6 ms·

"Decade" is a very convenient window. How about 15 years (or even 12)? Also, smoking is an awful example because - due to the dishonesty of the cigarette indu

by 3am 13y ago

"Decade" is a very convenient window. How about 15 years (or even 12)? Also, smoking is an awful example because - due to the dishonesty of the cigarette industry and the real health risks - there was massive federal regulation of tobacco consumption and marketing starting in the 1970s, as well as the $200B+ Tobacco Master Settlement that came later. There was enormous public action at the state and federal level against the tobacco industry. EDIT: I dont' care about karma any more, but you downvoters suck. pg, mark my words that this Snowden/NSA crap will be the end of HN as a quality forum. It's unreadable lately. Every tin-foil hatter or teenage naif out there is using it as their personal forum in this pissing match of who can be more strident over something that any halfway intelligent person had assumed was happening already.

mikeash 13y ago
You can include 9/11 in the window, it doesn't make any quantitative difference. Terrorism is a negligible threat no matter how you slice it. 9/11 was less than a month's worth of American traffic fatalities. Why don't reckless drivers get even 1/100th of the attention?
- 3am 13y ago
  Are you joking? Do you know the cumulative cost of policing US roads, prosecuting offenders, and jailing the felonious vehicular offenders? I bet it's a lot more that 1% of the NSA budget. Also, I'm going out on a limb and assuming you know no more than me about the probability of future terrorist threats, and the value of your opinion is equally negligible.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Almost none of the policing you mention is directed at reckless driving. The vast majority of highway policing is for excessive (but generally safe) speed, and much of the rest is enforcing bureaucratic nonsense (expired tags!). They get close with DUI enforcement, but non-drunken reckless driving goes basically ignored. None of us can predict the future, but why would you assume terrorism wouldn't continue to be a negligible threat? Sure, it could suddenly become a leading cause of deaths in the USA, but so could kittens, in theory. If you want the government to continue to pour billions (arguably trillions if you count certain military actions on the ledger) into defending against terrorism, you'd better have an argument that goes beyond "nobody knows, but it could get bad!"
    - lupatus 13y ago
      I think your metrics for concern about potential threats is a little skewed. You seem to be looking at "concern about a potential threat" has having a 1-dimensional score. Yes, there are more instances of death by hammer in the USA in a given year than there are terrorist attacks. But, the terrorist attacks have the potential for much larger impact (see links, below). Consider a 2-dimensional score for threat scenarios where we multiply likelihood of occurrence by potential impact for the following scenarios: Scenario A: Bludgeoned to death by a hammer. Scenario B: Terrorists recover a missing Cold-war era nuke, and detonate it over Iowa, during the winter. Effects are: nuclear explosion, EMP pulse disrupting power grid and electronics, disruption in home heating and food/medical supplies, downwind radioactive fallout over Chicago, Ohio, Pittsburgh, Philly, Boston, New York, Baltimore, DC, etc.. Scoring (pulling these numbers out of my arse for illustration purposes): Scenario A: 6000 occurrences per year * 1.2 deaths per occurrence = 12000 Scenario B: 0.2 terrorist occurrences per year * (10 million fatalities + ((0.5 fatality / endangered) * 150 million endangered) = 17 million As you can see, the terrorism is a lot more serious than hammers (or kittens). And, something like the NSA program could catch these potential large-impact events, because there are a lot of realistic and very scary scenarios: (A short list from some quick duckduckgo-ing) http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/1002/20130325/deadly-virus-sample-goes-missing-texas-lab.htm http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/1002/20130325/deadly... