I don’t know that many folks, left leaning or not, would classify Islamic terrorists as mentally ill. I’ve mostly seen that label applied to non-Islamic domestic terrorists (by both sides) irrespective of race.
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Replying to @asphyxiac
yeah, and that's interesting because while racism is obviously in it, it's not just that. the existence of a suicide agent indoctrination program going back to Hasan i Sabbah puts us in "brainwashing" territory, which for some reason we don't think of as a form of mental illness
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Replying to @chaosprime
Without sounding like I’m navel gazing here, is it really brainwashing? Or is it a valid but socially unacceptable ideology?
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Replying to @asphyxiac
jeez, how do we even tease those apart? the procedure i Sabbah is reputed to have used, involving drugs and intentionally falsified reality, is identifiably brainwashing, but my impression is that all that has survived of that is the conclusions people were led to reach from it
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Replying to @chaosprime @asphyxiac
can you brainwash people just with memes and social cognition? pretty sure, yeah, but if you stick to that it'll always be deniable
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Replying to @chaosprime @asphyxiac
if it is interpreted as strictly religious ideology, though, that would absolutely cut off any possibility of calling it "mental illness"; theists do NOT care for opening up the door to their own theism being labeled such
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Replying to @chaosprime
The other question, when does belief (spiritual or otherwise) become delusion?
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Replying to @asphyxiac
oh, immediately, the relevant questions are how radical a departure from the empirical it is, how radical a departure from social norms it is, what kinds of things you'll need to do to maintain it
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Replying to @chaosprime @asphyxiac
crank the dials on those hard enough and people will start being willing to actually use the word "delusion", but the actual point of dial crankage can't be identified because the term was always appropriate
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Replying to @chaosprime
Having an arbitrary and context specific dial makes discourse about the limit problematic. You may see it as valid ideology. I may see it as folie à plusieurs. We exist in different subcultures, and both viewpoints are valid in their context.
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hard problem, right? good thing we can just have our subcultures engage in all-out dominance struggle to determine which viewpoint was REALLY valid
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Replying to @chaosprime
As we spend more and more of our time circulating amongst the likeminded, an all out culture-war seems increasingly likely.0 replies 0 retweets 2 likesThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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