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Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

(www.nytimes.com)
623 points franzb | 4 comments | 14 Nov 15 00:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.449s | source
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djfm ◴[14 Nov 15 01:12 UTC] No.10563795[source]▶
I live in Paris and was spending the night in the middle of the hot zone. I was a few hundred meters from the Bataclan but fortunately the area I was in was spared. I tried to get a Uber but they were unavailable, "State of emergency, please stay home", the app said. I took a city bike home, rode about 10kms and barely saw anyone in the streets all the way home. It was really, really weird. I'm awfully sad that people can be proud of having killed a hundred innocents. I'm not afraid, I'm just terribly sad. Please stop this pointless killing.
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bedhead ◴[14 Nov 15 01:21 UTC] No.10563844[source]▶
You are trying to rationalize with people who are irrational. They don't reconcile. It sucks. It's depressing.
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rquantz ◴[14 Nov 15 01:31 UTC] No.10563887[source]▶
Terrorism is usually a rational act. It is terrible, but it has political goals. This, for instance, may be aimed at ending the European involvement in Syria and their taking in refugees.
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1. ArekDymalski ◴[14 Nov 15 01:46 UTC] No.10563944[source]▶
It might be not about political goals:

http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20Effective

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2. plonh ◴[14 Nov 15 03:53 UTC] No.10564363[source]▶
Gwern's analysis looks hopelessly naive in the face of modern ISIS-related acts; and ignores the difference between USA, where poison Tylenol causes a huge response, and China where people expect bad fake drugs with a certain frequency.

And he ignores that over-complicated (in gwern's view) cost over a trillion dollars in US response, from NSA to TSA to Afghan and Iraq war.

3. gozo ◴[14 Nov 15 04:11 UTC] No.10564417[source]▶
I've tried to take that analysis seriously when people have linked it before, but to me it just doesn't seem very relevant to the real world. I'm curious what you mean when you say that it's not about political goals and how that is supported?

Terrorists are by definition extremists. They want to upset the status quo to force people to take sides and create a situation where they feel they, who are righteous, have a better chance of being successful or at least relevant. Whether that is a race war, holy war or revolution. The killing itself isn't particularly relevant until your fighting over land and then normally in form of ethnic cleansing.

The analysis you linked misses a the point of e.g. the terrorist plot in Norway. It's wasn't just about killing people, he deliberately tried to effect politics by killing a generation of people he disagreed with. He also believed that it was part of and going to lead to a larger conflict.

4. jacquesm ◴[14 Nov 15 12:27 UTC] No.10565433[source]▶
That link gets way too much airtime. As much as I usually like Gwerns analysis this one seems in spite of the mountain of citations to miss the point entirely.