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[Link] A rational response to the Paris attacks and ISIS
Here's my op-ed that uses long-term orientation, probabilistic thinking, numeracy, consider the alternative, reaching our actual goals, avoiding intuitive emotional reactions and attention bias, and other rationality techniques to suggest more rational responses to the Paris attacks and the ISIS threat. It's published in the Sunday edition of The Plain Dealer​, a major newspaper (16th in the US). This is part of my broader project, Intentional Insights, of conveying rational thinking, including about politics, to a broad audience to raise the sanity waterline.
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Comments (275)
What terrorists want is irrelevant. "Don't play into enemy hands" is irrelevant. The entire discussion is irrelevant.
The correct response to enemy action is the response that furthers your own ends. It doesn't matter what effect this has on your enemy, good, neutral, or positive; your long-term ends matter.
"The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this." A particularly relevant quote from Musashi, used by Eliezer on at least one occasion in the sequences.
Avoiding doing what the enemy wants is mere parrying. Stop mere parrying, and cut.
If you are a rational player, then you were already doing that before the enemy action. So the correct response is to keep doing what you were already doing.
(Of course you also update on the enemy action, and maybe this could change your strategy. However, I don't think there is much to update on now. The fact that ISIS has a few suicidal volunteers is not new.)
We should update on ISIS having an increased desire to attack Western cities.
...and do what?
Put more resources into fighting ISIS.
Oh, you mean the, ahem, leaders of the free world should update. I s'pose. I'm not used to thinking of "we" as "me and Obama".
Yes, this, exactly this!
This makes me want a super-upvote, that subtracts four karma to award five. Yes, this, exactly.
I have just given you 25% of what you want by upvoting Viliam's comment and downvoting yours.
[EDITED to add:] I would not otherwise have voted either comment up or down.
I appreciate it! (No, seriously.)
Yup, very much agreed with OrphanWilde on this one.
There is an interesting argument that the Western countries have lost the capability. Europe leads the way and the US is now following it.
Not the capability in a technical sense, but the will. Not offending the Muslims who arrived in the last few decades seems to be of much higher importance to many politicians, than anything else.
Yes. Notice the important part in the quote in the grandparent post: "the primary thing is ... your intention to cut the enemy".
So, figure out why that is and fix it. I suspect a large part of the problem is pseudo-rationalists like Gleb arguing that "fighting terrorists is playing into their hands".
LOL. How about this: you go tell Cthulhu he's swimming the wrong way, and I stay here and watch X-)
Thank god I've seen someone else that thinks this! I was so infuriated by people saying "stop playing into their hands" as if this is supposed to be some silver bullet in this discussion.
Very much agreed. As I say in the op-ed:
We would first have to agree on what "cutting the enemy" would actually mean. I think liberal response would be keeping our society inclusive, secular and multicultural at all costs. If that is the case than avoiding certain failure modes like becoming intolerant militaristic societies and starting unnecessary wars could be considered as successful cuts against potential worse world-states.
Now that is liberal perspective, there are alternatives, off course.
Nobody who says "at all costs" means "at all costs". It's a way of avoiding a discussion of what costs are worth paying and what paying them will look like.
Given that your idea of "rational thinking" appears to consist of the kind of Straw-Vulcanism that gives "rational thinking" a bad name, I'd appreciate it if you would stop trying to "help" the movement.
1) Please clarify how this article conveys Straw-Vulcanism.
2) How are you currently helping the movement?
I would say again that there's a lot of one sided analysis i.e. counting costs but not benefits, exemplar numbers plucked out of thin air without any sensitivity analysis or justification from base rates, suggested actions ("use covert operations to defeat ISIS") without any indication of whether they are feasible or worse than than the alternative you rejeced.
IMO you need to imagine a smart, rational person arguing against each point you make. In my head I use CarlShulman because he ferrets out fallacies like a bloodhound. Then you need to check whether their best argument is stronger than the original point you made, and in any case you need to anticipate that objection and put out the counterargument.
Space is limited in a 700 word op-ed, but if space is so limited that you can't really do a rational analysis then don't advertise it as such.
I hear you about not advertising it as a rational analysis, and that's not what I think I did. Instead, I stated I am writing about a rational response to the Paris attacks, as set against a specific narrative of saber-rattling. I was not attempting to give a full analysis of the situation.
I'm updating, though, on the need to give a more clear title and description. Thanks!
I suppose the problem is that LW is a more sophisticated audience than the general public. We have heard every common position on most big debates. We don't need to hear yet another article proclaiming that war iz bad. We want an article that says why war is bad, and why everyone on the other side got it wrong and how their specific arguments are flawed. That necessarily involves addressing the strongest arguments the other side has, the downsides of your own suggestions, etc.
Yeah, I understand about LW. This is why I just had a link, and not the article itself - the article is not directed at the LW audience, I was making a meta-point about promoting rational thinking in politics using this kind of article.
