Bruce Schneier On Perceived and Real Risks 324
prostoalex writes "Encryption guru Bruce Schneier takes a look at perceived and actual risks with some insightful commentary on how warped the public perception of risks may be: '...we worry more about anthrax (with an annual death toll of roughly zero) than influenza (with an annual death toll of a quarter-million to a half-million people). Influenza is a natural accident, anthrax is an intentional action, and the smallest action captures our attention in a way that the largest accident doesn't. If two airplanes had been hit by lightning and crashed into a New York skyscraper, few of us would be able to name the date on which it happened.'"
Nice soundbyte there... (Score:2)
But I'm pretty sure if it happened on the same day and dropped both towers it'd be every bit as famous as the one we had.
Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
--Mr. Obvious
Re: (Score:2)
Boxing Day, and now some American will ask when boxing day is I suppose.
26th December
As an American... (Score:3, Funny)
As an American, I'm offended you think I don't know about Boxing Day.
It's the day you celebrate all the brave lads who died to keep China British.
Re:Nice soundbyte there... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nice soundbyte there... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Pearl Harbor was attacked
Sputnik was announced
President Kennedy was shot
Astronauts landed on the moon
Bobby Kennedy was shot
Martin Luther King was shot
President Reagan was shot
Challenger blew up
Operation Desert Storm started
The Twin Towers were hit
There are other
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
As for other fun attacks in US history... Remember the Maine!
Re: (Score:2)
Then tell me what was the date of the great san fransisco earth quake? do so without looking it up. It's only memorable because we have a huge species spanning problem with confirmation bias, distorted sense of risk, and we're in general gullable and stupid. Just see how a marketting partment made santa part of chirstmas and Diamonds part of engagements. The current American administratio
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Now wait a minute... Back in my school days I melted steel myself with nothing more than some Kingsford charcoal, a ceramic crucible I appropriated from chem lab, and the output hose of a ShopVac.
Now since charcoal undoubtedly "burns" cooler than jet fuel, that must have been impos
Re: (Score:2)
Steel's melting temperature (http://education.jlab.org/qa/meltingpoint_01.html ) is as I s
Re: (Score:2)
And deformation is all you need to bring down the building from its own weight. Kinetic energy supplied the rest of the heat.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, the giant fucking tanks of diesel fuel (>40,000 gallons) for the NYC emergency command post generator.
Re: (Score:2)
There's an effect called draft. Look it up. In a cavity that size, it would be hugely more powerful than a shop vac. Anyway, as others have pointed out, no actual melting of the structure was required to make it fail.
Or maybe, if these eyewitness reports were true, what they saw was about 100,000
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Nice soundbyte there... (Score:5, Informative)
No need for Data, Scotty, or Spock to get involved. The real explanation is much more mundane.
Debunking The 9/11 Myths - Mar. 2005 Cover Story [popularmechanics.com]
The original article lead to a book Debunking 9/11 Myths [popularmechanics.com], needed now more than ever.
The Conspiracy Industry [popularmechanics.com], By James B. Meigs, Editor-In-Chief, Popular Mechanics
War on ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, there's this; http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/NCSA/RNot e s/2005/809890.pdf [dot.gov] (PDF Warning)
There's a bit of debate about this going on at the moment over here in Aus, since the NT is looking at imposing upper speed limits for the first time ever. http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2006/s1780096.h tm [abc.net.au]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I had weeks of training, and medical, mechanical, highway, city and parking exams
OMG
MOD GP UP (Score:2)
- reckless driving: thought crime, ticket them only if they have an accident
- putting $1.50 in a broken meter: thought crime, ticket them only if they exceed the amount of time $1.50 would have bought them
- failing to signal in a turn-only lane: thought crime, ticket them only if the *don't* turn
* speeding is relat
Re: (Score:2)
Are you sure about this? I just want to make sure I have my facts straight. I thought the feds gave up control of Interstate highway speed limits back in the 90's. If not, how is it that Montana is allowed a mostly unlimited daytime limit, while Wyoming's is set to 75, and most of Utah is 65? I thought the difference between state and Inters
Re: (Score:2)
Traffic deaths do not take out 2,000 people in a single incident.
Traffic deaths do not massively damage infrastructure or erase 50,000 high-paying jobs in a single incident. Traffic deaths do not kill a significant fraction of a city's first responders.
New Orleans may never fully recover from Katrina. There are damn few world cities as ri
Re: (Score:2)
I take it you've never driven in Boston during rush hour? :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Our drivers would be even less attentive than they are now. Will all those safety features, why bother to be a good driver?
6304 people die every hour (Score:2)
Clearly we need (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Those 6000 deaths are more or less randomly distributed across 50 states and among a population of 300 million. What you do not see so often is 6000 deaths in a single incident.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Once, to undermine government legitimacy one would mock democracy or the methodology used. No longer. You are a threat and you must be stopped!!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Er.... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Americans actively supported the terrorism in Northern Ireland, of course that sort of terror was fine.
