We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousand…
> We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths It would be a highly controversial dashboard, I guarantee it, likely unpopular with both political parties. The problem is that assuaging fear is often more important (to irrational people) than saving lives. For example, guns…
20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
771–780 of 969 posts
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#772Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We could abolish parties altogether and instead elect all our representatives directly as independents No, we couldn't. I mean, we could eliminate formal parties, but making factionalism less transparent doesn't eliminate it, it just makes it harder for voters to know what they are getting. There's plenty of research about both better proportionality of results and more supported parties improves most measures of h…
We'd be bringing it into the public sphere where it can be regulated better at least, that's already an enormous improvement. I just think it's insanity to let essentially private and unaccountable organisations have this much power over ordinary people's lives. Laws should be made as part of an authentically democratic process that at least tries to involve the whole socio-economic makeup of the country, not as a re…
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#773Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ongoing and ramped up tyrannies don't affect the people with guns, so it's not doing much good so far. When the oppressed arm themselves, people who claim opposition to gun control suddenly become very pro-gun control.
It was all guns rights until the black panthers started arming up, and all the sudden it was "perhaps some sensible limits might be wise" Pretty hard to miss the intent. Arm the homeless is what I say when I'm feeling spicy.
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#774The way you know it is all security theater is TSA pre. I haven't taken my shoes off, my laptop out, or gone through the hands-on-your-head scanner in years, because the TSA pre-check line doesn't require any of that. Because apparently verifying my ID before arrival at the airport makes me less of a threat. Or maybe it's the $80 they get every few years that makes me less of a threat...
Aside: when I talk about this program, I refer to it as "T-S-A precheck" because it's depicted as "TSA Pre ". I often hear it referred to as "TSA Pre" and it seems to be the case here too. I agree that the signage is unclear but I don't think it's intended to be called "TSA Pre".
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#775Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ongoing and ramped up tyrannies don't affect the people with guns, so it's not doing much good so far. When the oppressed arm themselves, people who claim opposition to gun control suddenly become very pro-gun control.
It was all guns rights until the black panthers started arming up, and all the sudden it was "perhaps some sensible limits might be wise" Pretty hard to miss the intent. Arm the homeless is what I say when I'm feeling spicy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act
the bill was crafted with the goal of disarming members of the Black Panther Party who were conducting armed patrols of Oakland neighborhoods, in what would later be termed copwatching.[1][2] They garnered national attention after Black Panthers members, bearing arms, marched upon the California State Capitol to protest the bill.
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#776We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousand…
Comparing murder to accidences or to fate in case of deathly diseases is inappropriate.
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#777Earlier quoted context omitted.
"This minor temporary inconvenience I don't like is as bad as eugenics" is its own trope.
If you can suggest some other ~100yo example of something a lot of people believed would solve a lot of societal problems I'd be happy to edit my comment. In any case, you're either missing the overarching point (the charitable assumption) or you don't want to fight my point head on so you're nitpicking that my examples aren't good enough (the less charitable assumption).
Of the same sort of nature as masking during a pandemic:
Vaccinations, requiring docs to wear gloves during surgery, etc.
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#778We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousand…
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#779We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousand…
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#780Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a mountain worth of difference. The policies enacted for COVID have a very specific target, has been shown to work repeatedly, and deviating from them caused decline in the KPI its trying to maintain. Its nothing like TSA.
For anyone who still believes the non-pharmaceutical interventions are effective, trying taking this quiz: https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/