By calling out idiots such as yourself who are attempting to associate it with bad reasoning.
It's an interesting article, but I feel the analysis is very one sided. For example, "here are the costs of putting boots on the ground against ISIS: look there are costs, we shouldn't do it!"
But what about the benefits?
In rational analysis one has to be very careful to not construct these kinds of one-sided analyses because they are a fully general counterargument. Everything has costs. By just pointing at the costs and not even mentioning the benefits you can make anything look bad.
The point about being overly emotional in the immediate wake of a major disaster is a good one though. What do you think we could have done differently and better after 9/11 by being more rational and less emotional?
I hear you about the analysis. Unfortunately, the word length restrictions of 700 words made it impossible for me to write a nuanced piece. I wanted to make the large point about avoiding being overly emotional, and that meant going against the specific emotional tonality and saber-rattling and attention bias.
After 9/11? I think we could have done much more to make a plan and get support from other countries on actually rebuilding Afghanistan after we conquered it. The current mess there is a testament to our poorly-planned entry into that war. I'm not going to go into details of how to do it, but that's my short answer.
Maybe, though I strongly suspect that lack of "buildings" is not the main constraint on Afghanistan - more like lack of civil culture. To fix Afghanistan, you would have to replace the culture, which is not really a feasible option.
Yup, I was using "rebuilding" in the broader sense of socioeconomic/cultural infrastructure.
Yeah, very tough. Britain in roughly the year 600 AD is probably socioculturally comparable to Afghanistan today. It took us 1400 years of civil wars and bloodshed to get to where we are now.
Probably magical brain-altering nanobots for 90% of the population would be the only way to get there quickly - suddenly everyone wakes up one morning feeling that they are atheists or moderate Muslims and their primary loyalty is to their country and to humanity as a whole, rather than to the local warlord/sect, that they love freedom and democracy, etc. Maybe I'm being pessimistic.
On that time scale WW2 was yesterday. So tell me, where did it take you 1400 years to get to?
It took me a minute or two to figure out what you were trying to say. For anyone else who didn't get it first-read, I believe Lumifer's saying something like:
"World War II was 60 years ago. On a 1,400 year timescale, that's not getting somewhere, that's just a random blip of time where no gigantic wars happened; those blips have happened before. What do you mean 'to get to where we are now'?"
Now, to answer that, I think he means "to get to a society where fear of being killed or kidnapped (then killed) isn't a normal part of every day life, and women can wear whatever they want."
More specifically, if you are operating on the time scale of a millenium and a half and setting up the contemporary Western society as the one to emulate, that contemporary Western society includes, say, the entire XX century. So you're going to emulate attempts at genocide, concentration camps, massive slaughter of civilians through nukes and firebombings, etc.?
That's you normal hunter-gatherer tribe, Pharaonic Egypt, Ancient Rome -- pretty much any successful society.
Of course if you're treating "women can wear whatever they want" literally, it's not true for contemporary West as well. See the public obscenity laws.
Nearly the same could have been written after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor if you replace Muslims with Asians. My view is that political correctness stops westerners from considering certain weaknesses, and the big danger is that ISIS realizes and seeks to exploit this willful blindness.
I don't think the comparison is valid, if anything it's the opposite; the Pearl Harbor attack was intended as a devastating blow, to crush the American naval capability on the Pacific. The United States then did the opposite of what the Japanese intended, rebuilt the fleet and committed fully to the war.
The Japanese empire wasn't primarily using Perl Harbor as a PR tool. They were already powerful with lots of people and lots of resources.
That was one empire attempting to deliver a crippling blow to a competing power. They didn't need to recruit Japanese from around the globe or elicit donations to their cause.
If we're drawing comparisons, it's been widely recognized that the internment of Japanese Americans was a bad idea.
And what about the subsequent war against Japan?
You mean the part where the U.S. commits the most horrendous and indefensible act of needless overkill on an enemy who was already brought to the point of surrender?
Let's assume that given what people knew at the time, it was a good idea. Don't you still think that today it would still be "widely recognized" as a bad idea?
Actually, historians, including some of my colleagues at the Ohio State history department, have found that the internment was not based on credible information, but an rampant anti-Asian racism. By comparison, Germans were left alone, with no restrictions of any sort on their civil liberties, not to speak of internment.
"Actually, historians, including some of my colleagues at the Ohio State history department, have found that the internment was not based on credible information, but an rampant anti-Asian racism."
I would expect most historians to conclude this regardless of evidence. I don't trust academia on matters of political correctness. Imagine a non-Asian history grad student tells you that he has found evidence that FDR had based his internment policy on credible evidence, and this grad student asks you if political correctness would make it difficult for him to get a job if he publishes a paper on this topic. What would you tell him?
You are welcome to mistrust academia, but it doesn't mean you can dismiss the evidence with simply saying you mistrust academia. Peer review is peer review, in all cases and contexts.