Re: (Score:2)
If two airplanes had been hit by lightning and crashed into a New York skyscraper, few of us would be able to name the date on which it happened
The date is the important part. Who remembers the date flight 800 came down, the date the iraq war started, the date of the loma prieta quake, the date Katrina hit NOL, the da
!918 Flu Epidemic (Score:2, Insightful)
more from Schneier... (Score:2)
A retired veteran and candidate for Oklahoma State School Superintendent says he wants to make schools safer by creating bulletproof textbooks.
Bill Crozier says the books could give students and teachers a fighting chance if there's a shooting at their school."
why wasn't -that- slashdotted??
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder if something goofy like that (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Apropos, that Democrat has not said he is against pornography featuring deviant child rape by the terrorists burning the gay marriage flag that will cut and run the mushroom clound by raising your taxes while calling our troops DUMB. Nancy Pelosi as a speaker, ooooooooooooo!
Yep, Human Nature (Score:2)
You're more likely to be killed by a car accident than terrorism. You can take steps to reduce the odds, but they will always be there. With few exceptions though, the other drivers are not trying to kill you. Your car, the weather, or whatever it is causes the accident is not an intelligent being that "has it in for you".
So. Are people irrational or not? Maybe not. Terrorists, if successful, can destabilize the whole society. It hasn't happened yet, but in theory, left unchecked, it could. OTOH,
I don't know about that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
are the non-intelligent threats really less deadly or simply more open to analysis and prediction?
the eight million victims of the Holocaust might have the right to ask that question. perhaps also the 3000 who died at the WTC.
Attention vs. worry (Score:2)
There is a huge difference. I would say WORRYING (and thus planning for the prevention of) intelligent threats is far smarter, as they are a longer term threat that much be planned for as opposed to truly random threats which must be dealt with as they arrive.
I pay plenty of attention on the road, but am more concerned longer term as a citizen with terrorist action than with the more l
We are human nature: amen, brother (Score:2)
Add in greed, as in oil greed and thirst (it used to be water and arable land) and you get Iraq, as no proof has been forthcoming of any of the reasons we went to war there. Instead, we shot about $3trillion getting revenge for about 3K deaths.... this after we went to war for Kuwait and ru
Re: (Score:2)
So. Are people irrational or not? Maybe not. Terrorists, if successful, can destabilize the whole society. It hasn't happened yet, but in theory, left unchecked, it could. OTOH, lightning
Contaminate some chip fabs? (Score:2)
You could do that by getting a number of people employed at various fabs in an entry level position, and have them dump a bunch of powder with a moderate sublimation point in critical areas, and they could keep doing it until they started an investigation as to why chip yields had dropped to 1% of what they used to be.
Don't worry, I initially had the same question on 9/11, mainly "how could they be so stupidly ineffective in their choice of economic targets?".
But then I realized t
Re: (Score:2)
The point of the article really
If our fears were in relation to the actual risk we face ( eg: take your car, or take a plane ), Terrorist would never be able to succeed.
Terrorist try to scare the shit of the people with a very local action and a very limited number of death. In the big scheme of things, the annual death caused by terrorism worldwide is much lower than the number of people murdered in 1 US city. If Terrorist were to succeed i
Actual chance vs. perceived chance (Score:2)
This is a comparitive statistic that people love to bandy about, but it's really a poor comparison.
You have loads of control over the likleyhood of being hurt or even killed in a car "accident". If you are an aware driver, you can prevent almost any accident or control the degree of damage done to you and others... for instance if I am braking I am always looking in the rea
Test yourself (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps it is about intentionality (Score:3, Insightful)
When people fly two planes into the WTC, and their fellow travellers express the intent to conduct further attacks, the human intention behind it is pretty clear. Accidents happen, of course, but generally people aren't *trying* to get into car accidents. The idea that people are out there dreaming up further schemes involving mass destruction is what freaks people out. Sure, the odds are still absurdly low that you or I are going to get whacked by terrorists, but human beings are deliberately trying to create the destruction. I think it feels much more personal when you realize that human beings are behind these events, rather than random chance or nature.
Or fear of your own depravity (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Humans naturally and correctly respond more strongly to intentional attacks than to accidents.
Accidents will happen, and at any given point they may be more statistically threatening than whatever deliberate attacks may be going on. But accidents are relatively constant, and societies work to minimise them. Intentional attacks, on the other hand, tend to have people working to maximise the effects.
There are people right now who would bomb every airplane in the world if they had the a
Re: (Score:2)
What the terrorists are trying to do is cause maximal effect, with their extremely limited resources.
They cannot bomb every plane in the world, no matter how much they strive.
What can they do?..
The US response that it is playing through, right now, is exactly the response that the terrorists requested.
Let me repeat: Your president is doing exactly what the terrorists pl
Re: (Score:2)
There are people right now who would bomb every airplane in the world if they had the ability to do so. There is no possibility of an accident happening on any similar scale.
