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Use micromorts to fight terrorism
- gtirloni 11y agoSome types of death do have a stronger emotional effect on us. Perspective is everything. Good approach :)
- gesman 11y agoYou have a point, but I'd suggest to replace "fight" with "be ok with".
- saulrh 11y agoGiven the way terrorism works (http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/), "being OK with it" translates pretty directly into denying it a chance to reproduce and thereby killing it.
- haomself 11y agoThe risk of riding a motocycle can be estimated from a large sample. The risk of a terror attack in Paris can not. Friday's attach is 2.5 micromorts, but how do you know there is not another larger scale attach in the works? That is what worries, scares most people, until these attack become normal and people get used to it, like those live in Jerusalem.
- giaour 11y agoIsn't that kind of the point? Successful attacks are incredibly rare, and the risk of being killed in one is therefore very small.
- NhanH 11y agoEveryday passing by is a sample day that you can use to estimate the risks. Even if you argue that terrorism is a relatively new risk in the past few decades and start your sampling from September 2001, we still have more than a decade of sample days to estimate the risk. That's a huge sample. There might not be enough sample to know how many people would be harmed during a terrorist attack. But there is definitely enough information to estimate the risk of an attack itself.
- jndsn402 11y agoActuary here. I don't have the math at my fingertips, but to confidently estimate the risk of any occurrence you need a significant sample of the event, not just a significant amount of exposure. So for instance, if you are estimating the mortality rate of a 25 year old and the rate for an 85 year old you would be equally confident in each estimate if your data sample contained an equal amount of deaths for each, not an equal amount of life-years. So while we have many days of exposure to terrorism risk, we do not have many occurrences and therefore do not have a confident estimate of the rate of major terror attacks.
- jacquesm 11y agoDefinitely not an actuary here so forgive my ignorance: Isn't the fact that 'we do not have many occurrences' by itself enough to establish a lower bound?
- hawkice 11y agoYou mean upper bound -- being a more likely killer than heart attacks is a statistical impossibility. Same for car accidents. Same for iron deficiency, Trypanosomiasis, and a bunch of other things.
- vcdimension 11y agoAny terrorist attack in France will almost certainly happen in the center of one of the major cities, most likely Paris. So if you live in the center of Paris your micromort should be much higher, and if you live in a small village it will be much smaller. Also the micromort calculation quoted in the article is for being killed in a single terrorist attack in which 153 people die. If you think there are likely to be several such attacks over the next few years then that increases the micromort value higher.
- tedks 11y agoThis assumes there is some incentive for terrorists to attack big cities. It could be strategically valuable for terrorists to just randomly attack tiny villages, where the response time for emergency services equipped to deal with heavily-armed moderately-trained militants is long enough for them to wipe basically the whole place out, and after which they can strike fear into any village and cause the governments to spend a ton turning all of them into fortresses.
- yakult 11y agoWhen I see 'micromorts', my first thought is that it's an euphemism for assassination, possibly with drones.
- joeclark77 11y agoI was thinking some kind of mortar but ultra-portable. Perhaps an iPhone attachment of some kind?
- methou 11y ago>> After all the goal of shootings and explosions is not to physically destroy citizens, it is to scare them. So when people are not afraid, terrorists do not reach their goals. And if you succumb to fear, terrorists win. Reminds me of Japanese people's reaction to the ISIS threat, they mocked them on twitter with memes[1]. Also they denied request of religious food for exchange students[2]. Any religion is not superior than others, so there will be legal or philosophical standings for them to be treated special. [1] http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/japanese-twitter-users-mock-isis-internet-meme-n291591 http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/japanese-twitte... [2] http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11462331 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- grogenaut 11y agoWait, someone still serves a website with cold fusion?
- jonah 11y agoLots of sites! Big and small. There are even several excellent Open Source CFML engines.
- slyall 11y agoAfraid so. I used to work there. The codebase is at least 15 years old in places. Team of 4-8 people looking after it and rolling out changes. Self-written CMS as well. Every now and then somebody gets the idea of rewriting it in something else. Problem is that while it may look simple ( "I just need templates for front, section and articles pages") there is a lot of extras (see the 4-8 people and CMS). Note that newspaper companies don't have a lot of money these days. I've heard they are having another go at it. For one thing it is hard to get CF programmers these days.
- grogenaut 11y ago
- viraptor 11y agoWhile I like the idea in general, the result is a bit arbitrary. Why is it "153 people of 67 million French citizens have died in attacks on Friday"? Why not out of 508.2M people in EU? Or out of 2M people living in Paris? Unless you calculate the micromorts for comparison between countries, limiting the area in such way doesn't make much sense. It's a single event -vs- activities which can be practiced for long amount of time. (someone with better statistics vocabulary can probably explain it nicely)
- NhanH 11y agoWouldn't the set being chosen just resulting in different probability profile, and you get to pick one depending on your personal characteristics? Ie. 2.5 micromorts is your risk if you're a French citizen, (153 + other death from terrorism) / (7.3 billions) if you're a human, 153/2M if you're living in Paris? Edit: change the napkin calculation for correctnesss.
