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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

We are long past a point where there needs to be some regulatory intervention regarding the authority of pilots to deplane people at the whims of bigoted passengers.

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There's more than just bigotry at play here. We're constantly told now, "If you see something, say something" (the article even pokes a little at this), then our fear factor is raised as high as possible with notions that any of our fellow passengers could be evil terrorists about to bomb the plane. To top it all off, air travel is stressful and if you have even a little bit of fear of flying it gets amplified by the whole experience. It's like the perfect cocktail for these sorts of situations. I'm always surprised this doesn't happen more often.

It's interesting to contrast the response of American leaders to the Great Depression and run-up to WW2 ("The only thing we have to fear is fear itself") vs. that of 9/11 ("See something, say something").

As a counterpoint: internment of Japanese Americans.

Also, as people have been pointing out, "Keep calm and carry on" (on the other side of the Atlantic).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_Calm_and_Carry_On

(On the other hand, there were a lot of wartime counterintelligence efforts in the U.S. and U.K. which I think must have included public calls for people to turn in suspected Axis spies.)

Air travel is very stressful, so stressful that I am scared of the security more than any threats they supposedly protect us from. I fly regularly for my job and about 6 months ago I was "randomely selected" for extra screening -- even with TSA pre check. The person swabing my hands asked why I was shaking, I just told him flying makes me nervous. Truth be told, he makes me nervous with unlimited power over my ability to get back home and see my son. Flying itself is statically very safe from point A to B, the security isnt.

Why do you assume this woman was bigoted and not just ignorant but acting in good faith?

She got weird vibes from him but at least tried to make conversation with the guy to get a better read on him.

The men who did 9/11 were Arab Muslims. Arab Muslims commit terrorist attacks somewhere in the world every day (though most of their victims are other Muslims). This is actually real, even though it's uncomfortable to acknowledge.

The woman was ignorant and that's on her but also a failure of public education to some extent. See something say something is an extremely valuable tool in preventing terrorist attacks so we should be more careful in considering the motivations of people who see something and say something.

See something say something is an extremely valuable tool in preventing terrorist attacks

Is it? How many attacks has it prevented?

Is it? How many attacks has it prevented?

This. So now I'm curious and I found this posting by Bruce Schneier at https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/how_well_see_... which is relevant. He points to some data that really indicates that it just doesn't actually lead to preventing terrorist attacks at all.

The men who bombed Hiroshima were white dudes. Ergo: I shouldn't get on the plane with any white dudes, because they could be plotting to blow up a whole city with nuclear weapons.

The probability of you getting on a nuclear weapons equipped bomber on a mission to drop a nuclear bomb is infinitesimal though I suppose it's something you may want to watch out for and report if it ever seems likely that you have stepped aboard such a plane.

Ok, you're almost there. Just keep thinking along those lines. You'll get there!

White men frequently commit mass shootings in schooled and movies. Should we report suspicious activity every time we see a white man around school?

You think weird behaving white men hanging around schools don't get reported?

A professor doing maths is weird?

Thanks for conceding the argument.

It's entirely a problem of decision making and incentives.

You stop the plane, terrorist is arrested, you're a hero.

You stop the plane, guy turns out to be economist, idiot who thinks Arabs look like Italians and Arabic looks like equations does not even get named.

You don't stop the plane, guy's DSGE model explodes causing the plane to fall out of the sky, and you have lawsuits.

So wait, if the guy was an Arab writing something in Arabic, it was less of a problem?

If the guy was an Arab writing out his suicide note in Arabic, with specific references to what he was about to do ("I'm about to bomb this plane because virgins"), it would be less of a problem, yes. It's a question of what "reasonable" means.

Your pun is perhaps in poor taste, but still really funny, since DSGE models have in fact been known to explode. E.g.: http://www.econjobrumors.com/topic/issue-with-dsge-model

Umm it's the government and the media egging people on and creating a continuous atmosphere of suspicion, fear and mental illness. Honestly, the paranoia is a mental illness and it's caused by government and media propaganda. If you say that 10,000 people have died because of this, well we have spent $700,000 on the deaths of each of those individuals, 7.6 billion on TSA, to prop up the paranoia security apparatchiks. Not to mention billions of tourism dollars lost. It's already insane.

> If you say that 10,000 people have died because of this, well we have spent $700,000 on the deaths of each of those individuals, 7.6 billion on TSA, to prop up the paranoia security apparatchiks.

That's not $700,000 per person, it's $700,000 per person per year.

And that's just the TSA, to say nothing of the rest of the War on Terror.

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