Police have identified the perpetrator of an attack in Nice, France, who has killed at least 84 people attending a 14th July firework display.
The perpetrator had weapons and hand grenades in the back of his truck.
Naturally, there is interest in who this person was. An Islamic petty criminal, known to the Police but apparently not to the security services.
In predicting intelligence we are guided by the indifference of the indicator. Any test will do, formal or informal, if it reliably distinguishes one person from another, and has real life predictive value.
In predicting mass violence we should also follow the indifference of the indicator. Muslim men, probably with a criminal background, watching lots of jihadi videos and sermons, recently becoming devout, and probably subject to some random change in personal circumstances which would otherwise not be significant. Noisy data, and hard to find the signal in time to do anything about it. More potential perpetrators than there are teams to follow them.
President Hollande has just told France they will have to get used to terrorist attacks. It would be good to have a Plan B.
Anyone who dared to think out loud about a Plan B would presumably be accused of a hate crime and thrown in jail.
ReplyDeleteFIRST: I want to thank James Thompson for all your interesting texts. SECOND, a comment to dearieme: I hope that the French politician Jacques Myard will not be accused of hate crime and thrown in jail. PERHAPS some daring individuals will discuss Plan B? http://sputniknews.com/europe/20160715/1043020340/legislation-france-immigration.html
ReplyDeleteEarly reports indicate a fairly recent split with his significant other.
ReplyDeleteI don't often look at breitbart, but found this today.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/07/16/sweden-lowers-intelligence-requirement-new-police-officers/
Well, you named the indicator: Muslim men. No we just have to decide what to with the false positives this incator provides.
ReplyDeleteI have been reading breitbart recently. What about this - a Dr. Joseph Downing, a London School of Economics academic specialising in French politics and minority populations --- he believed the attack had nothing to do with Islam, but was merely the act of a mentally troubled man. --- insisting that there was in fact no common thread between people who turn to terrorism. --- “I am not a fan of an over sociological explanation for these kinds of attacks because there are so many people who are socio-economically disenfranchised in France of a Muslim background who do not get engaged in any way or support in any way any terrorist network. --- “My personal explanation for this – as we have seen with some of the reports that have come out about this individual today – is that these are the acts of mentally disturbed people, possibly. --- The individual today, there’s speculation that perhaps his motivations for conducting this attack had nothing to do with an ideological commitment to terrorism, but perhaps because he was in the middle of some sort of emotional distress over his wife leaving him.” THAT IS AN EXPLANATION AT THE PERSONAL LEVEL TOTALLY OMITTING CULTURE. I wonder what Gilbert Ryle would have said about the reasoning of LSE-Dr. Joseph Downing. http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/07/15/watch-sky-news-pins-blame-nice-attack-disenfranchisement/
ReplyDeleteGood to have you quoting Gilbert Ryle. Welcome, Ann. Emotional distress after a divorce some years ago does not usually lead to mass murder.
DeleteThere's an argument that people under unbearable stress "revert to type". If the "type" in question is defined by living in a milieu where murdering large numbers of people as part of "jihad" is viewed favourably, then that might explain why it was a mad moslem who drove the lorry rather than one of the large number of highly stressed, mad indigenous Frenchmen who were presumably available.
ReplyDeleteAgree. Scripts differ among depressed people, as you say.
DeleteI think we should at least consider the possibility that there may be multiple contributing causal factors for terrorist behavior. Clearly, there's a higher frequency of this sort of thing in Muslim populations than in most other demographics. However, that does not have to be the sole causal factor. One of the questions to ask is what the distinguishing characteristics are of Muslims who do this and those who do not.
ReplyDeleteI am surprised at how often these things are posed as false dichotomies, either the Islamic background or something else, such as poverty or psychological instability or whatever. What about the possibility that psychologically unstable individuals are more likely to engage in terrorism if they also have an justifying ideology to go with their instability?
Agree. At times of despair an explanation which justifies revenge (on unfeeling foreigners) can tip a vulnerable and resentful person into violence.
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