The 2004 Tsunami killed over 230,000 people. About 3000 died from 9/11. The tsunami was greater in damage than 75 9/11s. Four planes went down and two buildings on 9/11. The tsunami was equal to 300 plane crashes and 150 skyscraper destructions combined simultaneously
Over 30,000 people die in America every year due to driver errors in cars.
Even if he further had specific logistics planned and intelligence gathered, coupled with an exact set of marching orders, any reasonably intelligent person with even basic engineering skills could provide the exact same thing.
This is a staggering display of confirmation bias right here.
We're talking about groups of desperate and - by your own admission, dumb - people. They're not big into planning. Now put someone of even slight intelligence in charge, and you have an organization of dumb religious zealots with a leader.
It doesn't take much to enable a group with the proper motivation to be able to cause a lot of harm. And it's usually the dumb ones that are hell-bent on killing lots of people for religious reasons. Smart people embezzle a billion dollars, get away with it, and retire to a tropical paradise. Idiots blow up other people to defend a bunch of sand and rocks.
The extent of bin Laden's influence is still questionable, but I'm not comfortable dismissing his influence. Sure, the specific intelligence and organizing he did is weak compared to what an intelligent person could do, but the point is the context in which he used those skills.
Some people, who are wrong, might say the increased security is working. I say, how come attacks didn't come earlier or in greater numbers?
The problem is that preventative measures are really fucking hard to assess. If I recall a food product before anyone dies, have I prevented any deaths? We can't know. The only way to assess that is to set up a study, and that would be an ethics nightmare.
I agree with the "defeat terrorists by ignoring them" sentiment, but we've a long way to go before we can get everyone on board with that. It takes time to get people to come around, if they ever will at all. But until then, you have to address the problem.
Over 30,000 people die in America every year due to driver errors in cars.
You're right, our priorities are somewhat out of order. That doesn't mean that the issue of terrorism isn't an issue; it means we need to get serious about dealing with things that are problems.
Scott, Your whole line of reasoning assumes a HUGE amount of things. You assume that the terrorists want to behave in a way that would destroy themselves and their organization.
You're right, our priorities are somewhat out of order. That doesn't mean that the issue of terrorism isn't an issue; it means we need to get serious about dealing with things that are problems.
The main problem with terrorism is terror - hence the name. The most important thing to do is not to be terrified. Also, the opportunity cost of the excessive spending on terrorism-related issues probably outweighs the harm it mitigates.
The main problem with terrorism is terror - hence the name. The opportunity cost of the excessive spending on terrorism-related issues probably outweighs the harm it mitigates.
You're right, but then the problem again becomes terror. The damage that a terrorist does isn't in dollars or lives, but in fear and a loss of confidence in our way of life. And while we really all should nut up and not fear some stone-age barbarians from across the globe, it's unreasonable to expect everyone to suddenly stop obeying 30,000 years of instinctive fear.
We can get there, but there's no point in being frustrated about not being there now.
We can get there, but there's no point in being frustrated about not being there now.
There is a point in being frustrated at the fact that police randomly search people entering the subway and the TSA has the right to touch my balls if they so desire.
There is a point in being frustrated at the fact that police randomly search people entering the subway and the TSA has the right to touch my balls if they so desire.
No, there's a point in, say, tweeting out a picture of the TSA patting down a baby in a diaper.
Expressing your frustration is a way to blow off steam, but you actually have to do something in order to affect change. Frustration alone accomplishes nothing. Communicating your frustration can assist in the formation of groups of like-minded people, but if the group is centered around blowing off steam instead of doing something, they probably won't get a lot done.
So here's my question: what are you going to do about it?
You've got X resources to allocate to a set of problems that vary in size. How many resources do you allocate to solving each problem? Some of the small problems you can eliminate entirely because they are low hanging fruit, but that means less resources for the large problems. Those large problems, though, might not be able to be eliminated entirely since they are so big. Like cancer, no matter how much we donate to cancer charities and research in labs everywhere, it's still not beat.
Terrorism is an extremely small problem. It takes an extraordinary amount of resources to actually prevent and/or fight it. Even with that extreme amount of resource expenditure, it still can't even be effectively eliminated. Most methods we use to counter it are ineffective and/or have freedom-destroying side effects. Taking all those things into account, it would be best if we spent almost no resources on fighting terrorism unless it starts to become a bigger problem. We can just do simple relatively inexpensive things like armored cockpit doors on planes and just forget about most of this other bullshit.
it's unreasonable to expect everyone to suddenly stop obeying 30,000 years of instinctive fear.
