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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: 0.001s | 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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benihana ◴[14 Nov 15 03:42 UTC] No.10564337[source]▶
>You are trying to rationalize with people who are irrational.

In my opinion, this is the most dangerous statement in this thread. Saying the actions of these people is irrational loses any ability to understand why they're doing what they're doing and how we can stop them. It turns them into a faceless enemy who are doing things because of hate, which is easy and makes my ego feel better, but doesn't really explain their actions or the actions of anyone. Nobody thinks they're the bad guy of their own story.

There is nothing more rational than terrorizing civilians to achieve a goal. It is the logical conclusion of rationality.

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0mbre ◴[14 Nov 15 07:09 UTC] No.10564816[source]▶
Killing innocent, helpless people IS irrational. Period
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1. threeseed ◴[14 Nov 15 08:41 UTC] No.10564982[source]▶
It's not irrational at all.

If your goal is to terrify a nation in order to pressure it to change its foreign policy then it is quite rational. And there are quite a few examples of this approach actually working.

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2. 0mbre ◴[14 Nov 15 09:29 UTC] No.10565080[source]▶
Well obvioysly to someone irrational every of his action seem rational.

The point is that for a phycologicaly healthy and balanced human being these actions can not be called rational by any stretch of logic

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3. eivarv ◴[14 Nov 15 12:57 UTC] No.10565494[source]▶
I think you'll find that psychological health has little to do with what people can convince themselves of, or convince themselves to do - i.e. you can't explain away Daesh (or WWII nazis, etc.) with mental illness.

Their actions could absolutely be called rational and logical if you were to accept their premise - which is what I'd argue is irrational.

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4. mercurial ◴[14 Nov 15 14:19 UTC] No.10565738{3}[source]▶
You don't even need a Godwin point for that. Nobody was calling Air Marshall Harris, well-known for his strategy of carpet-bombing civilians with incendiaries during WWII, "insane" or "irrational". Instead, they gave him a bunch of medals and made him a baronet.