Here's a thought:
Right now, somewhere in the world, hundreds of men with prayer rugs are thinking of ways to kill as many people as they can.
G'night.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
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On Utopia
"I'm interested in keeping other people from building Utopia, because the more you believe you can create heaven on earth, the more likely you are to set up guillotines in the public square to hasten the process. "-- James Lileks
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5 comments:
Right now, somewhere in your body, hundreds of cells are having pre-cancerous thoughts. In your brain, a blood vessel is weakening ever so slightly, hinting at a future aneurism. Little chunks of coagulated blood are thinking of globbing together and stopping blood flow to your cerebral cortex. Meanwhile, millions of losers with drinking problems are getting in their cars after having 5 too many, driving down the road, ready to kill you and your family. A black icy patch on a highway somewhere is just waiting for the right moment to send your car into a tree, causing a branch to impale you through the heart. And all of these are thousands or even millions of times more likely to kill you than a criminal with a prayer rug.
We take action to eliminate or reduce all of the dangers you so thoughtfully enumerated. Why not take on the bombers as well?
Again, it's a matter of intelligent resource allocation. We should allocate resource proportional the level of risk. I'm not saying there's no risk from terrorism, but the risk is vastly overstated and vastly over-resourced. See http://schneier.com/blog/ for lots of analysis on these issues.
That type of risk analysis is bullshit, as my smarter partner has already explained. Any individual risk of anything can be brushed off with that approach. "Breast cancer? I'm not going to get it so why all the weeping and lump-hunting?" Your stance, sir, is predicated on either the idea that the world is not a dangerous place at all or that it is so dangerous that we should not do anything to minimize any danger ever. There is a vast middle ground that you are ignoring.
My stance is predicated on no such thing. The basic idea, to repeat, is to allocate resources proportional to expected loss from the threat. That means you allocate resources to various threats at different levels. Simple. I responded to this post because the men with prayer rugs plotting to kill is a lot less scary than a lot of other things in life.
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