How is it unreasonable? Clearly I have achieved this feat, have I not? I will gladly go to an airport and fly without fear if all TSA security measures were eliminated. In fact, I would fly much more often. Am I some sort of great enlightened person who is better than everyone else? Either I am, which I doubt, or it's not unreasonable to expect people to conquer this fear.
Or is there a third choice exposing a false dichotomy in my line of questioning?
"Small" problems can have a large impact, depending on how they are measured. I'd be interested to see a responsibly-conducted study that shows the cumulative effect of terrorism on the US economy. I'll bet I could find one, if I had an inkling.
Am I some sort of great enlightened person who is better than everyone else? Either I am, which I doubt, or it's not unreasonable to expect people to conquer this fear.
You have to remember that a large majority of the country is a lot less educated than you and cannot properly evaluate risks within their lives. Psychology isn't as clearcut or neat as you would want it to be.
Am I some sort of great enlightened person who is better than everyone else? Either I am, which I doubt, or it's not unreasonable to expect people to conquer this fear.
I have almost no options other than spreading awareness and anger.
How about getting involved in politics other than voting? Or educating the public? Or actually getting your political party going?
Go to local political meetings and talk to people about your issues. Talk to them one-on-one. Go out with them and talk about their issues with them and get them on the right side of things.
With a lot of time and perseverance, you may convince a handful of people of your views.
Either I am, which I doubt, or it's not unreasonable to expect people to conquer this fear.
No, it's unreasonable to expect people to up and conquer it all at once.
Really really really smart and enlightened people throughout history have grappled with this same problem. Like, the exact same goddamn problem. And it hasn't been solved yet. The answer is clearly more complex than "just do it."
All other options require vast amounts of self sacrifice with very little effect.
Yes, they do.
And as long as we're unwilling to engage in self-sacrifice to benefit community interests, we'll never fix any of this. Supermen don't exist and couldn't affect anything if they did anyhow.
Supermen don't exist and couldn't affect anything if they did anyhow.
That's true for Nietzsche superman. They don't exist and couldn't change anything if they did. However, a Clark Kent Superman also doesn't exist, but could sure as fuck change everything.
One way to change a great deal of things is with vast amounts of money. Yet it seems that all the people who do have vast amounts of money refuse to use it to enact the sort of big changes that we are looking for. They either wallow in luxury or make small gradual changes, sometimes bad ones. Those people that would use money in an awesome way never seem to be able to get that kind of money in the fist place. We discussed this on a recent podcast. If I had a billion dollars, can you imagine the kind of things I could/would change?
One way to change a great deal of things is with vast amounts of money.
That's a good temporary solution, but it really relies on a constant cash flow with a consistent vision. The instant anyone changes their mind about what to do with that money, the whole thing falls apart.
A guy with lots of money with the right mindset, and a large team of similarly smart people with the right mindset, might be able to affect some positive change on his own. How about we just focus on making people smarter?
Or tax the fuck out of the super wealthy. What's that, you made 10 billion dollars last year? We're taking 9.9 billion of that, thank you very much.
A guy with lots of money with the right mindset, and a large team of similarly smart people with the right mindset, might be able to affect some positive change on his own. How about we just focus on making people smarter?
Well we discussed this on a recent podcast, but nobody discussed it in the forums. Bill Gates is spending his money on education and eliminating diseases. Yet, even with his insane amounts of money, he has significant progress, but not insanely awesome progress. Is it maybe that money is less effective than we thought, or is he just not using the money as creatively and effectively as he could be?
If, as per my suggestion, he just bought a major pharmaceutical company outright, such as GSK or Merck, he could do more for positive change in the fight against disease than just about anything else. At the bare minimum he could reduce the profit margins without changing anything else. Competition would be forced to drop prices as well. That drop in the price of medicine would drop drug prices around the world helping everybody everywhere. And that's not even counting what if he did crazy things like sharing all the trade secrets for the benefit of medical research or freely licensing all the patents.
Or what if he bought all the academic journals and removed all the paywalls? That would provide an insanely huge benefit to the world that would be relatively easy and relatively inexpensive for someone that wealthy.
Is it maybe that money is less effective than we thought
This is usually the problem. What does it mean to give 100 million dollars to education? You give chunks to various organizations, who then distribute it as they see fit. Maybe you give some to schools, who then spend it at their discretion.
