16: Tyler Cowen - The Revolution Will Not Be Marginalized: Difference between revisions
16: Tyler Cowen - The Revolution Will Not Be Marginalized (edit)
Revision as of 22:42, 10 February 2020
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'''Eric:''' Agreed. And I agree that we don't know why so few reservoirs have been poisoned with relatively low-tech options. The Las Vegas shooting for example showed what a small level of innovation in mass killing can do to really amp the body count, if that's what somebody is trying to optimize. I think that there is a huge mystery, but I don't think that Pinker – from what I understand of his basis for optimism – is really getting at that. People who listen to this podcast and have heard me elsewhere, have heard me complain that it's as if he's neglecting a potential energy term, but for violence. And so, the realized violence as you were pointing out has gone down – but the potential for violence is enormous, and as the cost falls, the access to violence of this particular nature seems to put it within reach of far too many hands. | '''Eric:''' Agreed. And I agree that we don't know why so few reservoirs have been poisoned with relatively low-tech options. The Las Vegas shooting for example showed what a small level of innovation in mass killing can do to really amp the body count, if that's what somebody is trying to optimize. I think that there is a huge mystery, but I don't think that Pinker – from what I understand of his basis for optimism – is really getting at that. People who listen to this podcast and have heard me elsewhere, have heard me complain that it's as if he's neglecting a potential energy term, but for violence. And so, the realized violence as you were pointing out has gone down – but the potential for violence is enormous, and as the cost falls, the access to violence of this particular nature seems to put it within reach of far too many hands. | ||
'''Tyler:''' One of our saving graces could be that the contagion effects for methods of violence seem pretty strong. We're in a time where in the U.S. shooting up schools is the thing to do. It happens more often by some metrics than it used to. In the 1970's being a serial killer was somehow like the thing to do. So if you're inspired by what people have done just before you, and you're not very innovative, it could be that violence and lack of innovation are somehow correlated, and contagion effects mean you'll kill a terrible number of innocent people, but it still will quite limit how much damage you do to the world as a whole. | |||
'''Eric:''' Well, in terms of R&D; thinking about terror innovation is quite interesting. It seems to me that it's hard to remember that there is no known linkage between suicide bombing and Islam before the the Beirut barracks bombing, if I'm not mistaken. | |||
'''Tyler:''' It came from Sri Lanka, in the approximate sense the idea, from the Tamil Tigers. They're not the only ones who've done it, but… | |||
'''Eric:''' Didn't they really perfect it after the Beirut barracks bombing, and then it sort of came back to the Middle East, do I have that wrong? | |||
'''Tyler:''' I'm not sure on the timing. | |||
'''Eric:''' But there are very few groups that have been using suicide bombing in the modern era. | |||
'''Tyler:''' Yes. | |||
'''Eric:''' Maybe the Kurds, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, and various muslim violent movements; jihadi movements. | |||
'''Tyler:''' The striking thing about 9/11 is how innovative it was. That's what really ought to scare us, but it does seem also such innovations are pretty scarce. | |||