My reaction to the Norwegian 22th of July massacre #1 - the events themselves

This is a rather rambling reaction to the mass murders/terrorist acts in Norway at the 22nd of July, 2011. This was recorded 10 days later. It may feel like I'm going off at a tangent here, but I feel that the tragedy itself is better covered elsewhere and that my task is to contribute with my perspective on rationality and on a history (where I'm admittedly an amateur).

I'm trying to be spontaneous here and some of the thoughts in the later part of the clips are definately speculative, so don't expect too much in the way of scientific annotation.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Oslo
• Utøya
• massacre
• terrorist
• Anders Behring Breivik
• mental bug
• conspiracy theory
• conspiracy theories

[websnarf]

Hey Trond, I was worried that the calm, understanding, rational attitude amongst the Norwegians that I was seeing in the press was just a strong face in view of this tragedy. Then I remembered you, and I now I know where you get it from. :)

[trondreitan]

@websnarf Thanks for that very nice comment! :)

[philhellenes]

I find the general maturity of Norwegians in all this inspiring. I think it would have been VERY different in England had the same tragedy found us.

I heard a Norwegian say it should be viewed a natural disaster, like a tsunami or earthquake. That seems like the right attitude to me. It was a natural disaster, in that it came from human nature. Problem is, people look for patterns so hard at such times that they are guaranteed to find them, but then you of all people know that.

[trondreitan]

@philhellenes Thanks! It's certainly not something I would expect anyone to predict. It's just so enormously out of proportion to anything we are used to. The head of the security says that they wouldn't be able to catch this individual in the planning stage if they had the power and resources of the East-German STASI, and I think I agree. I think this habit of looking for patterns and intentionality where none need be is the basic error that makes conspiracy thinking (and other bugs) possible.