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These groups already know that blood and guts terrorism is politically self-defeating. Well-funded material attacks are only made on valuable targets, like oil

by angrow 14y ago

These groups already know that blood and guts terrorism is politically self-defeating. Well-funded material attacks are only made on valuable targets, like oil pipelines after you've stockpiled call options. Political objectives are pursued in other ways. Here's an article on Inspire magazine: http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/11/note-on-innovation-in-warfare.html http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/11... It's funny that the author says they were inspired by Robin Hanson, because he certainly is one of the best examples for a kind of person who confuses their intelligence for a kind of universal expertise, one that requires no schooling, no study, no direct experience or theoretical grounding. "It's better to come to the field from the outside," they say, "so I can better disrupt it!" The only thing that stops the post from being truly Hansonian is it stops short of openly arguing for solving the problem by "giving" women to dispossessed young men.

gwern 14y ago
> The only thing that stops the post from being truly Hansonian is it stops short of openly arguing for solving the problem by "giving" women to dispossessed young men. One of Hanson's flaws is ignoring any consideration of numbers or proportions; I like to think I'm better in that respect, and for those reasons I would not advocate it: the base rate for becoming a dispossessed young man becoming a terrorist is so low that it's not a good use of young women (not that Middle Eastern countries make good use of young women to begin with), while if you can target it to known terrorists, you'd be better off just imprisoning or executing them. Black September is interesting for what the effect of marriage says about their motivations, not as a useful suppression strategy - most countries do not have the same relation to terrorist groups that Fatah had to Black September and do not need to peacefully civilianize them while looking like friends, as it were.

by angrow 14y ago

gwern 14y ago

> The only thing that stops the post from being truly Hansonian is it stops short of openly arguing for solving the problem by "giving" women to dispossessed young men. One of Hanson's flaws is ignoring any consideration of numbers or proportions; I like to think I'm better in that respect, and for those reasons I would not advocate it: the base rate for becoming a dispossessed young man becoming a terrorist is so low that it's not a good use of young women (not that Middle Eastern countries make good use of young women to begin with), while if you can target it to known terrorists, you'd be better off just imprisoning or executing them. Black September is interesting for what the effect of marriage says about their motivations, not as a useful suppression strategy - most countries do not have the same relation to terrorist groups that Fatah had to Black September and do not need to peacefully civilianize them while looking like friends, as it were.