For all the conspiracy theorists and people crying "who will they go after next": All that's happening here is a non-profit is buying ads for common ISIS-related search terms and displaying anti-ISIS advertisements. You know, exactly like millions of people use Google ads for politics, selling things, etc. They're even getting external funding from donors to buy the ads. It astounds me that anyone could be against this. How are ads ok for selling your shitty SaaS product but they are not ok for convincing people not to murder one another?
Google's approach presumes that Islamic terrorism is driven by ignorant people.
They will link to media from outside the viewer's filter bubble, so the ignorant Daesh recruit would become educated and choose another path.
But is ignorance really the root cause? Researchers found that Islamist radicals are disproportionately well educated, and frequently have an engineering background.
Using rigorous methods and several new datasets, they explain
the link between educational discipline and type of radicalism
by looking at two key factors: the social mobility (or lack thereof)
for engineers in the Muslim world, and a particular mindset
seeking order and hierarchy that is found more frequently among
engineers. Engineers' presence in some extremist groups and not
others, the authors argue, is a proxy for individual traits
that may account for the much larger question of selective
recruitment to radical activism.
If prospective terrorists are already well educated, will linking to alternative viewpoints tell them anything they didn't already know?
> But is ignorance really the root cause? Researchers found that Islamist radicals are disproportionately well educated, and frequently have an engineering background.
Yes, ignorance is the root cause (well.. technically speaking there is never a "root cause" since you can always ask another round of whys). The problem is that smart and well-educated people can become ignorant.
The studies of these people also found that they are typically big believers in conspiracy theories. And I think that's the crux.
Conspiracy theory is like a cancer of the mind. When you believe in some conspiracy theory, then everything that other people are saying, or evidence they provide, is categorized as invalid, with reasoning that either those people are part of conspiracy itself or hapless masses brainwashed by the conspirators. So effectively, you decided to discount all external inputs on the matter (in other words, you chose to be ignorant).
The ingenious part is that it's not strictly irrational. Even if you close your mind to external evidence, rationality can have its field day, you can still work things out through logic. (And for sure, external inputs can be confusing and look inconsistent too.) It's like in a logic system which is inconsistent - anything can be proven within it, and that limits seeing its own inconsistency. (Luckily, the diversity of possible opinions of conspiracy theorists significantly limits spread of their theories.)
I have seen very smart and educated people fall prey on this. Libertarians, AGW deniers.. They tend to argue on rational/logic grounds rather than look out for the evidence. I think we should teach people, if your theory requires conspiracy of more than, say, 10k people, then it's a giant red flag and you should by all means reconsider the evidence.
There is plenty of evidence that would put the US as the "bad guy" from a Muslim perspective, it doesn't need one to play logic games in a vacuum to create a conspiracy. The support of "friendly" dictators, oppressive monarchies, and military coups that align with US interests, and the absolute backing the US gives Israel over any other Middle Eastern country. The last thing you want is people getting educated about that. There's no crazy conspiracy needed to show that the US does not have the best interests of the Arab world citizenry at heart.
And that figure of 10 000 people can't keep a conspiracy secret is predicated on the idea that it's some kind of active plot, when just having conflicting ideals and values can produce all the hallmarks of a conspiracy without any of the members necessarily being consciously aware. Cf studies on name blind hiring and diversity, where none of the recruiters would feel that they were racist/sexist/etc, but the end result would look very similar to there being a recruiter wide conspiracy against certain groups.
This is true, but that's not what I call "conspiracy theory". To see the difference, take Chomsky (or Assange, to an extent) as a good example. They are very critical to U.S. foreign policy, yet they never claim something without evidence (they don't claim for example that 9/11 was inside job), and as such they are not conspiracy theorists.
The problem with people that have conspiracy theories is that they ultimately defend same or worse atrocities, but done by some other party or even themselves.
> And that figure of 10 000 people can't keep a conspiracy secret is predicated on the idea that it's some kind of active plot
It's just a rule of thumb, where you should set a canary and deeply rethink your beliefs and evidence you have for them. You see, in order to maintain belief in conspiracy theory, you have to categorize all contradicting evidence as coming from either co-conspirators, or people who are "naive" and somehow manipulated. This means that over time, number of people that have to be involved in conspiracy will grow.
