people who are willing to be suicide bombers – and those who exploit them – may not be very bright at all.
Or maybe they’re just desperate. You might not like their conclusion, but at least consider the reasoning that turns ordinary people into suicide bombers. It’s comforting to think they’re a bunch of idiots dreaming of virgins, but at least some of these people have seen their families arbitrarily killed by a foreign army that far out-guns them. What else is left?
Yes, Some people are desparate. But I disagree that any ordinary person could turn into a suicide bomber. Killing oneself, along with random innocent people, comes from psychopathy or sociopathy, either from the perpetrator, or those who “trained” them.
It’s all good for a laugh - and I am laughing - but really, explosives are dangerous and plenty of soldiers do die in accidents, including training accidents. Anyone who tries to come to a big conclusion from this is trying too hard.
I guess if there was a point, that would be “war”.
I do not know if you base this assumption on any facts, but assuming you don’t, one could say that
“would be fair to say that
soldier children in africa aren’t very bright,
europeans struck from the economic crisis arent very bright,
amuricans arent very bright,
chinese factory workers aren’t very bright”
and the list could go on.
You seem to be disagreeing with yourself.
First you say nobody normal can become a suicide bomber, but then you add the major escape clause that a normal person can become so depraved at the hands of sociopaths…
I’d suggest there’s a significant fraction of ‘normal’ people who can be relatively easily coerced into unethical acts, and at the other end of the spectrum probably only a very few, if any, who could resist any and every attempt to break them.
Heh. My point is misanthropic if you’d like to interpret it that way. I see it as more of a statistical analysis. Groups can be above or below average if they select for intelligence, whether it be through direct testing, or testing through intelligence-related traits, or possibly by random chance.
Most people capable of survival in their local environment have at least average intelligence. Those people who are “very bright” are above average intelligence, and by definition don’t make up the majority of the population. Most Americans aren’t “very bright”, it’s simply a fact. Most Iraqis aren’t “very bright” either. Most people aren’t “very bright”. You only come across “Very bright” people half the time or less, therefore many groups aren’t “very bright”. Only those groups that select membership depending on intelligence/rational thinking/reasoning skills (whatever is meant by “bright”) have more than half their composition as “very bright” people. For instance, the group of Nobel prize winners. Or the group of Fields medal winners. Or the group of people with PhD degrees.
Like most 21st Century phenomena, it was accurately predicted by Monty Python years ago: Behold, the Judean People’s Front 1st Suicide Squad in action:
Premature Assplodulation!
Next up: Westboro Church assbags picket the funerals of their own members, who were killed when they wandered into the street - And directly into the path of a gay kid’s funeral procession. If only.
The problem with bringing up the Milgram experiment is it is increasingly becoming obvious that it is more legend than real scientific experiment – as Gina Perry’s book “Beyond the Shock Machine” shows – there were numerous subjects that were simply dropped because they didn’t respond the way Milgram wanted. And those who figured out that the shocks were fake and continued because they thought it was some sort of experimental theatre piece or something. But people like the “truthy” conclusion – it makes emotional sense and only recently have people begun to question if it is real science.
Statistically speaking you would expect to get a normal distribution curve with the intelligence or IQ, if we are to give it any merrit, with any group of individuals. Of course some will be morons, some will be not “very bright” ie stupid and some fucking geniuses.
Now certainly to my ethics blowing up people and/or commiting suicide while doing it doesn’t score high but that alone wouldn’t make me more clever than those individuals. I happen to live in an OK country with its own set of problems where blowing up isn’t in the agenta. Yet.
But I cannot assume lightheartidly that children soldiers in Africa, to make an extreme example, aren’t “very bright” just because they were made to live in those circumstances. If I raise my child to be like Sgt. Eugene Tackleberry thats what it will be regardless of brightness or potential brightness.
I would think that you have to factor in, the society those people live, before call names like “not very bright”. Of course people in Africa or in the Amazon rainforest do not have many nobel prize winners or PHDs due to lack of infrastructure and known societal problems.
Does that make them “not very bright”?
Random question: why does this story link to a tiny TPM story, that itself just links to the original, longer New York Times story?
Is it better to keep playing the game of telephone, so the story gets less accurate each time? Or does BoingBoing just hate the Times so much that it’s better to link to some news aggregator than the original source?
I think there is a pill you can get to stop men blowing up too soon
You could say that they all passed the course with flying colors.
Look at who posted the article and you have your answer.
Let’s just say that a significant proportion of the general population won’t have understood what you meant.
Wankers, We’re the People’s Front Of Judea!
I suppose it can’t be denied that…
“American soldiers conducted a drone strike in the interior of Pakistan today, killing over a dozen militants…”
…sounds a lot better than…
“American soldiers dropped a bomb on a village in the interior of Pakistan today, killing over a dozen innocent villagers…”
It’s all in how you market your indiscriminate, unjustified slaughter in the name of political expediency.
I wonder… would the same tactic work in reverse? If (goodness forbid) some foreign force conducted a bombing of an American site and managed to only kill “military age” males, then rationalized it as having killed “militants” as per the definition used by the American military, could they get away with it?
Would it perhaps rudely awaken Americans to the double standard and bankrupt morality of the practice? Or would it just incite even more oblivious lack of self-awareness and blind hatred of “the other”?
