Our values are definitely being tested...

The increasing social and political complexity of the modern world seems to generally pit reason against emotion. As the world becomes more complex, rationally deciphering current events becomes more and more difficult, making emotional narratives much easier to embrace by comparison.

Why put in unending rational leg work when we can settle for simple and emotionally appealing?

So...the fact that the buildings were insured means what? — Wayfarer

It means that in the grand scheme of things the infrastructural damage caused by 9/11 amounted to less financial cost than what a single insurance company could cover with money they had sitting around. Severe and lasting infrastructural damage was not inflicted. It was at best strategically null if destroying the west was their intent... When insurance companies can no longer cover the financial cost of the infrastructural damage caused by terrorism, then significant long term damage to the west might begin to accumulate.

If it doesn't, it's only because it doesn't have the means, but it does certainly have the intent. — Wayfarer

As far as I can tell the primary motivation of Islamic terrorism in the west is a kind of delusional revenge brought on and enhanced by political and religious extremes. Yes the intention to create a global caliphate and destroy western society is out there, but it is a bogeyman isolated in the middle-east and in the minds of a few radicals abroad who continue to remind us of why we abhor them.

The means of radical Islam to destroy the west are far out of it's reach. Beyond somehow gaining an arsenal of nuclear bombs, I can't even begin to imagine what they would need to do in order to accomplish their end goals.

Did you find 9/11 amusing? — Wayfarer

Not at all, but the fact that Larry Silverstein (WTC owner) had the towers fully insured puts a damper on the idea that severe or lasting infrastructural damage was inflicted. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in American history and was morally repugnant along with even the least deadly terror attack, but clearly the emotional scar it left has been it's most prolific legacy, not the strategic damage it did to American infrastructure.

The 9/11 hijackers didn't intend to bring down the west or destroy America. Their stated and speculated motivations include: religious revenge for supporting Israel (stated), religious revenge for sanctions and hostility against Iraq (stated), religious revenge for U.S support of Saudi Arabia (stated), religious motivation to humiliate the west (speculated), non-religious motivation to humiliate the west in response to feeling humiliated by globalization (speculated), an attempt to provoke America into a war which would incite a Islamic unification and revolution (speculated); but destroying the west isn't among them.

9/11 wasn't terrorism bringing down the west, it was terrorism galvanizing it in opposition. It wasn't a part of radical Islam's long term plot of global domination, and it wasn't a militant Islamist group actually making landfall. I'm not saying we should have no airport security or not do background checks on immigrants and tourists, I'm just saying that we don't need to spend every spare dollar and bend-over backwards trying to feel safe from terrorism, and that radical Islam does not actually pose an existential threat to the west.

It seems that our reaction to terrorism, on both the public and political level, is well typified by terror. On the level of the public it seems to air more on the outrage and anger side of fear and on the political level I think we have cool-headed politicians (notable exceptions not withstanding) who are all too willing to opportunistically play to their audience while justifying more power and authority, bigger budgets, and generally less fettered decision making (that dang democracy) in the name of safety...

In a world where outrage is a political commodity, terrorism is a cash cow.

I've more than addressed this in my recent posts. — Thorongil

...Islamic terrorists, on he other hand, are hellbent on creating a worldwide theocratic state and will destroy anyone and anything that stands in their way...

...I am not saying that some ISIS fighter poses the same statistical risk as innumerable other ways in which one could die. But I am saying he poses more of an existential and civilizational risk than a great many other things. You may not care about preserving civilization, but I do...

...If you don't nip terrorism in the bud, then you are taking a massive risk, for if terrorists do acquire the means to better achieve their ends, they will not hesitate to make use of them... — Thorongil

I have a harder time seeing and believing that radical Islam and Islamic terrorism poses even a remote existential threat to western civilization than I do accepting that the statistical threat to my life terrorism poses is actually a rational cause for worry.

I've caricatured that general thrust earlier in this thread... How will terrorism bring down the west? How will radical Islam bring down the west? How will ISIS make landfall in the US?

The contrived answers to these questions I've seen from all sources are comedic to me.

Rest assured you would have received a direct reply. This was an open post formulated in response to reading an article that Wayfarer posted which described a debate between Geert Wilders and someone else, along with reading andrewk's remarks concerning the cost in money and freedom entailed in fighting terrorism.

But now that we're here, what makes terrorism such a massively significant political issue? Is it the death and harm it causes or the widespread outrage that results?

AndrewK is quite right to point out that it's no more practical to throw money at the domestic "war on terror" than it is to throw money at the war on intestinal infection if we're trying to actually save lives rather than merely assuage outrage.

The question is: why should we throw away more money to fund "security theatrics" in the west when the actual safety it provides is increasingly marginal and there are far more cost effective ways to save lives which are currently underfunded? Why is stopping terrorism related death more important than stopping obesity related death? (hint: emotion)

Closing down mosques and banning Qur'ans in the west is a steep price to pay to try and end terrorism, and aside from being a terrible strategy to begin with (obvious reasons), it may come back to bite other religions in the future (obvious reasons). I know politicians would love to convince you that TSA agents groping your children and the NSA spending tax money to invade your privacy using every possible covert means available has something to do with protecting your freedom; or that spending money on the military is required to stop terrorists from blowing you up, but in truth it amounts to less than the boost in actual safety you would get from purchasing an emergency medical kit or attending a driving safety class.

If we're talking about military action abroad in order to intervene in genocides, this is entirely a separate issue from terrorism at home. Fighting ISIS directly is definitely a cost effective way to preserve Yazidi life, and I personally support it, but dismantling ISIS without causing extreme and mass civilian casualty would seem to necessitate many boots on the ground. Funneling money and guns into the region seems not to be working very well so far, for a host of reasons (infighting between rebels, desertion, the sale of weapons to ISIS, weapons being captured by ISIS, and some groups being assimilated into ISIS). So far total US commitment against ISIS hasn't happened because American foreign policy seems to value regime change in Syria much more than bringing and end to ISIS. Likewise, Russia seems more interested in keeping the Al-Assad dynasty in power than defeating ISIS.