Of course there can be conspiracies of 10k people or more (e.g. NSA), but they are very difficult to keep secret in practice (there was on average one whistle-blower per 2 years on NSA spy programs). There can also be situations that look like conspiracies on the surface, as you correctly state, but those don't have the property that they can actively suppress dissent (which is required to sustain belief in conspiracy theory, to reject the contradictory evidence).
Yep. Unfortunately, in some respects, we are the bad guys, our foreign policy is unjust and evil, and billions of people, including a tiny fraction who turn to terrorism, do have quite understandable grievances. Is there a peaceful way for them to get us to change what we're doing? Not that I'm aware of.
Da, it's like a meme that multiplies and refuses to die and then cuts off oxygen to the acceptable thoughts. I'm not a physician, but I suppose a "cancer of the mind" is a sort of 'mental illness'?
Thankfully there is a body of solid research into this phenomena -- Psychopathological mechanisms of dissent -- thanks to the good comrade doctors in Soviet Union [1]. I am sure we can come up with standardized tests to identify this type of mentally ill.
> I'm not a physician, but I suppose a "cancer of the mind" is a sort of 'mental illness'?
No, it's a metaphor. :-) I mean if unchecked, then conspiracy theory will consume all your rational thinking about some issue and maybe affect other issues.
Nothing against irony, but you should first understand that "belief in conspiracy theory" is not about having a particular (contrarian) belief, it's solely about how you process evidence. As I explain above, Chomsky is a dissident (or contrarian), but not a conspiracy theorist.
Edit: I should probably also point out that there can be conspiracy theorists within the government as well, that is, not dissenters. Near the end of the cold war, there were people in U.S. government who believed that Russians have invisible nuclear submarines in all oceans, and I am pretty sure there were similar nuts in the USSR as well.
I agree with your comment, but I can think of one example, depicted in a recently-released Oliver Stone film, that is a counter-argument against your last statement.
The most unfortunate thing about conspiracy theorists is that they can occasionally turn out to be right.
> The most unfortunate thing about conspiracy theorists is that they can occasionally turn out to be right.
Well, them being correct from time to time doesn't justify the method they use (pure logic ignoring empirical evidence). What I call "conspiracy theory" is an unproven claim, or something for which there is contradictory evidence. Once proven, it's simply a "conspiracy", and there is nothing wrong with belief in existence of (proven) conspiracies.
Libertarians.... I'll agree that being a libertarian can sometimes be less than pragmatic, but I hardly think it's the same level as a conspiracy theorists or climate change deniers.
Probably not the best choice of word, but I have seen a friend (smart programmer coworker, he studied physics) going (over couple years) from relatively harmless libertarian beliefs through disagreement with U.S. foreign policy and agreement with Ron Paul to being 9/11 truther and eventually believing that U.S. army is causing global warming. Just because he didn't like the government... So, be careful, it can afflict lot of people, not just Muslims.
Uh, don't the people who buy shitty SaaS products also tend to be well-educated? Do poorly-educated people tend to have a strong need for A/B optimization tools?
The only difference is that in normal ads you provide ads to people who are looking for such product. While here you are trying to do the opposite. For example, I am searching for Drone because I really love them and decided that I want to buy one. What google ad will make me not want it ?
To further your point, there are a number of studies that show how exposing political partisans to opposing viewpoints (and people on the other side) usually pushes them further into their own camp.
True. Hate to say it but anyone who regularly reads and follows the Quran is likely to be more extreme. The book draws a clear demarcation between believers and nonbelievers and has a hosstile attitude to the latter.
have you read original quran to come to that conclusion. I have many muslim friends. We are very close and they have no hostile attitudes to non-muslims. From where I am, well educated people who are not muslims have converted to muslim and joined isis whereas 99.999% of born and brought up as muslims in this area have not.
There's a large difference between being well-educated and exposed to many political views; it's perfectly possible to be an engineer and ignorant of politics.
You're right, but there's more to it. This is a complex issue that when people talk about candidly most often provokes violent reactions.
