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In fact, the best thing we can do is stop reporting terrorism in the media. Don't give these fanatics the spotlight they so much crave.

axod 17y ago
The problem is, we as a society crave sensationalist news entertainment. How to fix that? :/
- rbanffy 17y ago
  Education would be my fist guess. When people become aware of stupidity, they are at least free to try not being stupid.
  - axod 17y ago
    But here we are, sitting on HN voting up the most ridiculous non-useful articles. HN is often full of sensationalist entertainment news - endless appstore policies, iPad raves/rants etc. Why this is dead, why X is a Y killer. Endless rants about privacy. We're just as bad as the general population as a whole. Our "Terrorism" is "possible affront on privacy" or "Apple might be evil!"
    - derefr 17y ago
      The problem is "news." Without sensational news—without ephemera, in other words—the concept of "news" crumbles. We don't need to know the ongoing developments in stories that don't affect us personally, but we still crave to. If humans were stripped of this urge, this and every social news site would be reduced to magazines, publishing only after-the-fact analyses of completed narratives.
      - inerte 17y ago
        Maybe a way to start doing this would be telling people that they are dumb. The past couple weeks I've been thinking that people are ok with small/short/quick news because it makes them think they have figured out the whole thing. Maybe they are satisfied that they've learned something, or maybe they think it is enough. I think folks are overestimating their ability to put loosely connected ideas into something bigger. You get a little here, a sprinkle there and you're cool with that. It's like a fast food for the brain. You're constantly satisfied, almost by the second, because you're supposedly "learning" something. But I don't know. My train of thought stops there. I don't know how to strip people of this urge.
        rbanffy 17y ago
        Maybe we could work with the urge and create something good with it.
- hexis 17y ago
  Almost certainly, the best thing any person can do is work to lessen their own cravings for sensationalist news entertainment. Then, let your circle (at this point only containing yourself) grow to include others, beginning with the people closest to you (in one sense or another, as in you might start with friends, family, or maybe even start by telling us about how you lessened your cravings here on HN). You probably meant something larger scale in your original questions, or maybe something more tactically concrete. Hopefully, starting by getting the scale of the problem under control might help us get the tactics right, and then expand the scale.
- kokofoo 17y ago
  This is a much harder problem to solve than terrorism itself.
jackfoxy 17y ago
The 24 hour news cycle craves content, to use an anthropomorphism.
enjo 17y ago
I couldn't disagree more. The Times Square bomb was reported by a bystander who was on guard (certainly in part) because the media has effectively kept the terrorist threat fresh in our minds. While terrorist attacks may be rare, the ones that are attempted are often thwarted by people simply being aware of their surroundings. Terrorism and the threat of terrorism are not just a media creation. They are real, with real people wanting to kill real people. While we shouldn't surrender our fundamental ideals and liberties on the altar of security, pretending like the problem doesn't exist hardly seems like the answer either.
- derefr 17y ago
  By analogy, there are two solutions to spam: to filter it out, or to stop gving spammers a reason to send it. In this instance, it's almost impossible to do the former—requiring every human to add an additional step of waryness to their already-complex urban model—while the latter is easy, and only requires O(n = news editors) instead of O(m = humans) effort.
- MichaelSalib 17y ago
  The Times Square bomb was reported by a bystander who was on guard (certainly in part) because the media has effectively kept the terrorist threat fresh in our minds. He noticed that a car was filling up with smoke. Even if had never heard of terrorism before, he still would have called the police because that's what people do when they notice a fire nearby. pretending like the problem doesn't exist hardly seems like the answer either. There are 300,000,000 people in the US. On any given day, tens of thousands of them will notice something that looks like terrorism to them. On almost every day of the year, every single one of those tens of thousands of people will be wrong. Completely and totally wrong. As a result, those people will become extremely anxious and will cause law enforcement to waste time and hassle innocent people needlessly. We need to face facts: the vast majority of people are completely incapable of distinguishing terrorist activity so what they report as suspicious is often nothing but an artifact of their own prejudice. Terrorism has become an excuse to systematically harass out groups. And in the process, we are all made less safe because the police have to investigate these stupid incidents instead of focusing on real crimes.

