From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Thu Jul 31 2003 - 20:02:06 MDT
> On Fri, 1 Aug 2003, Emlyn O'regan wrote:
>
> > Of course not; we never have been. Total safety is illusory.
> >
> > So the question is "how safe are we"?
> >
> > How about a poll...
> >
> > Who on the list personally knows someone affected by
> terrorism. Personal
> > acquaintances as maximum distance, no friends of friends please.
>
Robert replied:
> Reasonable question. I don't think it requires too much thinking
> to get some approximations. [I point out some of this in [1]; Mez
> subsequently qualified it].
>
> But an easy ballpark estimate (for the U.S.) is that if you are
> dealing with 16,000 lives per year from drunk drivers [2] and
> something
> less than ~1000 lives per year (for the last three years) from
> terrorism then drunk driving should be more than 10x the concern
> of terrorism.
From the stats in your attached URLs, it would seem to me that even road
accidents are negligable. Heart disease & cancer (and age related conditions
that are hidden by those two biggies, presumably) are clearly the biggest
concern from the standpoint of a rational observer.
> But I would doubt that in terms of the allocation of budget
> dollars that would seem to be the case. [And Emlyn --
> don't even talk to me about AU -- terrorism deaths --
> considering the incident in Bali are probably something
> like a hundred or so per year -- based on a several year
> average -- and I'd hate to consider what the Driving Under
> the Influence stats would be.]
I totally agree. But I've thought all the way along that the threat of
terrorism has been wildly overstated, and while it does exist to some
extent, is far less problematic than AIDS, for example. The far bigger
threat from terrorism, IMO, is that it's working; we are all acting out of
fear, and destroying the great societies in which we live in the process.
>
> But the point is well taken -- as was the case with SARS we have
> a situation where some of the potential impacts cause a much greater
> notice than others. What we should be looking for is a rational
> scale and some way of presenting it. From my (extropic?) perspective
> the greater the risk to humanity, the greater should be the perceived
> risk from a hazard.
>
> Robert
>
> 1. http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/Aging/CausesOfDeath.html
> 2. http://216.190.132.53/pdf/info_and_stats.pdf
From my perspective, it's all about statistical risk, coloured by one's
personal behaviour. It seems obvious to me that the freedoms we are allowing
to erode now in the name of the "War on Terrorism" are in no way justified
by the risks.
Emlyn
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