- viraptor 11y agoI don't think the human one would be true, because there were many more people dying in terrorist attacks over the last year. But otherwise yes, you could depending on the area provide different risks - which was my point: you can use it to compare continuous activities within some area / population group. But absolute values for single data points just don't give you much information.
- privacy101 11y agoWho decides whether it was terrorism, revenge, craziness, etc?
- lkbm 11y agoIt should be based on the scope of policies. France should set their anti-terrorism policies based on the risk to France. The EU should set their anti-terrorism policies based on the risk to the EU. Paris should set their anti-terrorism policies based on the risk to Paris. Most policies being looked at right now are France-scope.
- vezzy-fnord 11y agoBlack swan events being unanticipated, it is futile to worry about them. It's commonly retorted that terrorist attacks should be interpreted as unique because of their intent. Yet no one actually fears the intent, only the end result (death, destruction, injury). Intent is relevant to drafting a response, but not to the public fear. Intent without resources or sophistication is also not meaningful. It is further stated that they are special because they're attacks on the social order. Yet this is a truism, because they only have such an effect if people permit themselves to make it so. More mundanely perceived events like business cycles or crime rates (many small events rather than one large event like a terrorist attack) have the same capacity for social ruin, but are not as feared even as they are significantly more protracted. It's all inexcusable bias.
- rayiner 11y agoThe response to terrorism isn't about fear. It's about justice. These assholes are trying to drag us all back to 700 AD and reestablish the Caliphate, and they struck at a bastion of western liberalism to that end. You can't appreciate the human reaction to that by short sightedly looking at the risk of dying in a car accident.
- woah 11y agoUnfortunately, goading western countries into wars we can't win is the basis of their strategy. So if your attitude causes you to short-sightedly support military action out of fear (even if you tell yourself it's anger), you're helping the terrorists win.
- joeclark77 11y agoISIS isn't trying to goad us into war. They're waging war on us, and doing so effectively. The kind of probabilistic analysis proposed by the OP takes terrorist attacks as if they occur randomly at some rate we have little control over, like car accidents. That is not the case when you have an enemy actively killing you and you have to make a decision: fight back, or signal that you won't fight back. If the latter, the number of "micromorts" is going to increase exponentially.
- icanhackit 11y agoInteresting. While skimming over the Wiki for micromorts it's reported [1] that Ecstasy has a rating of 0.5 micromorts per tablet. Which I kind of already suspected, given how widely it's consumed versus the rarely occurring yet widely reported deaths that result from its use. For perspective you get 1 micromort from traveling 17 miles (27 km) by foot. I've walked 8.91 miles (14.34 km) today, which comparatively would be as dangerous as taking an ecstasy pill...well probably not as it would scale differently. I wouldn't be surprised if simply attending a dance-party/rave would have a micromort rating of ~0.5, regardless of substances ingested. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort#Additional https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort#Additional
- ekianjo 11y agoThese generalizations are not helpful actually. If you walk a deserted road every day it would not matter how many miles you walk every day, you should only get 0 micromort, which is not the same as walking just right next to a highway. Context is everything.
- ColinDabritz 11y agoI think they are helpful. Sure, they are not especially detailed or accurate, but the point of the 'micromort' is to give some broader context to the scale of the risk to aid in understanding. Much like the "banana" is a radiation unit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose The Micromort is not a very precise or accurate unit, but it does a reasonable job of communicating the broad 'order of magnitude' context. The disproportionate emotional response undermining rational thinking is directly countered by this frame of reference, which in turn addresses the disproportionate impacts of terrorism.
- icanhackit 11y agoThese generalizations are not helpful actually. Perhaps not for walking, but for an activity like taking an ecstasy pill it is.
- grecy 11y ago
- nsxwolf 11y agoI don't think I'm going to die in a terrorist attack, and yet, I'm outraged and offended by acts of terrorism. I want them prevented and I want terrorists thwarted and destroyed. I don't think most people's opposition to terrorism and will to defeat it comes from a personal fear of becoming a victim. Admonitions to shrug your shoulders at terrorism because car accidents kill more people always ring hollow with me.
- grandalf 11y agoWhat is terrorism? If two sides are fighting each other and one side has smart bombs and drones and the other side doesn't, clearly the choice for the weaker side is to give up or to find tactics that work to break its enemy's will. The word terrorism is a propaganda word intended to make the audience pass moral judgment on the act and ignore the larger issue of why the conflict exists in the first place. I too find acts of violence upsetting, but it's dangerous to buy into the propaganda around the word terrorism, since it's used to justify abandoning diplomacy and dehumanizing the enemy.
