4 ms·

I like numbers, but this one might work better if they put some context: "You're 50% more likely to be killed by lightning than by a terrorist." or "You're s

I like numbers, but this one might work better if they put some context: "You're 50% more likely to be killed by lightning than by a terrorist." or "You're six times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a bumblebee." Or the somber "You're 150 times more likely to be killed by a motor vehicle than a terrorist." (The War on Vehicles should apparently be funded to the tune of $150T a year, if I understand the value of American lives properly.)

dllthomas 11y ago
If something on the order of the 9/11 attacks happened every other day, we'd still lose more Americans to heart disease.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  I can't see the war on heart disease winning an election though.
  - anoother 11y ago
    Which is an utter shame.
- mcnamaratw 11y ago
  lol there you go. Let's spend 1500T a year on that.
- nsxwolf 11y ago
  It has been 5,161 days since 9/11. Every other day would be 2,580 9/11 sized attacks. The entire country would be in ruins. There would be no more cities, and the economy would have ground to a halt. We would all be living in a post apocalyptic nightmare, with knock on effects leading to far more deaths than the direct numbers from the attacks. This is why I hate these comparisons to heart disease and whatnot.
  - dllthomas 11y ago
    You are correct that, beyond a point, the effects are substantially nonlinear. Of course, our reactions would also not be static. My point was not prediction of specific outcomes, but rather to illustrate the tremendous disparity between the two scales - even in a year when we lost an order of magnitude more people to terrorism than is typical. (You are also correct that there are substantial effects beyond the direct loss of life - but that is true with heart disease as well.) "The entire country would be in ruins. There would be no more cities" This is still exaggerating the scale. If we say 3000 9/11 sized-attacks and 3000 dead in 9/11, that's 9 million people. In that time, our population grew by 50 million. If we say the 9/11 attacks destroyed 10 million square feet of office space, that's 30 billion - about twice what we added between 2003 and 2012 (per http://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/reports/2012/buildstock/ http://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/reports/2012/build...), so plausibly about what we've added total in that time. There may be "no more cities", but it would be due to a response of radical decentralization (probably not a bad move, in that situation) not because the cities were physically destroyed.
twoodfin 11y ago
Your comment essentially demonstrates why setting public policy based on relative death counts is profoundly silly. How many Americans had the Nazis killed when we invaded N. Africa? Surely a tiny, tiny fraction of the number who had died in coal mine accidents that year. So?
- mcnamaratw 11y ago
  I'm just going to let this stand with no comment. It's perfect.
  - tarblog 11y ago
    ...wait a second

dllthomas 11y ago

If something on the order of the 9/11 attacks happened every other day, we'd still lose more Americans to heart disease.

JupiterMoon 11y ago
I can't see the war on heart disease winning an election though.
- anoother 11y ago
  Which is an utter shame.
mcnamaratw 11y ago
lol there you go. Let's spend 1500T a year on that.
nsxwolf 11y ago
It has been 5,161 days since 9/11. Every other day would be 2,580 9/11 sized attacks. The entire country would be in ruins. There would be no more cities, and the economy would have ground to a halt. We would all be living in a post apocalyptic nightmare, with knock on effects leading to far more deaths than the direct numbers from the attacks. This is why I hate these comparisons to heart disease and whatnot.
- dllthomas 11y ago
  You are correct that, beyond a point, the effects are substantially nonlinear. Of course, our reactions would also not be static. My point was not prediction of specific outcomes, but rather to illustrate the tremendous disparity between the two scales - even in a year when we lost an order of magnitude more people to terrorism than is typical. (You are also correct that there are substantial effects beyond the direct loss of life - but that is true with heart disease as well.) "The entire country would be in ruins. There would be no more cities" This is still exaggerating the scale. If we say 3000 9/11 sized-attacks and 3000 dead in 9/11, that's 9 million people. In that time, our population grew by 50 million. If we say the 9/11 attacks destroyed 10 million square feet of office space, that's 30 billion - about twice what we added between 2003 and 2012 (per http://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/reports/2012/buildstock/ http://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/reports/2012/build...), so plausibly about what we've added total in that time. There may be "no more cities", but it would be due to a response of radical decentralization (probably not a bad move, in that situation) not because the cities were physically destroyed.

twoodfin 11y ago

Your comment essentially demonstrates why setting public policy based on relative death counts is profoundly silly. How many Americans had the Nazis killed when we invaded N. Africa? Surely a tiny, tiny fraction of the number who had died in coal mine accidents that year. So?

mcnamaratw 11y ago
I'm just going to let this stand with no comment. It's perfect.
- tarblog 11y ago
  ...wait a second