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This is a morbid point, but I dislike the figure of ~3K people killed in the 9/11 attacks. If either of the towers had fallen sooner or had fallen sideways ins

by 3am 13y ago

This is a morbid point, but I dislike the figure of ~3K people killed in the 9/11 attacks. If either of the towers had fallen sooner or had fallen sideways instead of collapsing almost completely vertically, then it could have been much worse. I'm trying to make the narrowest possible point when saying this: just that ~3K casualties was far from the worst case outcome that was possible that day. EDIT: per my reply below, I'm only trying to make the discussion as honest as possible. At the core is the question, "Given X casualties to air travel based terror attacks, is a particular security policy worth implementing if it leads to Y casualties indirectly?". I'm addressing a shortcoming in what I see as the figure being used for X, since it's a small data set. It would be interesting to address the effectiveness (% of attacks thwarted or discouraged) of the security policy, too.

bmm6o 13y ago
Why does it make sense to introduce into this discussion some number of hypothetical counter-factual fatalities?
- 3am 13y ago
  Because at the core of the point is a comparison between a very large data set (auto fatalities) and a very small data set (large scale terrorist attacks). Since - thank god - there is a very limited data set available in the second case it's worth asking if the expected value is higher than the observed value up til now.
recursive 13y ago
And the actual number of car-related casualties are far from a worst case scenario also. Why do you dislike an apples to apples, actual to actual comparison?
scoot 13y ago
It was also far from the best. The second tower could have been evacuated before the second plane struck. One or both towers could have remained standing. Speculating as to what could have happened makes no sense. The number who died is what it is, for better or worse.
Symmetry 13y ago
Why limit this to Air terrorism attacks then? If the first World Trade Center attack [1] had succeeded in bringing the towers down the casualties would have been far worse. Or if the terrorists had smuggled a nuke into New York it would have been even worse than that. As it stands 9/11 is actually a worse terrorist attack than can ever be achieved with the use of airplanes again, see Flight 93. So it doesn't make sense to consider these sorts of hypotheticals when talking about changing air security policy. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing
- 3am 13y ago
  "As it stands 9/11 is actually a worse terrorist attack than can ever be achieved with the use of airplanes again, see Flight 93." I think this point is highly debatable, though I hope we don't find out in our respective lifetimes. Anyway, as to why I didn't address non-air terrorism: I didn't set the scope of the discussion, I'm just participating in it. Sadly I'm well aware of the '93 bombing, the Bali bombings, the African embassy bombings... all sorts of non-aircraft attacks. I literally said in my post that I was trying to make the "narrowest possible point". I meant it.

by 3am 13y ago

bmm6o 13y ago

Why does it make sense to introduce into this discussion some number of hypothetical counter-factual fatalities?

3am 13y ago
Because at the core of the point is a comparison between a very large data set (auto fatalities) and a very small data set (large scale terrorist attacks). Since - thank god - there is a very limited data set available in the second case it's worth asking if the expected value is higher than the observed value up til now.

recursive 13y ago

And the actual number of car-related casualties are far from a worst case scenario also. Why do you dislike an apples to apples, actual to actual comparison?

scoot 13y ago

It was also far from the best. The second tower could have been evacuated before the second plane struck. One or both towers could have remained standing. Speculating as to what could have happened makes no sense. The number who died is what it is, for better or worse.

Symmetry 13y ago

Why limit this to Air terrorism attacks then? If the first World Trade Center attack [1] had succeeded in bringing the towers down the casualties would have been far worse. Or if the terrorists had smuggled a nuke into New York it would have been even worse than that. As it stands 9/11 is actually a worse terrorist attack than can ever be achieved with the use of airplanes again, see Flight 93. So it doesn't make sense to consider these sorts of hypotheticals when talking about changing air security policy. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing

3am 13y ago
"As it stands 9/11 is actually a worse terrorist attack than can ever be achieved with the use of airplanes again, see Flight 93." I think this point is highly debatable, though I hope we don't find out in our respective lifetimes. Anyway, as to why I didn't address non-air terrorism: I didn't set the scope of the discussion, I'm just participating in it. Sadly I'm well aware of the '93 bombing, the Bali bombings, the African embassy bombings... all sorts of non-aircraft attacks. I literally said in my post that I was trying to make the "narrowest possible point". I meant it.