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Its too bad that most people don't have a basic appreciation of statistics or probability. Its too bad Schneier only spends a tiny paragraph on it: "Even thoug

by afhof 13y ago

Its too bad that most people don't have a basic appreciation of statistics or probability. Its too bad Schneier only spends a tiny paragraph on it: "Even though this will be in the news for weeks, we should recognize this for what it is: a rare event". The chance that a person will die from a bombing, or be shot, or their plane crash, or a hurricane kill them is so small that there is almost NO reason to be afraid of it. It is far more likely that a person will die of Heart disease or cancer than any of the above. What will almost certainly kill us, we accept. What is almost inconsequential to us, we abhor.

rayiner 13y ago
People don't react to terrorism because they're afraid of being blown up personally. They do it because they're afraid of the precedent that might be set by not responding. It's statistically unlikely that you'll be the victim of gang violence, but does that mean it's irrational prosecute and punish gang members? No, because the activity threatens social stability vastly out of proportion with the probability of any given person being victim to it. In general, we punish crimes not because it's likely that we'll be the victims of one, but because if we don't the problem might grow out of hand and undermine civil order.
- timr 13y ago
  #citationneeded Really now. I don't need to go much beyond the evening news to know that people spend a lot of time being afraid of things that aren't likely to happen. (What don't you know about your toothbrush that could kill you? Probably very little.) Your model of humanity is one that's much more rational and thoughtful than what I've come to expect from my neighbors. Nobody is scared of a decline in social stability; they're scared of getting shot or robbed or blown up. Usually by people who look different than they do.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Listen to Obama's speech on the issue. It's targeted to calm the average American. Listen to the word he uses to characterize the administration's response: justice. What does "justice" mean in this context? It means nothing other than the government's response to activity that threatens social stability and psychologically remedy the injuries created by actions that upset social stability.
    - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
      What does the War in Iraq or having to remove one's shoes before boarding an aircraft have to do with justice? I don't think anyone is making the argument that there should be no justice. Prosecuting the criminals who commit murder for the purpose of terrorism is clearly a "no reasonable person could disagree" sort of a thing. But the question remains, how is justice won? In theory we could impose martial law and suspend elections, or permanently shut all the roads and trains and prohibit gatherings of more than five people in the same place, or nuke the entire middle east. Perhaps doing those things could bring justice to more terrorists. Well before we reach that point, we come to a line we should not cross. We come to a choice that will cost us more of our humanity than it gains us in justice. And whipping the public into a frenzy is how popular support for crossing the line we should not cross is manufactured.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        All that is really irrelevant to my point, whixh is that the nature of the word "justice" shows that people are concerned about social order, not just the individual likelihood of being killed. One can argue about the extent to which any given response helps maintain order. That's why people care about "justice" for murderers even though more people are killed by auto accidents. Murder upsets the social order. A car accident doesn't.
- tuxidomasx 13y ago
