In a definitional sense, let's look at what the word stochastic means. It essentially means probabalistic. So for example there is no known safe level of radiation, even low levels of radiation have a small chance of causing cancer, so cancer is a stochastic effect. This is compared to something like a radiation burn that requires a certain amount of radiation to happen and if you keep the amount of radiation below a certain level you will never get a radiation burn.
So in this sense, the term "stochastic terrorism" is the idea that there's no known safe amount of a thing. Essentially that if you do anything whatsoever against a group, no matter how trivial, it is still terrorism because there's no known safe level of criticism a group can take without it potentially triggering violence.
In this sense, the term "Stochastic terrorism" is a fancy way of saying that at no point can you ever do or say anything against the target group in any way or at any level because even a benign - 0.00001 comment is "stochastic terrorism" since anything that isn't neutral or positive can automatically present a tiny risk of negative outcomes.
I think that a term like "stochastic terrorism" sounds like a great way to justify authoritarianism. We had examples such as zero tolerance school policies that put basically innocent people into really bad punishments because there's a non-zero risk that anything remotely suspect turns into something really horrible. It's practically precrime, suggesting that we are predicting an actual crime that could be caused by something that isn't a crime, so we need to make the thing that isn't a crime into a crime (or at least into a taboo)
So in this sense, the term "stochastic terrorism" is the idea that there's no known safe amount of a thing. Essentially that if you do anything whatsoever against a group, no matter how trivial, it is still terrorism because there's no known safe level of criticism a group can take without it potentially triggering violence.
In this sense, the term "Stochastic terrorism" is a fancy way of saying that at no point can you ever do or say anything against the target group in any way or at any level because even a benign - 0.00001 comment is "stochastic terrorism" since anything that isn't neutral or positive can automatically present a tiny risk of negative outcomes.
I think that a term like "stochastic terrorism" sounds like a great way to justify authoritarianism. We had examples such as zero tolerance school policies that put basically innocent people into really bad punishments because there's a non-zero risk that anything remotely suspect turns into something really horrible. It's practically precrime, suggesting that we are predicting an actual crime that could be caused by something that isn't a crime, so we need to make the thing that isn't a crime into a crime (or at least into a taboo)
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