I remember commentators discussing the question of why we didn’t see i) terrorists shooting people at shopping centres, ii) knifing them, iii) running pedestrians over with cars, etc, all the way back in 2001-2005.
I find it surprising that this obvious idea would occur to me and other random journalists and bloggers, but not to people who are actually trying to engage in terrorism. Regardless, pointing out these methods didn’t have any noticeable effect at the time.
An alternative explanation might be that we saw this spate of terrorism—as far as I know all committed by people who are sympathetic to ISIS—because ISIS had a different ideology that regarded these attacks as more worthwhile. My impression is that ISIS was more motivated by pure bloodthirsty religious zealotry, with less of an emphasis on shifting the foreign policy of the US and countries in the Middle-East.
It wouldn’t surprise me if ISIS—with its indiscriminate enthusiasm for all forms of murder—was pushing these methods aggressively, while Al-Qaida and other predecessor groups would have regarded running over a few pedestrians as an insufficient reason for one of its supporters to die. Perhaps because it’s not striking enough, embarrassingly unimpressive compared to 9/11, not focussed on the right symbolic targets, or for some other practical reason.
The copy-cat explanation is also slightly different from giving people ‘ideas’. ISIS supporters may not have been motivated by a blog post mentioning the method—only by seeing someone else actually pull it off. One might think of these methods not only coming to people’s attention, but also becoming ‘fashionable’ among a particular group of fanatics.
ISIS, with its quasi-country status, may also simply have been unusually effective at attracting supporters in Europe or the US, and convincing them to attempt terrorist attacks. We would naturally see more experimentation of all kinds when 1,000 people are actively working to kill their fellow civilians than when only 100 are.
I agree with your conclusion though—saying things that are ‘obvious’ can absolutely speed up how many people notice them. If only because there are many many possible ‘obvious’ thoughts, but with one stream of consciousness, each of us only has time to stumble on a tiny fraction.
One note I’ll add is that similar attacks with vehicles or bladed weapons were used against Israel prior to their adoption by ISIS, though these attacks are not as widely reported by Western media since they don’t happen in Europe or the US; that said, it’s quite possible that ISIS themselves got the idea from Palestinian attackers, especially if the “copycat hypothesis” is true.
The clearest explanation seems to be that extremely few people, terrorists included, are seriously trying to figure out the most effective ways to kill strangers—if they were, they’d be doing a better job of it.
AI Impacts’ discontinuous progress investigation finds that it’s really hard to make sudden progress on metrics that anyone cares about, because the low hanging fruit will already be gone. I doubt national militaries routinely miss effective ways to conduct war—when they make a serious effort, they find the best weapons.
If terrorists aren’t noticing the most effective ways to maximize their damage, it could be good evidence that they’re not seriously trying. (So +1 to Gwern’s theory)
I actually quite disagree—I believe history indicates national militaries very frequently miss effective ways to conduct war. There’s a famous phrase, “fighting the last war”, that describes how military planners almost always miss innovations and changes in conditions during peacetime and only adapt when forced to by direct conflict.
For example, between World War One and World War Two, the world’s militaries converged on several dangerously false theories with respect to what the next war would look like, and many weapons and strategies used in the early phases of World War Two were ineffective as a result.
By the end of World War Two, battleships were not only not the decisive naval unit but altogether obsolete in favor of aircraft carriers; strategic bombing wasted the lives of many soldiers, killed civilians indiscriminately, and didn’t even work; fixed fortifications infamouslyfailed and were no longer considered serious defenses.
I am quite confident that similar mistakes are being made now, and could even point you to some likely suspects if you like—and all this despite very substantial effort into arms development!
Good point, I hadn’t considered that. If I were to try to fit this to my model, I would say that there’s nobody really looking to produce the best military technology/tactics in between wars. But if you look at a period of sustained effort in staying on the military cutting edge, i.e. the Cold War, you won’t see as many of these mistakes and you’ll instead find fairly continuous progress with both sides continuously using the best available military technology. I’m not sure if this is actually a good interpretation, but it seems possible. (I’d be interested in where you think we’re failing today!)
But even if this is true, your original claim remains true: if it takes a Cold War-level of vigilance to stay on the cutting edge, then terrorists probably aren’t deploying the best available weaponry, just because they don’t know about it.
So maybe an exceptional effort can keep you on the cutting edge, but terrorist groups aren’t at that cutting edge?
Not entirely applicable to the discussion, but I just like talking about things like this and I finally found something tangentially related. Feel free to disregard.
if you look at a period of sustained effort in staying on the military cutting edge, i.e. the Cold War, you won’t see as many of these mistakes and you’ll instead find fairly continuous progress
The cold war wasn’t peacetime though… there was continuous fighting by both sides. The Americans and Chinese in Korea, the Americans in Vietnam, and the Russians in Afghanistan.
One can argue that these places don’t scale to the kind of military techniques and science that a World War 3 scenario would require. But this kind of war has never occurred with modern technology (specifically hydrogen bombs). How do we know that all of the ideas dreamed up by generals and military experts wouldn’t get tossed out the window the moment it was determined that they were inapplicable to a nuclear war?
This is an interesting issue.
