Comment by thwayunion | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thwayunion | Hacker News Reader

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> I don’t give a shit and won’t let it impact singe choice I make. So please don’t just declare how it “works”.

You missed the point.

There will always be many people like you, who aren't personally convinced to shift their security/liberty tradeoff by exactly the current level of terrorism deemed acceptable or unpreventable. There will always be people at far extremes of that spectrum. Probably even some further to the liberty side of that spectrum than you are, believe it or not.

Terrorism doesn't work by targeting you in particular, or by targeting the tails of the distribution. That's not how terror functions. It functions by targeting the fat portion of the distribution. It targets societies, not individuals.

Anyways, if you want to prove me wrong it's easy. Get the TSA to be disbanded by letting lawmakers know about your personal risk tolerance. I'm sure it'll work ;-)

Terrorism works to... what? Sell xray machines? Decrease tourism? Convince Lithuanians to quit interfering in Kentucky? Fund the security industrial complex?

The point can be easy to miss.

To attack. To hurt. To cause fear. To degrade a perceived enemy's sense of safety, order, civility, etc. To destroy social fabric. To cause maximum damage to that from which the terrorist feels alienated.

Real life isn't a Tom Clancy novel, and many terrorists are not agents of transnational militant organizations with specific and articulated geopolitical aims.

For many terrorists, the terror is the goal.

You can yell and scream and plead that we shouldn't be afraid. And look: I'm not here to disagree. Not at all. I'm just here to tell you that if your appeals started to work, future terrorists would switch to different tactics. And also that terrorists are likely choosing the tactics they are precisely because they think you're wrong about your ability to get the vast majority of people to not be afraid.

Again, no solutions here. But ignoring the fundamental goal of terrorism and mass violence probably isn't a good starting point.

In the US, terrorism is generally understood to be distinct from random violence specifically due to the political goal. So, this excludes most school shootings. Also, when we have a lone shooter with a manifesto or whatever, which could I guess arguably be seen as political, generally the media will skip it I think. Deter copycats and all that.

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