight about over in the middle east. 3) Quit supporting dictators and bombing countries for geopolitical reasons. 4) Start fixing double digit unemployment rates instead of making them worse with "free trade" agreements that only allow companies to use open borders while preventing workers from doing the same. 5) Make mental health care a much bigger priority than it currently is. Unfortunately, these solutions don't feed into people's preconceived biases and xenophobia and don't put more money into rich people's pockets. So they are all non-starters.
  - spacecop 10y ago
    Tips fedora Lol, these suggestions are ridiculous, could you possibly be more out of touch with the billions of other people that surround you
    - Retra 10y ago
      You're never going to find a solution to a hard problem by appealing to the whims of the masses.
      - blowski 10y ago
        Finding a solution which appeals only to Hacker News readers isn't a solution if you live in a democracy.
        waqf 10y ago
        One of you is answering the question "What should the country collectively [i.e. the government and people, negotiating and communicating with each other through elections and media] do about the destruction caused by terrorism?". One of you is answering the question "What should the government do about popular fears of terrorism, which might cause the government to lose elections?". You're in violent agreement that the easy answer to question 1 doesn't solve question 2, and the easy answer to question 2 doesn't solve question 1. Why not moot some other answers to those questions, instead of sitting on your high respective horses?
    - bsder 10y ago
      Not at all ridiculous. You need to work harder if you're actually trying to troll people--I'll assume you are not, however. 1) Most modern societies are becoming increasingly secular. 2) Global warming demands that we get off of petroleum as much as possible anyway. 3) Not poking our nose into geopolitical nightmares is quite doable, thanks. Bush Sr. sure showed how it was done. 4) You can fix massive unemployment or you can get violence out of young men. This is pretty simple cause/effect. If young men have no prospects, they never settle down and you wind up with a large disgruntled population segment with nothing to lose. 5) Mental health care needs to be better. Period. This includes the young and the old.
  - AdeptusAquinas 10y ago
    Hmm, I think your first two points are a bit harsh and don't cover the whole picture. 1) Religion is not really the problem. There are a over a billion muslims in the world, and a little more than that who are Christians. The percentage of each that are involved in violence, even major wars, is so small to be statistically insignificant (definitely less than 1% or even 0.1% (or even 0.00001% if you just consider terrorists)). When religion does come into play its typically in a more ethnocentric way - e.g. religion-as-race. 2) most of the current problems, including those coming out of iraq, were not due to 'petroleum', but rather internal rebellions and foreign interference that is probably more political/ideological than financial in nature. A certain mindset might attribute a lot of the problems in the middle east to politicians a decade earlier seeking to win elections by looking tough on dictators, but not having the willpower to deal with the aftermath of their intervention. The other points are good, though blaming 'freetrade' as the cause for unemployment and/or other financial troubles is probably a bit simplistic.
    - rubberstamp 10y ago
      May be there should be a constitutional requirement to put those politicians that call for war right in the front lines along with those who actually fights it. Then may be they would have an appreciation for veterans and their care, cut back on unnecessary wars as they would think hard before putting themselves in harms way rather than war mongering sitting in the luxurious comfort. Taking responsibility can put an end to a lot of bad things happening in todays society. Doing whatever without having to face its consequences is the root cause of such behavior that causes harm to people.
      - cturner 10y ago
        There's a lot of room for innovation here, and there hasn't been much precedent for this historically. You could have constitutional measures controlling the way that wars were funded. A simple example: simple outlaw any kind of deficit spending by the national government. Another: a mechanism by which the release of funds could be tied up under legislation supervised by a third party such as the judiciary. [You could have a war chest, but encode it in a law such that the money could only be released if a senior court ruled that the release satisfied self-defense criteria.] One of the reasons that the original United States constitution (Articles of Confederation) was replaced by the current one was related to military funding. In the old system, it was difficult to raise an army for shared purpose (e.g. fighting the revolutionary war) and there was potential for states to go to war with one another. The issues raised by that period will be familiar to anyone following European integration projects. Some hard-line libertarians in the US remember the Articles of Confederation fondly, because of the limits it imposed on government power.
- krapp 10y ago
  The solution is accepting that the potential for crime, even mass murder, is a necessity for a free society, and that it's better for some terrorists to succeed than for everyone to live under a government that sees all, knows all, hears all and cannot possibly be risen up against. The greater threat to life and liberty always comes from a government's response to terrorism, not from any act of terrorism itself. Treat terrorism as just another crime, nothing special, nothing existentially critical. Nothing to fight a war against the entire world over. Governments already have the tools they need to fight terrorists without limiting encryption, they simply choose not to use the tools they have, because they would rather use terrorism as a pretext for grabbing power.