- nsxwolf 11y agoLike pornography, you know it when you see it. I don't care much for this bit of sophistry. Islamic fundamentalists or lone wolf nuts deliberately targeting innocent people works as a definition of terrorism to me. I don't feel like I'm being manipulated by propaganda.
- ubersync 11y ago> I too find acts of violence upsetting, but it's dangerous to buy into the propaganda around the word terrorism, since it's used to justify abandoning diplomacy and dehumanizing the enemy. And it's used to curb the rights of your own citizens.
- jqm 11y agoExactly. I haven't figured out the true aim of terrorists. Unless it's to give license and cause for government to do outrageous things. Which seems to cause more problems for society than the initial terrorism. So maybe that is the aim.
- afarrell 11y agoAs the husband of someone who is afraid of these sorts of things, I can tell you that this line of argument would be entirely ineffective. What would be effective? I don't know and I wish I did. I suspect that I'm just unusually unfazed by things and fundamentally lack the ability to understand the perspective of people for whom bombings like this cause fear. This makes me sad.
- danieltillett 11y agoPeople tend to be over concerned of risks that they feel that they have no control over. This is why the very real risk of driving a car is considered acceptable, but the much lower risk from something like a random pesticide in food is seen as much worse than the risk warrants. Someone like your wife (or husband) needs a way to feel like they are in control. This is hard to do with terrorism hence why it is effective is causing terror despite the absolute risks.
- jqm 11y agoMy SO is scared to death of sharks, alligators and snakes. Always on the lookout. Can hardly go out in the water. Talking on the phone and shuffling through papers while driving is nothing to be concerned with though.
- etrautmann 11y agoThat's actually quite interesting. I've never considered the possibility of genuinely being afraid of terrorists, since it seems like such a statistical impossibility, but I suppose that's not a particularly emotional reaction. I might feel differently if I lived in a commonly targeted city or somewhere outside the US.
- ekianjo 11y agoThat's cute, but it is already widely known that there is way less chance to die from Terrorism than anything else. And it is a common misunderstanding that Terrorism's goal is to generate Terror. It is not. It is a form of political action with political goals, and it has about nothing to do with how fearful you are in your daily life.
- icanhackit 11y agoit is a common misunderstanding that Terrorism's goal is to generate Terror. The common misunderstanding has allowed it to become a self-fulfilling prophesy in a way - the social media campaign from ISIS and orbiting groups has focused on using scare-campaigns to amplify the power of smaller offensives by vowing copy-cat attacks. They've observed the social and operational inefficiencies that come from being fearful and trying to preempt future attacks. If it was a misconception before, it's reality now.
- epistasis 11y agoFYI, beginning a dismissal with "that's cute" kind makes it seem like you don't have a strong point and are resorting to name calling.
- ekianjo 11y agoI actually explained my point. Read my full comment.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- guelo 11y agoThe risk of being shot in a mass shooting in the US is way higher but everybody seems blasé about it.
- flubert 11y agoHmm. 9/319e6 = 0.028 micromorts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umpqua_Community_College_shooting#Fatalities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umpqua_Community_College_shoot... https://www.google.com/#q=population+of+the+united+states https://www.google.com/#q=population+of+the+united+states
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- DHJSH 11y agoOk then! Why aren't we terrified about obesity, which is the leading cause of death in the United States, killing over 300,000 people a year. (See https://www.wvdhhr.org/bph/oehp/obesity/mortality.htm https://www.wvdhhr.org/bph/oehp/obesity/mortality.htm)
- themodelplumber 11y agoWe _are_ terrified about obesity. The weight loss market in the U.S. is at roughly $60 billion. But I wonder how long a single person can remain terrified about anything, or is indeed terrified by e.g. terrorism.
- aianus 11y ago> We _are_ terrified about obesity. The weight loss market in the U.S. is at roughly $60 billion. That's: a) an order of magnitude less than U.S. defense spending b) not funded by taxpayers
- DHJSH 11y agoPeople really didn't like my Obesity comment! The number one killer has a "personal responsibility" component and the techno-libertarians here object. Go figure... We live in an upside-down world where good is bad and right is wrong.
- hackaflocka 11y agoFor the longest time, there has been Kashmir-related terrorism all over India, sponsored by Pakistan (which received "aid" in the form of money and arms from the US for decades prior to 9/11). So, yes, terrorism is indeed very, very bad.
- arithma 11y agoDoesn't this, if effective, encourage terrorists to up their game as well till enough micromorts register on our radars? Terrorists can skew things: they have raised the chance of death in an attack when you are participating in things they don't approve of (death to all the party goers.) This must be seen as an attack on society, rather than individuals.