I give you an example: I live in a country that has suffered a bloody civil war that involved Islamist radicals. After a certain time, there were people from the intelligence community, the military, and eye witnesses that came forward telling that security forces committed acts of violence disguised as Islamist radicals. This is an old recipe (false flag). The rationale is that other states and local population started to worry about the situation and pushed the local government to negotiate, so the armed forces allegedly burned any legitimacy of the Islamist factions committing things that would so badly damage their image, they'd dictate the name of the game.
There was a debate called "Who kills who?" (i.e: who's really committing this?) and the other old recipe was used: calling the people who ask such questions conspirationist and pointing at their tin foil hats (as if nobody ever used false flag tactics and it was impossible for it to have been the case). Whoever even hints that the government had something to do with that would provoke a dismissive reaction and called a traitor for even acknowledging the possibility or failing to assert the impossibility of the government's involvement.
The very act of not climbing on roofs and saying you're against something tags you as a sympathetic and/or a terrorist, even if you're truly against and adopting a neutral posture for the sake of intellectual debate and trying to have a cold, clinical, approach. You're expected to dance and jump and scream to prove you're against terrorism, or you're a terrorist. Similar to the masquerade in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, or waving flags to show your patriotism. Gung ho and motto.
Now, I'm not very qualified in these matters and I'm not a Statecraft guru, but the same people who are called terrorists in an armed conflict and are bombed in a certain geographic location (say Syria), are called allies and armed in another geographic location (say Libya). Sometimes some people are terrorist in a location, but other terrorists in the same location aren't considered terrorists. Where do people get the idea that Jabhat Annusra is different from Daech and where do they think Daech comes from? They all have a black flag and it may look the same for most people. Can be confusing.
As the saying goes, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter", and it's pertinent it came from the POTUS because if I'm not mistaken, the United States Declaration of Independence is, technically, an act of treason and terrorism against the Crown.
Again, most of the people who'll read that will probably be outraged and think I'm sympathetic or that I don't know what I'm talking about when they've never actually seen a terrorist or been in a terrorist attack. I've outlived half a dozen bombs were on my butt more than I'd have liked (but I had it good, it beats being dead). We've seen what humans are made of inside. I mean "inside" literally. So if there's someone who'd fit the posturing anti-terrorist cliché like a glove, I'd come close. From my experience, though, it's the people who know the least who have the most clear cut opinions on that. It's simple from the outside. They even have more clear cut opinions than the people actively involved, as we speak, in counter-terrorism or intelligence who are more nuanced and think in terms of leverage, positions, weakness, operations, incentives, allegiance, practicality, etc. (This is why many in the Military for instance roll their eyes when they're greeted by too enthusiastic a display of patriotism and "thank you for your service" or just can't understand why on Earth someone is posturing as a tough guy and calling for "killing them all" from the comfort of a sofa).
For the average citizen, a bomb is the end of the world and sets terror. For the entities involved, it's a message. They reason in colder terms that use armed factions as a means to achieve a political goal. States do it to each other, too.
So what's a terrorist? Well, what's a douchebag? For most people, it's someone who doesn't do exactly what we want them to do. For the British, Americans were terrorists. For the U.S., Nelson Mandela was on a terrorist watch list until 2008. What's a terrorist attack? A bomb? Sabotage? Disruption? Killing? All in the playbook of every single Army through covert operations/Intelligence services of every single Nation. These are the things they have covert operations and special forces for. Everyone is a terrorist to someone and all of them think they're the good guys. If you accept that one is true to their cause and think they're justified and that people have different causes, it only makes sense that conflict is bound to happen sooner or later.
Now, this is just one guy on Hacker News who's lived in a country and who could be a terrorist for all we know. But you read books written by U.S. former Intelligence Officers who have decades of experience on the subject. People who know what they're talking about and who've tracked AQ operatives for a long time. They understand the rules of the game. They point out that the discourse politicians have is very far from the truth, but it's the kind of discourse that's easier to sell. Scheuer for instance points out that terrorists attack the U.S. not because they hate freedom, but mostly because of the U.S. foreign policy. Someone can accuse me of knowing jack about this, but the guy who tracked UBL knows at least something about the topic.