Once the money leaves your possession, you're relying on the efficiency of the systems into which you inject it. So, even if you're operating at 100% efficiency, if other systems are at 50%, it doesn't matter all that much.
You also have to consider what it means to engage in "effective" spending. What is effective in one situation may not be effective in another. Bill Gates may be wicked smart, but I doubt he has the ability to look at every school everywhere and figure out exactly how to much to spend where and on what. So, he has to rely on the expertise of other people.
At the bare minimum he could reduce the profit margins without changing anything else.
Publicly traded companies? Investors could sue him, hypothetically. That happened with CostCo or some other company like that. These things also have boards of directors and such, so he doesn't get to be the only guy calling the shots.
Publicly traded companies? Investors could sue him, hypothetically. That happened with CostCo or some other company like that. These things also have boards of directors and such, so he doesn't get to be the only guy calling the shots.
Well, if you buy 51% you can indeed call the shots. You can vote yes men onto the board of directors and have an unstoppable majority. Then you can vote to make the company privately held. Then you can do as you please.
Publicly traded companies? Investors could sue him, hypothetically. That happened with CostCo or some other company like that. These things also have boards of directors and such, so he doesn't get to be the only guy calling the shots.
Can you imagine that shareholders' meeting?
Spokesman: "Yeah, so we reduced the margins on your profits going forward...." Shareholder: "Wait, wait, wait. You did what?" Spokesman: "We cut profits. We don't really need them. Bill has enough money." Shareholder: "FUCK BILL."
I suppose you could buy up all the stock and just take over the company that way, but aren't there usually laws about how that sort of thing has to proceed?
I suppose you could buy up all the stock and just take over the company that way, but aren't there usually laws about how that sort of thing has to proceed?
Yes. You don't get to ruin a company's profits even if you own 51 percent of the company. This is yet another instance in which Scott thinks he knows law like he thinks he's good with a gun because he thinks he can maybe remember firing one once sometime during the 90s.
I suppose you could buy up all the stock and just take over the company that way, but aren't there usually laws about how that sort of thing has to proceed?
Yes. You don't get to ruin a company's profits even if you own 51 percent of the company. This is yet another instance in which Scott thinks he knows law like he thinks he's good with a gun because he thinks he can maybe remember firing one once sometime during the 90s.
How did Osama send email without being detected? He used an offline computer. He wrote emails and had them put on a flash drive. Then a courier took the flash drive to an Internet cafe and used free email accounts to send the messages. Then they brought back the replies. The government wasn't able to intercept these emails or detect this method until they actually found the physical USB sticks in the compound.
No encryption. No tunneling. No proxies. Not even using a different messaging protocol besides plain old email.
Imagine if the terrorists were as technologically advanced as we are? Imagine if they were even 1/10th as advanced as we are. If they just used Tor and the most basic of encryption, the government would not have found one useful bit of information in that compound.
If a nerd ever becomes evil, then is the time to be afraid.
Mullah Omar Dead Mullah Omar Alive. This is why we should send in seal teams for all of these guys... So at least we have some sort of confirmation. :-p
Comments
We're talking about groups of desperate and - by your own admission, dumb - people. They're not big into planning. Now put someone of even slight intelligence in charge, and you have an organization of dumb religious zealots with a leader.
It doesn't take much to enable a group with the proper motivation to be able to cause a lot of harm. And it's usually the dumb ones that are hell-bent on killing lots of people for religious reasons. Smart people embezzle a billion dollars, get away with it, and retire to a tropical paradise. Idiots blow up other people to defend a bunch of sand and rocks.
The extent of bin Laden's influence is still questionable, but I'm not comfortable dismissing his influence. Sure, the specific intelligence and organizing he did is weak compared to what an intelligent person could do, but the point is the context in which he used those skills. The problem is that preventative measures are really fucking hard to assess. If I recall a food product before anyone dies, have I prevented any deaths? We can't know. The only way to assess that is to set up a study, and that would be an ethics nightmare.
I agree with the "defeat terrorists by ignoring them" sentiment, but we've a long way to go before we can get everyone on board with that. It takes time to get people to come around, if they ever will at all. But until then, you have to address the problem. You're right, our priorities are somewhat out of order. That doesn't mean that the issue of terrorism isn't an issue; it means we need to get serious about dealing with things that are problems.
We can get there, but there's no point in being frustrated about not being there now.