- poof131 11y agoThe problem is terrorism isn’t like car accidents. In another thread somebody commented that more people die on the roads in a single day then died in the terrorist attacks in France. Sure. But the volatility in car accident statistics is tiny while the possible volatility in terrorist attacks is huge. One well executed attack could kill hundreds of thousands or possibly millions if nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons are used. Car accidents are a bell curve, while terrorism is the long tail. And while I’m not really afraid of a terrorist attack, underestimating or dismissing a large group of people trying to actively kill you is naive.
- rayiner 11y agoBy the reasoning of the article, we should just shrug off murders because people are far more likely to die in a car accident. That is of course ridiculous. Terrorism is an attack on the social order. That precious stability that makes progress and liberal society possible.
- Confusion 11y agoNo, by the reasoning of the article you should not respond to murder by starting to fear being murdered, as the odds of being murdered are quite small.
- douche 11y agoTo be perfectly honest, I'm a little amazed that in the past fourteen years, there have been so very few terrorist attacks on US soil. Any group of suicidal, minimally-trained jackasses with a couple thousand dollars, access to Craigslist or an Uncle Henry's, and the ability to go to a WalMart, could obtain enough weaponry and ammunition to stage a significant attack on the scale of what happened in Paris this week. I have to conclude that the pool of such people that would be willing to commit such acts is vanishingly small.
- fouric 11y agoIt is also possible that the United States' security agencies are simply better than the vast majority of us are aware of. Or some combination of both.
- richmarr 11y agoPossible, yes. But it's a fact that we're terrible at evaluating how likely/dangerous terrorism is. We percieve far more risk than there actually is. Terrorism is designed to play to our cognitive biases, as is the news, as is politics. A triumvirate of douchegoblins taking advantage of our inability to correctly assess risk.
- kbart 11y agoExactly. Our infrastructure is so vulnerable, that I can think of multiple ways to disrupt daily routine and kill multiple people even without a gun, let alone suicide bombing -- dismantle/block the rails, drop an obstacle on a busy highway, poison the drinking water, cut electric wires open, sabotage industrial/power plants, set buildings on fire etc. heck, even shouting out loud "he's got a gun, run!!" in a crowded space could result in multiple injuries/deaths. If there were so many determined terrorists on our soil as various governments and agencies want us to believe, they would cause a significant damage, not just stage occasional attacks that are statistically insignificant. The smallest dog barks the loudest.
- Eric_WVGG 11y agoI have heard that one of al Qaeda’s biggest problems was attrition of “infiltrators” to the American way of life. The example I heard was truck-drivers, once they got real jobs and were welcomed into western mosques they assimilated fast. Thus the 9/11 hijackers were ordered to quarantine themselves in their hotel rooms until the actual event… (I have no idea of the veracity of this story; it sounds a little trite, but compelling like so many trite things)
- ooOOoo 11y agoSchneier called micromort a "great concept" (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/11/micromorts_1.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/11/micromorts_1....). "There's a related term, microlife, for things that reduce your lifespan. A microlife is 30 minutes off your life expectancy. So smoking two cigarettes has a cost of one microlife."
- ap22213 11y agoThese are great! Can't believe that I didn't know about them before - I've been looking for simple metrics that compare the impact of things on mortality. It's interesting that running one marathon per year is almost equivalent to being murdered in England.
- idibidiart 11y agoThe other day I read that someone has been purchasing bomb grade uranium from a source (or a chain of people) who have been traced back to a Russian General in charge of a nuclear weapons facility. I think I might have heard about it first via HN, but not entirely sure now. Anyway, it terrifies me to remember that there are people in the world who have known nothing of life's bright side and who were most likely psychologically damaged as kids living in the constant war zone of the middle east. Those who rise above it are usually brilliant people regardless of occupation and those who succumb to the darkness are the ones I worry about... They could feel a darkness so vast and so abysmal that the idea of stabbing the beast where it hurts (killing the civilians of nations that are partly responsible for what happened to them) is the only relief they have in a life where they've gotten no relief; only absolute terror and infinite trauma. What could we do to identify such people and help change the course of human history?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- hokkos 11y agoThis is stupid, Black Swan event can't be dealt with classic probabilities. Terrorism doesn't follow a normal distribution, more like a Dirac distribution. The simple averaging you used, I can use it to, but I am not only French, I am also living in Paris. Last year there have been 39 deaths from car accidents, 101 from homicides, and more than 147 from terrorist relative death an counting every few months in Paris. I can also look at my age, and that I go to concert often then my micromort explode to the roof now. You seems like the old ladys in the Terry Gilliam film Brazil. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4KFNhxibec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4KFNhxibec