We get back to where you're right. The role of Engineers. Engineers are a special breed. I like to joke that if God exists, Engineers are the closest creation to it for he just made an MVP that seriously lacked features (and maybe funding, YC didn't exist back then), and Engineers took it from there.
When the conflict started here, there were a lot of Engineers who took part in it in the start. There were a lot of EE majors, some ChemE and CS majors and they constituted the backbone of the early days. They knew exactly why they were doing it, the stakes, the arguments, etc. It was political and they were the armed branch. Then things got really nasty and the quality of the recruits degraded to the brainwashed who left school in 3rd grade and were in it because, well, they don't know and their recruiter told them there were virgins in paradise (USMC recruiters sell it with sex workers in Thailand to the ones who seem in need. They also sell it for patriotism). I think Engineers got in because they felt they have what it takes to do things.
But here's something funny. Here's an article with an interesting infographic that illustrates the backgrounds of the Intelligence Community in the U.S. pre and post 9/11.
I haven't read Engineers of Jihad, but Michael Scheuer touches on that in his books and you're saying the same thing: many of these people aren't the ignorant dudes the media make them to be, although their soldiers are for the most part. Many former Intelligence officers direct our attention to why these things are happening.
There's a quote I liked from Mankiw's "Principles of Microeconomics": "People respond to incentives, the rest is commentary".
>As the saying goes, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter", and it's pertinent it came from the POTUS because if I'm not mistaken, the United States Declaration of Independence is, technically, an act of treason and terrorism against the Crown.
No, a terrorist is a terrorist.
What ISIS and many other terrorist organizations do in the world are is terrorism, crucify, behead and stone people is terrorism, shooting up nightclubs and blowing up restaurants is terrorism, relativism has no place here.
If you ask why Nelson Mandela was on the terrorism watch list well like it or not it was deserved, Mandela wasn't Gandhi (in fact even Gandhi wasn't Gandhi) he had blood on his hands and he supported both political and violent protest of the apartheid regime. Understanding the cause of certain acts does not equate to relativism, support, or acceptance of the reasoning behind them and the people who perpetrated them.
As for your experience I would assume from your name that you are Algerian fits both the name and the overall background of the story of a civil war with heavy involvement islamic terrorist organizations.
And while I sympathize with your experience I don't think you have the whole picture either, while you did made some points against basically "arm chair generals" you also fall into the same logical fallacy, living through a conflict rarely provides you with considerable insight into the local and global geopolitics of it.
The Algerian civil war (which technically is still going on to some extent even tho it's even blow LIC signatures currently) was a messy one, there weren't sides, the islamic organizations fought each other as much as they fought the government.
Overall the civil war was a good examples of the risks of throwing elections into the pits of new democracies especially those which have large portions of the population with antithetical views to democracy and towards of the ruling party.
As far as the false flag operations I would not go so far and claim that with certainty, Algeria is a case study for many intelligence and military organizations in the world and I've had to study it quite well during my military service.
There were pretty nasty things that have been committed by all sides and plenty of things that you can describe as terrorism both by the "pro-government/socialist/centric" (e.g. the YFA) forces and by the islamic organizations.
But not every bloody act was an act of terrorism, and more importantly when terrorism is evaluated the intent is important, when bomb dropped from a jet drops hits a market by accident that isn't terrorism even if the initial result is the same as driving a mini-van filled with nitrite and gasoline into the same market, the intent behind the act and how you capitalize on are important for making a distinction.
Terrorism has a definition which is the use of violence and fear in order to further your political goals, and often unlike it is being described it's not a tool of last resort but the first thing you grab when the situation doesn't go your way.
just because your idea of gandhi doesn't match gandhi in real life, you cannot just say "even gandhi wasn't gandhi". Mandela and Gandhi were just humans fighting for equal rights for the oppressed. As a programmer, once you think about the rights one enjoys as a white and feels the double standard a non-white experiences trying to have that same right -when you think about it abstractly as rights of humans, anyone who can empathize will feel rage at the double standards that still exists. You have to go back nearly 50 years and think the standards that existed at the time. When I think that way, I think Mandela and Gandhi were incredibly brave. Because Walking the Walk and Talking the Talk is entirely different.