It would really be swell if America policed the world based on the morality that the UN tries (and fails) to enforce... Alack, alas... Saudi Arabia is free to behead "sorcerers" on a regular basis, Israel keeps getting the nod to demolish foreign homes to construct it's own, and ISIS benefits from the division within Iraq and Syria caused by the greed of external nations.

I would differ on this opinion. We have AI that learns, but it is not life. We have some very non-AI computer code that much more qualifies as life. You seem to ascribe more intelligence to mitochondria than to an AI that can, from looking at a snapshot of your skin, distinguish melanoma from benign conditions, better than a well trained doctor of dermatology. But the cancer-detecting AI is not making decisions for the benefit of its continued existence. — noAxioms

I didn't quantify/compare AI with mitochondria intelligence. That's apples to oranges.

Why would a fully functional AI that can think and act on it's own behalf not be considered alive?

Of what need do we have at all for a definition? Suppose we had a perfect rigid definition. What would benefit from it? What argument (besides "is this life?") would be laid to rest with such a definition at our disposal? It just seems to be an unimportant language issue to me. — noAxioms

It's about trying to understand what makes life life. The hunt for a sensical definition is tied to our efforts to try and comprehend how and why life does what it does. If we had a better understanding of how carbon based life organizes itself, we might have a better idea of how non-carbon based life might also organize itself.

Those all seem to be the means to achieve the persistence. If the persistence can be had without data storage, I think it would still be life. Would help if I could come up with an example.
There are plenty of life forms too primitive to anticipate their environment, and they persist more by prolific reproduction than to actually influence behavior. — noAxioms

Not all life successfully anticipates it's environment, but prolific reproduction as a means of ensuring long term survival does anticipate the environment. It anticipates harsh conditions, and uses numbers as a strategy to overcome them.

Human minds (and eventually written records) are the medium in which religions live, but religions are not humans, and are not objects any more than fire is an object. It does reproduce and evolve, but I decided it was too natural (inevitable) to meet my definition — noAxioms

Natural vs unnatural (inevitable vs avoidable) is a red herring loaded with baggage. How can you tell the difference between something that is natural and unnatural? If it happens, we call it natural, unless we really don't understand it, in which case we arbitrarily call it unnatural.

I disagreed with this above. You can have either without the other, so they're different things. The brain is just a part, an essential one to a human, but not the only essential one, and certainly not essential to be life, since most life doesn't have one. It can be alive, or can be a dead brain, but it is not itself life. — noAxioms

I said the brain produces intelligence, not that "brains are life". You claimed brains don't produce intelligence, but I contend that they do.

We have no clear definition, and DNA seems a tool to perpetuate life, but I would never say it creates it. It seems that at no point is non-life transformed into life by DNA. — noAxioms

There might be such a point. When strands of DNA begin to fold onto themselves and create three dimensional structure, it is in the process of turning non-living matter into the beginnings of a living cell.

I agree that the Brain has a type of Software and a type of Hardware. But from my point of view none of that has to actually be the Conscious Mind. A Conscious Mind is connected to all that, but does not have to actually be that. A Computer has Hardware and Software but will not be Conscious because it is not connected to a Conscious Mind as far as anyone can know. Certainly a Computer does not have Conscious Volition. The Hardware and Software of a Brain probably do not have Conscious Volition. The Conscious Mind provides the Conscious Volition. — SteveKlinko

It sounds like you're just presuming that some sort of separate entity exists apart from the brain and it's goings on which has something to do with human consciousness. I contend that the human brain contains the entirety of whatever human consciousness really is.

It's possible that some extra-dimensional plane contains the human consciousness, but we've not much reason to presume this is the case.

This would only work if intelligent were better understood than life. It isn't. — Banno

Decoding the physics and chemistry of human intelligence is well behind other fields of biology, but what about artificial intelligence? Granted we don't have a true one yet, machine learning is already extraordinarily powerful. Would an "artificial intelligence" qualify as a form of life? I would say so, which to me means we need programmers to go with our biologists in search of the definition of life. We aren't in dire need of a rigid or flawless definition, as you say (if there is one), but it's intriguing to see how close we can reasonably come.

Kindly comment on my definition of "an unnatural persistent pattern". I had wondered if religion qualified as a life form since it meets a lot of qualifications, especially reproduction. But I decided it was like the fire: It is a process that naturally (inevitably) happens with sufficient fuel laying around and is thus natural, not unnatural. — noAxioms

Anomalous "persistent patterns" seems like a broad and rough but fair description that applies to "life", but intuitively life is more than just a complex persistent pattern; it's a particular kind of complex pattern. It's a pattern that, for example, records large amounts of data in hierarchical structures which is used to inform behavior in a way that anticipates it's environment. Life reacts to it's environment with intelligence.

Religion is an interesting metaphor for life (and vice versa) because it shows how complex behavior (self-propagation) can result from recorded data, but the self-proliferation of religion is largely an abstraction of the behavior of already living humans, not strictly behavior of the religion itself (which has no internal decision making property of it's own and is mostly intelligently developed by humans themselves).

The brain has no such capacity. A human (or other creature) does, but a brain by itself can do none of this. Don't ascribe life to just one part of the functioning machine. Brains are not life forms any more than a car engine can get me to Chicago. A brain is also not consciousness. The processes of the brain might be, but the processes are not an object, and neither of them is life. — noAxioms

A beating heart is not "life" in and of itself, although the cells which comprise it individually could be considered "alive" and a satisfactory example of "life" (even though removed from their system they quickly die). That said, the brain, along with it's accompanying nervous systems is what connects parts of the machine together. The body is the machine but the brain is the conductor. The brain produces consciousness, and consciousness itself surely qualifies as "life".

