Only selfimmolate if you care about what foreigners think

Self-immolation in Tunisia seems to be what recently provided the spark that caused the whole country to rise up against its rulers.

So frankly, you're being historically ignorant. Ludicrously so given how recent the real counterexample is. Moreover you're trying to provide fictional evidence in an attempt to support your point, and you somehow think you actually gave an "example".

No. If you want to open a discussion about the topic, either you ought use some actual evidence, or atleast you ought put slightly more effort to your fiction, to make it remotely interesting or believable or insightful.

You've just earned a downvote from me as well.

What Aris said. Also, outside view is predicting behavior based on typical cases of a reference class. If you think, "This self-immolation will trigger a successful revolution because from the last 20 self-immolation cases, 15 did just that.", then you're taking the outside view.

I might have retweeted the original four sentences if they came up on Twitter, but a tweet usually isn't enough for a good Less Wrong post. I think that many of these downvotes are due to the form rather than the content.

3rd Edit: -15 Pretty clear that I'm wrong .

The main problem isn't that you're wrong in your conclusion (though I think you are) , but that you don't bother telling us how the evidence ought lead to that conclusion. You just make unsupported assertions both in your claims of what is, and your claims of what people ought do.

LessWrong is a site about refining the art of rationality -- in both the discovery of truth, and the pursuit of utility. Explain to us how your conclusions are correct about the former and the latter: don't just make unsupported assertions and expect us to applaud.

I really need to spell this out? The media of Hometown are vastly more likley to treat an immolation in Megdad as due to a legitimate grievance worthy of attention and down play any mental health problems or details that might paint the person in an unflattering light compared to someone who self-immolates in Hometown.

So basically your position summarizes to "a nation's establishment is more likely to control the media of that same nation instead of the media of a foreign nation?" That's indeed highly probable, yes.

Noble act of defiant self-sacrifice is far. Suicidal crazies are near.

Does that mean that Palestinians are more likely to see Palestinian suicide bombers as "suicidal crazies" and less likely as "noble and defiant self-sacrificing heroes" than an American is? Palestinians are far from America, and near to other Palestinians, so isn't that the sort of prediction that your near/far theory about sacrifice vs crazies would make?

Someone self immolates and explicitly states it is a form of political protest in Megdad. What a crazy regime! Someone self immolates and explicitly states it is a form of political protest in Hometown. What a crazy person!

I actually like this quote. But this isn't something you write by itself as an article, even on discussion. Also what ArisKatsaris said.

You could do with less certainty for your evidenceless claims

Failure to parse.