4 ms·

At the risk of sounding heartlessly numerate: campus shootings are so rare that they should mostly be ignored. The danger level is very, very low. If you must w

At the risk of sounding heartlessly numerate: campus shootings are so rare that they should mostly be ignored. The danger level is very, very low. If you must worry, then worry about something boring but important like traffic accidents instead.

thwayunion 4y ago
For terrorists, causalities are a means rather than an ends. Trying to characterize terrorism in terms of body bags isn't going to work for many reasons. One is that terrorism works even with small numbers of total body bags. Another, perhaps more important, is that terrorists will increase their violence to match the population's threshold. Anyways. I don't have any answers. But dismissing terrorism because it doesn't kill that many people kind of misses the point of terrorism in a lot of important ways.
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  Who in the heck is talking about terrorism at universities other than you?
  - thwayunion 4y ago
    GP's post is about campus shootings, which are a form of terrorism (or at least have enough in common that the above analysis is effective).
- mindslight 4y ago
  Why are you focusing on "terrorists" as the only ones with agency, rather than the media that hypes up the event, makes it into a spectacle, and encourages the next mentally ill person to go for their own 15 days of fame? The ones that buy ink by the barrel never critically examine their own role, but we certainly can.
  - thwayunion 4y ago
    There's nothing in your post I particularly disagree with. I'm simply making factual statements about the social phenomena exploited by terrorists. Stop shooting at the messenger.
    - mindslight 4y ago
      While you are making a factual statement, you're doing so while pushing a paradigm that absolves the media. The entire point of looking at numbers is to objectively judge the actual harm to people, rather than buying into the sensationalism. By the paradigm you're advocating, "the terrorists win".
- matt-attack 4y ago
  It’s only “works” if you let it. And it doesn’t “work” on me. I don’t give a shit and won’t let it impact singe choice I make. So please don’t just declare how it “works”.
  - thwayunion 4y ago
    > I don’t give a shit and won’t let it impact singe choice I make. So please don’t just declare how it “works”. You missed the point. There will always be many people like you, who aren't personally convinced to shift their security/liberty tradeoff by exactly the current level of terrorism deemed acceptable or unpreventable. There will always be people at far extremes of that spectrum. Probably even some further to the liberty side of that spectrum than you are, believe it or not. Terrorism doesn't work by targeting you in particular, or by targeting the tails of the distribution. That's not how terror functions. It functions by targeting the fat portion of the distribution. It targets societies, not individuals. Anyways, if you want to prove me wrong it's easy. Get the TSA to be disbanded by letting lawmakers know about your personal risk tolerance. I'm sure it'll work ;-)
    - supportlocal4h 4y ago
      Terrorism works to... what? Sell xray machines? Decrease tourism? Convince Lithuanians to quit interfering in Kentucky? Fund the security industrial complex? The point can be easy to miss.
      - thwayunion 4y ago
        To attack. To hurt. To cause fear. To degrade a perceived enemy's sense of safety, order, civility, etc. To destroy social fabric. To cause maximum damage to that from which the terrorist feels alienated. Real life isn't a Tom Clancy novel, and many terrorists are not agents of transnational militant organizations with specific and articulated geopolitical aims. For many terrorists, the terror is the goal. You can yell and scream and plead that we shouldn't be afraid. And look: I'm not here to disagree. Not at all. I'm just here to tell you that if your appeals started to work, future terrorists would switch to different tactics. And also that terrorists are likely choosing the tactics they are precisely because they think you're wrong about your ability to get the vast majority of people to not be afraid. Again, no solutions here. But ignoring the fundamental goal of terrorism and mass violence probably isn't a good starting point.
- supportlocal4h 4y ago
  I interpret "works" to mean that it accomplishes its goal. For instance, if somebody threatens to break your storefront windows unless you pay protection money, so you pay the money, then the threat worked. We used to use a different word than "terrorism" for that, but you get the idea. But you rarely hear that grafitti works. Or that road rage works. They might accomplish some goal, but that goal may be difficult to discern. So we tend to qualify the success. "If the goal is..." If the goal of running a marathon is to improve personal performance... When the point is unclear to say the least, it is pointless to say it works without saying what it works to accomplish. It's like saying, "dying your hair works."
  - thwayunion 4y ago
    Real life isn't a Tom Clancy novel. The point of most terrorism is the terror.
    - throwawaylinux 4y ago
      No it isn't, by definition. For example this modern misuse of the word terrorism is designed to strike fear into a population, but the point of that terrorism is not just to scare people, it is to coerce them into agreeing to give more power and money to the ruling class. Hurting and scaring people just to hurt and scare people isn't terrorism, it's probably driven some kind of mental defect like psychopathy though.
      - luckylion 4y ago
        > the point of that terrorism is not just to scare people, it is to coerce them into agreeing to give more power and money to the ruling class Are you saying that all terrorism is for (and thus probably also by, at least allowed by) the ruling class? That sounds pretty conspiratorial.
        throwawaylinux 4y ago
        No.
- vagrantJin 4y ago
  > Trying to characterize terrorism in terms of body bags isn't going to work > terrorists will increase their violence to match the population's threshold. This is called fear-mongering. Not only is it baseless, its mumbo-jumbo of self contradicting statements.