Does DNA make the decision as to when to mate? I mean, suppose my male DNA was suddenly changed to something else at say prepubescent age 12, let's say to that of a male gorilla or a female human. Would that change the decision? Arguably it would, but most of the physiology of when that change takes place is already there and not really a function of DNA. I'm not enough of a biologist to support or deny the claim.

The DNA is of course responsible for the design of said physiology that eventually makes the actual decision to hit puberty. But the DNA doesn't seem to do the instinctive work, it just hires the contractors that do it. — noAxioms

Creating biological "life" is what DNA does and it plays many roles which influence the behavior of the life it does produce. (Sort of how the brain produces consciousness and influences it's behavior). Yes the causal vehicles DNA uses to influence conscious behavior are indirect and not fully understood (especially by me), but the human body does interact with it's own genetic code on an ongoing basis, so it might not be long before alterations to genetic code could cause things like production of the wrong hormones, and undesirable behavior in certain types of cells (increased rates of division for example), both of which could be catastrophic.

You might start inexplicably banging your chest or find that you have mood changes during full moons.

Innocence should not be confused with weakness. — Cavacava

I agree, but fearless should not be confused with strength.

The image of a lone child doesn't speak to collaboration, to me is expresses desperation. Where is the community behind her?

If we're to be led by children against corporate America, we're fucked. Fearlessness alone is just as reckless as the fearlessness of the bull, except the bull has weight to back him up. The natural shame of the mighty bull is that it tramples meek and the innocent. That's the feeling I get from the standoff.

Let me try to be more specific:

"Life" is any entity capable of intelligent reaction to it's environment.

We still mostly have the problem of defining "intelligence" on our hands, and this is still somewhat vague, but life is vague. If mitochondria is alive, a human cell is alive, and a human brain is alive, what does "alive" mean?

A common denominator I'm interested in exploring is the way that these examples of "life" perpetuate their own existence by recording data to guide their decision making. The mitochondria and the individual cell does it through DNA, and the human brain does it by storing information via connected neurons.

I'm having a hard time finding a good example of non-life which performs this function, or an example of life which does not.

The first one is the least qualified to be on the list. Sure, humans, but human consciousness does not seem in any way to be a life form. It is not self-perpetuating, and seems to be debatably an effect as much as an agent for decision making. A human is intelligent, not the consciousness itself, unless the consciousness is defined as a synonym for the immaterial entity as dualist commonly use the term, in which case we're not talking about physical life at all, and we have no data about reproducability or capability of increase in complexity — noAxioms

O.K, let's talk about the brain then, along with it's accompanying nervous systems. The structure of the brain and it's goings on is what produces human intelligence, and we know that as the human brain acquires data it has the capacity to increase in complexity and sophistication in the decisions it makes.

You label the function of DNA as "intelligent.decision making" which stretches the definition of the words. Plenty of complexity there, but does it qualify as decision making? — noAxioms

It must.

Not only does our DNA in fact make decisions for us (like when to mate for instance), but it also uses data it gathers from the environment through trial and error in order to increase it's own internal complexity and sophistication in decision making.

A human is actually DNA's way of making more, and better, DNA.

As far as I can tell, the bull was originally about strength (and capitalism?). Whoopdedoo!

The addition of the girl seems to put innocence at odds with capitalism. Whoopdedoo!

Looking deeper into the origin of the fearless girl statue, it was actually commissioned by an investment group as an advertisement for an index fund made up of companies with "higher percentages of female leadership". Oh sweet pale irony...

I wondered why there would not be a girl and a boy standing defiantly, which I think would probably be more evocative, but alas some art is best interpreted in terms other than the artist's original intent.

The fearless girl was intended to mean: "Hey! Women can be tough capitalists too!", but it certainly doesn't give me that vibe.

The girl is clearly about to be trampled, (unless we shoot the bull?). Originally the bull was American strength, but now that it's at odds with women and children it's "American tyranny; capitalism". Apparently we must all rush to the defense of a helpless and irrational child whose absent minded parents allowed her to wander into a bull pen.

They should have made a Calamity Jane-esque statue holding a gun and tentatively threatening the bull in a show of equal strength. (either that or a full blown horse mounted heroine complete with lasso, which would be a massive and impressive statue that I think would constitute worthwhile art). Of course, those cheap wall-street bastards would never spring for that much bronze.

Isn't it possible that the Conscious Mind grows along with the Neurons in the Brain and is a separate thing from the Neurons? — SteveKlinko

Yes and no.

The brain is the seat of consciousness. If we meddle with the brain, the consciousness gets meddled with. If the brain gets destroyed, as far as we know the consciousness gets destroyed.

A good analogy here is the difference between computer software and computer hardware:

The hardware houses data and provides physical connect-ability between bits of data.

The software is data contained within the neurons, but more importantly it is the complex way in which individual bits of data connect together which produces a higher function.

The software is dependent upon the hardware (and constrained by it), but is much greater (more complex) than merely the sum of it's parts (it's hardware and also it's bits). There are 100 billion neurons in the human brain, but there are 1000 trillion connections between neurons in the human brain. It is these connections which seems to most plausibly represent the base unit of human cognition.

Like a dance (consciousness), it cannot be defined only by the nature of the dancers (the hardware of the brain), it must also be defined by their movements, including the spaces in-between them.

But maybe there is a way of interpreting relativistic time frames that doesn't support block theory of time? — Marchesk

Isn't block theory of time (eternalism) just a fancy way of saying "determinism"?

Time is a measure of change (from our perspective), and it is the necessity of that change (the causal flow) that connects one moment in time to the moments which immediately precede and follow it.
If we measured a-causal or random change, we would have no reason to suspect that there is a necessary future (a real future) and a necessary past.

