In the United States, stochastic terrorism is neither a statutory offense nor a term of art in criminal codes; it is an analytic label used in scholarship and practitioner writing to describe probabilistic risks of violence linked to rhetoric. Recent legal and critical surveys stress that usage is heterogeneous and contested, and that the concept's value lies in describing a structure of communication and harm rather than in supplying a justiciable element test.[7]
By contrast, U.S. incitement law is anchored in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), which protects advocacy short of speech that is intended to produce imminent lawless action and likely to do so. Stochastic accounts often concern non-directive, cumulative rhetoric whose effects materialize unpredictably, making the Brandenburg imminence and likelihood prongs difficult to satisfy absent clear exhortation.[2]
The goal of those pushing the “stochastic terrorism” scam has always been either outright criminalization of the speech or (at a minimum) public-private coordinated suppression of the speech. Don’t fall for it.
I know I feel enervated by the videos I see from MN. More and more by at the speed of my scrolling.
And, video instances depict the behaviors of agents who, in the moment of encounter, are able to rapidly escalate situations.
I would argue the latter is agents learning tricks and shortcuts from other agents on how to dominate. The more unrestricted and unaccountable they are, the more individuals are emboldened to learn and strive for the approbation of their superiors. They have a quota.
It’s unsettling to think that humanity has lost knowledge it once had, but it happens all the time. Anyone here know how to harness a horse to a buggy?
Speaking as someone who lives near Amish country, with friends who enjoy carriage racing... Yes, lots of people do.
It's not certain that much knowledge has been lost, although much of it is in "endangered" status of preservation. There's a kind of silk netting made from the hairlike tufts of a certain species of clams, only practiced by two people IIRC.
Some lost knowledge is being rediscovered. A well-known example is making Damascus steel; it's now so ordinary you can order it online.
What? We build skyscrapers and supersonic jets and computer chips with nanometer precision now. We haven't "lost" anything. This is just blind worship to some ancient, primitive knowledge that never existed. The past 10,000 years has just been normal people living normal lives.
And, yes, I feel confident that with a few weeks, a rope, and a really good reason - almost any American could strap a horse to a buggy. It's not rocket science and countless humans have done it before.
I think your take makes sense. Thanks for laying it out. I worry about the containment aspects of this. Sure, the capex for this is coming off corporate balance sheets, but a bad event could wipe away a lot of stock market value, which would trigger a deep recession given that AI spending is really the only thing keeping our economy afloat at the moment. It feels like we’re in a doomed if we do, doomed if we don’t moment. I see breadlines in our future whether or not we achieve AGI. The only question is whether or not we’ll have to deal with some added existential risk.
I came here with a similar thought. Given that we don't have a really precise definition of that transition from living to dead, I wonder if this could be it.
Some parts of the dead mice still emit in that spectrum. There won't be a clear and distinct "the lights went out" moment but a gradual fading, so you'll have to define some threshold to translate from radiation distribution and intensity do dead/alive. I don't think an image of photon emission will help pronounce someone dead.
Wedge issues, deployed by both political parties, do exactly this.
Wealthy donors express their political desires by funding politicians who become dependent on their continued financial support.
The voter gets just enough small wins on these wedge issues to keep them somewhat happy. The wealthy preserves the status quo since that’s how they became wealthy in the first place. Our democracy ossifies in the face of new challenges.
If voters across the spectrum viewed campaign finance reform as a key issue, we might have some hope in changing things.
I live in a somewhat small community (~25k) and I commuted into the city on public transportation for about 15 years. 10 years ago, I started working from home full-time.
I often see the people I used to commute with around town. I recognize them and remember them, but I’ve never had any interactions with them.
When I see them, I’m surprised by how much older they look. Then I realize I must look older to them.
It was a different world when you were a kid. People weren’t as incendiary in their speech.
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