For decades the right-wing propaganda machine has used stochastic terrorism to radicalize its public toward ever more extreme views.
stochastic stō-kăs′tĭk adjective Of, relating to, or characterized by conjecture; conjectural. Involving or containing a random variable or process. Conjectural; able to conjecture.
Someone care to explain what that means?
from dictionary.com:
>of or relating to a process involving a randomly determined sequence of observations each of which is considered as a sample of one element from a probability distribution.
from wikipedia:
>Stochastic (from Greek στόχος (stókhos) 'aim, guess'[1]) refers to the property of being well described by a random probability distribution.[1] Although stochasticity and randomness are distinct in that the former refers to a modeling approach and the latter refers to phenomena themselves, these two terms are often used synonymously. Furthermore, in probability theory, the formal concept of a stochastic process is also referred to as a random process
Randomly distributed terroristic propaganda? Wonder if it fits normal distribution, or if it is skewed to the right :-)
Maybe the author has a different definition? Or they are just tossing out big words, because big words sound intelligent.
I tried to reason about what they said and came up with: "For decades, the right-wing propaganda machine has used imagined terrorism to radicalize its public toward ever more extreme views."
Their phrasing is certainly not the one I'd use, however.
(post is archived)