If we presumed a-causal change could occur, then block theory of time gives way to a multi-verse of conflicting possibilities, all equally real or unreal. We could still record "blocks of time" by recording the random change we experience, but we would in this situation only be gaining insight into the nature of existence (or what exists) in the same way that a photon detector collapses the wave like properties of light in "the double slit test" and comes out wth a seemingly arbitrary specific result. The only real blocks of time would be the ones we pin down and record via "direct" observation.

No the hard problem has not been solved. Our best guess is that the consciousness is a kind of reflection/illusion produced by interactions of matter in the brain.

We cannot identify the neurons of consciousness because we're pretty sure that consciousness has something to do with the way neurons interact with each-other rather than a property of individual neurons.

Consciousness is like a dance in this sense. When the dancers (neurons) are motionless, there is no consciousness. It rises and falls with activity the between them.

Fire fits the list indeed, but I wonder if you could find a satisfactory exception for my definition too:

"Intelligence" (decisions from "memory" (stored data of any kind)) capable of increasing the complexity of it's decision making through unguided or emergent processes.

The bull was only installed in 1989 as an act of guerilla art.

You must be confusing this piece of art with a different one! (or else are making a reference to economic shenaniganry that went above me head!)

The bear? Forgive me, I'm not following...

I'm sure you're referencing bull/bear market trends, but I'm not sure how :)

Fascinating... The city chose to give it back to him basically. What a terrible decision...

When NY first woke up to the sudden appearance of a bronze bull abandoned in the middle of an intersection, they owned it. They could have cut it to pieces with torches and sold the bronze to pay for it's removal. Whoever floated the idea that the original artist still owns it even as it gets inducted as a permanent fixture of the city, needs to be smacked.

They've successfully given private control over a public exhibit to a private citizen who has no business dictating how the community is allowed to decorate itself. Since he still owns it, he is free to remove it at anytime, for any reason...

I do think the city could easily sue for ownership though. When the city decided to adopt it instead of removing or destroying it, the artist lost his right to make that decision. His abandoning of it and the community tolerating it was absolutely tantamount to a transfer of ownership.

As a public fixture, rather than merely a piece of privately owned art, it is the moral and artistic prerogative of the public, not the artist, to curate the aesthetics and meaning of it's features.

Wall street isn't his personal soap box.

So let me get this straight:

A man vandalizes a public space, and the public subsequently decides they like the aesthetics of said vandalism, so they elect not to destroy/remove it.

Some years later, someone else vandalizes that vandalism, to the aesthetic appeal of the public, and now the original vandal thinks he has rights in this situation?

He has no authority to curate a public space, regardless of whether or not his art exists there. The moral rights he has to his artwork were reasonably forfeit when he discarded it in a public space, ostensibly abandoning it as refuse. We give artists such rights because they work hard on and love their art, but this artist stuffed this particular piece of work into a political cannon and fired it into no-mans-land. He lost all rights over it when he chose to illegally inflict it upon the public, in my view.

Even if he wanted to have the bull removed (to protect it) at his own expense, he should be denied that right. It belongs to the public, morals and all. It's theirs to mutilate.

Sure the fearless girl destroys the original message, but since the public owns the bull, message included, it's theirs to destroy.

Sure the original artist ought to be pissed. He got beat at his own game.

I'd like to go out on a limb and try to defend the following definition of life: Self perpetuating intelligence. Any and all criticisms would be appreciated.

This definition handily describes all carbon based DNA having forms of life we have actually been able to observe, but more importantly it covers many forms of life we have yet only encountered in fairy tales. The intelligence of single cells and simple multi-cellular organisms like blades of grass stems from the genetic data that governs their structure and ultimately behavior. In a sense genes are able to remember in order to make intelligent decisions about what to do, which is a basic description of intelligence.

By "self-perpetuating" I don't mean "able to reproduce" or "emerged on it's own", but rather that the "intelligence" itself (the complex decision making (involves memory)) is capable of internal development (an increase in complexity). This is what differentiates a smart phone as non-life from mold as life: the mold can evolve and get smarter.

From this, here are some examples of things that qualify as life:

Human consciousness
Grass
single-cells
Mitochondria
"Artificial" intelligence

Intuition tells me that a part of what makes looking at "life" interesting is that there is all kinds of unknown cool crap that it might do in the future. Increases in the complexity of decision making is definitely something that can make that happen.

I think it depends on the nature of the hassling. Some of it is warranted, some of it not.

When a staunch anti-theist like Christopher Hitchens criticizes religion for it's inherent irrationality and it's contributions to suffering in the world, he doesn't also go on to say something like "There ought to be a law against religion". If he did then people would have said he was simply bigoted against religion. Perhaps some of what he said amounted to hate generating faulty generalization, but unlike some of the rhetoric floating around in contemporary internet culture, at least his position isn't also a trajectory toward outright repression of religion.

The reason why I brought up the Orlando night club attack specifically was because it seems like an example of terrorism more purely motivated by religious and cultural hatred than most others (as opposed to contemporary geopolitical sympathy). The on-going murder of gays in the Muslim world isn't associated with "holy war" or "jihad", it's associated with the cultural and religiously reinforced hatred of homosexuals (similar to hatred for apostates in appearance) and the "policing" (purging) of one's own community/family. It bears heavy similarity with the west's own recent history of persecuting gays.

The Orlando terrorist carried out an attack against the gay community specifically, not "the west" per se. The gay community of the west isn't the sworn enemy that ISIS thinks it's fighting against, it's the entirety of the west. Why would he choose to target only the gay community unless hatred toward it was chief among his motivations? In the eyes of the murderers who continue to torture lynch and execute gays abroad, this wouldn't even be considered a "terror attack", it's something they would do to their own family members. Not so long ago in the west we too were culturally barbaric enough to engage in the same actions.

