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NancyLebovitz 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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Of the sort that casebash assures us cannot exist? The imaginary competence of fictional rational heroes? Top human genius level?
No. These all amount to assuming a falsehood.
Another straw falsehood to set beside the first one. All of this rules out from the start any consideration of ISIS as they actually are. They are real people with a mission, no more and no less intelligent than anyone else who succeeds in doing what they have done so far.
There is no mystery about what ISIS wants. They tell the world in their glossy magazine, available in many languages, including English (see the link at the foot of that page). They tell the world in every announcement and proclamation.
"Rationalist", however, seem incapable of believing that anyone ever means what they say. Nothing is what it is, but a signal of something else.
I have not seen any reason to suppose that they do not intend exactly what they say, just as Hitler did in "Mein Kampf". They are fighting to establish a new Caliphate which will spread Islam by the sword to the whole world, Allahu akbar. All else is strategy and tactics. If their current funding model is unsustainable, they will change it as circumstances require. If their recruitment methods falter, they will search for other ways.
More useful questions would be: given their supreme goal (to establish a new Caliphate which will spread Islam by the sword to the whole world), what should they do to accomplish that? And how should we (by which I mean, everyone who wants Islamic universalism to fail) act to prevent them?
I recommend a reading of Max Frisch's play "The Fire Raisers".
I'm not quite as bitter as you are about rationalists, but it's certainly true that people get a lot wrong, and in particular, they're generally bad at checking on whether their means are a good match for their purposes. The planning fallacy is a good though unflamboyant example of people getting things wrong even when they have years of evidence that they underestimate how long it takes to get things done.
My guess about ISIS is a mixture of a desire for personal power and drama, combined with some hope that Allah will help make the Caliphate work.
Thanks for the pointer to "The Fire Raisers". Have an anti-Communism/anti-decadence story by Kipling on a similar theme: the Mother Hive.
Wow, that seems to be the most anvilicious support for conservatism I've ever seen! Still, I enjoyed reading it, thank you for linking to it. Just getting to know this story was worth writing the article.