thwayunion 4y ago

For terrorists, causalities are a means rather than an ends. Trying to characterize terrorism in terms of body bags isn't going to work for many reasons. One is that terrorism works even with small numbers of total body bags. Another, perhaps more important, is that terrorists will increase their violence to match the population's threshold. Anyways. I don't have any answers. But dismissing terrorism because it doesn't kill that many people kind of misses the point of terrorism in a lot of important ways.

nathanaldensr 4y ago
Who in the heck is talking about terrorism at universities other than you?
- thwayunion 4y ago
  GP's post is about campus shootings, which are a form of terrorism (or at least have enough in common that the above analysis is effective).
mindslight 4y ago
Why are you focusing on "terrorists" as the only ones with agency, rather than the media that hypes up the event, makes it into a spectacle, and encourages the next mentally ill person to go for their own 15 days of fame? The ones that buy ink by the barrel never critically examine their own role, but we certainly can.
- thwayunion 4y ago
  There's nothing in your post I particularly disagree with. I'm simply making factual statements about the social phenomena exploited by terrorists. Stop shooting at the messenger.
  - mindslight 4y ago
    While you are making a factual statement, you're doing so while pushing a paradigm that absolves the media. The entire point of looking at numbers is to objectively judge the actual harm to people, rather than buying into the sensationalism. By the paradigm you're advocating, "the terrorists win".
matt-attack 4y ago
It’s only “works” if you let it. And it doesn’t “work” on me. I don’t give a shit and won’t let it impact singe choice I make. So please don’t just declare how it “works”.
- thwayunion 4y ago
  > I don’t give a shit and won’t let it impact singe choice I make. So please don’t just declare how it “works”. You missed the point. There will always be many people like you, who aren't personally convinced to shift their security/liberty tradeoff by exactly the current level of terrorism deemed acceptable or unpreventable. There will always be people at far extremes of that spectrum. Probably even some further to the liberty side of that spectrum than you are, believe it or not. Terrorism doesn't work by targeting you in particular, or by targeting the tails of the distribution. That's not how terror functions. It functions by targeting the fat portion of the distribution. It targets societies, not individuals. Anyways, if you want to prove me wrong it's easy. Get the TSA to be disbanded by letting lawmakers know about your personal risk tolerance. I'm sure it'll work ;-)
  - supportlocal4h 4y ago
    Terrorism works to... what? Sell xray machines? Decrease tourism? Convince Lithuanians to quit interfering in Kentucky? Fund the security industrial complex? The point can be easy to miss.
    - thwayunion 4y ago
      To attack. To hurt. To cause fear. To degrade a perceived enemy's sense of safety, order, civility, etc. To destroy social fabric. To cause maximum damage to that from which the terrorist feels alienated. Real life isn't a Tom Clancy novel, and many terrorists are not agents of transnational militant organizations with specific and articulated geopolitical aims. For many terrorists, the terror is the goal. You can yell and scream and plead that we shouldn't be afraid. And look: I'm not here to disagree. Not at all. I'm just here to tell you that if your appeals started to work, future terrorists would switch to different tactics. And also that terrorists are likely choosing the tactics they are precisely because they think you're wrong about your ability to get the vast majority of people to not be afraid. Again, no solutions here. But ignoring the fundamental goal of terrorism and mass violence probably isn't a good starting point.
supportlocal4h 4y ago
I interpret "works" to mean that it accomplishes its goal. For instance, if somebody threatens to break your storefront windows unless you pay protection money, so you pay the money, then the threat worked. We used to use a different word than "terrorism" for that, but you get the idea. But you rarely hear that grafitti works. Or that road rage works. They might accomplish some goal, but that goal may be difficult to discern. So we tend to qualify the success. "If the goal is..." If the goal of running a marathon is to improve personal performance... When the point is unclear to say the least, it is pointless to say it works without saying what it works to accomplish. It's like saying, "dying your hair works."
- thwayunion 4y ago
  Real life isn't a Tom Clancy novel. The point of most terrorism is the terror.
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    No it isn't, by definition. For example this modern misuse of the word terrorism is designed to strike fear into a population, but the point of that terrorism is not just to scare people, it is to coerce them into agreeing to give more power and money to the ruling class. Hurting and scaring people just to hurt and scare people isn't terrorism, it's probably driven some kind of mental defect like psychopathy though.
    - luckylion 4y ago
      > the point of that terrorism is not just to scare people, it is to coerce them into agreeing to give more power and money to the ruling class Are you saying that all terrorism is for (and thus probably also by, at least allowed by) the ruling class? That sounds pretty conspiratorial.
      - throwawaylinux 4y ago
        No.
vagrantJin 4y ago
> Trying to characterize terrorism in terms of body bags isn't going to work > terrorists will increase their violence to match the population's threshold. This is called fear-mongering. Not only is it baseless, its mumbo-jumbo of self contradicting statements.