As a aide note "culture" and "religion" (and as they intertwine) should not be thought of as safe from criticism and condemnation in any kind of cultural relativist sense. My position in this thread is not to broadly absolve Islamic doctrine and practice of their moral failings, it is rather to point out that the same moral failures have and still exist in Christian doctrine and practice (along with many other religions), and so our redress of "Islam" (broadly) should be tempered with the understanding that it can and should also apply to Christianity.

Foolish anti-theists think they can actually eliminate a religion, not realizing that as they more broadly attack the religion as a whole the more they generate widespread sympathy for it. You cannot eliminate sympathy by (rational) force, it has to die out on it's own. The willingness to obey and enforce a specific religious tenet is one of the ways in which changing culture can dictate the shape that religion takes (as modern western Christianity has somewhat shown). Unless we're prepared to defenestrate hundreds of thousands of Christian clergy for their doctrines, many people need to come to grips with the idea that barbaric elements within Islamic culture and practice can, will, and must change, much as the Christian west has done. Opposing homophobia and the persecution of gays on progressive moral grounds is one way to influence cultural and religious change rather than stimulating only entrenched opposition by condemning the entirety of Islamic culture and religion as one broad and singular package.

Given the ample testimony that was floating around (including from the shooters wife) I'm less skeptical, but apparently his ex-wife has just pleaded not guilty to charges of aiding and abetting and obstruction of justice, so there's a good chance any hard evidence will emerge in court.

I think the supposition that the Orlando shooter himself was gay or bisexual and frequented gay dating sites was later debunked, IIRC — Arkady

As far as I know no gay dating app accounts were ever discovered, but there is a boat load of eyewitness testimony suggesting he frequented the night club he attacked. How was all that debunked? Severe homophobia seems the primary motivator of the attack, regardless of whether or not self-hatred was a factor.

I'm saying it's the genesis of all thought.

What would happen if we actually caught the truth?

Would philosophers bat it around back and forth like a proud cat who captured and killed a mouse?

Would we leave it on the porch and go seeking after more?

Can you imagine?

Imagination is absolutely necessary in philosophy. It's necessary for thought too I reckon... Otherwise we would just exhibit basic reactions to basic stimulus, like so many uninteresting animals...

The distinction I make between "religious" and "political" is to separate religious rhetoric as an influence from environmental and circumstantial influences (such as appealing directly to wars in the middle east as a justification for terrorism).

I do understand that religious terrorists are most often heavily steeped in religious concepts like paradise/martyrdom and the divine righteousness of holy war, and that this ideology is what comes standard in the handbooks of entrenched terror groups, but unless someone is totally at the mercy of such an organization, some justification/emotional driver external to doctrine seems necessary to actually motivate action.

Incidentally I don't believe the Orlando attack was motivated by anything like the above. That perpetrator was a crazed psychopath who simply latched onto the narrative for his own perverted reasons — Wayfarer

Evil is the easiest thing to condemn, but the hardest thing to understand. It's very easy to call it psychopathy and perversion (and maybe that's accurate) but exploring the causes of that psychopathy is complicated, tedious, and generally repulsive to endure. And yet it's necessary if we want to deepen our understanding of the various causes of this and similar incidents.

In this case, "radical ideology did it" seems to tell less than half the story. His religious and cultural hatred of homosexuals in particular (not hatred of the west as a whole) was central in his crime, and in light of the fact that he was himself gay or bi-sexual, it stands to reason that the resulting self-hate played a substantial role in creating the instability/psychopathy evident in his actions.

Reminds me of the plot of a spinoff T.V series called "Stargate: Universe"...

An ancient alien race discovers anomalous or artificial structure in the CMB (geometry that could not have arisen naturally and implies intelligence) and sends a ship that can travel faster than the speed of light to the distant and corresponding region of space in order to investigate it. But before their race discovers the truth of it, they die. Thousands of years later, humans are teleported on board that ship (still traveling toward the anomaly) and set about continuing that research. But before they could discover the truth of it, the damned show died!!!

I was so hooked on that show and scientifically challenged enough (at the time) to really buy into the mysticism of it. But now it seems oddly fitting that ultimate truth should be so fragile and easily missed/lost. From this side of the big bang the truth of what came before might as well be dead and lost to us. Your main character dying, the ancient enlightened race from my show dying, and even the show itself dying seems like logic's way of saying "This is a truth you will never have".

That might be true of many of the individuals recruited to Jihadist causes, but it also might be the case that terrorist ideologues are motivated by the belief that Western culture truly is a satanic force which is bent on the destruction of Islam. They therefore see themselves as warriors in a holy war, a cosmic war, between the forces of evil, personified by The Great Satan, which is American/Western cultural imperialism and degeneracy, and themselves as righteous warriors of Jihad. I think that is much nearer the way they seem themselves, rather than simply ascribing their actions to confusion and desperation. — Wayfarer

The belief that the west is a satanic lacks impact without basing itself in an emotional appeal to a real world conflict. It's one thing to accept in principle or in an ideological vacuum, but to then inspire direct action on it's own is a tall order.

There was a common saying we would use to explain terrorism: "They hate our freedoms", but in truth that's quite far from the reality of typical terrorist attacks. Terrorists almost always have the perception that their actions are a strategic retaliation for specific actions by specific groups and in specific conflicts. Take almost any Muslim terrorist attack as an example: an "evil west" will be featured in their narrative (this can be a part of what I broadly call confusion (lacking a better word) that leads to indiscriminately attacking civilians) but they will almost invariably cite real world conflicts as the actual justification and "retaliatory logic" behind their attack. "The west is evil" is much more of a political idea than it is a religious one.

My point here is to try and get a sense of what features more heavily in the psychological profile of the average Muslim terrorist, but there are of course cases where different motivations will be more prominent than others. In my approximation overtly religious rhetoric serves to reinforce and enhance existing hatred of the west rather than being it's originator in the vast majority of cases.