Expressing your frustration is a way to blow off steam, but you actually have to do something in order to affect change. Frustration alone accomplishes nothing. Communicating your frustration can assist in the formation of groups of like-minded people, but if the group is centered around blowing off steam instead of doing something, they probably won't get a lot done.
So here's my question: what are you going to do about it?
Terrorism is an extremely small problem. It takes an extraordinary amount of resources to actually prevent and/or fight it. Even with that extreme amount of resource expenditure, it still can't even be effectively eliminated. Most methods we use to counter it are ineffective and/or have freedom-destroying side effects. Taking all those things into account, it would be best if we spent almost no resources on fighting terrorism unless it starts to become a bigger problem. We can just do simple relatively inexpensive things like armored cockpit doors on planes and just forget about most of this other bullshit.
Or is there a third choice exposing a false dichotomy in my line of questioning?
I have almost no options other than spreading awareness and anger.
Go to local political meetings and talk to people about your issues. Talk to them one-on-one. Go out with them and talk about their issues with them and get them on the right side of things.
With a lot of time and perseverance, you may convince a handful of people of your views. No, it's unreasonable to expect people to up and conquer it all at once.
Really really really smart and enlightened people throughout history have grappled with this same problem. Like, the exact same goddamn problem. And it hasn't been solved yet. The answer is clearly more complex than "just do it."
And as long as we're unwilling to engage in self-sacrifice to benefit community interests, we'll never fix any of this. Supermen don't exist and couldn't affect anything if they did anyhow.
One way to change a great deal of things is with vast amounts of money. Yet it seems that all the people who do have vast amounts of money refuse to use it to enact the sort of big changes that we are looking for. They either wallow in luxury or make small gradual changes, sometimes bad ones. Those people that would use money in an awesome way never seem to be able to get that kind of money in the fist place. We discussed this on a recent podcast. If I had a billion dollars, can you imagine the kind of things I could/would change?
A guy with lots of money with the right mindset, and a large team of similarly smart people with the right mindset, might be able to affect some positive change on his own. How about we just focus on making people smarter?
Or tax the fuck out of the super wealthy. What's that, you made 10 billion dollars last year? We're taking 9.9 billion of that, thank you very much.
If, as per my suggestion, he just bought a major pharmaceutical company outright, such as GSK or Merck, he could do more for positive change in the fight against disease than just about anything else. At the bare minimum he could reduce the profit margins without changing anything else. Competition would be forced to drop prices as well. That drop in the price of medicine would drop drug prices around the world helping everybody everywhere. And that's not even counting what if he did crazy things like sharing all the trade secrets for the benefit of medical research or freely licensing all the patents.
Or what if he bought all the academic journals and removed all the paywalls? That would provide an insanely huge benefit to the world that would be relatively easy and relatively inexpensive for someone that wealthy.
Once the money leaves your possession, you're relying on the efficiency of the systems into which you inject it. So, even if you're operating at 100% efficiency, if other systems are at 50%, it doesn't matter all that much.
You also have to consider what it means to engage in "effective" spending. What is effective in one situation may not be effective in another. Bill Gates may be wicked smart, but I doubt he has the ability to look at every school everywhere and figure out exactly how to much to spend where and on what. So, he has to rely on the expertise of other people. Publicly traded companies? Investors could sue him, hypothetically. That happened with CostCo or some other company like that. These things also have boards of directors and such, so he doesn't get to be the only guy calling the shots.
Spokesman: "Yeah, so we reduced the margins on your profits going forward...."
Shareholder: "Wait, wait, wait. You did what?"
Spokesman: "We cut profits. We don't really need them. Bill has enough money."
Shareholder: "FUCK BILL."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_bin_laden
How did Osama send email without being detected? He used an offline computer. He wrote emails and had them put on a flash drive. Then a courier took the flash drive to an Internet cafe and used free email accounts to send the messages. Then they brought back the replies. The government wasn't able to intercept these emails or detect this method until they actually found the physical USB sticks in the compound.
No encryption. No tunneling. No proxies. Not even using a different messaging protocol besides plain old email.
Imagine if the terrorists were as technologically advanced as we are? Imagine if they were even 1/10th as advanced as we are. If they just used Tor and the most basic of encryption, the government would not have found one useful bit of information in that compound.
If a nerd ever becomes evil, then is the time to be afraid.
Mullah Omar Alive.
This is why we should send in seal teams for all of these guys... So at least we have some sort of confirmation. :-p