I would tell him he has a great shot, as he would then gain a great deal of attention if he actually had credible evidence and countered the previous evidence convincingly.
EDIT: Now how much have you updated based on my response, to both questions? Do you consider evidence to be evidence? Do you consider my credibility as an academic historian to be evidence? If so, how much have you updated? If you have not updated, I would urge you to reconsider your level or rationality.
You haven't presented any actual evidence.
What credibility? Your ridiculous response to James Miller's second question, shredded whatever credibility, you still had left.
"Peer review is peer review, in all cases and contexts" I trust you really don't mean this. If a woman studies journal publishes a peer reviewed article saying that 25% of women on college campuses have been raped, I trust you would give this statistic almost no weight.
I don't mistrust academia on all topics, just on issues related to political correctness. Lots of women studies professors say that gender is a social construct. This sends a strong signal about the value of truth in some areas of academia
I update a little in your favor, but I'm an academic myself (an economist at Smith College) so my priors are fairly strongly held.
"I would tell him he has a great shot, as he would then gain a great deal of attention if he actually had credible evidence and countered the previous evidence convincingly." Yes, just like Larry Summers received when he suggested that genetics MIGHT play a role in why so few women are in sciences. When I mentioned at a panel on free speech at Smith College that I thought Larry Summers was probably right about this, another professor on the panel said I didn't belong at Smith.
The key weasel phrase is "credible evidence." And yeah, it would be tantamount to career suicide for any humanities PhD student to argue in his dissertation that the internment of Japanese Americans was a good idea. (Maybe he could get away with it if he were Japanese.)
Many, perhaps most cultures and subcultures have taboos. In Thailand, you don't insult the King. In Saudi Arabia, you don't insult Islam. And in the American Academy, you don't say anything which might be construed as racist.
Peer review is peer review, correct. I don't say all peer review processes are made equal. If a woman's studies journal published it, I would consider it very weak evidence if the journal published similar things before. If it did not, I would consider it moderately weak evidence. Also depends on who is on the masthead of the journal.
Yeah, I hear you about Summers, that was a witch-hunting campaign.
A grad student offering a credible evidence would make a nice career out of it. I have a high probability estimate of this, and have seen plenty of examples in my field to provide support for it. Paradigm-shifting claims, credibly presented, are powerful makers of careers.
"have seen plenty of examples in my field to provide support for it." Are these examples of where the thesis was politically incorrect?
"Yeah, I hear you about Summers, that was a witch-hunting campaign." Doesn't this provide strong evidence that you can't trust many academics on issues relating to race and gender?
Yup, the examples were where the thesis was politically incorrect. For instance, there were a number of graduate students in Soviet history who made careers claiming that the Soviet Union was more violent than the politically correct, leftist historical mainstream narrative depicted. Similarly, I know a graduate student who made a career out of showing that the Amish were actually much more tolerant and respectful toward women than the historical mainstream narrative depicted.
There's a large gap between saying that the hounding of Summers was a witch-hunting campaign, and that one can't trust many academics on issues relating to race and gender. The latter is a categorical and absolutist statement, one that does not nuance then situation in any significant way. It doesn't acknowledge that weak evidence is still evidence, or that plenty of academics - such as myself and apparently you - have more complex and nuanced takes on women and gender and race.
One of the things that annoys me about lesswrong is the spectacle of rationalization in the clothing of rationality.
Where is the evidence for this claim? It's entirely possible that the opposite is true; that if the radicals are perceived to be accomplishing something without pushback, it will attract more support for their cause and more recruits.
During WWII, the United States slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Japanese and German civilians in various bombings. How much "rage" did this cause? Did it make it more difficult to de-Nazify Germany? I'm not sure but my gut feeling is that on balance, it was not counter-productive. My instinct is that creating fear and despair is more productive than avoiding anger. And that if it is perceived that Western powers are afraid of creating anger, it will only embolden the radicals and encourage them to use human shields.
Anyway, these are empirical questions and the rational thing to do is to see what worked and did not work in the past in similar situations.
There is a great deal of evidence about radicalization as a result of western actions, for example this account.
As a historian of modern European history, I can attest that archival evidence shows such slaughter did make it more difficulty to de-Nazify Germany.
There was a lot less general slaughter after WWI, so it should have caused Germany to be demilitarized a lot better then after WWII, oh wait.
What's interesting to me is that as an American, if you visit Japan, there does not seem to be a lot of Tsipursky Rage in evidence. Even though we bombed the hell out of them and nuked two of their cities. And you don't see many Japanese people plotting to launch terrorist attacks in the United States. Of course Japanese culture is probably different from that of the Arabic-speaking peoples in the Middle East. But anger at perceived injustice is a pretty universal human emotion (based on my general observations).