How did the ISIS come into existence. It is the end result of USA and other western countries that tried to arm people to revolt violently against an existing government. That government might be monarchy/dictatorship. But that is no reason for USA to arm people against that government. Those who take up arms are those inherently leaning towards a violent side. Internal politics of other countries shouldn't be meddled with. The people of a country should struggle and push through reforms to a better government. But once violent extremists rooting for the cause has been armed, as the first blood spills there is no reason anymore to both sides. I badly want to beat up all war mongers in the world.
These stupid plans are all treating symptoms instead of treating the root cause of terrorism.
>just because your idea of gandhi doesn't match gandhi in real life, you cannot just say "even gandhi wasn't gandhi". Mandela and Gandhi were just humans fighting for equal rights for the oppressed. As a programmer, once you think about the rights one enjoys as a white and feels the double standard a non-white experiences trying to have that same right -when you think about it abstractly as rights of humans, anyone who can empathize will feel rage at the double standards that still exists. You have to go back nearly 50 years and think the standards that existed at the time. When I think that way, I think Mandela and Gandhi were incredibly brave. Because Walking the Walk and Talking the Talk is entirely different.
I think you misunderstood my point, the point was that even Gandhi wasn't a pure pacifist (not that there is anything wrong with that, it is what it is).
Overall there were good reasons why Mandela would be on a terrorist watch list regardless how you feel about him, his ideals, or his actions.
[moral relativism leads to moral bankruptcy]
>How did the ISIS come into existence. It is the end result of USA and other western countries that tried to arm people to revolt violently against an existing government.
That is gross oversimplification of the situation, if you want to talk about root causes then a situational power vacuum isn't a root cause.
>But that is no reason for USA to arm people against that government. Those who take up arms are those inherently leaning towards a violent side. Internal politics of other countries shouldn't be meddled with.
The US did not arm ISIS directly, they did support various other factions in some cases even rival ones.
>Internal politics of other countries shouldn't be meddled with.
Countries meddle in the inner politics of other countries all the time, that's how politics work there are different forms of meddling from statements to actions but everyone meddles this is how the world works.
Apartheid fell because of meddling, the Berlin wall fell because of meddling, not every result is positive and not every result is immediately understood.
>The people of a country should struggle and push through reforms to a better government. But once violent extremists rooting for the cause has been armed, as the first blood spills there is no reason anymore to both sides.
You have again gross misconception about "people", "nations" and various other concepts that simply do not exist in major parts of the world.
Nationalism is still in its infancy in the middle east you would find more people in Germany who can recognize the Afghan flag than in Afghanistan.
Government and democratic institutions simply do not exist, democracy is more than election, infact elections have nothing to do with democracy they are just a slightly less violent form of conflict resolution and decision making.
Fair courts, transparency, free press, and many other institutions and concepts do not exist, many of these reforms that the people want to push are not "reforms" in any way shape and form as far as modern social democratic value goes.
Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood did quite a bit of "reforms" in Egypt after the election, it didn't however brought the country any closer to democracy.
Erdogan is doing a lot of "reforms" in Turkey these days which threaten to pull turkey effectively back 200 years, one can hear the buzzing hum of Kemal Ataturk spinning in this grave from across the bosphorus.
>I badly want to beat up all war mongers in the world.
Isn't that ironic.
Overall what disturbs me the most is the cognitive dissonance that some people have, the west grew to what it is today from the bloodiest period in history, there aren't really shortcuts in life, you can't expect the world to catch up without bloodshed.
Blaming everything on colonialism and foreign policy holds very little water when in fact it's simply the violent birth of nations and peoples, since you can't isolate them because the Truman Show isn't real and you aren't alone on the planet you have to pick sides and try to push them towards better ideals.
Violence is part of human nature, warmongering is a red herring.
Also people seem to have pretty short memory, WW2 wasn't that long ago, racial segregation wasn't that long ago, N. Ireland was pretty much yesterday and terrorist attacks across continental Europe were fairly frequent until the late 80's early 90's, people seem to forget the Red Brigades, ASALA, 17N, Abu Nidal and the likes, guess they have worse marketing than ISIS.