  - ricksplat 10y ago
    On your first paragraph, that sounds like the absurdist end of the libertarian spectrum and I'd expect more moderately minded people would take some issue with that line of thinking ... With regards to "Treat terrorism as just another crime, nothing special," I feel that the problem with terrorism, as it is called is the fact that it is coordinated and targeted. It is more like "organised crime" but it has the specific goal literally of creating terror, whereas the interests of organised crime are purely commercial and if you don't get in their way they won't get in yours. The issue is with people going around creating terror in a coordinated way, which undermines the authority of the state, and many people's feeling of safety. Of course that still leaves the question of how do you respond to it, but simply "accepting that the potential for crime, even mass murder, is a necessity for a free society" is similar to me to accepting that a waterfall software development model is a natural emergent phenomenon, inevitable and should thus be embraced. It's a mode of thought that never has a happy ending. Just to yank myself back on topic again, terrorism is thought to be similar to a child who wants his way and keeps escalating negative attention seeking tactics to the point where you either acquiesce (thus reinforcing the negative behaviour), or you smack the child (at best only a temporary solution, that could lead to further escalations if not sooner, then later in life - could even put you in front of a judge). "Smacking the child" is what the west has been trying so far. My personal opinion is that there is no universal generalised "third option", though intricate behavioural theories abound. I would take the opinion that every child is an individual and must be dealt with, and respected as such. It may be as simple as giving them something else to occupy themselves.
- yodsanklai 10y ago
  Why do you think that there is a solution? IMHO it's a mistake to think that there are solutions to everything. Sometimes, not doing anything is the best we can do. I know it sounds cliché to say that, but I'd rather see my gvt taking actions on things that could easily be improved. For instance, many teenagers smoke in front of every high school in my country. I see that as a much bigger threat than terrorism, and one that is much easier to address.

So what is the solution? If we spend all our time arguing what the solution isn't, we leave a big vacuum which is then filled with even more garbage ideas.

mtanski 10y ago
It doesn't make the Politicians Fallacy anymore valid.
bsder 10y ago
The solution is to go on with your life. You cannot stop terrorism, but you can take out it's sting. We seem to have forgotten the lessons about the IRA, et al. In addition, when people say "solutions" what they mean is "something that doesn't inconvenience me or require me to do anything". However if you want "real" solutions, here are some: 1) Start denouncing ALL religion as the force for stupidity that it actually is. "I believe in an imaginary sky being with no evidence and you can't convince me otherwise" should be LAUGHED AT as the absurdity it is. 2) Get everybody off of petroleum so that there isn't any money for people to fight about over in the middle east. 3) Quit supporting dictators and bombing countries for geopolitical reasons. 4) Start fixing double digit unemployment rates instead of making them worse with "free trade" agreements that only allow companies to use open borders while preventing workers from doing the same. 5) Make mental health care a much bigger priority than it currently is. Unfortunately, these solutions don't feed into people's preconceived biases and xenophobia and don't put more money into rich people's pockets. So they are all non-starters.
- spacecop 10y ago
  Tips fedora Lol, these suggestions are ridiculous, could you possibly be more out of touch with the billions of other people that surround you
  - Retra 10y ago
    You're never going to find a solution to a hard problem by appealing to the whims of the masses.
    - blowski 10y ago
      Finding a solution which appeals only to Hacker News readers isn't a solution if you live in a democracy.
      - waqf 10y ago
        One of you is answering the question "What should the country collectively [i.e. the government and people, negotiating and communicating with each other through elections and media] do about the destruction caused by terrorism?". One of you is answering the question "What should the government do about popular fears of terrorism, which might cause the government to lose elections?". You're in violent agreement that the easy answer to question 1 doesn't solve question 2, and the easy answer to question 2 doesn't solve question 1. Why not moot some other answers to those questions, instead of sitting on your high respective horses?
  - bsder 10y ago
    Not at all ridiculous. You need to work harder if you're actually trying to troll people--I'll assume you are not, however. 1) Most modern societies are becoming increasingly secular. 2) Global warming demands that we get off of petroleum as much as possible anyway. 3) Not poking our nose into geopolitical nightmares is quite doable, thanks. Bush Sr. sure showed how it was done. 4) You can fix massive unemployment or you can get violence out of young men. This is pretty simple cause/effect. If young men have no prospects, they never settle down and you wind up with a large disgruntled population segment with nothing to lose. 5) Mental health care needs to be better. Period. This includes the young and the old.