axod 17y ago

The problem is, we as a society crave sensationalist news entertainment. How to fix that? :/

rbanffy 17y ago
Education would be my fist guess. When people become aware of stupidity, they are at least free to try not being stupid.
- axod 17y ago
  But here we are, sitting on HN voting up the most ridiculous non-useful articles. HN is often full of sensationalist entertainment news - endless appstore policies, iPad raves/rants etc. Why this is dead, why X is a Y killer. Endless rants about privacy. We're just as bad as the general population as a whole. Our "Terrorism" is "possible affront on privacy" or "Apple might be evil!"
  - derefr 17y ago
    The problem is "news." Without sensational news—without ephemera, in other words—the concept of "news" crumbles. We don't need to know the ongoing developments in stories that don't affect us personally, but we still crave to. If humans were stripped of this urge, this and every social news site would be reduced to magazines, publishing only after-the-fact analyses of completed narratives.
    - inerte 17y ago
      Maybe a way to start doing this would be telling people that they are dumb. The past couple weeks I've been thinking that people are ok with small/short/quick news because it makes them think they have figured out the whole thing. Maybe they are satisfied that they've learned something, or maybe they think it is enough. I think folks are overestimating their ability to put loosely connected ideas into something bigger. You get a little here, a sprinkle there and you're cool with that. It's like a fast food for the brain. You're constantly satisfied, almost by the second, because you're supposedly "learning" something. But I don't know. My train of thought stops there. I don't know how to strip people of this urge.
      - rbanffy 17y ago
        Maybe we could work with the urge and create something good with it.
hexis 17y ago
Almost certainly, the best thing any person can do is work to lessen their own cravings for sensationalist news entertainment. Then, let your circle (at this point only containing yourself) grow to include others, beginning with the people closest to you (in one sense or another, as in you might start with friends, family, or maybe even start by telling us about how you lessened your cravings here on HN). You probably meant something larger scale in your original questions, or maybe something more tactically concrete. Hopefully, starting by getting the scale of the problem under control might help us get the tactics right, and then expand the scale.
kokofoo 17y ago
This is a much harder problem to solve than terrorism itself.

jackfoxy 17y ago

The 24 hour news cycle craves content, to use an anthropomorphism.

enjo 17y ago

I couldn't disagree more. The Times Square bomb was reported by a bystander who was on guard (certainly in part) because the media has effectively kept the terrorist threat fresh in our minds. While terrorist attacks may be rare, the ones that are attempted are often thwarted by people simply being aware of their surroundings. Terrorism and the threat of terrorism are not just a media creation. They are real, with real people wanting to kill real people. While we shouldn't surrender our fundamental ideals and liberties on the altar of security, pretending like the problem doesn't exist hardly seems like the answer either.

derefr 17y ago
By analogy, there are two solutions to spam: to filter it out, or to stop gving spammers a reason to send it. In this instance, it's almost impossible to do the former—requiring every human to add an additional step of waryness to their already-complex urban model—while the latter is easy, and only requires O(n = news editors) instead of O(m = humans) effort.
MichaelSalib 17y ago
The Times Square bomb was reported by a bystander who was on guard (certainly in part) because the media has effectively kept the terrorist threat fresh in our minds. He noticed that a car was filling up with smoke. Even if had never heard of terrorism before, he still would have called the police because that's what people do when they notice a fire nearby. pretending like the problem doesn't exist hardly seems like the answer either. There are 300,000,000 people in the US. On any given day, tens of thousands of them will notice something that looks like terrorism to them. On almost every day of the year, every single one of those tens of thousands of people will be wrong. Completely and totally wrong. As a result, those people will become extremely anxious and will cause law enforcement to waste time and hassle innocent people needlessly. We need to face facts: the vast majority of people are completely incapable of distinguishing terrorist activity so what they report as suspicious is often nothing but an artifact of their own prejudice. Terrorism has become an excuse to systematically harass out groups. And in the process, we are all made less safe because the police have to investigate these stupid incidents instead of focusing on real crimes.