[Legend2440]

Honestly this sounds so outlandish that it makes me skeptical of the whole thing.

They didn't stop after the first guy died? Or the tenth? Guy #11 just looked at the pile of corpses and was like, hell yeah I'm gonna try next?

And where's the video? Terrorist groups love propaganda footage, if they were doing motorcycle stunts like Evel Knievel they'd be bragging about it everywhere.

[woadwarrior01]

If they were wary of dying, they wouldn't be in the business of terrorism in the first place. Also, they almost certainly believe in a better afterlife. Reminds of the old animated short: Saga of Bjorn[1].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV5w262XvCU

[graemep]

The terrorist group that pioneered modern suicide bombs and was their largest scale user by far was multi-religious in its membership and had atheists in its leadership.

Obviously an Islamist group will tend to be different, but remember the British guys who were reading The Dummies Guide to Islam on their way to join ISIS?

The people carrying out terrorism (not the organisers higher up) tend not to be very bright or clear thinking. The are convinced blowing things up will make the world a better place.

[petilon]

Surely even terrorists want to die for a cause, not during practice.

[warumdarum]

Shh, shhh , shaheed. They do not even have medics for the most trivial of wounds.

[dylan604]

Are you granted your virgins if you do not take out any infidel?

[petesergeant]

ChatGPT says "it depends" and hedges: "not automatically a martyr in the technical legal sense, but possibly a martyr in reward"

[distances]

Please don't just provide LLM answers in human discussions. It's rude.

[petesergeant]

Ruder than completely ignoring the context of the article and thread, and then drive-by moralizing?

[solumunus]

Genuinely most terrorists are mentally handicapped. They groom, coerce and exploit low IQ individuals, because those are the people you can convince to blow themselves up (or whatever else).

[tptacek]

OK, if that makes you feel better. Most of the 9/11 hijackers weren't low-IQ individuals; they included engineers, architects, schoolteachers, and pilots (for real); many were recruited out of universities; many were bi- and trilingual; &c.

[solumunus]

It doesn’t make me feel any type of way it’s just an observation that has been made. You can find interviews with ex-terrorists where they detail how recruitment is done and how work is delegated.

[archonis]

Terrorists organizations are members of high control (ie. cult) groups.

High control groups succeed because they apply their tactics to people who at vulnerable. Vulnerability has no correlation with intelligence. Lots of intelligent people are exploited by high control groups because they are recruited at a time when they are vulnerable.

[solumunus]

Some intelligent people are vulnerable. All very low IQ people are vulnerable. Of course there is a correlation.

[rightbyte]

Yeah this didn't happen. If someone is cracy enough to practice with holes filled with glass on fire why trust them at all about being cracy in the first place?

[evan_]

where'd they get so much broken glass that it would fill a hole anyway? They just have that much glass on hand?

[lukan]

Erm, if you have 18 guys to spend on training, you also have some empty bottles or access to a place where there are more empty bottles.

Whether crazy people are actually crazy enough to literally do what a LLM gave them as a action sequence from movie inspiration - I have no idea. But I doubt it here.

[evan_]

I guess it's not like they have a really well-functioning garbage collection service

[true_religion]

Bokom Haram regularly kidnaps children. The girls become “wives”. The boys become the next generation of soldier.

[gwerbin]

Wasn't it established that ISIS soldiers go into battle hopped up on amphetamines and other drugs? I don't believe the story as stated either, but I fully believe that members of an extremist terrorist military organization would be willing to do extreme things in service of what they believe is a noble and justified cause, even if that includes dying during training. American soldiers that die in helicopter crashes are still honored as heroes who gave their lives in service of their country, and few question that, meanwhile people still enlist in the US Armed Forces. If some Boko Haram commander gets an obsession with some kind of crazy motorcycle attack and a guy dies in a motorcycle crash, do you think everyone else is going to punk out? Or are they going to honor him as having sacrificed his life so the other soldiers can carry out the attack?

[ozlikethewizard]

The USAF were using amphetamines as recently as Afghanistan, it's hard to find concrete info on but appears from the little research I've done that theres been a switch to other stimulants like modafinil. Stimulant use by soldiers has been pretty standard since the turn of the 20th century.

Edit: From 2012, official approval of Modafinil:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140611124025/http://static.e-p...

[ifwinterco]

There's a difference between using stimulants on long missions to stay awake (especially if, for example, you're flying an aeroplane) and getting cranked on speed before a battle purely because you're rather fight high than sober.

The German army in WW2 famously experimented with the latter during the invasion of France, but they seem to have reigned it in after that, mainly because while it might be initially effective, soldiers aren't much good for anything when they're having an awful comedown after a meth binge.

Modafinil is a good choice for the former because it's extremely effective at keeping you awake, but has almost no classical dopaminergic stimulant effects and isn't really fun to use

[scarecrowbob]

Its fun for me to read these comments as a person who hates the US military.

Because I know the pipe hitters working for JSOC are really just as fucked up and superstitious as any boko haram nutjobs, and the magic that the "operators" believe in is just as idealistic and disconnected from material reality evn if it's stated "rationally" and scientistically as you've done here.

The "difference" that you're stating is purely imaginary, hoss. Those assholes are getting cranked up because it's easier to kill folks, and that's the same deal weather you're team "deus vult" or whatever odd stuff the Boko Haram folks are into- yall are all just into killing people at the end of the day.

"It's different because we have science"... get out of here with that LOL

[Pay08]

That whole rescue fiasco was honestly what soured me on a lot of politics. I can barely remember anyone mentioning the hundreds of kidnapped boys.

[brookst]

To be fair, guy #11 was a lot better at prompting

[Pay08]

Honestly, Boko Haram is in general just bad at propaganda and mostly confines said propaganda to Nigeria.

[dylan604]

> Guy #11 just looked at the pile of corpses and was like, hell yeah I'm gonna try next?

Have you never seen a kung-fu movie? Of course that's what happens when a large group attack a superior solitary opponent.