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This is ignoring black swan events. There is no chance that police officers will kill 10 million people tomorrow, but there is a non-zero chance that terrorists

This is ignoring black swan events. There is no chance that police officers will kill 10 million people tomorrow, but there is a non-zero chance that terrorists will.

Retric 11y ago
There is a non zero chance a police officer will kill 10 million people tomorrow.
- a3voices 11y ago
  Well that would make him a terrorist. There is a zero chance it would happen from routine police activity.
  - Retric 11y ago
    If you’re talking about really low probability deaths then you need to consider really unusual cases. Fires gun at fleeing suspect, bullet hits _ -> deaths. Now, how does _ end up with 10 million deaths? Well, the US Air Force for example has accidently dropped nuclear warheads on several occasions. They are designed to be really tough, but there is probably a non-zero chance a bullet could end up setting a defective one off. Of course reality can be far stranger than fiction so I am unlikely to think of the most likely risk. PS: The odds of terrorists being able to kill 10 million people tomorrow is so low it's really not worth considering.
    - a3voices 11y ago
      But it's far, far higher chance that terrorists would kill 10 million tomorrow than police. All it takes is for a terrorist group to get their hands on nukes.
      - Retric 11y ago
        If your comparing something with 1 chance in 10^50 vs. 1 chance in 10^55 then sure the first is more likely. It's still not worth considering. First, getting a nuke while hard is not enough. Killing 10 million people takes either a really big nuke in just the right spot, or a large number of nukes. Second, having a nuke is not enough you need to be able to correctly detonate on command which it which is harder than you might think. Third, you need to transport it to a useful location as there not stored in the middle of city's. Fourth, you need to decide using them is more useful than threating to use them. Fifth, if your comparing them to US police then they need to target the US. So, no it takes far more than picking one up to kill 10 million people. PS: Simply killing lots of people is not that useful to a terrorist organization. Making nukes less useful than you might think.
      - user_0001 11y ago
        the chance that a nation state would kill 10 million more tomorrow is several orders of magnitude more probable. China, US, India, Pakistan, Russia.....
Zigurd 11y ago
No, there isn't such a chance. The only WMDs with the ability to kill tens of thousands are nukes. Terrorists only have nukes on TV, the kind with big countdown displays on them. It's the difference between a black swan and the fantasy of a black swan. The is no real-world hypothesis of how such a black swan happens. That's why black powder bombs are the highest technology terrorists actually use, because it is the most effective thing they actually can use. EDIT Before you hypothesize about "stolen nukes" know that it is impossible to move a nuke undetected: http://www.rense.com/general16/nucla.htm http://www.rense.com/general16/nucla.htm Terrorists and WMDs is fiction. And sometimes fiction is propaganda.
- a3voices 11y ago
  It is possible terrorists could gain access to nukes. You don't know this for sure.
  - Zigurd 11y ago
    Yes, anyone could know this to a high certainty. It is incredibly difficult to handle and move nuclear materials undetected. It is in fact impossible for non-state actors to deliver nuclear bombs. This is why every discussion of "nuclear terrorism" also includes "dirty bombs" because otherwise there would be no such topic as "nuclear terrorism."
    - simonh 11y ago
      It may be extremely unlikely, to the point of being negligible, that terrorists could develop, construct and deliver a nuclear device independently. However it may be possible for them to steal one. They'd find it hard to deliver it to a target, but if the theft went undetected (bear in mind that when the USSR disolved there was no definitive inventory of all their nuclear devices and there are still discrepancies in the records) it's certainly not impossible.
- dudul 11y ago
  There are other ways to kill tens of thousands of people other than nukes. Weaponized viruses is one. Other indirect ways such as triggering a large scale war, economic warfare, etc.
nkrisc 11y ago
What on earth would make you say there is no (zero) chance police officers will kill 10 million people tomorrow? There is most certainly a chance. It is likely a very, very small chance, but it is still a non-zero chance.
- a3voices 11y ago
  It's a zero chance unless those police officers are also terrorists. Like I said in another comment, there is a zero chance it would happen from routine police activity.
  - nkrisc 11y ago
    Now you're just playing semantics. There is still some chance it could happen during routine police activity, if that's the game you want to play.