  This might explain the political response to terrorism, but I'm not sure it applies to the individual. Fear of setting a bad precedent which could lead to the undermining of civil order seems to be a more complex feeling than that of being the victim of an attack. It's been my experience that the most common fears of an individual are related to sudden/unexpected pain and/or death, not concern for the social good. And if people are truly concerned over the long term social effects of a threat, why does this not also apply to large percentages of the population routinely dying of preventable causes? Surely this is just as relevant to the well-being of society.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Because people aren't just worried about death. They're worried about social order. Yes, not just governments but individuals worry about social order. It is a luxury of growing up in the west that allows people to say stuff like only governments worry about social order. Highway accidents don't have the potential to undermine social order the way terrorism does.
    - gknoy 13y ago
      I think it's more that they fear random death: crazy snipers on rooftops, bombs at the park. They don't fear things that they (mistakenly) think they have a lot more control over. heart disease: "But I eat healthily ... usually" traffic accidents: "I'm a good driver! I won't get in an accident." It's a combination of poor risk assessment and Dunning-Kruger mischaracterization's of one's skills. I'm sure there's more to it than that.
- DanBC 13y ago
  That does not explain why people stopped flying after 9/11. People are terrible at estimating risk.
  - artsrc 13y ago
    I flew less after 9/11 because it made rational sense to do so. Before I could turn up at the airport 10 minutes before my plane took off and go the the gate and check in. After 9/11 I was in a queue for ages and had to arrive really early. So it was quicker to just drive.
    - ygra 13y ago
      Also deadlier.
      - freehunter 13y ago
        Do you have statistics showing that it's more deadly to fly post-9/11 than it was before? Are more airliners crashing now?
        jaredandrews 13y ago
        Parent is probably referring to the fact that it is safer to fly than drive a car, statistically speaking.[0] [0] - http://reason.com/archives/2006/08/11/dont-be-terrorized http://reason.com/archives/2006/08/11/dont-be-terrorized
        ygra 13y ago
        That is indeed what I was referring to. Deaths due to traffic accidents increased measurably in the months after 9/11 as more people opted to drive instead of flying.
- riggins 13y ago
  "People don't react to terrorism because they're afraid of being blown up personally." I would disagree. My experience is that people view dying in a terrorist act as an especially horrific way to die and hence especially scary. I have had this specific conversation with people where they say it would be much worse to die in a terrorist attack than to die in a car accident. To me it doesn't make sense. They both kill you but a lot of people see it differently.
- darkarmani 13y ago
  > They do it because they're afraid of the precedent that might be set by not responding What precedent? Isn't the whole purpose of terrorism to provoke a response -- to force a change?
fmkamchatka 13y ago
I don't think it's a matter of statistics or probability: it's just easier said when you're not directly affected by the events. For me personally, I completely agree when reading this article but I'm here, on the west coast, not feeling threatened directly and knowing my friends are now safe. But what if you were passing the finish line as these devices exploded. You might well be the most rationale person in the world, you would not think about probabilities. What if you were there in the public, wondering why your life has been spared because you decided to stand further away from that point.
- emiliobumachar 13y ago
  I agree with you that refusing to be terrorized is borderline impossible for the people who got hurt in the blast or their closest family and friends. The article is aimed at the rest, the majority who can potentially either panick or just carry on.
  - twoodfin 13y ago
    There's nothing in-between? Nobody's panicking, as far as I can tell, but an awful lot of people seem ready to describe any response as panic-inspired.
knodi 13y ago
More people died on black friday every year. Shit more people die every year falling out of bed.
anigbrowl 13y ago