My looking at history is that this isn't quite correct. It is the most restrained aggressor/tyrant who winds up getting targeted. To use an example I'm familiar with most of the Russian Tsars were rather despotic; however, two did make major liberal reforms, Alexander II freed the serfs, and Nicholas II make strides towards modernizing the country including introducing an elected parliament. Not-so-coincidentally, they were also the only tsars to be assassinated by revolutionaries.
That may very well be the case, and if so, it's positive evidence that Tsipursky Rage is not a relatively important factor in motivating peoples' behavior. Which is consistent with my instincts.
Causality could go the other way here - the reforms might have been (ultimately ineffective) attempts to address dissatisfaction among the people.
Probably not. Consider why there was an increasing amount of dissatisfaction among the people, after all the Tsars had always been brutal, it was only when the Tsar was less brutal that dissatisfaction seemed to manifest.
The main problem with that argument is that it assumes dissatisfaction is determined by the amount of repression. It's a factor, but there are others, like food, wars, and technical innovations.
This kind of question needs complex analysis and can't be answered that easily. You could plot a measurement of repression against a measure of dissatisfaction (assume the measurements are accurate), show that they corresponded perfectly from regime to regime, and even if you ignore confounders it still wouldn't show causality because you still wouldn't know which one came first.
That's sort of my point. That repression done right doesn't cause rebellions.
Well for starters if you look at them chronologically, you can see which one actually changed first.
LOL. The dead and the broken don't rebel much...
Would you care to summarize the evidence? Is it mainly anecdotal observations of peoples' claims about their own motivations? Or is it something else?
I am looking for specific, reliable evidence that Western military activities which resulted in the deaths of civilians had a significant "rage" effect you described (and had recruitment effects significantly above the baseline). Please note that peoples' accounts of their own motivations are generally unreliable.
Again, would you care to summarize the evidence?
I accept that you perceive that people's account of their own motivations is unreliable, but that is the kind of evidence available. Can you present evidence for the counter-claim?
I can't really summarize whole books. Please check out Biddiscombe, Perry (2006). The Denazification of Germany 1945–48. The History Press Ltd if you wish to read more on this topic.
Er, what?
For what it may be worth, I have read thousands of books in my life and I have never encountered a book which is impossible to summarize in a few paragraphs or even less.
I could use a summary of Statistical Physics by L.D. Landau and E.M. Lifshitz in a few paragraphs if you have one to sell me. :-)
I think you and brazil84 may have different notions of summarizing in mind. If summarizing a book means describing what's in it then most books can be summarized in a few paragraphs. If it means conveying a large fraction of the useful or interesting content then many books can't. (A dictionary or encyclopaedia might be an even better example than a physics textbook.)
Yes, I think so. Here is how I would summarize an unabridged dictionary:
This is a book which contains entries for most of the words in the English language; each entry sets forth the typical pronunciation as well as definitions for the word. Here are a few examples:
Example 1:
Example 2:
Example 3.
Lol, fair enough. You caught me well on that one. Let me update my statement to being unwilling to summarize whole books.
You disagree with this?
I might be able to if I put some time into it, but you have the burden of proof and I do not want to spend time on it.
I'm not asking for you to summarize whole books. Let's do this: What's the strongest piece of evidence that the deaths of civilians as a result of Western military action against Germany during World War 2 caused a "rage" effect which made de-Nazification significantly more difficult?
There are many pieces of evidence, it's not helpful to speak of the strongest one. Here's one typical example, a link from a prominent book that shows that there were a number of newspaper articles expressing outrage over the bombings that made de-nazification more difficult. Newspaper articles are representative of a segment of public opinion, so this is direct evidence of public opinion on this topic. Moreover, such events remain very controversial right now, giving continued support to radical German groups over 70 years after the end of the war.
Then please summarize the best evidence for your claim.
Also, please answer my question: Do you dispute that peoples' accounts of their own motivations are generally unreliable?
Can you please quote the relevant part of your source? I did not see what you were talking about.
Yes, I dispute the statement that peoples' accounts of their own motivations are generally unreliable.
It's the sentence ending in footnote 22.
Then I suggest you educate yourself about social desirability bias. It's well known -- and obvious just from general observation -- that people have a strong tendency to self-report information which puts them in a more flattering light. If you have not taken this into account in your assessments, then it's fair to say that any conclusions you have drawn are suspect.
Ok, so apparently a typical example of the best evidence of your claim is a polemic in which someone cites the Dresden bombing as a rationale to criticize Western attempts to purge Nazis from post-WW2 Germany. There is no evidence as to how much such events actually motivated anyone; it's just an argument someone is making.
Your evidence for Sipursky Rage is quite weak as to Nazi Germany and extremely weak as to the situation in Syria:
A few anecdotal reports of terrorists who make the self-serving and unverifiable claims that they were motivated by Western misdeeds is so weak as to be ridiculous.
Anecdotal reports by terrorists is the best data we have available. Weak evidence is still evidence. We should update on whatever evidence we have, and avoid dismissing it out of hand and calling it ridiculous. As aspiring rationalists, we need to orient toward the truth, and avoid confirmation bias.
