[sametmax]

I find crazy the amount of resources we deploy to fight something:

    - that causes little deaths compared to most diseases or social issues.
    - cost little compared to most economical or educational issues.
    - has little long term consequences on the country compared to internal and external policies, laws, politics and visions;
    - is a direct consequence of social, economical and educational issues and a by product of policies, laws, politics and visions.

But what's astonishing me the most is the fact that a lot of people don't see this and just freak out, despite that almost all of them have never been in direct contact with it or suffer direct consequences from it.

[rayiner]

People don't view the impact of death merely in terms of body count. If we did, we wouldn't care about serial killers or child abductions or people shot by police. We devote major resources to fighting terrorism not because of the body count, but because we feel it deeply unjust to allow terrorists to kill innocent people to make a political point, especially when that political point is an attack on fundamental precepts of our society. Terrorism isn't just an attack on people; it's intended to be an attack on our institutions and our society.

[jjoonathan]

> we feel it deeply unjust to allow terrorists to kill innocent people to make a political point

Our response was to go over and kill 100 of their innocent civilians for every 1 of our innocent civilians that the extremists killed in order to make our political point. I don't buy the argument that this was premised on any noble principle such as the one you describe.

[nkozyra]

One other difference - at least in terms of perception - is that the threats you listed are relatively static over time. Terrorism is a movement that involves recruitment and contains inherent plans to expand.

To be the first to invoke Godwin's here, the Nazis did not statistically represent a significant daily threat to health and safety in 1928, either. Looking at present body counts as a gauge for what's worth "freaking out" about seems incomplete.

[wildmusings]

Exactly, terrorism is a high-variance event and we can't extrapolate that future violence will resemble current violence. A single catastrophic attack, like a nuke in a city, makes everything that happened before irrelevant. 9/11 itself was a huge escalation, the most deadly terrorist attack in history by far. Future death tolls are limited only by the capabilities of the terrorists and our ability to stop them. They would kill millions of us if they could.

[GordonS]

> Future death tolls are limited only by the capabilities of the terrorists and our ability to stop them. They would kill millions of us if they could

This is rather sensationalist. There are infinite ways that anyone with a bit of intelligence could hurt or kill large numbers of people with small arms, explosives, chemicals, vehicles etc - and yet we see time and time again that terrorists usually display extreme incompetence (e.g. underpants bomber). The few terrorists that there are, just aren't very good at it.

The idea of terrorists getting hold of a nuke and actually being able to use it effectively is, frankly, ridiculous.

[wildmusings]

It's unlikely that a nuke falls into terrorist hands, but its not unimaginable. Pakistan is a half-failed state with nuclear weapons and it's easy to imagine that government collapsing completely. North Korea is another unpredictable actor. US officials have warned about lax security around smaller nuclear weapons in Russia. You are right that they would face further obstacles in trying to detonate it.

There are many more-likely but still catastrophic scenarios. A bigger Paris/Mumbai-style attack could kill thousands. An attack on the Hoover Dam or a chemical plant could also kill thousands and cause billions of dollars of economic damage.

[nkozyra]

> The few terrorists that there are, just aren't very good at it.

Sure, but let's say we take the "stop freaking out about it" approach and it enables further mobilization. Suddenly those things change in a hurry.

> The idea of terrorists getting hold of a nuke and actually being able to use it effectively is, frankly, ridiculous.

Unless a terrorist organization is able to morph into a pseudo-state. Which sounds a little less ridiculous than it did five years ago.

The point is primarily that chastising fear/effort/resources/counterattacks based only on the current statistical threat level is short-sighted.

[GordonS]

I'm not saying we should be entirely complacent, but the response from the western world since 9/11, and ongoing, has been insane, and has caused more civilian deaths than any terrorist attack could ever cause.

Devices like this, or indeed body scanners, just add to the security theatre that makes corporations money and allows our politicians to further continue the narrative of fear that allows them to get away with almost anything.

[Zigurd]

The way you portray that implies that the public has an undistorted view of the effects of terrorism. In fact, the greater part of the effect is how governments, media, security state vendors, and other profiteers and comp followers shape the impact of terrorist attacks, and echo and amplify the profitable and policy-promoting aspects of those effects. You can launch multi-trillion dollar wars of aggression based on that messaging. It's not "our institutions and society." The people are not represented. They are farmed for profit and kept docile.

The real question is not whether it is irrational to fear terrorism, but, rather, whether the warmongers, snoops and profiteers exploiting terrorist attacks should be heeded, or not.

[d4nt]

I don't think the parent post was suggesting we don't care about it. Just questioning why we care about it more than, say, serial killers.

> Terrorism isn't just an attack on people; it's intended to be an attack on our institutions and our society.

The fact that you're calling it terrorism instead of murder, and that we're discussing this in the context of an OP about the development of new technologies to detect explosives, shows that it's working.

[rayiner]

Terrorism and murder are two entirely different things. What distinguishes various types of killing is intent. Killing someone because they stepped onto your drug dealing territory is an act motivated by a very different intent than killing someone to make a political point.

[d4nt]

I accept that people kill people for lots of different reasons. And that sometimes its sensible to consider intent (e.g. when passing a sentence).

But we've ended up in a position where killing people because they stepped onto your drug dealing territory will get you a mention on the evening news, followed by a trial by jury, while everyone gets on with their lives.

But killing people because you believe you're in a holy war will get you wall to wall news coverage for several days, any associates in foreign countries will be summarily killed by drone attack, and whatever particular tactics you used (shoe bomb, liquid explosives in drinks bottle, attacking outspoken news publication) will be memorialised across the globe within days in the form of updated security procedures or public reaction.