most people have a better grasp of probability than you suggest. What they're scared of is not so much the remote possibility of being a bombing victim, but the complete lack of control they would have in such a situation. there's a much higher chance of being in a car accident than in a bombing, but you can mitigate your risk of a car accidnet by paying attention to your own and others' driving, and in most cases you'd have the opportunity to take some evasive action. Likewise you can mitigate your risk of getting mugged by not going into dangerous neighborhoods or suchlike. And so on. If you're the victim of a bombing, on the other hand, you probably won't have any warning or any time to do anything about it. By the time you figure out what's happened, you're already maimed/ dying/ dead, or one of your loved ones is, or whatever. Remote though the risk is, the randomness and immediacy of it are a lot scarier. I've been in close proximity to a car bomb; it's shocking because it's a lot bigger than you are, and whether you are a victim or not has absolutely nothing to do with your skills or reaction time, it's purely a matter of luck. It's like getting killed by a falling tree or a sinkhole opening up under you or something. The risk of that actually happening is tiny, but what's scary is how helpless you would be if it did. Unlike car accidents or confrontations with wild animals or people, you probably won't get the opportunity to think/talk/fight your way out of danger in the former situation.If you think about movies, TV etc., people are always getting in jeopardy but worming their way out of it somehow or another. We find it much more shocking when we see someone get killed without having any time to react to the danger they're in.
- ErrantX 13y ago
  Yes, and that's the GPs point; that paralysing fear outweighs the logic of the situation. Indeed, I'd suggest your own comment about being able to mitigate a car accident is a prime example of our difficulty with assessing the probability of risk (you may have more control of the situation; but that does not reduce the probability of you being killed by a car). Many many things could kill us suddenly and without warning (even heart failure!). We are disproportionately scared of some things (eg flight) because they "seem" scary, and are blasé to actually risky things because they seem familiar. And excellent book on this is "Risk; the science andpolitics of fear" which uses case studies and real data to examine this phenomenon.
gitmothrow 13y ago
People have an expectation that they could die from heart disease or cancer at some point. They have an expectation that they could die in a car crash when driving. They have an expectation that they could be killed in a plane crash when flying. They have no expectation that they and their friends will suddenly have their legs blown off and bleed out on the street while enjoying a public social event. That is what makes terrorism different than those situations you highlighted. The fear in the back of you head while doing mundane things. This isn't complicated. If I wanted comments like yours, I would go to reddit.
twoodfin 13y ago
This wasn't just a few hundred people being injured or killed: This event, by its targeted and spectacular nature, negatively affected hundreds of thousands of people. Add together the costly, chaotic disruptions for all those individuals, and you don't need many of these "rare" events to make terrorism a much more significant problem than you're making it out to be.
cscurmudgeon 13y ago
Sorry, but I think you don't understand probability that much and you also underestimate how much people do probability subconsciously in the right way. Also, even experts and scientists studying probability theory are pretty confused when it comes to reasoning correctly with probability. Look at it this way: the probability of me dying from heart disease is extremely low even though a lot of Americans have a high probability for that. There are quite genuine concerns in AI that people have messed up uncertainty, probability and statistics. http://www.agroparistech.fr/mia/agi-workshop/ http://www.agroparistech.fr/mia/agi-workshop/ So please stop the pop sci version of probability and statistics. Carnap is probably spinning in his grave right now :) Any good book on probability will show that there a half dozen ways to do probability from first principles and all of them are sort of equally valid but differ greatly. http://books.google.com/books/about/Universal_Artificial_Intelligence.html?id=NP53iZGt4KUC http://books.google.com/books/about/Universal_Artificial_Int...

