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> Since 1865, there have been 5,031 deaths and 22,125 injuries caused by terrorism in the United States. Here's another way of spinning the same data: There ha

> Since 1865, there have been 5,031 deaths and 22,125 injuries caused by terrorism in the United States. Here's another way of spinning the same data: There have been more deaths caused by terrorism in the US in last 15 years than in the prior 135 years. Furthermore, I don't think your comparisons to deaths from car accidents or cancer are completely valid. Those are both phenomena for which induction works well (what has happened previously is a good predictor of what will happen in the future) because the events come from more or less stationary distributions. As illustrated by September 11th attacks, the number of terrorist deaths can double in a single day. There's no reason that this can't happen again with an event with >5k deaths in a single day. For those who have read anything by Nicholas Nassim Taleb: Nicholas Nassim Taleb might argue that terrorist attacks are black swan events (impossible to predict, potentially very large impact) and that the comparision of terrorist deaths (a distribution from Extremistan) to motor vehicle deaths is not very valuable. On the other hand, I don't believe the level of NSA surveillance is appropriate. I'm just trying to illustrate the amount of effort one puts into thwarting something shouldn't just depend on its previous costs, but also on the probability distribution of the event (and your uncertainty in that). tl;dr: Terrorism is more like pg's view of a startup in that it has potential for explosive growth, while motor accident deaths are more like a well established medium sized business.

jacquesm 13y ago
Due to its nature terrorism does not scale well, it's akin to a parasite/host relationship. It could escalate into civil war though, or even regular war between nation states (especially if one nation selects random nation states to attack as a counterstrike). Interesting reading on the subject: http://reliefweb.int/report/world/2012-global-terrorism-index-capturing-impact-terrorism-2002-2011 http://reliefweb.int/report/world/2012-global-terrorism-inde...
- mixmax 13y ago
  The black swan event of terrorism doesn't need to scale, it's a big one-off event carried out by a few dedicated resourceful people. A nuclear bomb over New York city, smallpox distributed in all Western major airports, or simultaneous nerve gas attacks in a number of major cities.
adventured 13y ago
The comparison to motor vehicle deaths is very valuable: it's a part of how you score what's most threatening, namely, how many people is the topic killing. Another part of that scoring, is potential. Discarding the actual and only focusing on the potential, is every bit as bogus as the opposite. Nuclear / biological / chemical attacks are the only high threat vector that terrorism presents. That should be the prime focus for anti-terrorism. The secondary focus should be terrorists like the Tsarnaev brothers that can hurt people on the level of the Aurora shooting. Neither of those threats require abandoning the first and fourth amendments to deal with properly. The odds are strongly in favor of young children, via gun accidents, continuing to kill more people every year than what terrorists do on average. It has to be noted that 9/11 and Boston both happened solely due to extreme government incompetence. Those two supposed black swan events should have never happened. They were not black swan events, they were sheer incompetence. The government failed at its job in numerous ways in both instances, and that's the nice explanation. Their incompetence was not because they lacked information on Average Joe citizen or because they didn't have my email meta data. They demonstrate that they're wildly incompetent at even basic security in multiple high profile cases, and yet they're given even more power. It's a failed approach top to bottom. The NSA programs are much like our big security / security theater approach, and they'll be just as useless for the exact same reasons. It's trying to thread a needle with a hammer.
mikeash 13y ago
Actually, there are a lot of reasons it's extremely unlikely to happen again with an event with >5k deaths in a single day. And even if that does happen, so what? Even if an attack happens that dwarfs 9/11, it'll still be insignificant compared to the country as a whole, and not justify anything near the amount of money spent to fight it. Barring the detonation of a nuclear bomb in a major US city, there's just nothing that terrorists can do that would really count for much, as long as we can avoid a massive overreaction.
- twoodfin 13y ago
  As I've said before, I don't get this idea that we should strive to act like that darkly funny scene in Terry Gilliam's Brazil, wherein the patrons and staff at a bombed restaurant attempt to continue dining as if nothing has happened. Let's suppose that some terrorist group became skilled enough to bomb a major sporting event or other large concentration of people every six months or so. Not big bombs, mind you, just enough to kill a few dozen or a hundred people each. By the strategy seemingly being argued for here, a "resilient" or "rational" America would just let the existing police do their work as best they can, maybe with some not-too-expensive Federal assistance, and simply accept the added risk of dying at major events, which, after all, is not that much more significant than the risk of dying in a car accident on the way. Obviously, that is not the response we'd expect, and it's not because Americans are irrational or fearful. It's because this prioritization-by-mortality-rate policy logic is faulty. It matters that there's an agency behind these deaths. One thing our society values highly is justice, and that often requires a disproportionately expensive response to an unjust act, and not solely to buy deterrence.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Well, we have historical examples of both approaches. The British provide the stereotypical example of my suggestion. The famous "Keep Calm and Carry On" slogan, of course, comes from their experience during the Blitz. (And yes, I realize it was never published in that time, but it still typifies the response.) The Blitz killed 40,000 civilians, but people did basically go on with their lives and let the government handle things, because that was the best way to do it. Freaking out wasn't going to help the war effort. The British provide another example of the approach with The Troubles. Not so much in Ireland, really, but I think the response to the attacks in Great Britain qualify. The British approach seems to work well. The American approach got us mired in two unwinnable wars, sank the country deep into debt, and wrecked the economy. I know which one I prefer.
clicks 13y ago
If you're going to go by Taleb's logic, your point-of-view is directly contradicted in his later book, 'Anti-fragile'. With every occurrence of a black swan event, you are made more resilient in preventing an event of a similar kind. So, now that we know that 9/11 can happen, we're now more mentally prepared than ever to prevent something like it if it happens again. Case in point, pilots now carry weapons and are much more likely to thwart attempts of hijacking. Passengers will also react more violently and vigorously now towards any sign of threat. Note that we actually have a few precedents since 9/11 in which hijacking of airplanes were thwarted in this manner.
- cholmon 13y ago
  How does Anti-fragile contradict lightcatcher's point-of-view? I understood him to say, simply, that terrorist attacks are from Extremistan, while car accidents are from Mediocristan, thus they aren't comparable phenomena.
Zigurd 13y ago
Terror attacks appear to follow the power law: http://arxivblog.com/?p=1186 http://arxivblog.com/?p=1186

