You are much more likely to be killed by mundane things than terrorism (2013) | Hacker News Reader

You are much more likely to be killed by mundane things than terrorism (2013)

washingtonsblog.com

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The issue I take with the message behind these statistics, that one should not worry about one's enemies simply because they're unlikely to do as much damage as other problems, is that they make it seem like the best course is to do nothing; that because the odds are low, no preventative action should be taken because everything will be OK.

That seems to be a poor stance to take against one's adversaries. It puts them in a better position over you that improves the likelihood of another attack occurring. The current rate is associated with our current amount of "security". Surely lowering the vigilance and thus lowering the security would just make matters worse!

I don't think it's binary choice. The statistics call into question if we should ever decide to launch a full scale invasion due to the threat of terrorism, but isn't arguing against ending safety measures currently in place.

Another way to put it is if the threat of terrorism is so low, should we direct investment into terrorism versus other initiatives? If we were a start-up we'd determine the most efficient way to deploy capital to have the maximum lives saved.

Something the article ignores is really taking into account efficiency of preventative measures and money spent on those measures.

> The issue I take with the message behind these statistics, (...) is that they make it seem like the best course is to do nothing;

That's exactly what they're supposed to do, because it is the best course of action against terrorism. Not because "ignoring your enemy" is wise, but because "terrorism" is the name we give to the form of attack that weaponizes you doing something - out of fear or anger. There is no value to the enemy in blowing up a bus. Killing a bunch of civilians is an effort wasted. But, if their deaths can get you to change your policies - start a war, or institute a police state, or something - then the attack has achieved its purpose.

TL;DR: remember that in terrorist attacks, deaths are just collateral damage - means to an end.

Isn't death collateral damage in just about every conflict? People usually just want power.

True, but in a typical conflict you attack enemy warriors and infrastructure in order to deny them the power to do the same to you. Since you can't hope to convince them to not attack you, you have to kill them. If a general orders you to strike a facility, their direct goal is to have that facility - and its contribution to the enemy war effort - eliminated. Terrorism, on the other hand, is about provoking the enemy into action. Victims are completely unrelated to the goals attackers may have.

We by that I mean in the west, only see a small fraction of this particular terrorism. People in-situ see much more and are escaping and risking their lives to escape because it's so devastating.

Doing nothing would mean leaving the whole country to go down the drain with multiple generations scarred by war, atrocities, tribalism, lawlessness, etc. That's why advanced countries typically go in and try to tamp things out, sometimes the results are less than desirable, but doing nothing surely seals their fate --as it does to many countries in Africa (where international African forces nominally are in charge, but typically do little, are ineffective, corrupt)

Yes, my response was about terrorism in the West. What happens in the East is closer to a civil war.

If you by "in the West" you mean domestic western terrorism... maybe. Still, in the US the FBI and other gov't agencies monitor those orgs because of the potential to escalate into an undesirable state.

If you mean middle eastern terrorism jumping over into the west, I think it's fair to say that if they could, they would strike, but the threat has been managed well with the security precautions in place, but that's not to say they aren't trying to overcome their shortcomings.

In my opinion it is not about doing nothing, it all boils down to the proportion of the reaction. An act of terrorism that kills hundreds of people, should not be reciprocated with an all out offensive on a whole region. Not only because that by itself is an act of terrorism; since most of the victims are usually innocent civilians, but because it cause the fear and anger that leads to the creation of these groups in the first place.

Just looking at history, you realize that all these groups labeled as terrorists, and I say labeled because many others go by under the radar, such as the KKK, all spawned from conflicted area where the political powers were sabotaging the stability. Either through corrupt governments or international mingling and occupation.

Declaring the associates of some dead spree killers your enemies is not an especially empowering position (but perhaps required in case of nationalist ideology). What I see are some nasty folks overseas who I'd rather wield less influence, and who I'd rather see get much less free PR from the media.