by afhof 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago

People don't react to terrorism because they're afraid of being blown up personally. They do it because they're afraid of the precedent that might be set by not responding. It's statistically unlikely that you'll be the victim of gang violence, but does that mean it's irrational prosecute and punish gang members? No, because the activity threatens social stability vastly out of proportion with the probability of any given person being victim to it. In general, we punish crimes not because it's likely that we'll be the victims of one, but because if we don't the problem might grow out of hand and undermine civil order.

timr 13y ago
#citationneeded Really now. I don't need to go much beyond the evening news to know that people spend a lot of time being afraid of things that aren't likely to happen. (What don't you know about your toothbrush that could kill you? Probably very little.) Your model of humanity is one that's much more rational and thoughtful than what I've come to expect from my neighbors. Nobody is scared of a decline in social stability; they're scared of getting shot or robbed or blown up. Usually by people who look different than they do.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Listen to Obama's speech on the issue. It's targeted to calm the average American. Listen to the word he uses to characterize the administration's response: justice. What does "justice" mean in this context? It means nothing other than the government's response to activity that threatens social stability and psychologically remedy the injuries created by actions that upset social stability.
  - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
    What does the War in Iraq or having to remove one's shoes before boarding an aircraft have to do with justice? I don't think anyone is making the argument that there should be no justice. Prosecuting the criminals who commit murder for the purpose of terrorism is clearly a "no reasonable person could disagree" sort of a thing. But the question remains, how is justice won? In theory we could impose martial law and suspend elections, or permanently shut all the roads and trains and prohibit gatherings of more than five people in the same place, or nuke the entire middle east. Perhaps doing those things could bring justice to more terrorists. Well before we reach that point, we come to a line we should not cross. We come to a choice that will cost us more of our humanity than it gains us in justice. And whipping the public into a frenzy is how popular support for crossing the line we should not cross is manufactured.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      All that is really irrelevant to my point, whixh is that the nature of the word "justice" shows that people are concerned about social order, not just the individual likelihood of being killed. One can argue about the extent to which any given response helps maintain order. That's why people care about "justice" for murderers even though more people are killed by auto accidents. Murder upsets the social order. A car accident doesn't.
tuxidomasx 13y ago
This might explain the political response to terrorism, but I'm not sure it applies to the individual. Fear of setting a bad precedent which could lead to the undermining of civil order seems to be a more complex feeling than that of being the victim of an attack. It's been my experience that the most common fears of an individual are related to sudden/unexpected pain and/or death, not concern for the social good. And if people are truly concerned over the long term social effects of a threat, why does this not also apply to large percentages of the population routinely dying of preventable causes? Surely this is just as relevant to the well-being of society.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Because people aren't just worried about death. They're worried about social order. Yes, not just governments but individuals worry about social order. It is a luxury of growing up in the west that allows people to say stuff like only governments worry about social order. Highway accidents don't have the potential to undermine social order the way terrorism does.
  - gknoy 13y ago
    I think it's more that they fear random death: crazy snipers on rooftops, bombs at the park. They don't fear things that they (mistakenly) think they have a lot more control over. heart disease: "But I eat healthily ... usually" traffic accidents: "I'm a good driver! I won't get in an accident." It's a combination of poor risk assessment and Dunning-Kruger mischaracterization's of one's skills. I'm sure there's more to it than that.
DanBC 13y ago
That does not explain why people stopped flying after 9/11. People are terrible at estimating risk.
- artsrc 13y ago
  I flew less after 9/11 because it made rational sense to do so. Before I could turn up at the airport 10 minutes before my plane took off and go the the gate and check in. After 9/11 I was in a queue for ages and had to arrive really early. So it was quicker to just drive.
  - ygra 13y ago
    Also deadlier.
    - freehunter 13y ago
      Do you have statistics showing that it's more deadly to fly post-9/11 than it was before? Are more airliners crashing now?
      - jaredandrews 13y ago
        Parent is probably referring to the fact that it is safer to fly than drive a car, statistically speaking.[0] [0] - http://reason.com/archives/2006/08/11/dont-be-terrorized http://reason.com/archives/2006/08/11/dont-be-terrorized
        ygra 13y ago
        That is indeed what I was referring to. Deaths due to traffic accidents increased measurably in the months after 9/11 as more people opted to drive instead of flying.
riggins 13y ago
"People don't react to terrorism because they're afraid of being blown up personally." I would disagree. My experience is that people view dying in a terrorist act as an especially horrific way to die and hence especially scary. I have had this specific conversation with people where they say it would be much worse to die in a terrorist attack than to die in a car accident. To me it doesn't make sense. They both kill you but a lot of people see it differently.
darkarmani 13y ago
> They do it because they're afraid of the precedent that might be set by not responding What precedent? Isn't the whole purpose of terrorism to provoke a response -- to force a change?

fmkamchatka 13y ago

I don't think it's a matter of statistics or probability: it's just easier said when you're not directly affected by the events. For me personally, I completely agree when reading this article but I'm here, on the west coast, not feeling threatened directly and knowing my friends are now safe. But what if you were passing the finish line as these devices exploded. You might well be the most rationale person in the world, you would not think about probabilities. What if you were there in the public, wondering why your life has been spared because you decided to stand further away from that point.

emiliobumachar 13y ago
I agree with you that refusing to be terrorized is borderline impossible for the people who got hurt in the blast or their closest family and friends. The article is aimed at the rest, the majority who can potentially either panick or just carry on.
- twoodfin 13y ago
  There's nothing in-between? Nobody's panicking, as far as I can tell, but an awful lot of people seem ready to describe any response as panic-inspired.

