3 ms·

I call this "outlier driven policy"; one single instance of some thing happening some where at some time within the past 100 years means that everyone for perpe

I call this "outlier driven policy"; one single instance of some thing happening some where at some time within the past 100 years means that everyone for perpetuity has to follow some new rule because the lim(x -> 0) risk is simply too much. For instance, there was one person, 2 decades ago, flying out of france, who hid a bomb in his shoes so today we are all still taking off our shoes, all of us, each time, on every flight. Splendid. It's a completely reactionary narrative driven policy that really illustrates the probabilistic illiteracy, cost/benefit illiteracy, lack of critical thinking ... it's like we've taken the structure of folksy tales like "one child did that and they poked their eye out" and are all like "ok, let's make official policy around this" This is how all the fun park equipment has been dismantled and replaced with things no child past the age of 4 or so would ever find appealing because the existence of a non-zero risk, regardless of how small that is, are all treated equivalently with their volumes cranked to 11.

jonathankoren 6y ago
> For instance, there was one person, 2 decades ago, flying out of france, who hid a bomb in his shoes so today we are all still taking off our shoes, all of us, each time, on every flight. Splendid. I'm still disappointed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempted bombing didn't lead to a similar policy. > it's like we've taken the structure of folksy tales like "one child did that and they poked their eye out" and are all like "ok, let's make official policy around this" Growing up, my mom was repeatedly told not to play with a button on a string because, "some kid put his eye out". Being a kid my mom always thought that was just a stupid story. She played withing a button on a string, and didn't know anyone that happened to. Decades later, as an adult she was telling the story about this weird and admonition to a distant cousin (2nd?) of hers, and her cousin got real quiet, and simply stated, "That was my brother," and then told the story about how it happened, and that he did lose sight in one of his eyes he struck it with a button tied to a string.
ip26 6y ago
I mean, speaking of the shoes, yes it was one time. But once it was shown to work, there would probably have been many copycats without a countermeasure.
- stephen_g 6y ago
  Few other countries make people take off their shoes through airport security... we haven’t had any copycat attacks.
  - dannyw 6y ago
    The US does a lot of very, very bad things _around the world_. Possibly more than any other country, depending on your viewpoints.
- kristopolous 6y ago
  In the EU they use none of that security theater and it hasn't happened. You're doing the thing I just talked about
mlyle 6y ago
> For instance, there was one person, 2 decades ago, flying out of france, who hid a bomb in his shoes so today we are all still taking off our shoes, all of us, each time, on every flight. Splendid. I feel like the shoe inspection is silly, but this seems like the wrong logic. To the extent that there's a vulnerability in the system, patching it makes sense, even if it's only been exploited once. No one has closed network sessions with unauthenticated RSTs lately like we used to do in the 90s-- so is the sequence check no longer necessary? Of course, one needs to consider the cost-benefit of every mitigation measure and whether you're addressing the biggest risks.
centimeter 6y ago
I bet a lot of people on this website will nod their head and think to themselves that they agree with your comment (because of the specific examples you gave), but in my experience fewer than 1% of the general population and probably fewer than 5% of people on HN today are capable of actually thinking in a utilitarian manner. Even my smartest and most numerate acquaintances (let’s say +2-4 stddev, mostly scientists and engineers) have to be pushed to thinking this way about specific issues unless they have a background in economics or something. The concept of making decisions as part of an explicit optimization strategy, rather than as a result of applying a set of heuristics, is completely foreign to most people. Giving specific examples almost invariably pisses people off, because they’re emotionally invested in the heuristics being accurate. They would probably be fine in a tribal group of ~100 people with no out-group communication, but they scale very poorly to billions of people with an internet connection.

jonathankoren 6y ago

> For instance, there was one person, 2 decades ago, flying out of france, who hid a bomb in his shoes so today we are all still taking off our shoes, all of us, each time, on every flight. Splendid. I'm still disappointed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempted bombing didn't lead to a similar policy. > it's like we've taken the structure of folksy tales like "one child did that and they poked their eye out" and are all like "ok, let's make official policy around this" Growing up, my mom was repeatedly told not to play with a button on a string because, "some kid put his eye out". Being a kid my mom always thought that was just a stupid story. She played withing a button on a string, and didn't know anyone that happened to. Decades later, as an adult she was telling the story about this weird and admonition to a distant cousin (2nd?) of hers, and her cousin got real quiet, and simply stated, "That was my brother," and then told the story about how it happened, and that he did lose sight in one of his eyes he struck it with a button tied to a string.

ip26 6y ago

I mean, speaking of the shoes, yes it was one time. But once it was shown to work, there would probably have been many copycats without a countermeasure.

stephen_g 6y ago
Few other countries make people take off their shoes through airport security... we haven’t had any copycat attacks.
- dannyw 6y ago
  The US does a lot of very, very bad things _around the world_. Possibly more than any other country, depending on your viewpoints.
kristopolous 6y ago
In the EU they use none of that security theater and it hasn't happened. You're doing the thing I just talked about

mlyle 6y ago

> For instance, there was one person, 2 decades ago, flying out of france, who hid a bomb in his shoes so today we are all still taking off our shoes, all of us, each time, on every flight. Splendid. I feel like the shoe inspection is silly, but this seems like the wrong logic. To the extent that there's a vulnerability in the system, patching it makes sense, even if it's only been exploited once. No one has closed network sessions with unauthenticated RSTs lately like we used to do in the 90s-- so is the sequence check no longer necessary? Of course, one needs to consider the cost-benefit of every mitigation measure and whether you're addressing the biggest risks.

centimeter 6y ago

I bet a lot of people on this website will nod their head and think to themselves that they agree with your comment (because of the specific examples you gave), but in my experience fewer than 1% of the general population and probably fewer than 5% of people on HN today are capable of actually thinking in a utilitarian manner. Even my smartest and most numerate acquaintances (let’s say +2-4 stddev, mostly scientists and engineers) have to be pushed to thinking this way about specific issues unless they have a background in economics or something. The concept of making decisions as part of an explicit optimization strategy, rather than as a result of applying a set of heuristics, is completely foreign to most people. Giving specific examples almost invariably pisses people off, because they’re emotionally invested in the heuristics being accurate. They would probably be fine in a tribal group of ~100 people with no out-group communication, but they scale very poorly to billions of people with an internet connection.