bgaesop comments on Are Your Enemies Innately Evil? - Less Wrong
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There is a problem with arguments of the form, "The leader of that group clearly doesn't 'really' believe his own rhetoric he's just saying that because it resonates with his followers." This implies that their followers actually believe that stuff, otherwise there would be no point in the leaders' saying it. But you've just admitted that there exist people who really believe that stuff, why is it so absurd for the leader to be one of those people?
You're still self-anchoring. You observe that they want to kill people, so you try to imagine under what conditions you would be willing to kill people.
Well, near as I can tell, your model boils down to "they secretly have to same world-view as I do, and the difference in their rhetoric is because it resonates with their audience".
For the record I should probably mention my model:
They observe that the Islamic world isn't as powerful as it was in its glory days. Furthermore, the West and the United States in particular is influencing their culture in ways they don't like. Solving this problem requires a model of how the world works. Well, the model they turn to is one based on Islam.
There is certainly more that could be added to this model, e.g., a discussion of how feuds work in clan-based societies for starters.
I just remembered the obvious point that I had been forgettig this whole time. Your position seems to me to be basically the position the article we're both commenting on is directly arguing is a silly, untenable one to take.