I don't think that's what it's saying. When people are scared out of their minds they tend to respond reflexively rather than rationally, and in the case of terrorism they tend to do things that make things worse (confer legitimacy on the "enemy," give them the war they want, invade Iraq) or things that are totally tangential or even orthogonal to the problem (warrantless domestic wiretapping and mass collection of phone data; giving law enforcement tools and training brutally put down protests; invade Iraq). The author just wants us to respond to terrorism in a rational state of mind, when we at least have a chance of doing things that make the problem better, not worse.

> is that they make it seem like the best course is to do nothing

When "doing something" is worse than "doing nothing", then yes we should do nothing. Off the top of my head, the things we've done because of 9/11:

* Create DHS

* Begin TSA security theater

* Start illegal NSA metadata collection program

* Afghanistan + Iraq ("not related", but had support from misinformed public) wars.

A good thing I can think of: more secure cockpit doors. On balance, yeah, I wish we had done nothing after 9/11. On the other hand it's not impossible for good actions as a result, but we have a pretty bad track record of it.

The importance of putting the _actual_ consequences in perspective is to let you at least consider that maybe we don't have to do anything sometimes. It's like the 80/20 rule or anything with diminishing marginal returns: to actually achieve flat out 100% safety and security is going to be an extremely expensive endeavor both in monetary terms and in how our society and ideals have to change.

Not to mention destabilize an entire region and create a brand new generation that wants to see us destroyed. Our best course now is to start doing nothing.

The idea behind many of those actions may have been to make people feel safe. Part of leadership is addressing peoples' concerns and to maintaining regular order. I don't think the goal is 100% safety and security. I think it was more along the lines of "We see and understand that you're worried about terrorism. Look at all the things we're doing to deal with that problem". And if it makes people feel better...it worked.

Now sure, some people will look at pages of facts and figures about death statistics. But a lot of people will think "I had to wait in line for a long time at the airport while they did security stuff, so I must be safe." And that's the job of government, to deal with problems that are on the minds of citizens.

> When "doing something" is worse than "doing nothing", then yes we should do nothing. Off the top of my head, the things we've done because of 9/11:

Your comment presents a false dichotomy between the particular responses they took and doing nothing.

It ignores the possibilities of other courses of action, by implying that if the particular responses they took were poor then the best option therefore must be to do nothing.

It's not a false dichotomy when every single thing people propose to do is like that - wastes money and/or kills innocent people.

BTW. GP forgot to add - terrorizing Pakistan. US drone strikes themselves killed about as many civilians as 9/11 attacks.

The person I was replying to was talking about things that were actually done not every possible option, so it was a false dichotomy.

I dispute your claim that every possible option other than doing nothing would be worse than doing nothing. What's your justification for that claim?

Right, it's like saying, not many people die from salmonella, people die from so many other things, let's stop worrying about salmonella.

No, it's like saying - how about not kicking out all shop clerks from the country because salmonella is related to food, and how about not starting a war with another country over it?

> The issue I take with the message behind these statistics, that one should not worry about one's enemies simply because they're unlikely to do as much damage as other problems, is that they make it seem like the best course is to do nothing; that because the odds are low, no preventative action should be taken because everything will be OK.

There is no message and the article never draws any conclusions so it's up to the reader to decide what the data proves. It would be silly to believe that this is somehow trying to excuse terrorism, it's like letting a murderer go because car accidents killed more than he did that year.

...that one should not worry about one's enemies...

Calling terrorists "enemies" is giving them way too much credit. The USSR was an enemy of the USA. Terrorists are a highly vocal criminal nuisance by comparison. Terror only works if you are terrorized.

Despite these facts, the availability heuristic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic) ensures that our perception of probabilities is proportional to how dramatic (and thus memorable) an event is and not to how likely it is.

Fearmongering is the best/easiest tool to create the feeling of us against them so you don't have to think about the problems that are way worse (probabilistically speaking). And it is good TV( AKA availability heuristics enabler )

...and it's well understood and used throughout history.

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." Hermann Goering

Yes, refugees like Tsarnaev tend to influence.

Surely this is a sketchy way of inferring future likelihood of being killed in a terrorist attack? The number of lives claimed by a single biological weapon could be gigantic, while the number killed by a single car accident, say, is limited to a relatively small number.

