[obituary_latte]

>That is the million dollar question. And it's a hard one. I believe that yes, we can do something but I don't believe there is a magical incantation or a simple and short thing that we can do. It will take many years (decades) to slowly un-wind this mess and in the meantime it could get a lot worse and that lone might be enough to lose the plot on any plan that isn't perceived as a silver bullet but that actually has a chance of working

I admire your patience for sure. The hope that we have decades to unwind this mess.

I fear, though, militant religious sects may not have the same self control.

I fear that the inability or lack of willingness to meet violence with violence may be the downfall of rationality. We rightfully shun violence in place of discussion, but as is evident (again), we are not dealing with rational actors.

I think a discussion about how we can realistically meet this violence with violence is warranted. Sam Harris made a good argument for this in this podcast: http://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-riddle-of-the-gun-...

We have in a way changed the paradigm already. A bad actor brandishing a box cutter on a plane is to be sure to be met with resistance that wouldn't have been seen pre 9/11.

[jacquesm]

> I fear, though, militant religious sects may not have the same self control.

But that could actually be an advantage. The more people see them for the nutcases they are the shorter the path to a possible solution.

> I fear that the inability or lack of willingness to meet violence with violence may be the downfall of rationality. We rightfully shun violence in place of discussion, but as is evident (again), we are not dealing with rational actors.

The danger in dealing with non-rational actors is that rational people will either do one of two things: they will join the non-rational actors and will respond non-rationally themselves, or they will persist in setting up a rational frame of reference for dialogue with the non-rational actors, which clearly will not work.

So the solution is to treat non-rational actors as exactly what they are: crazy, and deal with them accordingly.

[obituary_latte]

>But that could actually be an advantage. The more people see them for the nutcases they are the shorter the path to a possible solution.

Sorry for not being clear. I'm not speaking about others perception; we can easily discern they are out of shape. They, though, don't care what the rest of us rational people think.

>So the solution is to treat non-rational actors as exactly what they are: crazy, and deal with them accordingly.

Agreed. What I'm arguing is that that may involve reciprocating violence -- which we (rightfully) inherently tend to avoid. You can't rationalize with irrational people.

In that situation, we need multiple people to be willing to sacrifice themselves to save others. In today's world, the modus operandi is to cower and hope things pass over or to sympathize with the attackers views. This will not work going forward as the attackers could give a fuck what you think or how you feel so long as your death plays into their idea of making the world right.