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DanArmak comments on Are we failing the ideological Turing test in the case of ISIS? (a crazy ideas thread) - Less Wrong Discussion
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My intention with writing this post was not to discuss religious extremism itself. If you just want to talk about religious extremism there are a lot of places to do it, including other topics on this very site. This topic is only about assuming the top leadership of isis to be rational people (who just abuse religious extremism for their own goals), what could their main objective be?
What I'm commenting on is your use of "rational people" as if being genuine religious extremists is irrational, or in your words "lunatic".
Why would you assume they are lying about their stated goals and are using religion only instrumentally? Or, more precisely: do you think this is more likely to be true for ISIS, than for the many other groups who in the present or past justified such violence by religion, and if so why?
Oh come on, I'm not assuming anything at this point... how often should I repeat that my point was not to present and defend my theories about them, but to gather weird and unusual theories about them? If you think that the listed goals are contradictory, then you are right. But that's the point, they are examples, not the statement of my beliefs. Imagine it more like an open-ended poll: which one is more likely, and if none, than what do you consider more likely.
I'm not saying anything about the listed theories. I'm talking about your motivation for listing theories at all, and not accepting things at face value. Why do you think ISIS needs to be explained at all and not taken at their word, more so than any other group of people? Why do you think (apparently) that if ISIS are sincere in everything they've said, that makes them "lunatics" and not "rational"?