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ksYDuIuuAE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ksYDuIuuAE http://www.cfr.org/weapons-of-terrorism/loose-nukes/p9549 http://www.cfr.org/weapons-of-terrorism/loose-nukes/p9549 http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Los-Alamos-can-t-find-two-vials-of-plutonium-2608951.php http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Los-Alamos-can-t-find-two... http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/09/usa-lost-tons-nuclear-weapon-uranium http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/09/usa-lost-tons-nuclea... http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/17483/8-nuclear-weapons-us-has-lost http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/17483/8-nuclear-weapons-u... http://rense.com/general33/mss.htm http://rense.com/general33/mss.htm http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9355413/ns/health-infectious_diseases/t/plague-infected-lab-mice-missing-new-jersey/#.Ucnk7_nOnbM http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9355413/ns/health-infectious_disea... P.S. Hello, NSA! I'm guessing this comment has gotten caught in some of your filters. I just want to say, keep up the good work. My brother-in-law works at Fort Mead, too. -Updated for grammar.
  - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
    There is good money in traffic enforcement. So good that in Texas we had to make it against the law to finance your whole police department with speed-trap revenue.
  - flyinRyan 13y ago
    The way to predict the future is look at the past. If we start at the first WTC bombing until today there are around 100 terrorism deaths per year. Utterly irrelevant. You seem to imply we should trust the government to tell us the probability but they've never been right in the past and are completely opaque in their methods. There's literally no reason to believe them at all.
incongruity 13y ago
Okay, sure, let's toss out the comparison to smoking. How about deaths in motor vehicles on the US highways? Okay, not that either – there's been (arguably) a lot spent on that in the last 15 years. How about choking to death or babies dying from SIDS? A quick google shows that each claims about 2,500 lives a year in the US. So, over the last 15 years, that's approximately 37,500 lives lost to each, or 75,000 total over the last 15 years... I'll leave the terrorism death count to you. And, I guarantee you, the funding isn't anywhere near the anti-terrorism funding.
- 3am 13y ago
  Like lupatus mentioned in the other response, there is considerable variability in the risk from terrorism. I would guess - while tragic, and my profound sympathies to anyone reading this who has been touched by either - that SIDS and infant/toddler choking deaths are much more consistent year over year (and there is a lot of educational material out there on preventing SIDS with sleep positions, and huge federal regulation on childrens' toys for, eg BuckyBalls). I would instead use the analogy of weather in the context of urban planning around floodplains, building standards, etc. These are typically based on 50 or 100 year storm events. If you look at a 15 year average, these standards look like overkill. EDIT: Lo and behold, another downvote. What in the way I've structured my argument or my logic is flawed? Or is it just more satisfying to downvote those you disagree with? Anyway, downvote away, you're only lowering yourself. I don't care.
  - incongruity 13y ago
    The risk from terrorism is, most greatly, the fear of terrorism and the effort a society will expend on trying to stop future terrorism, which in itself generates fear and adds to the likelihood of spending more on preventing terrorism... In short, it's all too easy to let it become a vicious cycle that simply is not justified based on the actual damage done by terrorism. To circle back to your analogy to floods – I'm not sure about what you're suggesting. Are you saying we need to look at a larger timeframe? If so, I would point out that I was considering precisely the timeframe you suggested. But, beyond that, looking over the last 100 years, SIDS and choking have certainly killed more... and I would expect they'd continue to do so over the next 100, even if the current anti-terrorism measures were never enacted.
mcantelon 13y ago
>pg, mark my words that this Snowden/NSA crap will be the end of HN as a quality forum. It's unreadable lately The front page currently has 4 articles about the NSA controversy: 13% of the 30 articles. Noone is forced to read, or comment on, every article.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Yeah, but the discussion has been bleeding into the non-NSA articles.
  - deathcakes 13y ago
    Heaven forbid that current events and unfolding political discourse should have any effect on anything one does with ones life.