Why? You started to speak about Nazi Germany as an example of bombings haven't lead to problems.
I would like an answer to my question:
Do you really not see why Sipursky has the burden of proof and I do not have the burden of proof?
Are you joking? DId you actually read what I said? Here's what I said:
By contrast, here's what Tsipursky said:
He also said this:
Do you really not see why Sipursky has the burden of proof and I do not have the burden of proof?
Really?
You're forgetting that one of the reasons why ISIS exists in the first place was the chaos the U.S. invasion created in Iraq (along with the already existing motivations of Al Qaeda, which ISIS split off from). Going about purposely making enemies is hardly "productive."
Let's assume that's true. How does it follow that in terms of dealing with ISIS (or any other enemy or adversary for that matter) avoiding anger is more productive than creating fear and despair?
I will certainly concede that creating power vacuums is dangerous policy.
It depends what you get in return. But anyway, the issue on the table is the Sipursky Rage hypothesis. Sipursky seems to believe that air strikes in retaliation for the Paris attacks will be counter-productive since they will make people angry and more likely to support ISIS. My position is that insufficient evidence has been presented to reach such a conclusion.
Do you have a position on this issue? Or do you just want to change the subject?
The U.S. response to 9/11 serves as a didactic example of the most counter-productive way imaginable to respond to terrorism. If France follows the U.S. example after these attacks (and the recent news about their military cooperation with Russia seems to indicate so), the potential for stupid mistakes escalates manyfold. Especially considering that the West and Russia have opposite opinions on what the future of Syria should be, adding more guns to the situation can only make it worse.
Which occurred because the US wasn't willing to be sufficiently brutal in clamping down on it.
How do you know?
(The most obvious example of US willingness to be sufficiently brutal seems like Vietnam, which wasn't a responding success.)
Middle Eastern cultures are heavily based on clan/kinship relations and honor. I would expect that just accurately killing guilty people would lead to a rage effect as bad as killing innocent ones, because of the enormous number of people in the guilty person's kinship group whose honor you have just besmirched.
Note that this dynamic can be profitably used in the opposite direction. Suppose in retaliation for someone committing a terror attack, the government exiles their entire family (out to, say, first cousins) in response. Now the family dynamics are recruited to cut things off early on, and local patriarchs face serious penalties if they fail to keep their kin in line.
(Compare to the frankpledge, wherein people were clustered into joint responsibility units, where if any person in the unit committed a crime everyone in the unit had to pay for it (if they couldn't deliver the criminal to justice).)
I would guess you are probably right, but the bigger question here is how strong is any "rage effect" compared to other factors which might influence human decision-making. For example, lets suppose ISIS rolls into your town, throws a few gay dudes of off roofs, blows up the local church or mosque, and publicly tortures to death a few suspected informants. One can imagine that perhaps this will create a large Tsipursky Rage. At the same time, it will probably result in a lot of fear and despair; these emotions might actually discourage people from working against ISIS. Which is stronger in the short or long term? What other factors might be in play? These are not easy questions to answer.
For Tsipursky to claim that he knows the answer with reasonable certainty based on a few magazine articles in which a few captured terrorists cite "rage" as their motivation is the height of the worst kind of irrationality.
That said, your point does illustrate how silly Tsipursky's position is if taken to its logical conclusion. i.e. that we should not even kill actual ISIS operatives in Syria or Iraq because that will make people angry and result in more attacks.
It's not really silly. Focusing on cutting funding sources might be better than focusing on killing ISIS operatives, As long as a NATO country buys their oil for money, weapons and hospital care killing individual ISIS operatives won't go very far.
The two are not mutually exclusive, agreed?
If you want to use certain NATO bases to do your bombing, then you will be less likely to criticize the policy of the countries that host the bases.
Umm, does that mean "yes" or "no"?
Truth is more complex than binary values. It means that in practice doing one thing means that you can do the other less well.
Do you consider the account of a man who says: "I have to revenge a blood debt because they killed my cousin" to be a unreliable description of someone's self-motivations?
Absolutely.
Are you looking for a double-blind experiment where in hundreds of randomly selected countries the civilians were slaughtered, in other hundreds they were not, and this was all conducted in a way that neither the people in the attacking countries nor the people in the attacked countries knew which was which?
No. I am looking for specific, reliable evidence which backs up Tsipursky's claim. It is up to him what form that evidence might take. Is that a problem for you?
As I mentioned below, the "What would ISIS not want us to do?" is not a good heuristic, because by asking it you implicitly accept their world view. I'm reminded of a (probably apocryphal quote from a WWII general), something like "Every Japanese soldier you encounter believes it is his duty to die for his country, your duty is to assist him in the performance of his duty in whatever way is most practical."
I used the statement "What would ISIS not want us to do?" for rhetorical force, the actual heuristic I emphasized was to figure out our actual goals and then the best means of achieving them.