    - a3voices 11y ago
      Well perhaps from quantum mechanics there's also a chance that the moon is made out of cheese, but it's not really worth thinking about. The chance that police will kill 10 million people from routine activity is like that. It's not realistic.
      - crpatino 11y ago
        Let's assume it is non-zero, but negligible. Would you say that chance has increased, decreased or remained the same over the last 30 years?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
jegutman 11y ago
That's completely silly. Yes tail events are important to consider. But major terrorist attack are already events on part of the tail. All of the successful attacks around the world in the last 15 years probably could have been far more deadly if the terrorists only goal was death count. That's probably not what they're optimizing for, this is framing everything from the victim's point of view. Terrorists can be awful, but they still have motivations and are somewhat rational actors. I'd be happy to change my view with evidence otherwise, but terrorists are still somewhat "rational actors" with goals that seem horribly irrational to most people. Killing 10 million people in a terrorist attack probably wouldn't serve their long-term goal (even terrorists worry about PR) and would be an incredibly difficult / expensive undertaking.
backlava 11y ago
It also ignores that the probability can change over time. Past frequency is not always a good predictor for future probability.
cryoshon 11y ago
Dodges the issue entirely. Police kill people in a non-black swan fashion anyway, because their flaws are systemic. We can actually fix the flaws that the cops have. Terrorists are working as intended, not killing millions of people here but instead squabbling over dirt in a destabilized wasteland while the Russians explode them.
- a3voices 11y ago
  Well there is a chance terrorists will kill millions of people here and it just hasn't happened yet. So the total chance of being killed by a terrorist, if you had more information, might be higher than being killed by an officer.
bmm6o 11y ago
There is a non-zero chance that an asteroid will slam into the Earth next month, ending life as we know it. There is a non-zero chance that the LHC will create a black hole that will swallow us all. Etc.
lhorie 11y ago
Hmm, 10 million people is roughly a third of the population of Canada. AFAIK, nothing in recorded history ever killed that many people in a single day. (To give some perspective, the atomic bombs in WWII "only" killed in the range of a hundred thousand people) If you look at a major terrorist attack death toll, you'll probably find that it's within one order of magnitude of, say, a major riot death toll.
- foxhedgehog 11y ago
  I don't think that this is true. The worst terrorist attacks look to be about an order of magnitude worse than the worst riots.
  - lhorie 11y ago
    Looks like I was wrong: riots were worse. Quick google search: http://www.sickchirpse.com/top-10-most-devastating-terrorist-attacks-by-death-toll/ http://www.sickchirpse.com/top-10-most-devastating-terrorist... http://listverse.com/2014/02/07/10-deadliest-riots-in-history/ http://listverse.com/2014/02/07/10-deadliest-riots-in-histor... According to those, worst terrorist attack was 9/11, with ~6k deaths in a single day. Most of the riots in the riot list had larger death tolls (ranging from anywhere between ~7k in a single day, to over 1M over a period of time).
ctdonath 11y ago
Some are arguing that the former case isn't 0% due to extreme fluke events, but they ignore that there are people in the latter case actively trying, right now, to make that chance 100%.
RobertoG 11y ago
If we are going to sing that song: if somebody is going to kill 10 million people tomorrow is, necessarily, somebody with nuclear or biological weapons. As a non-American I would feel a lot safe if you just dismantle yours.
- briandear 11y ago
  American has used nuclear weapons twice in history. Fearing American nukes is ridiculous and not based on any rational thought.
  - RobertoG 11y ago
    In my opinion, fearing nukes, in general, is pretty rational.
    - oldmanjay 11y ago
      Fear can't be rational. It's definitional. The fear is justifiable in some sense, of course, as we still allow people to feel whatever they want (if not express it)
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    A counterpoint is that the US is the only country in the world ever to use nuclear weapons. (I don't think that this actually makes the US more likely to use them again.)
  - crpatino 11y ago
    1. Last time I checked, 2 > 0. 2. Actually, 2 > 1 also. If the goal was to demonstrate unsurmountable military power and Hiroshima had already happened, what's the point of Nagasaki? 3. Given the past record of violations to international treaties, it can be argued that if the Russians had not developed the capability to retaliate in kind, N >> 2 by now.