If you think USA is actually trying to bring democracy, then its not me who is naive. Democracy is not the only way. Just because an outsider drew and created a border and calling it a nation doesn't make it a country.
Colonialism was just taking away other people's resources and treating those people like shit while at it. If UK would have created institutions for welfare and development of people and treated them on par with their citizens, then as those people see that as a step closer to better living than as some foreigners that were killing their own, there wouldn't have been any freedom movements and UK would have been biggest country on earth. Am not blaiming anyone. Just trying to point out that nothing good comes out of violence. If we take away the power to kill other person, then eventually they will find a way to live alongside eachother. With a gun you can kill someone in just one second. If there were no gun and no advanced training in killing, then killing becomes messy and bloody and there wont be as many killings.
>You have again gross misconception about "people", "nations" and various other concepts that simply do not exist in major parts of the world.
I do not have any such misconceptions. You can't meddle and force them to live your way at flip of a button. Tribes have their own form of government. Some are good. As long as they are not isolated, they will evolve to better forms of governing. It may take some time, but it eventually they will discover a better form of government and gradually implement it. Take UK for example. They were just normal humans like anyone else. No outsider brought democracy to UK. If it were bought to them forcefully by outsider by overthrowing their king/queen, and throwing away all government structures UK had at that point, and then install someone else as their new head, then UK too would be a bloody mess like libya or syria
>No, a terrorist is a terrorist. What ISIS and many other terrorist organizations do in the world are is terrorism, crucify, behead and stone people is terrorism, shooting up nightclubs and blowing up restaurants is terrorism, relativism has no place here.
Good. What about states that backup these groups? This is basically a high-school where every girl calls the other "slut" for doing exactly what she herself does. If any other state does it, it's terrorism. But if I overthrow regimes, invade sovereign countries with bogus reasons, financing and training militias overseas, etc. it's freedom and democracy.
With which mental mechanism someone could truly think they are righteous doing that, but others are not? One cannot have the luxury of sloppiness here: if you are okay with your Government doing that all over the world, just for the sake of being rational, you have to accept the possibility of retaliation. It doesn't mean you like it. It just means that you understand what's at stake and don't act surprised not knowing why someone is attacking you.
>And while I sympathize with your experience I don't think you have the whole picture either
Never claimed I did, and actually claimed I didn't.
>While you did made some points against basically "arm chair generals" you also fall into the same logical fallacy, living through a conflict rarely provides you with considerable insight into the local and global geopolitics of it.
On the contrary. Sorry I haven't expressed myself very well: I was saying that most people have clear cut opinions about it while being distant. Then said that if there was someone who'd fit the posturing anti-terrorist cliché, I'd come close to that cliché. I meant that I don't buy into thinking I get the whole picture. That was to say that despite being close to the thing, I don't claim to understand everything the way most people who are not close to it seem to think they do. Contrary to what a lot of people post online after a bomb: "OMG! I can't believe it! I was there a year ago" and somehow become subject matter expert just because something happened somewhere they visited a year ago.
>Overall the civil war was a good examples of the risks of throwing elections into the pits of new democracies especially those which have large portions of the population with antithetical views to democracy and towards of the ruling party.
And that is something typical to say. It's a luxury I can afford today, too. Some people said that back in the day. Intellectuals/jurists, etc. "Why not let the Islamists win the elections and we'll win next time?".
The others warned: There will be no next time. The Islamists are telling you explicitly* that the first thing they will do after winning the elections is cancel the constitution ("No constitution, no charter" aiming for whatever they consider "Sharia") and never have an election again and submit everyone to whatever messed up religious views they had.
It's 2016 and it's a nice conversation, but just for the sake of argument: would you really be willing to be so democratic with someone who's telling you exactly what he's going to do and the way he's going to impact your life. They'd probably kill you if you didn't show up at a mosque five times a day, rape your daughter and wife, etc. And you can't oust them or vote.
It is the difficult questions those in Government, as good or bad were they, had to deal with.
This situation was the result of very poor management and a harsh economic context. I remember food lines (for a limited choice of items in number and choice) and rations. I didn't suffer from that really and I can't imagine how the people lived. It was at that time the joke went around that you'd gain more knowing a cashier at a store than a Government official.