I think part of the problem here is that it is difficult to discern how rational ISIS is as an organization. It is some combination of militia group; millennialist cult; and breakaway state. (It's interesting that it has changed its name a couple times.) As best I can tell, the overall game plan of ISIS is -- generally speaking -- to follow in the footsteps of the most fundamental religious doctrine it can, and have faith that this will result in their eventual success. Under such circumstances, I don't think it's very useful to "avoid playing into ISIS's hands."
This may be a more useful consideration if the enemy was some kind of James Bond super-villain who was carefully scheming at every stage. Even then, you never know if the other fellow really wants something or if he is only pretending to as some kind of ruse or feint.
The problem is that their game plan is likely to be something more or less along the lines of, "Start a war between Islam and the rest of the world. Since our religion basically teaches that we are inevitably going to conquer the world by force, we will be guaranteed victory in such a war."
The religion is false, so they would not win such a war. But it would be an extremely bad thing if it happened at all, regardless of whether they win. So playing into their hands is probably not a good idea anyway, even though they are wrong.
I agree with this to a large extent.
Assuming that's true, it's still not like the situation where your adversary is an evil genius so that doing what he wants you to do is likely to be helping him succeed in his evil goals. In this situation, it's not worth it to put much stock in whether the West is playing into Isis' hands.
It depends how far they get in their war, it seems to me.
ISIS (or any enemy, for that matter) doesn't need to be led by evil geniuses in order to know how to set a trap for the West to fall into. With 9/11, Al Qaeda set a perfect trap for the U.S. to be blinded by pain and rage (having the simpleminded W. in office certainly helped) and, as a result, the U.S. engaged in what from the White House looked like a righteous campaign for the liberation of oppressed masses, but to those masses looked like a meddlesome intrusion into their already complicated lives. In this case (in every case, actually), I think it's absolutely essential to consider what our enemies are counting on us to do.
No, but it would (edit: arguably) help quite a lot.
What is the evidence that Al Qaeda's intention with the 9/11 attacks was to goad the United States into invading Afghanistan and later Iraq?
Various journalists have analyzed the writings of Al Qaeda strategist Muhammad Makkawi a.k.a. Saif al-Adel, concluding that:
"His goal, for at least five years, had been to goad America into invading Afghanistan..."
"September 11 constituted the first step: dragging the United States into the Arab region in preparation for an extended war of attrition."
What exactly did he write and when?
The text in question is allegedly called "Al Qaeda's Strategy until Year 2020." My search met a dead end at the website of the newspaper Al Quds al Arabi. I don't read Arabic, and that newspaper doesn't show digital archives for 2005, which was the date when Makkawi's writings were first made available to the general public. Journalist Abdel Bari Atwan wrote a book on the subject, but Google Books doesn't give a complete view of it.
Ok, well your second source states the following:
It would be interesting if an individual who was known to be a senior Al Qaeda official were known to have written BEFORE the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq that they had a plan to goad the US into such invasions. But without this kind of evidence, your claim does not stand up to scrutiny.
In which case they're going to keep making attacks so the solution is to destroy their ability to do so.
The problem with that solution is that it is either impossible, or implies genocide.
As Socrates says in Plato's Gorgias, "Suppose that I go into a crowded Agora, and take a dagger under my arm. Polus, I say to you, I have just acquired rare power, and become a tyrant; for if I think that any of these men whom you see ought to be put to death, the man whom I have a mind to kill is as good as dead; and if I am disposed to break his head or tear his garment, he will have his head broken or his garment torn in an instant. Such is my great power in this city. And if you do not believe me, and I show you the dagger, you would probably reply: Socrates, in that sort of way any one may have great power-he may burn any house which he pleases, and the docks and triremes of the Athenians, and all their other vessels, whether public or private-but can you believe that this mere doing as you think best is great power?"
Great power or not, it is in fact true that anyone can do those things if he wishes, so as long as people are alive, one cannot take away their ability to do those things. So as I said, your solution is either impossible or implies genocide.
Kill a single person, yes. Carry out an attack like the one in Paris, no.
Asking "what does my enemy want me to do" is very useful when you are trying to predict how the enemy will respond to your possible future moves.
Yes. It's completely useless, however, as the basis for making your future moves.
Reversed stupidity isn't intelligence. Counterstrategy isn't strategy.
The Mongol Calvary under the command of Genghis Khan unexpectedly runs away. The enemy can't figure out why but doesn't worry about the Mongol's motivation and starts pursuing . An hour later, at a spot carefully prepared last night, the Mongol cavalry turns around and catches the enemy on ground that maximizes the Mongol advantage over its enemy.
Their fundamental mistake wasn't pursuing; that was merely a symptom. Their fundamental mistake is that they either had no plan of their own, or abandoned that plan. Because had they not pursued, the Mongols would have harried them with regular raiding skirmishes, a tactic they excelled at.
