Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say • Hacker News Board

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#361

Post by toyg » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 3:39 AM UTC

jules wrote: post #304

toyg wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why blow yourself up when you can make a bomb and then another and another? To avoid having to endure the consequences of your own actions. For people with nothing to lose, suicide attacks are actually the most risk-averse choice: regardless of the possible existence of an afterworld, you're certain to escape punishment in this world. Look at Columbine-style attacks - no religion there, just semi-rational choices.…

This is what many people think, but it is demonstrably false. Most terrorists are highly educated and some are rich. The terrorists involved in 9/11 all had university degrees, for example, and some of them from western universities. These are not people who would be committing suicide anyway out of depression caused by miserable circumstances. Frankly, I suspect that at least part of this comes from the aversion of…

I know very well what you mention, but you're not reading what I wrote: "either in material or spiritual terms". Well-educated people are the first to know that society is full of lies and deceit, and without some spiritual rooting (be it familial love or something else), they are at high risk of being depressed but functional individuals. Alienation is a very powerful force. We used to say that only the rich can worry about being sad.

My second statement is coherent with this view: what education should give people is such a rooting. This is not necessarily what it does currently give them. In fact, a lot of academic tracks do their best to kill off any ounce of sentimentalism in one's heart. If it's really "all about data", killing a few hundreds "for the greater good of billions" doesn't look like such a terrible choice. This is something we really should keep in mind.

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#362

Post by dang » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 3:40 AM UTC

usaphp wrote: post #208

I don't understand how can you talk about ISIS, Nazis and Communists in the same sentence? Communism has nothing to do with violence compared to ISIS and Nazis... Edit: Why downvotes? Idea of communism does not propose violence, Nazis and ISIS on the other hand do.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10563972 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#363

Post by benihana » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 3:42 AM UTC

bedhead wrote: post #109

djfm wrote: post #76

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 peopl…

You are trying to rationalize with people who are irrational. They don't reconcile. It sucks. It's depressing.

>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.

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#364

Post by peferron » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 3:43 AM UTC

Asbostos wrote: post #335

jtblin wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found it valuable to know that my friends and family in Paris are safe, so I'm grateful to FB for doing that. OTH It saddens me and make me wonder what kind of world we live in for FB to release such a feature.

You didn't need Facebook to tell you that. You could have just assumed it was true based on the enormous population of Paris (2 million) and the small number of deaths in this incident (100-200).

You would have 0.01% chance of being wrong. How high would it need to be to warrant, in your eyes, checking if your family members are alive, instead of assuming they are? 0.1%? 1%? 10%? And why?

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#365

Post by draaglom » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 3:43 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #322

rezashirazian wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting guns, grenades, creating bombs: These things take time, effort and "chatter".

Somehow the assumption always seems to be that terrorists are stupid. They're not stupid, they have seen some plots foiled so they adapt until they make it through the next time. Footsoldiers they can afford to lose, just like the drug trade can afford to lose shipments and mules. Getting guns and grenades is relatively easy in Europe, many ordinary criminal gangs much less well funded manage to get these. Making bom…

I don't think you have to assume terrorists are stupid, good OPSEC is hard.

Particularly re. phones / internet, it only takes one mistake to link a phone number used for nefarious activities with your identity.

(I would expect them to use phones, at least - they have to coordinate somehow.)

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#366

Post by auntienomen » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 3:44 AM UTC

imaginenore wrote: post #221

coldcode wrote: post #173

Right now we don't know who these people are, where they came from and what their aims were (besides terror). Of course terror is exactly this, you don't know, you imagine the worst, and everyone reacts, often pointlessly. I wonder why France?

We know exactly who they are: islamists. We have video recordings where you can hear them yelling "allahu Akbar" while shooting. 42% of young Muslims in France believe suicide bombings are justified (35% overall). http://www.pewresearch.org/files/old-assets/pdf/muslim-ameri...

42% is appalling, but so what? What's your conclusion? (Recall that a majority of Americans have no problem with dropping bombs on foreign civilians.)

