>I've also thought about this, why most terrorists are so dumb.

My theory is that when a terrorist does a stupid thing there are millions of dollars available, and thousands of people trained and ready, to take advantage of that stupidity.

When we do something stupid a couple people might point at us and say slightly mean things.

Everyone is stupid at least a few times a day.

Public perception about the average intelligence of any type of criminal is likely influenced by survivorship bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

On the bright side, an attested (N=1) method for de-radicalising former terrorists has been simply hooking them up. They may be dumb, but they're not stupid: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/12/all-you...

So we must sacrifice one person to save many?

What makes you think it's a sacrifice rather than a reverse proselytization (or de-radicalization as some call it)?

For the flagger: quoting the opening line of Pride and Prejudice is simply a more verbose way to say /s.

(I have double checked, and all three of google, weibo, and yandex pull Austen up as the top hit for the key phrase.)

Also note that criminals are the ones who failed. We don't get to see how the successful ones are. Same with terrorists.

Unlike most other crimes, a terrorist act that goes unnoticed is almost by definition unsuccessful.

Well, there's a conspicuously unoccupied middle ground between the two, but if the terrorist's goal is only to inflict harm, without necessarily revealing the reason or taking credit, they would presumably prefer their actions to look like a natural disaster, riot, (industrial/medical/etc) accident, forest fire, or other non-deliberate and/or non-planned event.

That is not terrorism though. The point of terrorism is to achieve political goals by spreading fear.

That's true by definition, sure, but that's not how governments actually use the word.

How would causing a riot not achieve political goals by spreading fear?

I dunno. I believe it's actually pretty easy to get away with lots of crime. It's just that the smart ones don't get caught.

> Also, smart people tend to do something with their life, so they are less inclined to be attracted by terrorism.

that probably plays a role. And they are perhaps more likely to consider the ethical dimension.

"Also, smart people tend to do something with their life,"

Dunno. The Unabomber had probably a higher IQ than most people on hackernews.

And on a side note: who cares about James bond? It is always the villain who makes or breaks a James bond movie. I am actually sad that Jet Lee never played the villain.

Your comment was extremely insightful. Thank you for this. I rarely favorite (to be fair I only knew about it recently) but...your comment is in my favorites.