This is ignoring black swan events. There is no chance that police officers will kill 10 million people tomorrow, but there is a non-zero chance that terrorists will.

Retric 11y ago

There is a non zero chance a police officer will kill 10 million people tomorrow.

a3voices 11y ago
Well that would make him a terrorist. There is a zero chance it would happen from routine police activity.
- Retric 11y ago
  If you’re talking about really low probability deaths then you need to consider really unusual cases. Fires gun at fleeing suspect, bullet hits _ -> deaths. Now, how does _ end up with 10 million deaths? Well, the US Air Force for example has accidently dropped nuclear warheads on several occasions. They are designed to be really tough, but there is probably a non-zero chance a bullet could end up setting a defective one off. Of course reality can be far stranger than fiction so I am unlikely to think of the most likely risk. PS: The odds of terrorists being able to kill 10 million people tomorrow is so low it's really not worth considering.
  - a3voices 11y ago
    But it's far, far higher chance that terrorists would kill 10 million tomorrow than police. All it takes is for a terrorist group to get their hands on nukes.
    - Retric 11y ago
      If your comparing something with 1 chance in 10^50 vs. 1 chance in 10^55 then sure the first is more likely. It's still not worth considering. First, getting a nuke while hard is not enough. Killing 10 million people takes either a really big nuke in just the right spot, or a large number of nukes. Second, having a nuke is not enough you need to be able to correctly detonate on command which it which is harder than you might think. Third, you need to transport it to a useful location as there not stored in the middle of city's. Fourth, you need to decide using them is more useful than threating to use them. Fifth, if your comparing them to US police then they need to target the US. So, no it takes far more than picking one up to kill 10 million people. PS: Simply killing lots of people is not that useful to a terrorist organization. Making nukes less useful than you might think.
    - user_0001 11y ago
      the chance that a nation state would kill 10 million more tomorrow is several orders of magnitude more probable. China, US, India, Pakistan, Russia.....

Zigurd 11y ago

No, there isn't such a chance. The only WMDs with the ability to kill tens of thousands are nukes. Terrorists only have nukes on TV, the kind with big countdown displays on them. It's the difference between a black swan and the fantasy of a black swan. The is no real-world hypothesis of how such a black swan happens. That's why black powder bombs are the highest technology terrorists actually use, because it is the most effective thing they actually can use. EDIT Before you hypothesize about "stolen nukes" know that it is impossible to move a nuke undetected: http://www.rense.com/general16/nucla.htm http://www.rense.com/general16/nucla.htm Terrorists and WMDs is fiction. And sometimes fiction is propaganda.

a3voices 11y ago
It is possible terrorists could gain access to nukes. You don't know this for sure.
- Zigurd 11y ago
  Yes, anyone could know this to a high certainty. It is incredibly difficult to handle and move nuclear materials undetected. It is in fact impossible for non-state actors to deliver nuclear bombs. This is why every discussion of "nuclear terrorism" also includes "dirty bombs" because otherwise there would be no such topic as "nuclear terrorism."
  - simonh 11y ago
    It may be extremely unlikely, to the point of being negligible, that terrorists could develop, construct and deliver a nuclear device independently. However it may be possible for them to steal one. They'd find it hard to deliver it to a target, but if the theft went undetected (bear in mind that when the USSR disolved there was no definitive inventory of all their nuclear devices and there are still discrepancies in the records) it's certainly not impossible.
dudul 11y ago
There are other ways to kill tens of thousands of people other than nukes. Weaponized viruses is one. Other indirect ways such as triggering a large scale war, economic warfare, etc.

nkrisc 11y ago

What on earth would make you say there is no (zero) chance police officers will kill 10 million people tomorrow? There is most certainly a chance. It is likely a very, very small chance, but it is still a non-zero chance.