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#367

Post by balladeer » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 3:45 AM UTC

mietek wrote: post #348

usaphp wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article you mentioned has no explanation of where he got those figures, as far as I know there is no official data on this and estimates range from 3Mln to 60Mln [1], which as you can see is quite bizarre estimate. According to official documents there were 799,455 people executed in a period from 1921 to 1953 [2] and keep in mind that's a total number of execution, not only those that were executed for political…

Let’s start with the Holodomor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Since we are talking about man-made hunger at large scale I thought Churchill deserved a mention - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#368

Post by jtblin » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 3:48 AM UTC

lemevi wrote: post #237

Svip wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he might be talking about Stalinism. Or at the very least, just Stalin.

...or Bolsheviks, try reading wikipedia about the immediate post-revolution violence called the Red Terror as it will turn your stomach it was truly, truly terrible [0] ...or Maoism "struggle sessions" which resulted in 2 million deaths [1] ...or just read about mass killings in communist regimes[2]. Clearly communist governments have mass killed a lot of people. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror [1] https…

The period after the French Revolution that threw down monarchy and more or less brought democracy to Europe was called the Terror [1] as well and tens of thousands of people were guillotined or executed (that was quite a lot of people at the time). Unfortunately, when oppressed people overcome the power in place, bad things happen as the results of the change in the balance of powers. IMHO this is similar to what happened when Bolsheviks took over the tsars and Communist Chinese put down the Emperor. I am of course not condoning violence (I am French and still in shock with what just happened) but I think these examples are sometimes more a sign of the people getting rid of hundreds (thousands) years of oppression than a particular political alignment. Unfortunately history is rich of mass killings in the name of politics, religions and other ideologies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#369

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 3:49 AM UTC

j42 wrote: post #325

iMark wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's equating "do no harm" with "do the right thing". I don't believe the comparison stands.

It does if you play devil's advocate and follow the chain of reasoning. If god is great and non-believers are bad and "god" says it's righteous and just to punish the non-believers, then naturally doing "god's work" is doing no harm? Actually the truth is even messier... most of these young men committing atrocities are merely indoctrinated pawns who know very little of their own religion and instead defer to their "…

>indoctrinated pawns who know very little of their own religion and instead defer to their "emir." //

They appear to be following Mohammed's example quite closely, he was a war lord, he murdered those around him who wouldn't accept the rule of the regime he established. It seems a mainstream axiom in Islam that Mohammed is the perfect example of humanity, a person to emulate to the utmost.

The Koran and Hadith don't seem, from the reading I've done, to be at odds with these actions either if one follows standard abrogation in the Koran.

That said I'm fortunate that the muslims I meet daily don't appear to know "their own religion" - or at least don't follow the example from which it started - and instead are peaceable and as virtuous as one would expect of anyone in UK society in general. They seem much like those who call themselves Christians: following a generally moral code without a deep understanding of what being a true adherent entails.

>too morally corrupted & detached to care about ideals such as "civilian life." //

Civilian isn't a concept that I've come across in the Koran - it's Muslim, Dhimmi and infidel.

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#370

Post by Turing_Machine » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 3:51 AM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #355

robbiep wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not European but travelling in Asia at the moment. Have had a couple of discussions with run-of-the-mill Europeans concerned that the refugees areproportionally made up much more of young men than women/children with the implication that these guys are up to no good. I'd say the subtleties of the humanitarian crisis is going to be lost on the average European Joe in the wake of this

The refugees who have travelled to Europe to seek asylum are disproportionately young and male. Because if you have a family group in a refugee camp in Turkey, you don't send your grandmother to take a dangerous boatride across the Med and then traipse around the countryside of the Balkans trying to find a way to get to talk to a German government official about the possibility of making an asylum application for you…

If I had a wife, grandmother, kids, etc. in a dangerous war zone or refugee camp, there is no way in hell that I would leave them behind. Not gonna happen.