[aswanson]

You're more likely to die from a lightning bolt than a 'terrorist' attack. You're thousands of times more likely to die from bad driving habits or being overweight, so why is the terrorist bogeyman given so much concern in the political conversation?

[hyperdunc]

Because a lightning bolt is a much more random occurance. It doesn't have agency, an agenda or a trajectory within society. A lightning bolt isn't looking to instigate more lightning bolts.

In 10 years time the death stats for lightning bolts will be similar and for road accidents will probably have declined. Which way do you think the terrorists stats will go?

[aswanson]

Given the trends and the fact that it's a low probability event, I'd expect it to stay about where it is, about one death per year, or about as much as a chance as I have of getting killed by a piece of furniture: http://uk.businessinsider.com/death-risk-statistics-terroris... http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-terrorism-statistics-every-...

[hyperdunc]

Terrorism is less likely to remain a low-probability event because it contains the intention of death spurred by a toxic ideology that wishes to spread.

The comparisons given are accidents and happen through negligence or plain bad luck.

[aswanson]

If your premise is true that it will grow because it wishes to spread, then why has it empirically remained constant? Why isnt it more successful every year as it pushes growth?

[hyperdunc]

It has the strong potential to grow but right now there are enough people opposing its spread.

Even so, terrorism may have cumulative political and social effects. People don't like to know there are others out there who wish them harm. Once a certain threshold of resentment is reached within an affected society then suddenly massive unrest could erupt.

Some politicians are trying to mitigate this by suggesting we should just get used to the occasional terrorist attack and treat it like a lightning strike or a piece of heavy furniture falling over.

[aswanson]

You must not live in the us. Every politician here is hyping the threat well beyond proportion to the life loss potential. But humans are irrational and scare prone, so why not exploit the cognitive bug, for votes and profit?

[aub3bhat]

Arguing deaths due to <x> happened more frequently than terrorism in some time period is useless, if the underlying process that generates those numbers are widely different.

Rather than thinking in terms of mortality rate over a period, its more accurate to think in terms of events. A single lightning bolt strike can at most affect 0 ~ 10 people with a gaussian distribution. A terrorist attack on the other hand has a long tail distribution and can cause 10^0 ~ 10^4 deaths.

There is no organized cult going around making lightening bolts with explicit intention of causing large scale harm. On the other hand there are several organized terrorist groups which are intentionally trying to do that. As far as being overweight or bad driving habits, billions of dollars are poured into health care system, automated driving and regulations with goal of reducing deaths due to them.

[aswanson]

Bad driving and cardiac/obesity DO cause more than 10^6 deaths per annum and get no where near the proportionate political/media attention that terrorism does. There are 10x the deaths in auto accidents than the worst terrorist attack in US history every single year. The DHS budget alone dwarfs any proportional safety return that could be made by simply raising the legal driving age by a year.

[aub3bhat]

>>The DHS budget alone dwarfs any proportional safety return that could be made by simply raising the legal driving age by a year.

What?? What does legal driving age has to do with DHS budget? You are simply rambling, different mortality causes have different risk models.

Or to explain simply you are comparing "Apples to Oranges".

[joncrocks]

I think what he's saying is that a disproportionate amount of time and money is spent on saving a tiny number of lives.

If your goal as a government is to minimise the number of lives lost that were preventable, then the argument is that there are many more effective ways of doing it other than spending huge amounts on security services.

I presume there's some stat somewhere that says that young drivers are more likely to be involved in fatal traffic accidents. No-one would claim that dying in these accidents is not tragic.

So if you were to raise the legal driving age by a year, you may end up saving lots of lives, and that would be a lot cheaper way of saving lives.

It's not a flawless argument, as one has to balance freedoms with restrictions and the fact that any historic analysis of attacks has to try and unpick the fact that security apparatus was in place in the past. Spending 0 money on security could have unforeseen consequences, and most people would accept that preparing and executing an attack would be easier.

[jliptzin]

First of all I agree with you, but let me state what I think the other side's argument might be. You can choose to eat healthy and exercise and reduce your chance of early death from obesity/health issues. You can also drive extra carefully, or take a plane, or not travel at all if you're that concerned about a car crash. With a terrorist attack though, it's mostly out of your control and literally anyone can be affected at any time and that's the scary part. That being said, people should take into account how minuscule that risk really is, but that's hard for the average joe to do when every attack is plastered all over the news for days whether it's something major or a lone gunman killing a few people.

[ItendToDisagree]

>You can choose to eat healthy and exercise and reduce your chance of early death from obesity/health issues. You can also drive extra carefully, or take a plane, or not travel at all if you're that concerned about a car crash.

Since "Terrorism" is a political problem, how about a political solution? Stop going into Muslim countries and murdering women/children and tearing down governments with no plan for rebuilding? Be more cautious about what you do on the world stage. Stop bombing brown people just because they don't support 'American interests' and such.