The most organized will win the elections. Islamists are known to be extremely well organized. You can see that in Egypt, and you could see it here at that time. They target sensitive domains: education, welfare, religion, health. They gave money to that. Money the government didn't give. There was a void and they filled it.
There was only one political party, the others weren't allowed, but the Islamists maneuvered not as a party but as a hive (from mosques, etc). The Government let them be because they were afraid of the "real" political entities (Socialists, Labor, etc) wanting to become official so they used this to counter that. When the decision was made to finally open up, who had already a shop on the street? Who has been giving away food and helping others all that time? Who had a popular base? Who knows that people will vote for them because they were on the streets every single day? Who was "nice" to people when the Government was absent? It wasn't Islamist radicals who voted. Even people who didn't have anything to do with religion voted just to screw with a Government they didn't like because now they could in a "it couldn't be worse than that" mentality.
It just happened to be the Islamists but it could have been anyone who had that level of organization and done what they did. They'd have the support of the people just for a change of the daily misery. Of course after that everyone showed their true colors and people understood that it in fact could be worse.
>Terrorism has a definition which is the use of violence and fear in order to further your political goals
Isn't that the definition of war?
>and often unlike it is being described it's not a tool of last resort but the first thing you grab when the situation doesn't go your way.
This assumes that the other entity acknowledges your way in the first place, something people almost never do when they have a dominant position. People tend to be nicer when they have an incentive to be, like when they're in a position of weakness or fear, or have more to lose than you.
For the record, I don't claim to be right or something. I'm just asking questions and formulate what seems to make sense and am delighted reading about others' points of views.
>Good. What about states that backup these groups? This is basically a high-school where every girl calls the other "slut" for doing exactly what she herself does. If any other state does it, it's terrorism. But if I overthrow regimes, invade sovereign countries with bogus reasons, financing and training militias overseas, etc. it's freedom and democracy.
With which mental mechanism someone could truly think they are righteous doing that, but others are not? One cannot have the luxury of sloppiness here: if you are okay with your Government doing that all over the world, just for the sake of being rational, you have to accept the possibility of retaliation. It doesn't mean you like it. It just means that you understand what's at stake and don't act surprised not knowing why someone is attacking you.
this was the point i was trying to get to, but pulled myself into some other argument and forgot it. It took many years of reading to see through all the propaganda noise in news to finally get to this conclusion. Me and dad occasionally discuss politics. He doesn't follow international politics much and he still likes obama.
To be clear, this is not the first nor will it be the last time Google's "Jigsaw" has gotten involved in politics. It's CEO, Jared Cohen, worked for Hillary Clinton at the State department, and once at Google, had emailed back and forth with her about Google helping encourage revolution in Syria. I don't want to see a Trump White House, but I am also sad that if Clinton wins, Google's influence in the White House will continue, or expand.
Considering Google's width of influence and overall power, it should be looked at as an international threat, because we have no way of knowing what they'll use that power for next. Anti-brainwashing is great, until you realize it's not much different than straight-up brainwashing. Google is proud to admit it uses manipulative tactics to subconsciously trick it's own employees into eating healther. Again, laudable goal, questionable moral ethics.
I actually had an extended argument with a Googler here on HN earlier this week about Google's apparent happiness to manipulate people's views to suit it's goals.
Google doesn't hide the fact that it puts snacks that are bad for you in a ranked order and makes healthier snacks easier and more convenient to get to on lower shelves. They also label healthy stuff green ink, bad stuff red ink, and semi-ok stuff yellow. How is this any different than planners designing buildings to encourage exercise, or personal interactions?
There's nothing immoral about this, and everyone is told about it, but we know people don't always read the labels, but actually sorting healthy to unhealthy by convenience, leverages the laziness of most people into eating healthy. If I have to bend over to the lowest shelf to eat a Snickers, but a banana or apple is right in front of me, maybe I'll eat that?
There is nothing immoral or unethical about, and it publicly know.
If you provide any range of snacks for employees, like any store or restaurant, you face a decision on how to order the food. Most restaurants and stores optimize their menus or shelves to hawk stuff that has the highest margin and least cost.
