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Stochastic Terrorism
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- ares623 9mo agoSometimes it's good to put a name on a nebulous "thing" that we know permeates us.
- phendrenad2 9mo ago[flagged]
- phendrenad2 9mo agoDownvotes really should be public, it would make HN a much more civil place.
- polotics 9mo agothis would be indeed super-interesting I wish @dang sees this. maybe only allow users with a certain (1000+ ?) karma to see who downvoted them maybe, to avoid second order effects?
- tomhow 9mo agoThis has been discussed plenty over the years and the reason for not doing it is that it would encourage meta-discussion (argument/debate) about downvotes, when what we really want is for all the forces and incentives to keep discussions focused on the primary topic.
- direwolf20 9mo agoNot needed in this case. Grokipedia is a heavily manipulated AI slopaganda outlet.
- diamond559 9mo agoPeople are being shot in the face by masked gangs of brown shirts, while they are on the ground after trying to administer aid, we're beyond "stochastic" terrorism at this point.
- iamnothere 9mo agoThis concept is sophistry when deployed against Democrats just as much as it was when deployed against Republicans. “Stochastic terrorism” is free speech. I get it, you don’t like your enemies and you want to find a way to punish them. Maybe even to prevent them from saying things that seem to be increasing their base of support. So you find a few dangerous whackos who also happened to articulate the same points that you’re trying to suppress. Boom, instant justification to suppress that speech! Even if the speech isn’t per se illegal, maybe the fact that both your target and the whackos said the same thing makes it ok to suppress that speech anyway! No, that doesn’t make it ok. Free speech is free speech. Stop trying to unconstitutionally suppress the rights of your opponents.
- PorterBHall 9mo agoIn the United States, stochastic terrorism is neither a statutory offense nor a term of art in criminal codes; it is an analytic label used in scholarship and practitioner writing to describe probabilistic risks of violence linked to rhetoric. Recent legal and critical surveys stress that usage is heterogeneous and contested, and that the concept's value lies in describing a structure of communication and harm rather than in supplying a justiciable element test.[7] By contrast, U.S. incitement law is anchored in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), which protects advocacy short of speech that is intended to produce imminent lawless action and likely to do so. Stochastic accounts often concern non-directive, cumulative rhetoric whose effects materialize unpredictably, making the Brandenburg imminence and likelihood prongs difficult to satisfy absent clear exhortation.[2]
- timmmmmmay 9mo agothe more you don't want somebody to be allowed to say something, the more stochastic it is
- rcbdev 9mo agoWhat is up with this comment, is it bot-spam? What are the citations [7] and [2] supposed to be?
- rcbdev 9mo agoThis the most hokus pokus pseudo-sciency thing I've read on HN in a while.
- rixtox 9mo ago“Stand Alone Complex”
- amadeuspagel 9mo agoIf someone actually took this idea seriously, they would have to start with data about terrorism and then ask what speech might have inspired them, and they would end up banning pretty much all political expression. The Wikipedia article on Terrorism in the United States lists Attacks by Type[1], two of the types are left-wing and anti-government extremism and right-wing and anti-government extremism. That about covers all political speech. But for people who refer to this idea, the starting point is always that they want to censor specific speech, and they look for acts of terror to justify that. There's no advocate for censorship that couldn't make up their own "stochastic something", and I'm sure many have, I'm sure people have argued that porn is stochastic rape or something. Anyone who has ever advocated for censorship has argued that the speech he wants to censor leads to violence and social breakdown. Do people who consider "stochastic terrorism" a serious concept see themselves in this tradition, just expressing themselves more formally or do they think they've invented something new here? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States#Attacks_by_type https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States...
- cratermoon 9mo agoFrom Hannah Arendt's book The Origins of Totalitarianism, first published 1948. She identified what we now call stochastic terrorism but did not give it a name. Mostly such orders were "intentionally vague, and given in the expectation that their recipient would recognize the intent of the order giver, and act accordingly", for the elite formations were by no means merely obligated to obey the order of the Fuehrer (this was mandatory for all existing organizations anyway), but "to execute the will of the leadership". And, as can be gathered from the lengthy proceedings concerning "excesses" before the party courts, this was by no means one and the same. The only difference was the the elite formations, thanks to their special indoctrination for such purposes, had been trained to understand that certain "hints mean more than their mere verbal contents" -- Arendt, Hannah. 2025. Hannah Arendt: The Origins of Totalitarianism Expanded Edition (LOA #389). Edited by Jerome Kohn and Thomas Wild. New York, NY: Library of America. (588-89)
- throwawaypath 9mo ago>elevates the statistical risk of ideologically motivated violence by unknown individuals, even without direct coordination or explicit orders. This perfectly describes what leftists have done by importing Muslims and the third world en mass to the West. Part and parcel!
- bigbadfeline 9mo agoFor a brain on nationalism, everything is terrorism - mothers, nurses, cars, probability, math, tiny flying drones, physics, 3d printers, the web, software... on and on and on. Just look at what Congers has banned or is in the process of banning or mandating seizure and remote control over people's property.
- throwawaypath 9mo agoFor a brain on wokeism, everything is racist - mothers, nurses, cars, probability, math, tiny flying drones, physics, 3d printers, the web, software... on and on and on. Just look at what Congers has banned or is in the process of banning or mandating seizure and remote control over people's property.
- bigbadfeline 9mo agoNationalism and wokeism go hand in hand. Too bad you're incapable of understanding either or how they relate, that much is clear from the parrot style of your response.
- throwawaypath 9mo agoIslam and terrorism go hand in hand. Too bad you're incapable of understanding either or how they relate, that much is clear from the parrot style of your response.
- bigbadfeline 9mo agoI don't know about Islam in general but fundamentalist Islam is as fundamentalist, oppressive and dictatorial as nationalism. Looks like even a parrot can utter a half-true half-sentence once in a blue moon.