> The number of lives claimed by a single biological weapon could be gigantic

Terrorists have never used WMDs, except for two incidents caused by one group, the Aum cult in Japan. And all that showed was that WMDs are hard to make and hard to use. They would have killed more people with a cheap improvised bomb.

It is at this time we should be thankful that intelligence is inversely proportional to ones desire to blow ones self up.

A single meteorite could kill everyone. Why don't we pay more attention to those?

We pay a lot of attention to those https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Planet_Center. Their paths are also predictable. Anyway, my point wasn't to do with the attention we should give terrorist attacks, rather that in this case in particular, past events are a poor predictor of future ones.

If you live in a city like New York City, your chances of being killed by terrorism is surely more than someone living in Provo, Utah. I wonder how the statistics would look when taking location into account.

Way more people have died in New York City from non-terrorism causes than from terrorism.

NYS Leading causes of death in 2012: http://www.health.ny.gov/statistics/vital_statistics/docs/le...

NYC causes of death in 2001: http://www.health.ny.gov/statistics/vital_statistics/2001/ta... -- "Malignant Neoplasms" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplasm#Malignant_neoplasms) alone killed 4x more people than terrorists that year.

Yes, we are much more likely to be killed by something else. But the presence of terrorism is not replacing those other ways to die, but being added on top of them. And it also adds, as the name implies... terror. And trauma for survivors, anger for the victims families, decreases trust amongst different peoples, and strengthens conflicts in our world.

So these statistics are true... yet I'm still pretty sure terrorism is a problem worth our time and efforts to fight, even if it will not personally kill me.

>And it also adds, as the name implies... terror. And trauma for survivors, anger for the victims families, decreases trust amongst different peoples, and strengthens conflicts in our world.

Many of those are purely a product of the way we react to terrorism. We can choose our reaction.

That's really not true. We take away a greater part of human lifespan doing security theatre at the airport than we save. We spent TRILLIONS on wars. Had we not done so the 2008 derivatives crisis would have been smaller and more readily dealt with. instead we came within a hair's breadth of economic collapse. There are real costs in taking away from living, and taking away from our collective wealth, that are vastly greater than the direct costs of terrorism.

And that, let me remind everyone, is the whole point of terrorism. Making a nation destroy itself, and maybe even take someone else down too.

But then stopping terrorism should fall somewhere around where the statistics say it should on priority list (adding in the anger/trauma). So right around vending machine accidents or whatever? Those are additive as well.

Terrorism disproportionately dominates our media attention, but has a small affect on our death rate. Of course we should stop it if we can. But why place a larger priority on it than something that is more damaging to us (even after weighing in the negative emotions)?

I get it. Terrorism is scary and it's easy to have empathy for the victims. But if we accept car deaths as a consequence of modern life, than why not terrorism deaths? That I don't get.

I get that this is an unpopular opinion, but why does all of society have to have the same priority?

As a computer engineer, the likelihood of me contributing to a 'cure for <x>', is very very low. I'd like to focus on things that I can solve, or work towards.

So telling people to stop trying to solve something (that is an actual problem), because something else should be a higher priority.....seems kind of ridiculous.

As for attributing terrorism to "modern life", I think that's a joke. We should just ACCEPT mass murder?

Also, people DON'T accept car deaths, there are huge segments of the population working towards reducing car deaths (that's kind of the whole point behind autonomous cars, as I understand it).

> We should just ACCEPT mass murder?

We shouldn't. We should ruthlessly pursue those responsible and bring them to justice. Just like with any other mass murder case. What we should not do is to enter nationwide state of panic and proceed to bomb other countries while cracking down on minorities that had nothing to do with the attack and/or establishing a police state locally.

Dying from slipping and falling in the shower adds terror and all that as well. Why is it not fought to the same extent?

Surely terrorism is worth fighting. The question is whether it's worth all the effort and attention it gets, or perhaps some smaller amount.