knodi 13y ago

More people died on black friday every year. Shit more people die every year falling out of bed.

anigbrowl 13y ago

most people have a better grasp of probability than you suggest. What they're scared of is not so much the remote possibility of being a bombing victim, but the complete lack of control they would have in such a situation. there's a much higher chance of being in a car accident than in a bombing, but you can mitigate your risk of a car accidnet by paying attention to your own and others' driving, and in most cases you'd have the opportunity to take some evasive action. Likewise you can mitigate your risk of getting mugged by not going into dangerous neighborhoods or suchlike. And so on. If you're the victim of a bombing, on the other hand, you probably won't have any warning or any time to do anything about it. By the time you figure out what's happened, you're already maimed/ dying/ dead, or one of your loved ones is, or whatever. Remote though the risk is, the randomness and immediacy of it are a lot scarier. I've been in close proximity to a car bomb; it's shocking because it's a lot bigger than you are, and whether you are a victim or not has absolutely nothing to do with your skills or reaction time, it's purely a matter of luck. It's like getting killed by a falling tree or a sinkhole opening up under you or something. The risk of that actually happening is tiny, but what's scary is how helpless you would be if it did. Unlike car accidents or confrontations with wild animals or people, you probably won't get the opportunity to think/talk/fight your way out of danger in the former situation.If you think about movies, TV etc., people are always getting in jeopardy but worming their way out of it somehow or another. We find it much more shocking when we see someone get killed without having any time to react to the danger they're in.

ErrantX 13y ago
Yes, and that's the GPs point; that paralysing fear outweighs the logic of the situation. Indeed, I'd suggest your own comment about being able to mitigate a car accident is a prime example of our difficulty with assessing the probability of risk (you may have more control of the situation; but that does not reduce the probability of you being killed by a car). Many many things could kill us suddenly and without warning (even heart failure!). We are disproportionately scared of some things (eg flight) because they "seem" scary, and are blasé to actually risky things because they seem familiar. And excellent book on this is "Risk; the science andpolitics of fear" which uses case studies and real data to examine this phenomenon.

gitmothrow 13y ago

People have an expectation that they could die from heart disease or cancer at some point. They have an expectation that they could die in a car crash when driving. They have an expectation that they could be killed in a plane crash when flying. They have no expectation that they and their friends will suddenly have their legs blown off and bleed out on the street while enjoying a public social event. That is what makes terrorism different than those situations you highlighted. The fear in the back of you head while doing mundane things. This isn't complicated. If I wanted comments like yours, I would go to reddit.

twoodfin 13y ago

This wasn't just a few hundred people being injured or killed: This event, by its targeted and spectacular nature, negatively affected hundreds of thousands of people. Add together the costly, chaotic disruptions for all those individuals, and you don't need many of these "rare" events to make terrorism a much more significant problem than you're making it out to be.

cscurmudgeon 13y ago

Sorry, but I think you don't understand probability that much and you also underestimate how much people do probability subconsciously in the right way. Also, even experts and scientists studying probability theory are pretty confused when it comes to reasoning correctly with probability. Look at it this way: the probability of me dying from heart disease is extremely low even though a lot of Americans have a high probability for that. There are quite genuine concerns in AI that people have messed up uncertainty, probability and statistics. http://www.agroparistech.fr/mia/agi-workshop/ http://www.agroparistech.fr/mia/agi-workshop/ So please stop the pop sci version of probability and statistics. Carnap is probably spinning in his grave right now :) Any good book on probability will show that there a half dozen ways to do probability from first principles and all of them are sort of equally valid but differ greatly. http://books.google.com/books/about/Universal_Artificial_Intelligence.html?id=NP53iZGt4KUC http://books.google.com/books/about/Universal_Artificial_Int...