In attempt to demonstrate this, consider how many examples of terrorism we have where religion is completely absent from the ideologies of the terrorists, but how few where ideology (of any kind) is the sole motivation (to a reasonable degree, given there are always external influences) of terrorism.

One of the few examples that comes to mind is the Orlando night club shooting which was specifically an attack on the gay community. The attacker did make references to attacks against ISIL on face-book hours before the attack, but his choice of target was explicitly aligned with religious ideology and there is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence suggesting that retaliation was not his primary motivation. By many accounts the attacker was himself gay or bi-sexual, and so it is not at all inconceivable that the intolerance for homosexuality in his religion and culture caused not only his hatred of the gay community, but also himself. Rather than suffering abroad serving as his emotional grievance, his own internal conflict seems to be what motivated him toward what he must have viewed as moral and religious absolution.

Were it not for religious and cultural hatred and intolerance of homosexuality, this attack would not have occurred, but that cultural and religious intolerance is ubiquitous across many religions and many cultures. This doesn't diminish the horrible reality of his crimes, or diminish the need to oppose such hatred and intolerance (both religious and cultural), but we should also acknowledge that Islam isn't it's only source in the world.

P.S When speaking of religiously inspired violence in general (as opposed to terrorism), the physical safety of gays is widely under threat, and changing that will be a slow but steady process. As globalization spreads western ideals, regional cultures are progressing (as western culture itself did) toward levels of tolerance where violence against gays doesn't manifest despite hard-coded religious condemnation in the mainstream religion.

That's a lot. It's not surprising, and not altogether illogical, to connect a pressure cooker bomb by a Kyrgyzstani in Boston, or a truck attack by an Uzbek in Stockholm to the larger number of bombings elsewhere, especially if there are some commonalities. — Bitter Crank

My suspicion is that aside from the commonality of a shared religion there must also be various psychological influences exterior to the religion itself that play a role in the creation of terrorist psychology. What strikes me as most different between the typical perpetrators of suicide bombings in the middle east (the majority of which take place in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan) and the Boston marathon terrorists (for example) is that they were not directly affected by the kind of strife that accompanies war and conflict (but were instead exposed to propaganda depicting that strife alongside extremist rhetoric) and also were not directly affiliated with or supported by organized terrorist groups. Their primary emotional driver came from focusing on suffering in Iraq and Afghanistan which translated into blame on the American government and subsequently (and indiscriminately) on American citizens..

Belief in "eternal paradise" definitely serves to make death more palatable for a would be "martyr", but it doesn't exactly make death desirable on it's own. Such a belief was referenced by the Boston marathon terrorists, but they didn't exactly seem to completely desire death and martyrdom. This contrasts highly with suicide bombings carried out in the middle-east by individuals who explicitly include suicide in their plans. It stands to reason that in addition to inciting hatred for one's perceived enemies, living in the conditions of prolonged and bloody conflict (rather than exposure through media) causes individuals to value their own lives less (in addition to lives of others in general), which may also enhance the perceived value of a paradise after-life. Rather than chasing paradise or upholding ideological values, the main psychological driver for almost all terrorist attacks is the perception of retaliation against an enemy/aggressor, which somehow makes a difference toward some political plight; paradise afterward only serves to lessen the cost.

This is also true for some terrorist organizations that draw upon desperation and anger for recruitment which is naturally abundant in war torn regions. For them, their doctrine amounts to a battle plan and promise of victory against their perceived enemies, and they've become somewhat effective at indoctrinating and radicalizing new recruits. It's never just: "Islam says kill the infidel". It's something like: "The infidels are attacking our homes, our children, and our faith, and so in order to protect them you must kill these infidels as our religion instructs us to do". I would say that groups wielding such rhetoric act like a springboard for terrorist action, but they can only thrive in an environment where there are individuals desperate enough to accept their specific narrative and extreme resolve.

The justification a typical terrorist might offer for their actions is largely the product of confusion; they confuse actual aggressors with innocent civilians, and they ironically misunderstand the predictable consequences of their actions (it foments opposition to their cause rather than vice versa). This rational confusion can be exacerbated by religion (it delineates opposing sides) but it is also spurred by rhetoric which identifies specific groups as enemies and calls for violence to be done to them. The moral depravity inherent in a willingness to take innocent lives to achieve political/religious goals can definitely come from religious doctrine (and does in more ways than just promoting terrorism), but actually being immersed in a violent and morally depraved environment seems to be the major source of terrorist actions being viewed as morally equivalent or superior to the actions of perceived enemies.

One take-away from this helps explain the spread of suicide bombings in 2016 shown by the article you linked (below). The vast majority of all suicide bombings take place in countries with the most prolonged and violent internal conflicts, but not necessarily the most ideologically religious/Islamic. Obviously pre-existing conflict and resident terrorist organizations will naturally affect these numbers, but if suicide bombing was primarily ideologically motivated, I would expect to see a more consistent spread across Muslim countries (and their perceived enemies) rather than the vast majority of all attacks occurring in regions with the most pre-existing violence. While the United States did experience terror attacks of other kinds in 2016, compared to it's prevalence elsewhere terrorism in the U.S is almost non-existent despite being the central villain in most Islamist narratives (and having no shortage of resident Muslims capable of being radicalized). I conclude that this is the case because Muslims living in the west are not typically exposed to or immersed in the levels of violence and death which generates the emotion and hatred that is central to motivating terrorism; violent rhetoric capitalizes on existing violence, but violent rhetoric alone is most often not enough.

It occurs to me that terrorism really is the prime mover of anti-isamic sentiment.

I wrote the OP with all forms of religious violence in mind, not just terrorism, but terrorism does seem to be what actually drives emotional opposition to Islam (not lynching and capital punishment under sharia, not the oppression of women, etc..).