If Google instead sorts their snacks according to say, popularity in the market, and puts all the Kit Kat or Snickers bars on the front shelf, then isn't that immoral? Lining the pockets of corporations that promote unhealthy disease causing foods, getting people addicted to sugar, and subconsciously steering them towards junk food? By "doing nothing" or "doing what was always done before" you are in fact, doing something knowingly bad that will harm health.
I'd say it's even MORE unethical to 'default' to putting the snacks in order of demand or popularity.
Google has also been trying to use data science internally to correct unconscious bias in promotions and interviews. Everyone is made aware of this, it's not a Milgram Experiment. Perhaps we should continue to let people rank resumes based on visible metadata like applicant name, even though we know it biases the reviewer -- even people who are progressive and even women are prone to this biasing effect. We could do nothing, or we could try to change the result -- and people will cry unethical, social engineering and manipulation.
You've been doing anti-Google rants for years, almost a daily obsession, but it doesn't seem like you've toured their offices even once. Maybe you should take a look at how the cafes and microkitchens actually work.
I've toured Mountain View and spent some time at the San Francisco office, FWIW. I doubt anyone would let me in the door these days though. ;)
The cafeteria in Google San Francisco started my obsession with dried apple chips. ...I ate all of the ones that cafeteria had. And bought more at a local convenience store after I left for the day. I may or may not have recently bought approximately twenty bags of apple chips at one time. The brand of apple chips sold in California is way better than the ones sold here.
Also, as with anything in politics, it's easy to justify truly horrific things using noble-sounding arguments. For example, who wouldn't want to protect civilians? No-one, which is why when Clinton's State Department and the UK government used it to justify catastrophic military intervention in Libya few questioned it. Yet according to recent committee report, the threat was questionable and the groups we supported dangerous: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/14/mps-deliver-da... It wouldn't take much of a slide down the slippery slope at all for Google to back those groups, or their Syrian equivalent, in the name of stopping murder - or for them to discredit claims that the groups we're backing are killing civilians.
> I don't want to see a Trump White House, but I am also sad that if Clinton wins, Google's influence in the White House will continue, or expand.
It doesn't matter who the next president will be. Google will still have it's role to play in the govt. Isn't their guy responsible for search part of a Pentagon? initiative or something?
Much of Google's partnership with the executive branch (of which the Pentagon is a part) is likely due to their close relationship with the Obama administration. Whether or not they'll be able to arrange the same deals with an opposing party's staff is anyone's guess. Money definitely talks to both parties though, and Google makes it rain in politics.
You describe white house influence at Google, then express concerns about Google influence. Looks like you are either willing to vilify Google or to launder the white House. What interests could possibly motivate Google in Syria ?
I must say that I agree both with you and the "conspiracy theorists". On the one hand, targeting ads at potential ISIS recruits is arguably benign compared to most advertising, as you say. On the other hand, the fact that a company such as Google potentially has such unprecedented influence on people's thoughts, at all (not necessarily in this specific case), is terrifying.
I'm not entirely sure why Google's power appears so salient in this case, compared to the general case of online tracking and targeted ads, as well as control over search result ordering. I suspect it's because:
a) supporting ISIS is a political position (if a crazy one), rather than just a product, so it makes it easier for people to extrapolate to influencing people with slightly more mainstream political opinions
b) the article claims that the targeted ads are actually relatively effective in this case.
I'm not implying that Google is currently abusing its power, and perhaps naively, I actually trust it to a non-zero extent, unlike, say Facebook, but there definitely is scope for abuse.
I get ads about converting to Islam and Christianity and I also got a few political ads. I don't see it as abuse. It's an ad. I'll think for myself whether I agree with its message or not.
Whatever scope of "abuse" is possible with Google is also possible with any other form of media that has advertising.
But we already know who they will go after next. From the article:
> And this month, along with the London-based startup Moonshot Countering Violent Extremism and the US-based Gen Next Foundation, Jigsaw plans to relaunch the program in a second phase that will focus its method on North American extremists, applying the method to both potential ISIS recruits and violent white supremacists.
I think the difference is that it's illegal to advertise to promote a contrary view of a terror group. If you pay for ads to counter the anti-ISIS ads, that's material support for terrorism.
