which is that the number of people killed by terrorists is much more variable than the number of people killed by lightning.
High or low variation does not mean easy or hard to control. Estimates of the cost of the War on Terror since 9/11 are going to be upwards of $6 trillion at this point. That’s a lot of money.
How much would it cost to install a few million more lightning rods? Install giant wires to draw lightning strikes? Develop a mandatory early warning system tied into all smartphones’ GPSes to warn people? Researching better medical treatments to deal with the long-term cognitive & psychological damage? Banning kites and taxing umbrellas? Subsidizing cardiac arrest kits? Relocating millions of people to less lightning-strike-prone regions?
(None of this sounds more costly or intrusive than spending $6t+, requiring millions of travelers to shed shoes annually for decades, invading multiple countries and creating millions of refugees, maintaining continuous drone strikes on multiple continents, running a global network of torture sites, etc etc etc.)
Since lightning strikes are almost completely uncorrelated random events, the distribution of deaths by lightning is governed by the Central Limit Theorem and so is nearly Gaussian.
True (perhaps), yet almost completely irrelevant to the question of how to allocate resources.
I entirely agree with you about what a calamity the war on terror has been (heres a comment I wrote a while back suggesting that the negative impact of the WoT might be about as big in magnitude as the positive impact of the tech revolution).
I was just observing that there is a meaningful statistical difference between the two types of events and therefore it isn’t wildly irrational to be more concerned with one type than the other, even if a naive expected loss calculation suggests the opposite.
“Friends, countrymen, lend me your ears! Too long have we suffered under the blows of indifferent fate. I meet you today to propose a War on Lightning, against the axis of electrons—a strike on the Mount (Olympus).
Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, But why, some say, the Mount? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 88 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the Mount. We choose to go to the Mount in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.
High or low variation does not mean easy or hard to control. Estimates of the cost of the War on Terror since 9/11 are going to be upwards of $6 trillion at this point. That’s a lot of money.
How much would it cost to install a few million more lightning rods? Install giant wires to draw lightning strikes? Develop a mandatory early warning system tied into all smartphones’ GPSes to warn people? Researching better medical treatments to deal with the long-term cognitive & psychological damage? Banning kites and taxing umbrellas? Subsidizing cardiac arrest kits? Relocating millions of people to less lightning-strike-prone regions?
(None of this sounds more costly or intrusive than spending $6t+, requiring millions of travelers to shed shoes annually for decades, invading multiple countries and creating millions of refugees, maintaining continuous drone strikes on multiple continents, running a global network of torture sites, etc etc etc.)
True (perhaps), yet almost completely irrelevant to the question of how to allocate resources.
I entirely agree with you about what a calamity the war on terror has been (heres a comment I wrote a while back suggesting that the negative impact of the WoT might be about as big in magnitude as the positive impact of the tech revolution).
I was just observing that there is a meaningful statistical difference between the two types of events and therefore it isn’t wildly irrational to be more concerned with one type than the other, even if a naive expected loss calculation suggests the opposite.
Ok. Now I want a President to declare the “War Against Lightning.”
“Friends, countrymen, lend me your ears! Too long have we suffered under the blows of indifferent fate. I meet you today to propose a War on Lightning, against the axis of electrons—a strike on the Mount (Olympus).
Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, But why, some say, the Mount? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 88 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the Mount. We choose to go to the Mount in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.
Good night, and gods bless America.”
http://sharpwriter.deviantart.com/art/Ben-Franklin-VS-Zeus-271337266
And with the ominous resolution spoken, a deep thunder was heard, as if echoing the importance of what had just been said,
Then everyone dived for cover...