Curious...

This means that the most persuasive rebuke of the "Islam is too violent to be tolerated" crowd would be to address and dismantle the idea that terrorism is unique to Islam or that it is statistically significant as a behavioral norm for Muslims.

This makes diffusing unwarranted and extreme opposition to Islam straightforward, but it doesn't do much to help us understand how terrorism can and does arise in the first place. To do so we may need to tediously catalog and discuss the apparent and possible psychological motivations and influences of individual terrorists to explore and understand the various observable terrorist archetypes. And in the words of Dostoyevsky "Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him". It's not a pretty picture.

Off the bat I propose three distinct (Islamic) terrorist archetypes:

The first is the western terrorist ("homegrown", sometimes a convert to Islam, raised in the west). This seems to be the most rare kind of terrorist, and what makes them relevant as a distinct group is that they were for the most part not raised in orthodox Islamic communities and societies as their less rarefied counterparts. It might also be worth noting that the acts of terror carried out by these individuals are among the most visible and emotionally impacting.

As far as I can tell most acts of Islamic terrorism are carried out in Muslim countries by individuals raised in Islamic societies and communities (although the actions of these terrorists do include activity in the west). Middle eastern terrorists of this kind typically carry out suicide bombings, and in contrast with western terrorists who largely act alone, they generally act in accordance with the wishes and support of one of many radical groups they have been inducted into (as others have mentioned, destitution and illiteracy are common in these individuals).

The third archetype I have in mind is a bit harder to define. ISIS terrorists and their leaders are in all appearances terrorism incarnate. They are a group so fundamentally so dedicated to senseless violence that they have become a Mecca for bloodthirsty mercenaries and ideologically driven psychopaths who now exist in a self-perpetuating hierarchy of fear and violence. Not only does it attract people with particular psychologies from abroad, it also sweeps up and and indoctrinates locals in a military style. What distinguishes this group from other terrorists and terrorist organization is it's sheer level of organization (the way it controls it's fighters), and the violent extremity of it's actions, stated goals and religious ideology...

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By looking at the differences between the average psychological profile between these archetypes, and the prevalence of each, we can get a better sense of where, how and why Islam plays a critical role in motivating people to carry out acts of terrorism... (I'm trying to make shorter text walls, so I'll leave it here for now and try to explore these archetypes in a future post).

I am unsure of the reasoning behind your post — TimeLine

I wanted to write down my understanding of the CMB to see how well I understood it, and it occurred to me that not many people are very familiar with it whatsoever. They see the CMB map and they have no sweet clue what they're looking at... I don't think I achieved what I wanted to though, which was to really help to visualize what it actually is/looks like.

is the universe ever going to 'crunch' and die, or are we expanding exponentially — TimeLine

They think the universe is really really flat, which means it should keep expanding, but eventually slow down, and never actually stop (If Krauss is to be taken at his word).

Are you talking about the acoustic oscillations detected by WMAP? If so, this is wrong. ;) — TimeLine

As far as I understand it, pressure differences in the photon-baryon fluid are the acoustic oscillations. The photons we gather reflect that pressure distribution at the time of decoupling.

Why more or hotter photons are detectable in different regions of the CMB must be due to some mechanism which caused more radiation from more dense regions of the baryon-photon fluid.

Is it that there were more photons released from dense regions because they contained more photons? Did the gravitational strength differential of these more dense regions cause more photons to be emanate from specific trajectories at the time of decoupling?

I admit I'm not exactly sure. The best digestible description I can muster is that directions where more (or hotter, I don't actually understand light very well) CMB photons are striking us, there was a denser cloud of baryon-photon fluid, and so when decoupling occurred more photons emanated form that direction.

Can you offer a correction?

and a little more homogenization wouldn't be a bad thing.

Any guidance here? — Bitter Crank

When the world was a much bigger place, we were much less homogeneous. The distances that separated us insulated us from the conflicts that naturally developed from collision between culturally disparate groups. The world is now smaller and homogeneity seems to be at a peek, (which logically is what you get from increased mixing). It's a good thing for sure; without it we fight.

Some people take pause though, and look back on lost culture as if it is some unique and impressive animal that is now extinct. "What a tragedy!", they think...

Then they set about categorizing every possible discrete cultural genesis as some sort of holy nature reserve which must be preserved in perpetuity so that our children can admire it.

Diversity can be interesting, and there's some value to stuffing a dodo bird, but it's of historical or aesthetic interest only. When a living group of people change, they should not lament that change unless they regret what they (we) have become. That might be where many people really disagree...

I'm somewhat fascinated by how religious reform, revisionism, and reinterpretation is informed by individual bits (sometimes single lines/verses) of the hard coded doctrine. I view religious doctrine (a body of) as a kind of genomic database of different "genes" that can each have their own complex and convoluted impact on how a given religion winds up expressing itself in a given human environment. Like genes, the more something specific is repeated within the doctrine, the more strongly it will tend to be pronounced in the beliefs and behavior of it's adherents. Additionally, specific "genes" can exist within a given religious genome but lay dormant, having little or no impact on the resulting form of the overall religious organism. Finally you can have an individual line of code that causes totally different effects at different times and in different environments; their effect is ambiguous or indeterminate.

O you believe, obey God and obey the messenger and also those in charge among you" — Qur'an: 4:59

This verse in particular I have seen used to claim that it is considered sharia to obey the law of the land you are in. I'm not sure if and how much reinterpretation might be required to squeeze that meaning out, but once squeezed and accepted has vast and sweeping implications about many other tenants that some Muslims hold has more important (namely a desire for theocracy itself). It can also be possibly useful as a seed of secularism.

