Posted by Jerry from 2011 but could not be more meaningful than it is today. Stochastic Terrorism: Triggering the shooters. by G2geek Mon Jan 10, 2011 at 05:37:39 PM PST Stochastic terrorism is the use of mass communications to stir up random lone wolves to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable. This is what occurs when Bin Laden releases a video that stirs random extremists halfway around the globe to commit a bombing or shooting. This is also the term for what Beck, OReilly, Hannity, and others do. And this is what led directly and predictably to a number of cases of ideologically-motivated murder similar to the Tucson shootings. Update: the mechanism spelled out. (This update is to resolve some ambiguity.) The person who actually plants the bomb or assassinates the public official is not the stochastic terrorist, they are the missile set in motion by the stochastic terrorist. The stochastic terrorist is the person who uses mass media as their means of setting those missiles in motion. Heres the mechanism spelled out concisely: The stochastic terrorist is the person who uses mass media to broadcast memes that incite unstable people to commit violent acts. One or more unstable people responds to the incitement by becoming a lone wolf and committing a violent act. While their action may have been statistically predictable (e.g. given the provocation, someone will probably do such-and-such), the specific person and the specific act are not predictable (yet). The stochastic terrorist then has plausible deniability: Oh, it was just a lone nut, nobody could have predicted he would do that, and Im not responsible for what people in my audience do. The lone wolf who was the missile gets captured and sentenced to life in prison, while the stochastic terrorist keeps his prime time slot and goes on to incite more lone wolves. Further, the stochastic terrorist may be acting either negligently or deliberately, or may be in complete denial of their impact, just like a drunk driver who runs over a pedestrian without even realizing it. Finally, there is no conspiracy here: merely the twisted acts of individuals who are promoting extremism, who get access to national media in which to do it, and the rest follows naturally just as an increase in violent storms follows from an increase in average global temperature.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 22:33:00 +0000
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