Of course terrorism is worth our time and efforts to fight it! Even better, it's incredibly cheap and easy to fight - you just have to stop doing terrorists work for them by going insane about attacks! Ignore them (while treating attackers themselves as you would treat any other organized crime group - with solid police work leading to capture, trial and sentencing), and they'll go away.

I do understand your point with these posts, but I'm not sure that the best response to a terrorist attack is to do absolutely nothing.

This is what Bruce Schneier said after the Boston Marathon bombing:

As the details about the bombings in Boston unfold, it'd be easy to be scared. It'd be easy to feel powerless and demand that our elected leaders do something—anything—to keep us safe.

It'd be easy, but it'd be wrong. We need to be angry and empathize with the victims without being scared. Our fears would play right into the perpetrators' hands—and magnify the power of their victory for whichever goals whatever group behind this, still to be uncovered, has. We don't have to be scared, and we're not powerless. We actually have all the power here, and there's one thing we can do to render terrorism ineffective: Refuse to be terrorized.

There are things we can do to make us safer, mostly around investigation, intelligence, and emergency response, but we will never be 100-percent safe from terrorism; we need to accept that.

How well this attack succeeds depends much less on what happened in Boston than by our reactions in the coming weeks and months. Terrorism isn't primarily a crime against people or property. It's a crime against our minds, using the deaths of innocents and destruction of property as accomplices. When we react from fear, when we change our laws and policies to make our country less open, the terrorists succeed, even if their attacks fail. But when we refuse to be terrorized, when we're indomitable in the face of terror, the terrorists fail, even if their attacks succeed.

Don't glorify the terrorists and their actions by calling this part of a "war on terror." Wars involve two legitimate sides. There's only one legitimate side here; those on the other are criminals. They should be found, arrested, and punished. But we need to be vigilant not to weaken the very freedoms and liberties that make this country great, meanwhile, just because we're scared.

Empathize, but refuse to be terrorized. Instead, be indomitable—and support leaders who are as well. That's how to defeat terrorists.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/the-bost...

The best respone to a terrorist attack is to treat it as normal crime: take basic precautions beforehand, leave the police to investigate and arrest afterwards, and everyone else get on with their lives.

The UK's response to terrorism in Northern Ireland was very much more localised and stiff-upper-lip than it seems to be in response to Islamist terrorism. Similarly in the US nobody gets in a panic about the numerous white supremacist terrorists. Even spree killings have become normalised with "there's nothing we can do", due to reluctance to question the 2nd amendment. Not to mention that if the US wants to get involved with fighting murderous extremists that threaten stability, the Mexican cartels are much closer and just as dangerous.

Getting involved in the Syrian civil war is instead just going to turn into a proxy war against the Russians, like 70s Afghanstan.

Similarly in the US nobody gets in a panic about the numerous white supremacist terrorists

That has more to do with cognitive dissonance and tacit approval than calculated strategy. White supremacy is the dominant culture in the US. Violent acts are continually explained away as "isolated incidents" by the "mentally ill", a convenient escape from the hard job of inward reflection and decolonization.

Spontaneous, coordinated action by the public is anything but cheap and easy. We live in a society of individuals, not an ant colony.

Or maybe they'll just use a bigger bomb next time.

Do not get me wrong, I also think its silly to be afraid of dying from terrorism, but those "mundane" ways of dying are the result of things that provide utility and benefit to their lives or are the result of old age. What is the comparison with someone who dies from Terrorists? They arent exactly blowing up nursing homes.

Prevalence of coronary heart disease by age and sex. https://www.heart.org/idc/groups/heart-public/@wcm/@sop/@smd...

Duh.

Very few people die from terrorists, or mass-murderers, or even guns in general (even in war more people die of disease and starvation than guns. And artillery kills more soldiers (at least in 20th cent)).

Lung disease, heart disease, obesity are the killers of humanity.

On present records, the statement is a truism but totally irrelevant when it comes to determining measures we should take to protect ourselves from a group like ISIS given their apocalyptic ambitions and relative wealth. We might also factor in the very shocking, and to most of us unintelligible, fact of its attraction for thousands of young people across the world.

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