The trends and characteristics of religious behavior are undeniably shaped and possibly somewhat constrained by religious doctrine, but the statistical variance that results from specific doctrines is undeniably vast. To me this paints a picture of a religious world which is highly unconcerned with reason and truth (of and from their own doctrines) which means they must get something else out of religion instead (as a whole, not on an individual level). Individually a religious scholar can be (or seem) entirely concerned with the objective truth of their religious texts, but should they come to an enlightened and rational new interpretation they would still need to convince a crowd of their fellow apes to all think the same way and at the same time for their change to come to fruition. It's much easier to sway a crowd using something which appeals to their existing emotional state than to use cold and rigid logic, which is why what emerges in overall religious trends might be just as much or more of an expression of what the people want than it is an expression of the actual religion.

Bringing this back to the point at hand, as extreme conflicts continue to play out in the middle east, it's likely not being lost on it's people that religion is playing a distinct role (religious differences seem to be how battle lines are most commonly drawn). More and more the idea that a human law designed to protect a religiously plural society will then be justifiable not just in the vacuum of enlightenment, but as a direct emotional appeal to those those who want to see an end to suffering. Early in heated religious conflicts firebrand verses appeal to anger and function as a call to arms, but in the bitter end, when all blood-lust is slaked and the bill is due, messages of forgiveness and peace become the main attractors. The peace of Westphalia brought an end to distinctly religious war in Europe because the thirty years war which preceded it caused human suffering and (state) welfare to become more real and more important than simply upholding the tenants of their conflicting doctrines and squabbling religious leaders. The current period in the history of Islam might have an effect not unlike the thirty years war, which should cause not only a heavy change in what pieces of doctrine are most focused on and valued (peace is at a premium), but also perhaps a general step back from orthodox interpretation of verses which condone violence or otherwise obfuscate peace.

There's more pressure on Islamic reformers than ever before and we get to watch it play out in a digitally recorded and interactive environment. I don't know much about the scope and spread of scholarly Islamic schools of thought, but how accessible to the average Muslim are they? The more accessible, the more I reckon they could be selected by Islamic preachers and patrons at large who look for ideology that suits their desires and the desires of their community.

If you're only able to respond by listing outlying tragedies, we could go back and forth forever. Let me take a whack at it:

#Hiroshima

170,000 dead

What's your end game Tom?

Amend the constitution and ban a religion? Close the mosques? Run the muzzies out of town? Send them to camps?

Who do we go to war with and what will be our goal in said war?

If none of the above, and all you're trying to do is persuade people that Islam is nothing but evil, then you've got to do a better job of it. Religion can be a catalyst for violence, yes, but answer me this:

Why doesn't every able bodied Muslim on the planet engage in terrorism if that's the inexorable directive of Islamic doctrine?

If you can answer that one, then please tell me why Islamic terrorism such as we're seeing today is a relatively new phenomenon in Islam's history rather than a mainstay throughout? What happened in the Islamic world in the 70's that caused Islamic terrorism to show up and proliferate?

You're showing no understanding of history Tom (of Islam and otherwise), and no acknowledgement whatsoever of how varied contemporary Islamic culture (and belief, doctrinal interpretation, behavior) actually is. Pointing to the farthest behavioral outliers (actual terrorists) as representing the whole only works on an emotional level, not a logical one. You say that the terrorists represent true Islam and non terrorists Muslims say "peace" represents true Islam. Who is correct here? You or them? (you're both wrong on a fundamental level because both versions exist as expressions of what Islam is/does, although they certainly have the numbers on their side).

I want to understand contemporary Islamic terrorism, and I'm more than willing to speak openly about it; no existential crisis/white guilt/cultural relativism gets in the way of my thoughts, that I promise you. But when you simply state that the entirety of what can be referred to as "Islam" is the one and only ingredient which produces and perpetuates Islamic terrorism, you're not actually explaining why; you're not talking openly about it. You feel like me resisting that idea might come from fear of being mean, but it actually comes from my desire for rigid accuracy in my understanding of human behavior, religions, and the world. When I was a young atheist I spent quite a bit of time condemning Christianity in all the same ways that you currently argue against it now, but overtime I realized that "Christianity" isn't actually a dragon that can be slain. It's a field of windmills. Some of these windmills do conceal monsters and are worth burning down (as is the case with radical Islam), and the surrounding windmills tend to agree, but not all of them actually contain harmful beasts. Once you run out of actual monsters to chase, all that's left are the benign windmills, what should we do to those? Should we burn them down even though they might actually believe and behave in peace? That would unfortunately make us the monsters.

Every-time I rebuke your position somehow you resist getting into specifics in favor of restating your position along with a new-old angle of approach. Nevertheless, here's that rebuke yet again: if "Islam" is the one and only ingredient that causes violence and terrorism, then all or at least the majority of Muslims would be violent terrorists. Given that this is clearly not the case, what causes variance in the behavior of Muslims? Can you be specific?

It's not growing, and that's the problem. — tom

If you look at prof. Saad's youtube metrics and those of other youtube pundits who are windy on the subject, you can actually see charted growth. But unfortunately, hobby grade you-tube political punditry comes with sloppy double standards too (not that all of prof. Saad's input is worthless, but applying evolutionary behaviorism to economics only gets you so far in a discussion and debate on theology and politics). In the case of this video, he accuses Islam of broadly disguising hate speech and threats of violence with religious freedom, and ends with doomsday talk to get us to "rise up" and "talk openly about how to solve the problem, in order to solve the problem"... Though he doesn't ever get around to actually defining the problem beyond: "Islam".

It's true that the examples he cited of abhorrent beliefs should be ridiculed and contested, but he incorrectly equates these extreme beliefs with the beliefs (and speech? and actions?) of the average Muslim. Anyone actually credibly calling for such violence, religious or no, can already be arrested on those grounds. He advocates for special anti-islamic speech laws (essentially); what could possibly go wrong? Christian doctrine can reasonably advocate genocide and child slavery too, so shouldn't we censor the offending bits of both religious texts?