Board 8 > Would you consider most terrorists to be "insane?"

(+) Yeah! (+)

heard about what happened at that concert in england
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They are ultra-nationalist levels of insane.
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They are not insane, they just believe in perverted ideals.
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Deluded, absolutely.

Insane, however, not statistically likely.
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Please do not stereotype my people
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Depends on the definition, really.
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trdl23 posted...

Depends on the definition, really.

Technically, by doing the same thing over and over again, they can produce varying results.

So does it still count?
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I remember reading about how while 98% of Al Quaeda and such were sane, the ones that were actually down to blow themselves up in some coffee shop just to kill like ten people tended to be some combination of insane and mentally deficient. It led to problems where the guys willing to do the damage weren't trustworthy to actually pull it off.
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I don't know whether I would or I wouldn't, but either I really don't like the labeling of anyone who commits acts of mass violence as "insane". Disregarding whether or not it's accurate, I think the way the term is too colloquially used is to paint them as beyond help or "different from us", when I think the first step to preventing things like this is to recognize that they are also human and to then determine what led to them taking the actions that they did.

As I'm thinking about it, this rant probably applies less so to religious terrorists and more to members of our own society who one day "just snap", but I feel this is worth mentioning anyways.
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pyresword posted...

I don't know whether I would or I wouldn't, but either I really don't like the labeling of anyone who commits acts of mass violence as "insane". Disregarding whether or not it's accurate, I think the way the term is too colloquially used is to paint them as beyond help or "different from us", when I think the first step to preventing things like this is to recognize that they are also human and to then determine what led to them taking the actions that they did.

As I'm thinking about it, this rant probably applies less so to religious terrorists and more to members of our own society who one day "just snap", but I feel this is worth mentioning anyways.

The labeling of anyone who perpetuates great harm as "insane" is a way for people to divorce themselves from the perpetrators, basically. "At least I could never be like that, because I'm sane."

There's also the idea that delusion and insanity are the same thing, when they are not.

Anyone can become deluded, especially when they believe they are immune to delusion because of their intelligence.
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Insanity is a legal term, not a medical one. I guarantee that 100% of suicide bombers would be diagnosed with some kind of psychological disorder if they were seen ahead of time. Just the foreknowledge that someone is willing to harm himself or someone else is more than enough cause to provoke an intervention.
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