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Agree, it's about possible reduction of harm. A notice that cars crash is not going to stop people from using cars. A notice that foreign travel is not safe wil

by dstyrb 11y ago

Agree, it's about possible reduction of harm. A notice that cars crash is not going to stop people from using cars. A notice that foreign travel is not safe will deter some people.

sliverstorm 11y ago
There's also the relative-to-baseline nature. Foreign travel has always had risk; this alert declares the risks are temporarily higher. If the gov't said "For the next week, car travel will have heightened risk", people might take notice.
- e12e 11y ago
  Actually, given the time of year, I'm guessing car travel will have heightened risk for next week. Due to snow/freezing in places. The risk (and change in risk) is probably much greater than this warning about "dangerous evil people in the foreign lands".
morgante 11y ago
> A notice that foreign travel is not safe will deter some people. The problem is that foreign travel is safe and all this fear-mongering is unjustified. 99% of people who travel to a foreign country are completely safe. Saying anything to the contrary is pure fear-mongering.
- codyb 11y ago
  It has to be higher than that. Probably 99.9, maybe 99.99%. Possibly greater. But yea.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- frandroid 11y ago
  And it's a much higher number than 99%. This page[0] reports 68M exits in 2014... How many Americans have died travelling abroad due to terrorism in 2014? 5? 50? 500? [0]: http://travel.trade.gov/view/m-2014-O-001/index.html http://travel.trade.gov/view/m-2014-O-001/index.html
- krapp 11y ago
  On the other hand, if Daesh does kill a lot of Americans overseas anytime soon, it becomes a Republican stalking horse alongside Benghazi. I think it's less fear-mongering than election-season politics.
icanhackit 11y ago
A notice that foreign travel is not safe will deter some people. Which is silly when they're more likely to die in a crash on the way to the airport than during flight or while abroad. It's completely illogical and actually gives weight to the actions of terrorists.
corysama 11y ago
Because it will deter a disproportionate number of people. This isn't a binary situation. Proportionality matters. If the World Health Organization issued a world-wide alert that going outside in the month of May 2016 will have an increased risk of death from bees, you might be annoyed to have to dig through obscure, possibly unpublished analyses to find that the increased risk was +0.001% due to projected shifts in the bee population relative to 2015. That straw-man example of announcing nearly nothing would probably be in practice more statistically relevant to people's lives than this one. Yet, here we are discussing how "foreign travel is not safe" with no information we can use to determine how much anyone should actually care.

by dstyrb 11y ago

Agree, it's about possible reduction of harm. A notice that cars crash is not going to stop people from using cars. A notice that foreign travel is not safe will deter some people.

sliverstorm 11y ago

There's also the relative-to-baseline nature. Foreign travel has always had risk; this alert declares the risks are temporarily higher. If the gov't said "For the next week, car travel will have heightened risk", people might take notice.

e12e 11y ago
Actually, given the time of year, I'm guessing car travel will have heightened risk for next week. Due to snow/freezing in places. The risk (and change in risk) is probably much greater than this warning about "dangerous evil people in the foreign lands".

morgante 11y ago

> A notice that foreign travel is not safe will deter some people. The problem is that foreign travel is safe and all this fear-mongering is unjustified. 99% of people who travel to a foreign country are completely safe. Saying anything to the contrary is pure fear-mongering.

codyb 11y ago
It has to be higher than that. Probably 99.9, maybe 99.99%. Possibly greater. But yea.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
frandroid 11y ago
And it's a much higher number than 99%. This page[0] reports 68M exits in 2014... How many Americans have died travelling abroad due to terrorism in 2014? 5? 50? 500? [0]: http://travel.trade.gov/view/m-2014-O-001/index.html http://travel.trade.gov/view/m-2014-O-001/index.html
krapp 11y ago
On the other hand, if Daesh does kill a lot of Americans overseas anytime soon, it becomes a Republican stalking horse alongside Benghazi. I think it's less fear-mongering than election-season politics.

icanhackit 11y ago

A notice that foreign travel is not safe will deter some people. Which is silly when they're more likely to die in a crash on the way to the airport than during flight or while abroad. It's completely illogical and actually gives weight to the actions of terrorists.

corysama 11y ago

Because it will deter a disproportionate number of people. This isn't a binary situation. Proportionality matters. If the World Health Organization issued a world-wide alert that going outside in the month of May 2016 will have an increased risk of death from bees, you might be annoyed to have to dig through obscure, possibly unpublished analyses to find that the increased risk was +0.001% due to projected shifts in the bee population relative to 2015. That straw-man example of announcing nearly nothing would probably be in practice more statistically relevant to people's lives than this one. Yet, here we are discussing how "foreign travel is not safe" with no information we can use to determine how much anyone should actually care.