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by ars 1108 days ago
> And we're talking about stochastic processes.

No we aren't, because that's not a real thing.

That's just something people make up when they want to demonize someone for their words, but don't have any actual evidence that their words are causing harm.

People aren't random agents of evil, that may or may not trigger. That's simply not a description of reality.

1 comments

> People aren't random agents of evil, that may or may not trigger. That's simply not a description of reality

That is not what stochastic terrorism means.

Stochastic terrorism is the observation that while you can not express specifically, where and how terror will occur, you know that with prob 1, it will occur and is a consequence of people rallying and exploiting crazy people.

Of course, anyone can deny that they explicitly told people to commit acts of terror, because they didn’t, and therefore they can not be held responsible for what the mentally ill did; that doesn’t mean there isn’t a cause and effect.

A constant barrage of people expressing “think of the children”, or blaming minorities for the perils of society is going to slowly but surely deteriorate and rally people into supporting murder and other heinous acts by distorting their reality and allowing them to justify atrocities.

Expressing that some [hero] needs to do something, nudge nudge wink wink doesn’t mean you did not cause an event, people don’t exist in vacuums, and all of our interactions provably matter.

I really fail to see why my response is deemed inappropriate by HN standards. Apparently I have also been flagged and I can't even comment. I really don't understand what I am doing wrong and would appreciate some feedback.