I remember commentators discussing the question of why we didn’t see i) terrorists shooting people at shopping centres, ii) knifing them, iii) running pedestrians over with cars, etc, all the way back in 2001-2005.
I find it surprising that this obvious idea would occur to me and other random journalists and bloggers, but not to people who are actually trying to engage in terrorism. Regardless, pointing out these methods didn’t have any noticeable effect at the time.
An alternative explanation might be that we saw this spate of terrorism—as far as I know all committed by people who are sympathetic to ISIS—because ISIS had a different ideology that regarded these attacks as more worthwhile. My impression is that ISIS was more motivated by pure bloodthirsty religious zealotry, with less of an emphasis on shifting the foreign policy of the US and countries in the Middle-East.
It wouldn’t surprise me if ISIS—with its indiscriminate enthusiasm for all forms of murder—was pushing these methods aggressively, while Al-Qaida and other predecessor groups would have regarded running over a few pedestrians as an insufficient reason for one of its supporters to die. Perhaps because it’s not striking enough, embarrassingly unimpressive compared to 9/11, not focussed on the right symbolic targets, or for some other practical reason.
The copy-cat explanation is also slightly different from giving people ‘ideas’. ISIS supporters may not have been motivated by a blog post mentioning the method—only by seeing someone else actually pull it off. One might think of these methods not only coming to people’s attention, but also becoming ‘fashionable’ among a particular group of fanatics.
ISIS, with its quasi-country status, may also simply have been unusually effective at attracting supporters in Europe or the US, and convincing them to attempt terrorist attacks. We would naturally see more experimentation of all kinds when 1,000 people are actively working to kill their fellow civilians than when only 100 are.
I agree with your conclusion though—saying things that are ‘obvious’ can absolutely speed up how many people notice them. If only because there are many many possible ‘obvious’ thoughts, but with one stream of consciousness, each of us only has time to stumble on a tiny fraction.
Good points!
One note I’ll add is that similar attacks with vehicles or bladed weapons were used against Israel prior to their adoption by ISIS, though these attacks are not as widely reported by Western media since they don’t happen in Europe or the US; that said, it’s quite possible that ISIS themselves got the idea from Palestinian attackers, especially if the “copycat hypothesis” is true.
The clearest explanation seems to be that extremely few people, terrorists included, are seriously trying to figure out the most effective ways to kill strangers—if they were, they’d be doing a better job of it.
AI Impacts’ discontinuous progress investigation finds that it’s really hard to make sudden progress on metrics that anyone cares about, because the low hanging fruit will already be gone. I doubt national militaries routinely miss effective ways to conduct war—when they make a serious effort, they find the best weapons.
If terrorists aren’t noticing the most effective ways to maximize their damage, it could be good evidence that they’re not seriously trying. (So +1 to Gwern’s theory)
I actually quite disagree—I believe history indicates national militaries very frequently miss effective ways to conduct war. There’s a famous phrase, “fighting the last war”, that describes how military planners almost always miss innovations and changes in conditions during peacetime and only adapt when forced to by direct conflict.
For example, between World War One and World War Two, the world’s militaries converged on several dangerously false theories with respect to what the next war would look like, and many weapons and strategies used in the early phases of World War Two were ineffective as a result.
Prior to World War Two it was widely believed that battleships were the decisive naval unit, that strategic bombing with large fleets of conventional bombers would be devastating and unstoppable, and that war would likely consist of battles across trenches and fixed fortifications.
By the end of World War Two, battleships were not only not the decisive naval unit but altogether obsolete in favor of aircraft carriers; strategic bombing wasted the lives of many soldiers, killed civilians indiscriminately, and didn’t even work; fixed fortifications infamously failed and were no longer considered serious defenses.
I am quite confident that similar mistakes are being made now, and could even point you to some likely suspects if you like—and all this despite very substantial effort into arms development!
Good point, I hadn’t considered that. If I were to try to fit this to my model, I would say that there’s nobody really looking to produce the best military technology/tactics in between wars. But if you look at a period of sustained effort in staying on the military cutting edge, i.e. the Cold War, you won’t see as many of these mistakes and you’ll instead find fairly continuous progress with both sides continuously using the best available military technology. I’m not sure if this is actually a good interpretation, but it seems possible. (I’d be interested in where you think we’re failing today!)
But even if this is true, your original claim remains true: if it takes a Cold War-level of vigilance to stay on the cutting edge, then terrorists probably aren’t deploying the best available weaponry, just because they don’t know about it.
So maybe an exceptional effort can keep you on the cutting edge, but terrorist groups aren’t at that cutting edge?
Not entirely applicable to the discussion, but I just like talking about things like this and I finally found something tangentially related. Feel free to disregard.
The cold war wasn’t peacetime though… there was continuous fighting by both sides. The Americans and Chinese in Korea, the Americans in Vietnam, and the Russians in Afghanistan.
One can argue that these places don’t scale to the kind of military techniques and science that a World War 3 scenario would require. But this kind of war has never occurred with modern technology (specifically hydrogen bombs). How do we know that all of the ideas dreamed up by generals and military experts wouldn’t get tossed out the window the moment it was determined that they were inapplicable to a nuclear war?