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Counterpoint: As Taleb points out, car accident deaths are 'thin-tailed'; that is, the rate of car fatalities is essentially fixed (and predictable by looking at past data), while terrorism is 'fat-tailed', and the number of deaths that would be caused by a dirty-bomb in Manhattan does not appear in historical data, and so it can't be 'priced' in the same way.

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In the example of the dirty bomb, I'm not sure that the number of casualties/cancer incidences is especially high, based on some brief search. Sept 11 seems like it was a more damaging attack, for example, and that seems roughly as difficult to replicate as a dirty bomb. Especially given the trade-off between payload and shielding your substances enough to prevent detection by the myriad of radiation detection systems I'm sure DHS has installed in major cities.

But you are certainly correct that statistically these events are more difficult to interpret, and raw averages are not a fair comparison.

I have made this exact argument (quoting Taleb) but HN users are not receptive to anything other than a do-nothing approach.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14262011

This was reply to the grand-parent comment, mistakenly posted to parent comment.

Unfalsifiable arguments are not especially strong.

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