a3voices 11y ago
It's a zero chance unless those police officers are also terrorists. Like I said in another comment, there is a zero chance it would happen from routine police activity.
- nkrisc 11y ago
  Now you're just playing semantics. There is still some chance it could happen during routine police activity, if that's the game you want to play.
  - a3voices 11y ago
    Well perhaps from quantum mechanics there's also a chance that the moon is made out of cheese, but it's not really worth thinking about. The chance that police will kill 10 million people from routine activity is like that. It's not realistic.
    - crpatino 11y ago
      Let's assume it is non-zero, but negligible. Would you say that chance has increased, decreased or remained the same over the last 30 years?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

jegutman 11y ago

That's completely silly. Yes tail events are important to consider. But major terrorist attack are already events on part of the tail. All of the successful attacks around the world in the last 15 years probably could have been far more deadly if the terrorists only goal was death count. That's probably not what they're optimizing for, this is framing everything from the victim's point of view. Terrorists can be awful, but they still have motivations and are somewhat rational actors. I'd be happy to change my view with evidence otherwise, but terrorists are still somewhat "rational actors" with goals that seem horribly irrational to most people. Killing 10 million people in a terrorist attack probably wouldn't serve their long-term goal (even terrorists worry about PR) and would be an incredibly difficult / expensive undertaking.

backlava 11y ago

It also ignores that the probability can change over time. Past frequency is not always a good predictor for future probability.

cryoshon 11y ago

Dodges the issue entirely. Police kill people in a non-black swan fashion anyway, because their flaws are systemic. We can actually fix the flaws that the cops have. Terrorists are working as intended, not killing millions of people here but instead squabbling over dirt in a destabilized wasteland while the Russians explode them.

a3voices 11y ago
Well there is a chance terrorists will kill millions of people here and it just hasn't happened yet. So the total chance of being killed by a terrorist, if you had more information, might be higher than being killed by an officer.

bmm6o 11y ago

There is a non-zero chance that an asteroid will slam into the Earth next month, ending life as we know it. There is a non-zero chance that the LHC will create a black hole that will swallow us all. Etc.

lhorie 11y ago

Hmm, 10 million people is roughly a third of the population of Canada. AFAIK, nothing in recorded history ever killed that many people in a single day. (To give some perspective, the atomic bombs in WWII "only" killed in the range of a hundred thousand people) If you look at a major terrorist attack death toll, you'll probably find that it's within one order of magnitude of, say, a major riot death toll.

foxhedgehog 11y ago
I don't think that this is true. The worst terrorist attacks look to be about an order of magnitude worse than the worst riots.
- lhorie 11y ago
  Looks like I was wrong: riots were worse. Quick google search: http://www.sickchirpse.com/top-10-most-devastating-terrorist-attacks-by-death-toll/ http://www.sickchirpse.com/top-10-most-devastating-terrorist... http://listverse.com/2014/02/07/10-deadliest-riots-in-history/ http://listverse.com/2014/02/07/10-deadliest-riots-in-histor... According to those, worst terrorist attack was 9/11, with ~6k deaths in a single day. Most of the riots in the riot list had larger death tolls (ranging from anywhere between ~7k in a single day, to over 1M over a period of time).

ctdonath 11y ago

Some are arguing that the former case isn't 0% due to extreme fluke events, but they ignore that there are people in the latter case actively trying, right now, to make that chance 100%.

RobertoG 11y ago

If we are going to sing that song: if somebody is going to kill 10 million people tomorrow is, necessarily, somebody with nuclear or biological weapons. As a non-American I would feel a lot safe if you just dismantle yours.

briandear 11y ago
American has used nuclear weapons twice in history. Fearing American nukes is ridiculous and not based on any rational thought.
- RobertoG 11y ago
  In my opinion, fearing nukes, in general, is pretty rational.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    Fear can't be rational. It's definitional. The fear is justifiable in some sense, of course, as we still allow people to feel whatever they want (if not express it)
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  A counterpoint is that the US is the only country in the world ever to use nuclear weapons. (I don't think that this actually makes the US more likely to use them again.)
- crpatino 11y ago
  1. Last time I checked, 2 > 0. 2. Actually, 2 > 1 also. If the goal was to demonstrate unsurmountable military power and Hiroshima had already happened, what's the point of Nagasaki? 3. Given the past record of violations to international treaties, it can be argued that if the Russians had not developed the capability to retaliate in kind, N >> 2 by now.