Pursuing-or-not-pursuing is playing the game according to the rules your opponent has set. Your first act should always be to change the rules.
If the Mongols are running away in panic you should pursue since pursuers normally have a big advantage, if they are running away as part of planned strategy you should not.
What you should or should not do is better determined by whether or not it helps win the war than whether it helps win a battle. If pursuing causes your unit to leave the territory you should have been defending, the mere accident of another of their units stumbling across the undefended territory could lose you the war, without any planned strategy on their part.
It is insufficient to know their plans. You have to know your own.
For better or worse Gleb doesn't go into the ISIS worldview about the importance of Muslims immigrating to the caliphate and Western armies coming to fight ISIS in Dabiq.
But he nevertheless makes conclusions as if he has.
No, he makes conclusions based on imaging what would be good for ISIS to do to expand it's powerbase.
The comments on that article don't seem to responding to anything in the article itself. Many are just ad hominem followed by a strongly stated opinion. From what I can tell the Plain Dealer is a relatively liberal newspaper, but the comments don't seem to reflect that.
Anyways, probabilistic thinking has become a reverse dogwhistle for me and I think part of your argument illustrates why:
Why did you choose those numbers? Do you have any inside knowledge as to why people join ISIS? And why would 100 new ISIS members lead to any increase in the number of suicide bombings? I doubt that the decision of ISIS to cause a suicide bombing is constrained by the number of members, or willing members. And are you sure that the only effect that more aggressive interventions can have is to increase the number of willing suicide bombers? Even granting that aggressive measures do push people over the edge into joining ISIS, what if they also scare some people out of joining ISIS? What if they kill more ISIS members than the create?
We can make up numbers but that isn't particularly productive, because the math isn't the hard part - it isn't where most of the uncertainty is.
Actually, I would love it if politicians and analysts used actual numbers. Then, we can check the accuracy of their forecasts. The hard part is getting them pinned down on some numbers. If we can get numeracy and probabilistic thinking into the political system, it seems that we would be much better off as it would allow us to gather real data. What do you think?
Numeracy and consequence based thinking, sure. But as far as probability thinking goes, I quite disagree for roughly the reasons stated here*.
I tried to illustrate the following but let me try to make it more explicit. In using any sort of mathematical model there are a few steps: The first is to determine relevant parameters that you can try to assign numbers to (such as probability of events). The second is to create a model for how those parameters interact. The third is experiment with different inputs to see the different outcomes so you can optimize your model. Fourth you can make predictions with error bounds as determined by your model.
The first two steps are incredibly important, but I often see naive bayesians jumping straight to the third or even fourth step. But with complex systems subject to uncertainty and unknown factors, almost all of the work lies in the first and second steps. Getting back to one of my early comments if you construct a model in which only considers the ways in which an aggressive military intervention can increase the number of suicide bombings, then you'll of course show that such an intervention will increase the number of suicide bombings. But this is modeling failure at the first step, by choosing only those parameters you've assumed your conclusion. It's not the math that is the problem, it is lack of understanding of the phenomenon being described (and I think this is at the heart of many or even most instances of failed models).
*I know that post is long but I highly recommend reading at least section I on what probabilities are and section V on why/when you can use them.
I hear you about using mathematical modeling. However, I'm talking about quick, intuitive, System 1 probabilistic estimates here, more Fermi style than anything else. Remember, the goal is to convey to a broad audience that they can do probabilistic estimates, too. Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
But can they do good probabilistic estimates? A little knowledge is a dangerous thing...
I'd prefer they do some than not at all. Then, they would improve over time, as research by Tetlock and others shows.
I'd prefer they first figure out the limits of their competence before starting to act on their Fermi estimates. And Tetlock's sample is not quite general public.
I guess we have different preferences. I'd rather that people experiment and learn by doing.
Whether experimenting is a good thing depends on the cost of failure.
Also, on whether you can distinguish success from failure.
That may be desirable but it doesn't make unrealistic numbers any more realistic. The US has made over 3,000 airstrikes in Syria, and ISIS does not have anywhere near 300,000 people with them. Of course, you said "report of an airstrike," and not "airstrike," but presumably most attacks have been reported at least in local media there.
What I said was report of an airstrike that killed civilians - not a simple airstrike. An airstrike killing civilians reported in prominent Muslim media is a great recruiting tool
(Disclaimer: politics is the mind-killer.)
I think it should be a requirement that anyone who wants to write about Da'esh should at the very least have travelled to present-day Syria or Iraq at least once, and communicated with people involved in the war. I'm not necessarily saying that your argument is wrong, just that the actual situation seems far more nuanced.
For instance, can you provide an argument that increased committment of troops is "exactly what ISIS wants."? It seems like something oft-mentioned on "pundit" blogs but rarely justified through argument or evidence. Sure, it makes sense that Da'esh would enjoy more radicalized Muslims, but it doesn't seem like it would enjoy the "intensive assault and attack" part.