by 3am 13y ago

mikeash 13y ago

You can include 9/11 in the window, it doesn't make any quantitative difference. Terrorism is a negligible threat no matter how you slice it. 9/11 was less than a month's worth of American traffic fatalities. Why don't reckless drivers get even 1/100th of the attention?

3am 13y ago
Are you joking? Do you know the cumulative cost of policing US roads, prosecuting offenders, and jailing the felonious vehicular offenders? I bet it's a lot more that 1% of the NSA budget. Also, I'm going out on a limb and assuming you know no more than me about the probability of future terrorist threats, and the value of your opinion is equally negligible.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Almost none of the policing you mention is directed at reckless driving. The vast majority of highway policing is for excessive (but generally safe) speed, and much of the rest is enforcing bureaucratic nonsense (expired tags!). They get close with DUI enforcement, but non-drunken reckless driving goes basically ignored. None of us can predict the future, but why would you assume terrorism wouldn't continue to be a negligible threat? Sure, it could suddenly become a leading cause of deaths in the USA, but so could kittens, in theory. If you want the government to continue to pour billions (arguably trillions if you count certain military actions on the ledger) into defending against terrorism, you'd better have an argument that goes beyond "nobody knows, but it could get bad!"
  - lupatus 13y ago
    I think your metrics for concern about potential threats is a little skewed. You seem to be looking at "concern about a potential threat" has having a 1-dimensional score. Yes, there are more instances of death by hammer in the USA in a given year than there are terrorist attacks. But, the terrorist attacks have the potential for much larger impact (see links, below). Consider a 2-dimensional score for threat scenarios where we multiply likelihood of occurrence by potential impact for the following scenarios: Scenario A: Bludgeoned to death by a hammer. Scenario B: Terrorists recover a missing Cold-war era nuke, and detonate it over Iowa, during the winter. Effects are: nuclear explosion, EMP pulse disrupting power grid and electronics, disruption in home heating and food/medical supplies, downwind radioactive fallout over Chicago, Ohio, Pittsburgh, Philly, Boston, New York, Baltimore, DC, etc.. Scoring (pulling these numbers out of my arse for illustration purposes): Scenario A: 6000 occurrences per year * 1.2 deaths per occurrence = 12000 Scenario B: 0.2 terrorist occurrences per year * (10 million fatalities + ((0.5 fatality / endangered) * 150 million endangered) = 17 million As you can see, the terrorism is a lot more serious than hammers (or kittens). And, something like the NSA program could catch these potential large-impact events, because there are a lot of realistic and very scary scenarios: (A short list from some quick duckduckgo-ing) http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/1002/20130325/deadly-virus-sample-goes-missing-texas-lab.htm http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/1002/20130325/deadly... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ksYDuIuuAE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ksYDuIuuAE http://www.cfr.org/weapons-of-terrorism/loose-nukes/p9549 http://www.cfr.org/weapons-of-terrorism/loose-nukes/p9549 http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Los-Alamos-can-t-find-two-vials-of-plutonium-2608951.php http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Los-Alamos-can-t-find-two... http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/09/usa-lost-tons-nuclear-weapon-uranium http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/09/usa-lost-tons-nuclea... http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/17483/8-nuclear-weapons-us-has-lost http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/17483/8-nuclear-weapons-u... http://rense.com/general33/mss.htm http://rense.com/general33/mss.htm http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9355413/ns/health-infectious_diseases/t/plague-infected-lab-mice-missing-new-jersey/#.Ucnk7_nOnbM http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9355413/ns/health-infectious_disea... P.S. Hello, NSA! I'm guessing this comment has gotten caught in some of your filters. I just want to say, keep up the good work. My brother-in-law works at Fort Mead, too. -Updated for grammar.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  There is good money in traffic enforcement. So good that in Texas we had to make it against the law to finance your whole police department with speed-trap revenue.
- flyinRyan 13y ago
  The way to predict the future is look at the past. If we start at the first WTC bombing until today there are around 100 terrorism deaths per year. Utterly irrelevant. You seem to imply we should trust the government to tell us the probability but they've never been right in the past and are completely opaque in their methods. There's literally no reason to believe them at all.

incongruity 13y ago

Okay, sure, let's toss out the comparison to smoking. How about deaths in motor vehicles on the US highways? Okay, not that either – there's been (arguably) a lot spent on that in the last 15 years. How about choking to death or babies dying from SIDS? A quick google shows that each claims about 2,500 lives a year in the US. So, over the last 15 years, that's approximately 37,500 lives lost to each, or 75,000 total over the last 15 years... I'll leave the terrorism death count to you. And, I guarantee you, the funding isn't anywhere near the anti-terrorism funding.

3am 13y ago
Like lupatus mentioned in the other response, there is considerable variability in the risk from terrorism. I would guess - while tragic, and my profound sympathies to anyone reading this who has been touched by either - that SIDS and infant/toddler choking deaths are much more consistent year over year (and there is a lot of educational material out there on preventing SIDS with sleep positions, and huge federal regulation on childrens' toys for, eg BuckyBalls). I would instead use the analogy of weather in the context of urban planning around floodplains, building standards, etc. These are typically based on 50 or 100 year storm events. If you look at a 15 year average, these standards look like overkill. EDIT: Lo and behold, another downvote. What in the way I've structured my argument or my logic is flawed? Or is it just more satisfying to downvote those you disagree with? Anyway, downvote away, you're only lowering yourself. I don't care.
- incongruity 13y ago
  The risk from terrorism is, most greatly, the fear of terrorism and the effort a society will expend on trying to stop future terrorism, which in itself generates fear and adds to the likelihood of spending more on preventing terrorism... In short, it's all too easy to let it become a vicious cycle that simply is not justified based on the actual damage done by terrorism. To circle back to your analogy to floods – I'm not sure about what you're suggesting. Are you saying we need to look at a larger timeframe? If so, I would point out that I was considering precisely the timeframe you suggested. But, beyond that, looking over the last 100 years, SIDS and choking have certainly killed more... and I would expect they'd continue to do so over the next 100, even if the current anti-terrorism measures were never enacted.

mcantelon 13y ago

>pg, mark my words that this Snowden/NSA crap will be the end of HN as a quality forum. It's unreadable lately The front page currently has 4 articles about the NSA controversy: 13% of the 30 articles. Noone is forced to read, or comment on, every article.

sliverstorm 13y ago
Yeah, but the discussion has been bleeding into the non-NSA articles.
- deathcakes 13y ago
  Heaven forbid that current events and unfolding political discourse should have any effect on anything one does with ones life.