I don't particularly fear being killed by a religious fanatic, it's so rare it would be irrational to fear that. But I do fear the disintegration of my open and free society due to a social engineering hack called "Terrorism".

[sametmax]

Your point suggest people are actually thinking about it, while discussions I had in the past show, to the contrary, a complete lack of thinking and a full emotional reaction, even way after the fact.

[ross-life]

Because (it feels) like it's not possible to properly debate the subject in public. As a little/normal person the answer is always the same: "But but what if it was your mother/girlfriend/daughter that died in the attack?!". These are the same people that probably have been into contact with someone who has directly dealt with the consequences of police corruption, yet won't ever support "making the police's job harder".

Once an attack "gets through", which will always happen eventually, anyone that didn't support the PersonalRights-Devouring Anti-Terrorist Bill will get crucified by the press and their opponents.

Most people don't appear to care about numbers, or facts or evidence. They only seem to care about pushing their ideology (normally authoritarianism) that "makes them feel safe", rights and freedoms be damned (which is why I can never take the US's obsession with "rights and freedoms" seriously).

[sametmax]

Yes but why do we fail to convince ? What can we do to help people not panicking ?

[wildmusings]

If panic is to be averted, the leadership of the West has to show that they take the problem seriously. As long as people are tiptoeing around even calling the problem what it is, hard-line sentiment will grow.

Tony Blair had some good thoughts on this lately: ""The centre has become flabby and unwilling to take people on. We concede far too much. There's this idea that you're part of an elite if you think in terms of respectful tolerance towards other people. It's ridiculous [...] You have to give a real solution and not one which is populist but false. If you don't give a solution, and you leave people with a choice between what I would call a bit of flabby liberalism and the hardline, they'll take the hardline I'm afraid." Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/education-35862598

[GordonS]

> Tony Blair had some good thoughts on this lately

Sorry, but Tony Blair is a war criminal - why on earth would anyone care what he has to say?

[nxzero]

You can't, let it go.

[krzrak]

It's because this "something" is attractive for media, causes lot more fear than "boring" stuff like car crashes or diseases and, of course, can be politically exploited.

[gerbilly]

I think humans have a cognitive bias that makes them fear risks more if they perceive "ill will" behind it.

A natural disaster is scary and can kill a lot of people, but to most people it feels more impersonal.

When someone is targeting people directly (serial killers, murderers, terrorists) it feels scarier because there is an intention to harm.

This bias is stronger that probability. Even if someone lived near a volcano that had a 5% chance of killing you every year, I bet that same person would be more scared of a terror attack that had .01% chance of killing you per year.

This is reflected in our legal institutions. If you kill a person accidentally, even through neglect, that is involuntary manslaughter, but if you kill deliberately, that is murder.

[kgilpin]

I live in Boston. I had friends that were in the World Trade Center when the planes hit, then terrorists blew up our marathon and my kids had to stay inside all day during the ensuing manhunt. So that's twice I have been personally affected, and I am really just an ordinary citizen.

[leaveyou]

Yeah, soon we will be like "God forbid if we run out of terrorists.." because peace could really ruin our economy.

[seivan]

You should tell that to women and kids who were hit by chemical bombs from British Muslims in Rojava.

[dang]

Most of your posts continue to be political rants despite our asking you more than once not to do this. If you keep doing it, we're going to ban your account.

[seivan]

That happene when the likes of you become mods. I went back far enough to check. But hey, don't let that make you wonder.

[dang]

I'm concluding that you haven't any interest in not abusing HN, so your account is banned.

Your view of how HN moderation has changed is quite wrong. PG would have banned you many times over (and IIRC actually did).

[wildmusings]

>that causes little deaths compared to most diseases or social issues. cost little compared to most economical or educational issues. has little long terme consequences on the country compared to internal and external policies, laws, politics and visions

9/11 was an extra 20% on top of US murders in 2001. The Paris attacks also clock in at an extra 20% of the murder rate in France. Larger versions of sophisticated ambushes like the ones in Paris or Mumbai could very conceivably run up death tolls in the thousands. These people would kill millions of us if they could, so why exactly should we let down our guard?

Not to mention that murder is not the totality of terrorism's effects. When people critical of Islam are repeatedly targeted by terrorists, we all lose our freedom to speak our minds. We live in societies almost completely free of political violence, which has allowed an amazing flourishing of industry, technology, and culture. Terrorism is a huge threat to that. Europe in particular has a serious problem on their hands, given how many European-born Muslims are alienated from and hostile to Western society.

>is a direct consequence of social, economical and educational issues and a by product of policies, laws, politics and visions.

Huh? Isn't this true for any societal issue?

[jjoonathan]

There's a difference between "letting down your guard" and being selective about the policies you're willing to adopt to effectively fight terrorism. Unless you're willing to defend the patriot act, wars on terror, the parts of the TSA that are obviously just security theater, police militarization, etc as reasonable, then you have to accept that we overreacted. Those parts of our reaction are emphatically not part of our "guard," and getting rid of them is not in any way lowering our guard. Quite the opposite due to their propensity for misuse.

[wildmusings]

I agree with some of what you're saying, and there's a whole separate debate to be had there. Today, in this thread, I'm only interested in refuting this idea that terrorism is an overblown threat. It absolutely is not. If anything, the threat is being understated by the current administration in the US, using arguments along the same lines as sametmax's.