5 ms·

You're right. We should just all get used to terrorism now, a few dead a year is the best we can do.

by verroq 9y ago

NickSharp 9y ago
Correct. If we as a society could somehow "get used to terrorism" it would be no more of a threat than falling vending machines, as pointed out above. Plus, we'd save billions of dollars and countless hours of productivity. Not that I'm expecting this to happen, but one can imagine...
- schrodinger 9y ago
  I do generally agree that terrorism isn't a threat worth changing our lifestyles over. However, I wonder if it's a little unfair to average out the probabilities and compare to something closer to an actual random event, like falling vending machines; surely, a terrorist attack is significantly more likely to occur in a place like New York than Middle America, no? I'd really like to see something like what's the probability of being killed by a "falling vending machine" IN NEW YORK vs a terrorist attack IN NEW YORK, than something country wide.
  - CydeWeys 9y ago
    FYI, getting killed by falling vending machines isn't a random event. It happens because people are rocking vending machines back and forth, either to knock loose a stuck purchased product or just to try to steal from them. If you get killed by a falling vending machine it's because you were doing something stupid. So long as you never rock vending machines, and you shouldn't!!, you are way more likely to be killed by a terrorist, even though the odds of that are incredibly low (one in many, many millions).
vkou 9y ago
You are more likely to be struck by lightning, then killed by a terrorist. That doesn't mean that we should spend billions of dollars on outfitting every man, woman, and child, with a Faraday cage. If you do insist on spending billions of dollars to deal with terrorism, though, perhaps you could look at dealing with the root causes that breed dejected, anti-social, and radicalized young men (Who tend to either join terror cells, or an army.) As a bonus, you'll also probably save quite a lot of people from opiates.
- Banthum 9y ago
  First thing is, people worried about terrorism aren't really worried about terrorism as it is now. They're really worried about what terrorism and ethnic conflict will be like in a few decades when, for example, Muslims are majority in some European countries. Muslim majorities are predicted in several major European countries, using basic conservative demographic projections, this century. How will that be to live in? For a prototype of that, you can look to Lebanon, or how Christians have been faring in Egypt in recent decades. Here you have to make the distinction between the steady problem and the unlimited-growth problem. The steady problem is "homegrown" terrorism. While there is always some level of terrorism coming from all groups, that should be addressed with the usual deradicalization and politics programs. Those approaches solved the issue with, for example, IRA terrorism. Which is a good thing, because we have to live with our own people. The real issue is the one that will grow without limit due to ongoing demographic replacement in the West by Muslims. That's what people are worried about, because people understand that unlike homegrown terrorism, the Islamic terrorism problem can become infinitely bad, and you can end up like the Christians in Egypt. No magical historical force prevents French or Germans or British from ending up living under such deadly tyranny. Sadly, the only real way to stop this is to cease Muslim immigration until some of these data [1] start looking a lot more promising (which will take a century at least). There's certainly no shortage of people wanting to move West from places like India and China, so I see no problem with choosing immigrants who will create better outcomes (and we do that anyway). If we're willing to discriminate on age and education, we can discriminate on religion - especially when a religion's core beliefs, as interpreted in all its mainstream schools of thought, explicitly opposes the basic egalatarian democratic values of our society. [1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/26/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/26/muslims-and-...
  - rorykoehler 9y ago
    What does a Muslim majority population have to do with terrorism? I've lived in many Muslim majority neighbourhoods and the closest I've gotten to terrorism is watching it on the news. In fact there was far more terrorism (daily almost) on the news as i was growing up in Ireland. 'Christians' blowing the shit out of each other. Practically all of the recent Muslim immigrants in Europe are running away from terrorists not becoming them. Fear of a Muslim majority is completely irrational.
mrgriscom 9y ago
Well... yes, because if we got used to terrorism, it would break the media cycle and cease to terrorize, and people would stop doing it!
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

You're right. We should just all get used to terrorism now, a few dead a year is the best we can do.

by verroq 9y ago

You're right. We should just all get used to terrorism now, a few dead a year is the best we can do.

Correct. If we as a society could somehow "get used to terrorism" it would be no more of a threat than falling vending machines, as pointed out above. Plus, we'd save billions of dollars and countless hours of productivity. Not that I'm expecting this to happen, but one can imagine...

schrodinger 9y ago
I do generally agree that terrorism isn't a threat worth changing our lifestyles over. However, I wonder if it's a little unfair to average out the probabilities and compare to something closer to an actual random event, like falling vending machines; surely, a terrorist attack is significantly more likely to occur in a place like New York than Middle America, no? I'd really like to see something like what's the probability of being killed by a "falling vending machine" IN NEW YORK vs a terrorist attack IN NEW YORK, than something country wide.
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  FYI, getting killed by falling vending machines isn't a random event. It happens because people are rocking vending machines back and forth, either to knock loose a stuck purchased product or just to try to steal from them. If you get killed by a falling vending machine it's because you were doing something stupid. So long as you never rock vending machines, and you shouldn't!!, you are way more likely to be killed by a terrorist, even though the odds of that are incredibly low (one in many, many millions).

vkou 9y ago

You are more likely to be struck by lightning, then killed by a terrorist. That doesn't mean that we should spend billions of dollars on outfitting every man, woman, and child, with a Faraday cage. If you do insist on spending billions of dollars to deal with terrorism, though, perhaps you could look at dealing with the root causes that breed dejected, anti-social, and radicalized young men (Who tend to either join terror cells, or an army.) As a bonus, you'll also probably save quite a lot of people from opiates.

Banthum 9y ago
First thing is, people worried about terrorism aren't really worried about terrorism as it is now. They're really worried about what terrorism and ethnic conflict will be like in a few decades when, for example, Muslims are majority in some European countries. Muslim majorities are predicted in several major European countries, using basic conservative demographic projections, this century. How will that be to live in? For a prototype of that, you can look to Lebanon, or how Christians have been faring in Egypt in recent decades. Here you have to make the distinction between the steady problem and the unlimited-growth problem. The steady problem is "homegrown" terrorism. While there is always some level of terrorism coming from all groups, that should be addressed with the usual deradicalization and politics programs. Those approaches solved the issue with, for example, IRA terrorism. Which is a good thing, because we have to live with our own people. The real issue is the one that will grow without limit due to ongoing demographic replacement in the West by Muslims. That's what people are worried about, because people understand that unlike homegrown terrorism, the Islamic terrorism problem can become infinitely bad, and you can end up like the Christians in Egypt. No magical historical force prevents French or Germans or British from ending up living under such deadly tyranny. Sadly, the only real way to stop this is to cease Muslim immigration until some of these data [1] start looking a lot more promising (which will take a century at least). There's certainly no shortage of people wanting to move West from places like India and China, so I see no problem with choosing immigrants who will create better outcomes (and we do that anyway). If we're willing to discriminate on age and education, we can discriminate on religion - especially when a religion's core beliefs, as interpreted in all its mainstream schools of thought, explicitly opposes the basic egalatarian democratic values of our society. [1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/26/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/26/muslims-and-...
- rorykoehler 9y ago
  What does a Muslim majority population have to do with terrorism? I've lived in many Muslim majority neighbourhoods and the closest I've gotten to terrorism is watching it on the news. In fact there was far more terrorism (daily almost) on the news as i was growing up in Ireland. 'Christians' blowing the shit out of each other. Practically all of the recent Muslim immigrants in Europe are running away from terrorists not becoming them. Fear of a Muslim majority is completely irrational.

mrgriscom 9y ago

Well... yes, because if we got used to terrorism, it would break the media cycle and cease to terrorize, and people would stop doing it!

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]