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A major airport and the entire rail system of the city was shut down. A lot of damage was done. And, of course, a bunch of people died from something not many s
by rtpg 11y ago
A major airport and the entire rail system of the city was shut down. A lot of damage was done. And, of course, a bunch of people died from something not many signed up for.
Driving a car at least gives you the opportunity to reject taking on the risk.
The fabric of society is based around us not shooting each other/ blowing up trains. Every event like this (or, say, some countries bombing out neighborhoods in other countries) makes it harder to rely on the idea that this sort of thing doesn't happen.
Acknowledging that this happens because of conscious policy decisions by many people is also good.
There's absolutely nothing inevitable about these kinds of attacks. We could bring this sort of event down to a number real close to 0.
Not to mention that it's possible to worry about car crashes and terrorism at the same time
- ant6n 11y agoI don't drive a car, I cycle. I reject the risk of driving, but drivers put that risk on me anyway. Even more so than they do to themselves, because I'm more vulnerable than a person sitting in a moving steel cage, and because many drivers seem eager to put risk on me. In my life time, I'm much more likely to be murdered by a driver than a terrorist.
- SonicSoul 11y agowait. you cycle because driving is too risky? are you statistically less likely to get injured while cycling, or is it mainly about caring for not injuring others?
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoI read it as they don't drive, and thus don't consent to the risk of being in a car accident. Not that they cycle because of the risk; they didn't list why they cycle.
- realitygrill 11y agoCycling appears to be about an order of magnitude (~10x) times more dangerous, per mile travelled, than driving.
- ptaipale 11y agoI made the same calculation from the statistics in my country (Finland). Risk of death in a car is in the order of 1 per 300 million km, risk of death on bike is ten times higher. Most bike deaths are single-vehicle accidents (they do not involve another party).
- pif 11y ago> Acknowledging that this happens because of conscious policy decisions by many people is also good. > We could bring this sort of event down to a number real close to 0. Please, would you mind elaborating a bit on these two points?
- rtpg 11y agoI might be a bit overzealous in saying we can get the results down to 0 but there are many major countries that have not been attacked by ISIS. The narrative after 9/11, and after both Paris attacks were "this is a war of civilization, of culture. They attack us because we are free". I think a lot of us realise on a conscious level that this narrative simply isn't true, but the narrative still stands. Foreign intervention make us targets for "retaliation" (I'm trying hard to not apologise for monsters murdering a bunch of civilians pretty indiscriminately). There are many major countries and populations that are easier targets for Daesch that don't seem to get attacked. If this was about maximum carnage so many worse things could be happening right now. The whole "having a population not super happy about the current government" thing doesn't seem to help (in terms of building a support network). Though even that requires a pound of salt: a journalist on twitter pointed out that in the case of the Paris attacks, there were support networks... but they were mainly for "normal" criminals (drug dealers and the like). We're not talking about a huge set of jihadists, but a bunch of opportunists [0]. I think most people would recognise that the IRA bombings and the Troubles was a result of policy, not culture. Daesch is, I think, pretty similar. It's not like a bunch of people got up and were like "We hate the West!". There's a lot of stuff involved. Not that it justifies their actions, but it's at least good to be lucid when thinking about the why. [0]: https://twitter.com/joshuahersh/status/712280093343793153 https://twitter.com/joshuahersh/status/712280093343793153
- 13thLetter 11y ago> It's not like a bunch of people got up and were like "We hate the West!". There's a lot of stuff involved. Not that it justifies their actions, but it's at least good to be lucid when thinking about the why. I agree with you on that; it's unfortunate, though, that a lot of political bad actors have spot-welded "we need to understand why they're doing this" -- which is obviously true, it's much harder to defeat an enemy you don't understand -- to "it's racist to think that we have an enemy at all, never mind actually fight them effectively."
- Someone1234 11y ago> There's absolutely nothing inevitable about these kinds of attacks. We could bring this sort of event down to a number real close to 0. I don't think so. Even if you exclude international politics completely the number still isn't zero. Take the 2011 Norway attacks where 77 people died. That was one guy, a Christian fundamentalist, likely paranoid schizophrenic who wanted to rid the world of Marxism/feminism/islam/something. Then you have the unabomber, most school shootings, and so on which you can point to. My point is: This stuff is NEVER going away. All you can do is minimise it. Zero is certainly a laudable goal but likely an unachievable one.
- brudgers 11y agoThe parent comment uses the phrase "close to zero".
- ptaipale 11y agoLabeling Breivik as a Christian fundamentalist serves a political need, but if we really have to attribute to a religion what he did, he was more like a pagan fundamentalist ("Odinist") who expressed his belief that Jesus was "pathetic". Edit: However I agree with the part that this is never going to go away (completely). You cannot totally prevent terror, and living in a society that could would be terror itself.
- musha68k 11y agoThere is no such thing as 100% security, we probably are already at 99% security at this point.
- appleflaxen 11y agoCompared to other risks we take every day, it already is close to zero.