mtraven comments on When None Dare Urge Restraint - Less Wrong

41 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 December 2007 11:09PM

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Comment author: mtraven 09 December 2007 07:14:59AM 3 points [-]

Susan Sontag pointed out that the 9/11 hijackers weren't cowards a week after the event, and took an enormous amount of shit for it. And in fact there were a great many people engaging in relatively sane, measured reactions after 9/11. But they were drowned out by the much louder negative death spiral.

Many conflicts are really formed out of two mutually reinforcing negative death spirals. In this case, our overreaction to 9/11 caused us to take actions that produced more hatred of us in the Islamic world, leading to more conflict, leading to further hatred on both sides. This is a very basic dynamic underlying war.