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The police detained him until they could investigate the device and question him about his intentions, then released him. Sounds like a rough afternoon, but har

by beauSD 11y ago

The police detained him until they could investigate the device and question him about his intentions, then released him. Sounds like a rough afternoon, but hardly a ruined life. He's been released and he's exonerated. > Hopefully some will learn that reasonable and probable cause needs to have some basis in certain priori, and that opportunity cost and the boy who cries wolf are really and very harmful issue. I put the security of a school full of other kids above the 'opportunity cost' of being questioned by police. I'm guessing many other people would as well - especially the parents of the other kids at the school. > understand that P(massacre | kids = 14 years old in the US) is some number that probably is smaller than IEEE floating point error, then everyone will be better off for that. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Just because it doesn't happen in the US often, doesn't mean it won't. 14 years old are involved in violence all over the world, especially in bombing incidents.

NhanH 11y ago
If you truly assume that the world is a dangerous place that we really need to be that careful, then it's the opportunity cost of the police force of NOT preventing the actual problems (there has to be some bad things being done/ will be done that is not prevented, right? That's the basis of your argument). And if they truly believed it was a dangerous bomb, was the school evacuated? > Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Just because it doesn't happen in the US often, doesn't mean it won't. 14 years old are involved in violence all over the world, especially in bombing incidents. This is not even wrong, and it's terrifying if politicians would be thinking the same way as you does here. There is no guarantee EVER that anything will, or will not happen. But due to the limited resources and capability that we human have, we have to act and behave rationally based on the probability that something will happen. A scenario that comes from an unfounded basis and human imagination can not be treated with the same weight as a scenario that has some more reasonable chance to happen (based on past performance or what not). And note that P(something) indicate the probability that something can happen (or your belief of something to happen, in Bayesian interpretation), it has nothing to do with past performance/ events. The past changes your belief of P, but probability is predicting the future. People in certain area of the world are involved in violence all year round, having bombed dropped on their roof, their hometown decimated. Are you preparing for that scenario to happen to you in the US in the present? Why or why not?

by beauSD 11y ago

NhanH 11y ago

If you truly assume that the world is a dangerous place that we really need to be that careful, then it's the opportunity cost of the police force of NOT preventing the actual problems (there has to be some bad things being done/ will be done that is not prevented, right? That's the basis of your argument). And if they truly believed it was a dangerous bomb, was the school evacuated? > Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Just because it doesn't happen in the US often, doesn't mean it won't. 14 years old are involved in violence all over the world, especially in bombing incidents. This is not even wrong, and it's terrifying if politicians would be thinking the same way as you does here. There is no guarantee EVER that anything will, or will not happen. But due to the limited resources and capability that we human have, we have to act and behave rationally based on the probability that something will happen. A scenario that comes from an unfounded basis and human imagination can not be treated with the same weight as a scenario that has some more reasonable chance to happen (based on past performance or what not). And note that P(something) indicate the probability that something can happen (or your belief of something to happen, in Bayesian interpretation), it has nothing to do with past performance/ events. The past changes your belief of P, but probability is predicting the future. People in certain area of the world are involved in violence all year round, having bombed dropped on their roof, their hometown decimated. Are you preparing for that scenario to happen to you in the US in the present? Why or why not?