I'd like to see an article dealing with the actual reasons people decide to join Da'esh. And I'd also like to see a realistic analysis of the actual - not percieved - threat that Da'esh poses to the World. And I'd also like to see an analysis of the reasons why Da'esh succeeded in its latest attacks. Did it expertly fool law enforcement/security agencies? Or did they have adequate warning but chose to not act on their intelligence? So far the evidence seems to point to the latter possibility.
Why is "what ISIS wants" relevant here. ISIS is a bunch of fanatics who have a rather distorted model of reality. It may be that they want an increased commitment of troops because they believe it will lead to the prophesied climactic battle that ends with Allah destroying the unbelievers.
Why isn't it a relevant question to understand the motivations of your enemy? Unless you're saying that Da'esh has no motivation and is just doing things randomly.
It may be, sure, but it may also be that they want everyone to think that about them, in order to produce fear. Appearing totally crazy is often a good strategy in warfare.
It's not directly relevant to the argument you were making.
Unfortunately, op-eds are limited to 700 words, so no way to make that sort of analysis possible. By definition, with this word count, the analysis has to be simplified and clear messages conveyed. Believe me, as an academic I am used to writing 20,000-word essays or 140,000 word books. This is a different genre that serves a different purpose.
Well, there's no word limit on LW, so you're quite welcome to write out your thoughts.
Why People Keep Saying, “That’s What the Terrorists Want”
...
It's like Texas sharpshooter fallacy by proxy.
Much of the article is quite on point, but this portion is just restating the same thing in different terms. The whole reason 'alienated moderates' are at risk of being 'receptive to extremism' is that France was unsuccessful in its attempt to assimilate its Muslim population.
--Not for lack of trying, mind you, and they even had a pretty sensible policy stance - quite far from the spineless multiculti ideology that seems to be ubiquitous in 'Anglo' countries. One critical problem is that the 'ethnic' population bears the brunt of the failing French economy and labor market, because their lack of social capital effectively makes them marginal participants in the best of cases; the end result is that these folks are now pretty much excluded from any sort of productive activity and become structurally unemployed. Young male idle hands being the devil's workshop, and all that.
I'm glad to see rationalists getting published in mainstream media outlets. And I appreciated your reference to attentional bias.
However, the article seemed too simplistic overall. For example, the idea that attacking Islam is playing into terrorists' hands is almost a cliche. And the policy conclusions seem extremely bland and also not particularly rationalist.
For an idea of what an explicitly rationalist and non-obvious policy conclusion might look like, imagine a counterterrorism foreign policy that is actually randomized: in 90% of situations we do nothing in response to terror attacks, but 10% of the time we topple a regime. The randomization prevents ISIS and other actors from manipulating us (I'm not saying this is a good idea, just that it builds on rationalist (game theory) concepts and is nonobvious).
Another policy response would be to fight attentional bias by imposing certain restrictions on media reporting of terror attacks. For example, we could place a 6-month moratorium on detailed or graphic reporting of attacks, allowing only simple, factual information to be published in the immediate aftermath of an attack ("On November 13, more than 100 and less than 200 people were killed in Paris by unidentified assailants. Police responded quickly, and the attackers have now all been arrested or killed. Authorities recommend a general increase in vigilance, but no other interruptions are necessary. Details of the attack will be published in March 2016"). Again, I'm not saying this is a good idea, just that it is nonobvious and builds on rationalist concepts.
So, you suggested two clearly bad ideas which "build on rationalist concepts". Is that supposed to promote these "rationalist concepts"? Because the obvious conclusion would be that you should build on something else.
Thanks for the good words about publishing in media venues!
The article is meant to be simplistic, as it's talking in a language oriented for a broad audience, and has a 700-word limit.
I don't have a value of non-obviousness, just of rational decision making. To me, rational decision-making implies using a process that involves determining our goals, weighing the best ways of getting there without letting our emotions tip the scale, and making the best decisions to reach our goals. This is what I conveyed in the article, I hope :-)
On a related note: the Libertarian International Brigades are an informal foreign fighter grouping involved in the Syrian conflict in particular. They are allied with the People's Protection Units, and the Lions of Rojava (PPU's foreign legion) in particular who espouse democratic confederalism. They may also be associated with the Kurdistan Workers Party, but it is unclear:
They also seem to be rivals of the Kurdistan Regional Government, which has top level ICANN domain so they're fairly legitimate in the international domain:
But, just like the Lions of Rojava, aren't a 'Kurdish movement', apparently:
Now to my point:
Recently, as far as I can tell, all their online communications have dissapeared. For instance here and here or even here.
IS/ISIL/ISIS/Daesh's hackers?
Turkey?
Self censorship?
As the Kurdish saying goes: 'Kurds have no friends but mountains'
I would ask their allies themselves, but is probably frowned upon by Western authorities, even for academic curiosity/concern.