jacquesm 13y ago

Due to its nature terrorism does not scale well, it's akin to a parasite/host relationship. It could escalate into civil war though, or even regular war between nation states (especially if one nation selects random nation states to attack as a counterstrike). Interesting reading on the subject: http://reliefweb.int/report/world/2012-global-terrorism-index-capturing-impact-terrorism-2002-2011 http://reliefweb.int/report/world/2012-global-terrorism-inde...

mixmax 13y ago
The black swan event of terrorism doesn't need to scale, it's a big one-off event carried out by a few dedicated resourceful people. A nuclear bomb over New York city, smallpox distributed in all Western major airports, or simultaneous nerve gas attacks in a number of major cities.

adventured 13y ago

The comparison to motor vehicle deaths is very valuable: it's a part of how you score what's most threatening, namely, how many people is the topic killing. Another part of that scoring, is potential. Discarding the actual and only focusing on the potential, is every bit as bogus as the opposite. Nuclear / biological / chemical attacks are the only high threat vector that terrorism presents. That should be the prime focus for anti-terrorism. The secondary focus should be terrorists like the Tsarnaev brothers that can hurt people on the level of the Aurora shooting. Neither of those threats require abandoning the first and fourth amendments to deal with properly. The odds are strongly in favor of young children, via gun accidents, continuing to kill more people every year than what terrorists do on average. It has to be noted that 9/11 and Boston both happened solely due to extreme government incompetence. Those two supposed black swan events should have never happened. They were not black swan events, they were sheer incompetence. The government failed at its job in numerous ways in both instances, and that's the nice explanation. Their incompetence was not because they lacked information on Average Joe citizen or because they didn't have my email meta data. They demonstrate that they're wildly incompetent at even basic security in multiple high profile cases, and yet they're given even more power. It's a failed approach top to bottom. The NSA programs are much like our big security / security theater approach, and they'll be just as useless for the exact same reasons. It's trying to thread a needle with a hammer.

mikeash 13y ago

Actually, there are a lot of reasons it's extremely unlikely to happen again with an event with >5k deaths in a single day. And even if that does happen, so what? Even if an attack happens that dwarfs 9/11, it'll still be insignificant compared to the country as a whole, and not justify anything near the amount of money spent to fight it. Barring the detonation of a nuclear bomb in a major US city, there's just nothing that terrorists can do that would really count for much, as long as we can avoid a massive overreaction.

twoodfin 13y ago
As I've said before, I don't get this idea that we should strive to act like that darkly funny scene in Terry Gilliam's Brazil, wherein the patrons and staff at a bombed restaurant attempt to continue dining as if nothing has happened. Let's suppose that some terrorist group became skilled enough to bomb a major sporting event or other large concentration of people every six months or so. Not big bombs, mind you, just enough to kill a few dozen or a hundred people each. By the strategy seemingly being argued for here, a "resilient" or "rational" America would just let the existing police do their work as best they can, maybe with some not-too-expensive Federal assistance, and simply accept the added risk of dying at major events, which, after all, is not that much more significant than the risk of dying in a car accident on the way. Obviously, that is not the response we'd expect, and it's not because Americans are irrational or fearful. It's because this prioritization-by-mortality-rate policy logic is faulty. It matters that there's an agency behind these deaths. One thing our society values highly is justice, and that often requires a disproportionately expensive response to an unjust act, and not solely to buy deterrence.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Well, we have historical examples of both approaches. The British provide the stereotypical example of my suggestion. The famous "Keep Calm and Carry On" slogan, of course, comes from their experience during the Blitz. (And yes, I realize it was never published in that time, but it still typifies the response.) The Blitz killed 40,000 civilians, but people did basically go on with their lives and let the government handle things, because that was the best way to do it. Freaking out wasn't going to help the war effort. The British provide another example of the approach with The Troubles. Not so much in Ireland, really, but I think the response to the attacks in Great Britain qualify. The British approach seems to work well. The American approach got us mired in two unwinnable wars, sank the country deep into debt, and wrecked the economy. I know which one I prefer.

clicks 13y ago

If you're going to go by Taleb's logic, your point-of-view is directly contradicted in his later book, 'Anti-fragile'. With every occurrence of a black swan event, you are made more resilient in preventing an event of a similar kind. So, now that we know that 9/11 can happen, we're now more mentally prepared than ever to prevent something like it if it happens again. Case in point, pilots now carry weapons and are much more likely to thwart attempts of hijacking. Passengers will also react more violently and vigorously now towards any sign of threat. Note that we actually have a few precedents since 9/11 in which hijacking of airplanes were thwarted in this manner.

cholmon 13y ago
How does Anti-fragile contradict lightcatcher's point-of-view? I understood him to say, simply, that terrorist attacks are from Extremistan, while car accidents are from Mediocristan, thus they aren't comparable phenomena.

Zigurd 13y ago

Terror attacks appear to follow the power law: http://arxivblog.com/?p=1186 http://arxivblog.com/?p=1186