I disagree with your second sentence: cf. the Indian Ocean Tsunami, with total casualties and economic damage both exceeding that of, say, every airplane in the sky at a given moment suddenly exploding.
But leaving that aside: a similar statement could be made in response to your first sentence, that is, that there is no possibility
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Preventability is key (Score:2)
Yes, that is exactly why people are so much more worried about things like terrorism. With something like driving, you always are either making choices yourself (deciding to drive when drunk) or have the abil
I have played with this for some time. (Score:2)
People will jump in a car and drive to the store. Then till you how dangerus it is to do X or Y.
What I would love to see would be an analysys of the number of highway deaths that accured becase more people drove and are driving futher and more often sin
Re: (Score:2)
I could only hope that everyone on earth (Score:2)
don't forget profit (Score:2)
Perspective (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
LLE (Score:2)
It makes interesting reading, particularly when you compare it to our perceived risks.
The Availability Heuristic (Score:2)
Essentially, that sums TFA up in two words. When something's drummed into your brain on a regular basis, your brain begins to classify it as being real or genuine; it's a more "available" scenario or assertion to you. While in this particular case it proves cause for a lot of fallacies about terrorism, and the media/politicians take advantage of it regularly, it's actually something you do as a way of survival (think Darwin); it allow
not sure i buy this (Score:2)
If that skyscraper then collapsed, killing 3000 people, I'm thinking we'd remember it. If not the exact date, at least the fact that it happened. Witness Katrina- an accident in which far fewer people died than on 9/11. Do I remember the exact date Katrina hit? Nope. But I do remember it happened.
Is it really so mystical that people would react more strongly
Re: (Score:2)
And as for natural causes, you had better believe that you can do something about most of them. The single greatest advance towards increasing life expectancy is chlorinated drinking water.
While meteors are too rare to worry about on an individual basis, there are programs to look out for large asteroids. Also
people certainly do worry and do
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If that skyscraper then collapsed, killing 3000 people, I'm thinking we'd remember it. If not the exact date, at least the fact that it happened.
FTFSummary:
"...few of us would be able to name the date on which it happened."
Of course you'd remember that it happened, no one is arguing that we forget the events completely. But even when they have much higher death tolls, we don't remember them as specifically, and they fade much more quickly. To the degree that our priorities in avoiding such disasters
Fear of homocide (Score:2)
Summary of Lifes Risks (Score:2)
"Don't Worry, Be Happy" - Bobby McFerrin
* 2nd ref: footnotes [wikipedia.org]
Counterexamples. (Score:2)
You mean like the Hindenburg, the Titanic, the Andrea Doria, and Swissair flight 111?
Here's a date for you: Dec 26, 2005.
How about Friday the 13th? That's a date that everyone remembers, and they don't even remember why.
Or the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918?
Be careful when you say "the largest accident."
I suspect that we wouldn't really remember the exact date September 11th if the Government and press didn't keep jamming it
Re: (Score:2)
So all the additional safety feature of modern cars are nothing?
Airbags, traction control, abs, crumple zones - well I could go on...but this sounds like a heck of a lot more than nothing already.
"Over"-react? (Score:2)
problem is mistated (Score:2)
Risk analysis is rational, and is different from the examples he gives.
Back to irrational fears. A great book on this topic is "meaning of anxiety" (r. may, c. 1977). He discussed why fears are irrational, especially in children. We project irrational fears, because they really don't happen to us, so we worry for a while, then stop and get on with life. To express real fear on what is likely to happen to us wou
9/11 = 911 (Score:2)
That is why we remember the date. That and the fact that we refer to it as 9/11, whereas we refer to other incidents by names such as "Pearl Harbor".
It is also a big event because it's new. We already know tons of people die in car accidents, so we're cynical and jaded to that -- but 9/11 is a change, so we notice it, and thousands of people died, so it shocks us.
Re: (Score:2)
You will be perfectly safe in your jail cell, no doubt.
Enjoying freedom (Score:2)
Agressive defense is a pretext for the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.
Plain old regular flu (Score:2)
I'd hazard a guess that more people are concerned about bird flu than the garden variety (i know it varies from year to year) yet they are more likely to die from the latter.
Would you really remember the date? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A math professor of mine once pointed out that more people in the U.S. die each year from eating fast food than die from rabies.
bats vs bulges (Score:2)
Fast food helps obesity and obesity makes heart attacks more likely.... Heart attacks kill almost a million people a year in North america. That's about 114/hour -- so if fast food obesity accounts for 3% of heart attack deaths, then we'll have more people
Re: (Score:2)
Compare that to India where the number is in the tens of thousands! That may explain why the word "rabies" comes from a Sanskrit word.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The 911 hijackings were a one off event. Passengers had been educated to comply with orders and wait for rescue in the event of a hijack. Now we all know to kick the shit out of anybody who tries to take a plane over with chopsticks and stanley knives.
It won't happen again because OBL knows that we will p
Re: (Score:2)
"but, look at that guy! he dresses so neat and talk so well! How can you say he's a liar?" is a sentense I heard WAY too often.