Surely that depends on the extent of the police state and the amount of terrorism. I am guessing that some police states would be preferable to places in Syria right now.

What a terrifying false dichotomy.

How can you even promote that? Even taken at face value...on the one hand, you have illegal violence carried out by non-state actors. On the other hand legal violence carried out by the state. Unless I totally misunderstood you, you are saying being subject to illegal violence carried out by non-state actors is better than police violence? No. Way. Societies worldwide would also disagree with you. The State has a monopoly on violence. And this form of social organization is the majority in the world today, not your "terrorism is better" alternative. Deal with it.

I don't know if the comment was comparing state sanctioned violence vs non-state sanctioned violence, but a quote comes to mind:

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Basically, if we wanted to eliminate terrorism, we would have severely curtail freedom. And there aren't nearly as many terrorists as people think. More people die from car crashes, drug overdoses, etc. But changes in the law, the way police and law enforcement do things, could cause a loss of the liberties and freedoms we currently enjoy.

Oh, so you're saying the speaker was saying

" some terrorism as opposed to the curtailing of freedoms that would come from eliminating" [1]

is preferable ?

I completely took it to mean: "I would prefer to live in the Islamic State, than in the USA with mass surveillance."

Okay, well I'm undecided as to whether [1] would be preferable or not in the way it's phrased. What I have thought about tho is:

- Yes we could eliminate terrorism, and it would take a lot of extreme measures ( that the West would be unlikely to get away with )

- But why should we eliminate terrorism, since from a purely political standpoint, it is quite useful. From any sufficiently emotive or divisive issue political motivation and utility can be extracted. For instance, the fear of terrorism helps the State advance legislation that it probably would not be talking about if we did not have terrorism. So the funny paradox I see is that, at this stage of human development, our States can actually benefit from using the spectre of terrorism to develop and advance themselves. Please take this in no way to mean justifying terrorism in any way...just to say that, IMHO, real politik dictates that terrorism has political benefits for the very State it is supposed to politically disadvantage.

The obvious point is that terrorism isn't something that can be eliminated. It's just like violence. The only difference between terrorism and violence is honestly a political message.

If you want to say that the state can get away with things it couldn't before because of a war on something it can't win, I'm with you. The "war on drugs" is about as useful as waiting for Godot. But make no mistake, nobody thinks its about drugs.

But overall, you seem to be taking these arguments to extremes that weren't really needed, and I'm not sure why. Nobody said anything about living in the Islamic State, and anyone who would take it that way I think has some serious thinking to do about their perspective.

Police states are pretty bad, too. Consider this:

Would you rather live in a European country where terrorist attacks happen on a semi-regular basis and are in the news, or would you prefer North Korea where the state is very strong and terrorism is unheard of?

Okay, but that's unfairly ( to police States ) correlating lack of economic development with with increased State power. A more realistic comparison is: would you rather live in London, or Hong Kong ( or even better, Singapore )? ( terrorism is rare in HK, which is basically a police state protectorate of China, and SG is almost certainly a police state ).

You could just as easily say Paris v Warsaw, or Berlin v Shanghai.

TL;DR - comparison with NK is unfair since NK is very hostile to all foreigners and has few attractive economic reasons to live there, it doesn't offer much to potential expats / migrants. But Warsaw or China or HK, or SG have strong policies that seem to have stifled terrorism ( for now ). The fear of "police state == (NK or Burma)" is overblown. You can have strong policies and still have many attractive qualities.

Sorry, I feel the above isn't very clear, but it's the best I could do right now. Thanks

I'd take Sweden over Singapore anytime.

I mean, I like Singapore, but I'm not a fan of having one party that runs everything, the draconian drug laws and wide application of the death penalty. It's also worth pointing out that large numbers of the wealthy have left HK (and been replaced by transplants from China) and a similar trend has been happening in SG for decades

I think we should try to stop terrorism, but not "at any cost".

Using AI model's to monitor all 1-1 conversations in the world is too dangerous of a power - it increases the risk for tyrany much more than it decreases the risk of terrorism.

I haven't thought much about this....But my first reaction is -- can we at least test it to see what happens?

I have something that might not be that relevant. Consider China's control of conversations on Weibo as a microcosm of "all 1-1 conversations". Assume they are using some sort of AI there ( there's a good argument for any sufficiently large bureaucracy being AI-like ). Is it really so bad? They've tracked huge GDP growth for 70 years and very low civil conflict, and much harmony, I think, from some points of view, definitely.

Not an American (I'm a भारतीय) but as "anti-India" as Trump may be, I actually like this platform of Trump's (extreme vetting that is). I wish to return to the time when flight check-in was much faster. If 9/11 hadn't happened, we'll have more concordes and economy would be at a different place today (I know this wasn't the only reason for their demise but surely it helped)

I wish our country could do something similar but Pakistan doesn't send terrorists by plane :|

What does flight check-in times has to do with extreme vetting? US visas are already granted after extreme vetting and pre 9/11 ease of moving around is not coming back anytime soon. Concordes are not flying purely for safety and business reasons and not terrorism and sot com bubble and the 2008 market crash happened because of corporate greed which is what affects many more lives than fear and paranoia.

Our country already extremely vets, tracks the movement and stay of Pakistani nationals inside our borders. I know of a few people who have married Pakistani nationals and stay in Mumbai. They undergo the most inhumane scrutiny. You want an ankle bracelet on you when you live in the US? Terrorist attacks in India have seldom been committed by visa travellers. It has either been disgruntled natives like Tiger memon colluding with corrupt Indian officials or poor security infrastructure which leads to ttacks over water. I am sorry but you have no idea what you are talking about.