- AdeptusAquinas 10y ago
  Hmm, I think your first two points are a bit harsh and don't cover the whole picture. 1) Religion is not really the problem. There are a over a billion muslims in the world, and a little more than that who are Christians. The percentage of each that are involved in violence, even major wars, is so small to be statistically insignificant (definitely less than 1% or even 0.1% (or even 0.00001% if you just consider terrorists)). When religion does come into play its typically in a more ethnocentric way - e.g. religion-as-race. 2) most of the current problems, including those coming out of iraq, were not due to 'petroleum', but rather internal rebellions and foreign interference that is probably more political/ideological than financial in nature. A certain mindset might attribute a lot of the problems in the middle east to politicians a decade earlier seeking to win elections by looking tough on dictators, but not having the willpower to deal with the aftermath of their intervention. The other points are good, though blaming 'freetrade' as the cause for unemployment and/or other financial troubles is probably a bit simplistic.
  - rubberstamp 10y ago
    May be there should be a constitutional requirement to put those politicians that call for war right in the front lines along with those who actually fights it. Then may be they would have an appreciation for veterans and their care, cut back on unnecessary wars as they would think hard before putting themselves in harms way rather than war mongering sitting in the luxurious comfort. Taking responsibility can put an end to a lot of bad things happening in todays society. Doing whatever without having to face its consequences is the root cause of such behavior that causes harm to people.
    - cturner 10y ago
      There's a lot of room for innovation here, and there hasn't been much precedent for this historically. You could have constitutional measures controlling the way that wars were funded. A simple example: simple outlaw any kind of deficit spending by the national government. Another: a mechanism by which the release of funds could be tied up under legislation supervised by a third party such as the judiciary. [You could have a war chest, but encode it in a law such that the money could only be released if a senior court ruled that the release satisfied self-defense criteria.] One of the reasons that the original United States constitution (Articles of Confederation) was replaced by the current one was related to military funding. In the old system, it was difficult to raise an army for shared purpose (e.g. fighting the revolutionary war) and there was potential for states to go to war with one another. The issues raised by that period will be familiar to anyone following European integration projects. Some hard-line libertarians in the US remember the Articles of Confederation fondly, because of the limits it imposed on government power.
krapp 10y ago
The solution is accepting that the potential for crime, even mass murder, is a necessity for a free society, and that it's better for some terrorists to succeed than for everyone to live under a government that sees all, knows all, hears all and cannot possibly be risen up against. The greater threat to life and liberty always comes from a government's response to terrorism, not from any act of terrorism itself. Treat terrorism as just another crime, nothing special, nothing existentially critical. Nothing to fight a war against the entire world over. Governments already have the tools they need to fight terrorists without limiting encryption, they simply choose not to use the tools they have, because they would rather use terrorism as a pretext for grabbing power.
- ricksplat 10y ago
  On your first paragraph, that sounds like the absurdist end of the libertarian spectrum and I'd expect more moderately minded people would take some issue with that line of thinking ... With regards to "Treat terrorism as just another crime, nothing special," I feel that the problem with terrorism, as it is called is the fact that it is coordinated and targeted. It is more like "organised crime" but it has the specific goal literally of creating terror, whereas the interests of organised crime are purely commercial and if you don't get in their way they won't get in yours. The issue is with people going around creating terror in a coordinated way, which undermines the authority of the state, and many people's feeling of safety. Of course that still leaves the question of how do you respond to it, but simply "accepting that the potential for crime, even mass murder, is a necessity for a free society" is similar to me to accepting that a waterfall software development model is a natural emergent phenomenon, inevitable and should thus be embraced. It's a mode of thought that never has a happy ending. Just to yank myself back on topic again, terrorism is thought to be similar to a child who wants his way and keeps escalating negative attention seeking tactics to the point where you either acquiesce (thus reinforcing the negative behaviour), or you smack the child (at best only a temporary solution, that could lead to further escalations if not sooner, then later in life - could even put you in front of a judge). "Smacking the child" is what the west has been trying so far. My personal opinion is that there is no universal generalised "third option", though intricate behavioural theories abound. I would take the opinion that every child is an individual and must be dealt with, and respected as such. It may be as simple as giving them something else to occupy themselves.
yodsanklai 10y ago
Why do you think that there is a solution? IMHO it's a mistake to think that there are solutions to everything. Sometimes, not doing anything is the best we can do. I know it sounds cliché to say that, but I'd rather see my gvt taking actions on things that could easily be improved. For instance, many teenagers smoke in front of every high school in my country. I see that as a much bigger threat than terrorism, and one that is much easier to address.