Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Our Newfound Fear of Risk

schneier.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 195 posts

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#21

Post by dalek_cannes »

newobj wrote: post #11

Related: at the PARK this weekend, and heard all the following utterances in the span of ten minutes from some parents: "NO RUNNING!" "IT'S DANGEROUS HERE" "YOU'RE GONNA GET HURT" "NO RUNNING!" Talk about instilling fear and creating risk aversion. Sometimes you just have to let a child find out for themselves what's safe and what isn't. What you can get up and dust yourself off from and what you can't. It's hard to…

There's also the problem of fear of litigation. I'm from a part of the world that is not as lawsuit-happy as the U.S. Amongst other things, medical treatment is very cheap here and people laugh at labels like "warning: device heats up when in operation" (seen on an iron made in the USA).

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#22

Post by RougeFemme »

newobj wrote: post #11

Related: at the PARK this weekend, and heard all the following utterances in the span of ten minutes from some parents: "NO RUNNING!" "IT'S DANGEROUS HERE" "YOU'RE GONNA GET HURT" "NO RUNNING!" Talk about instilling fear and creating risk aversion. Sometimes you just have to let a child find out for themselves what's safe and what isn't. What you can get up and dust yourself off from and what you can't. It's hard to…

I have a co-worker who is so risk-averse, she literally pushes her 4-year-old in the stroller to each piece of playground equipment - so she doesn't have to worry about running; even walking at the playground is forbidden for her child.

Yes, I'm a parent, but. . .

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#24

Post by icegreentea »

lambda wrote: post #15
twoodfin wrote: post #3

Sorry, but there is no remotely possible U.S. political world in which Afghanistan is not invaded after September 11. If avoiding military action after an attack on that scale is your standard for a "smart about risk" society, you'll be waiting a long, long time.

The U.S. could have participated only in targeted strikes against Al Qaeda, leaving the rest to local forces as a local matter that isn't our business, and not tried to occupy the country and engage in nation-building. If they had done just a targeted strike against Al Qaeda, larger in scope but similar to what they did against Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, we probably could have gotten Bin Laden years earlier an…

Overthrowing the Taliban was almost a prerequisite for those types of strikes. The initial strikes and action in Afghanistan by special forces and CIA were almost completely reliant on assistance from the Northern Alliance - for which over throwing the Taliban was always the goal.

The initial air strikes (unguided from the ground) were totally useless. It wasn't until they got SF/CIA on the ground working with the Northern Alliance that they could get it working.

In any case, it would never have been as simple as 'leave it to the local forces'.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#25

Post by RougeFemme »

001sky wrote: post #5
twoodfin wrote: post #3

Sorry, but there is no remotely possible U.S. political world in which Afghanistan is not invaded after September 11. If avoiding military action after an attack on that scale is your standard for a "smart about risk" society, you'll be waiting a long, long time.

The interesting question is to turn this point on its head. The conventional wisdom (before 9/11) was it was "too risky" to fight back against hostage takers on an airplane. That bit of social engineering led to a huge force multiplier when trained pilots turned civivian aircraft into cruise missles. So, the origins of 9/11 have to do with mis-understanding the real risks we face. The opposite of ignorance is educati…

Prior to 9/11, at least in the U.S., hijackers typically "simply" wanted money or to be flown elsewhere. As long as those demands were met, there were no casualties. So it wasn't that it was "too risky" to fight back - it was that hijacking was generally not considered life-threatening. The original reactions on 9/11 were not due solely to "social engineering", but to prior experience.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#27

Post by twoodfin »

lambda wrote: post #15
twoodfin wrote: post #3

Sorry, but there is no remotely possible U.S. political world in which Afghanistan is not invaded after September 11. If avoiding military action after an attack on that scale is your standard for a "smart about risk" society, you'll be waiting a long, long time.

The U.S. could have participated only in targeted strikes against Al Qaeda, leaving the rest to local forces as a local matter that isn't our business, and not tried to occupy the country and engage in nation-building. If they had done just a targeted strike against Al Qaeda, larger in scope but similar to what they did against Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, we probably could have gotten Bin Laden years earlier an…

The U.S. could have participated only in targeted strikes against Al Qaeda, leaving the rest to local forces as a local matter that isn't our business, and not tried to occupy the country and engage in nation-building.

This is more or less our current counterterrorism strategy in the wilds of Pakistan or Yemen. While I'm skeptical that such a strategy could have seriously damaged 2001-era AQ's ability to operate inside Afghanistan, I also don't think I'm qualified to debate its merits today. But that's not my point.

My point is that if another 9/11-scale attack occurred and the bad guys were in Yemen and the Yemeni government was not extremely helpful in bringing those responsible to heel, that "drones and spies" strategy could never be the limit of our response. It's just not politically practical, not even close. When Schneier talks about the "waste" of a war in Afghanistan, he should remember that the entire time Bush was sticking around trying to nation build, the Democrats were making political hay that Iraq was a sideshow and that we weren't spending enough attention/money/troops on Afghanistan. And indeed when a Democratic president was elected, he proceeded to spend more attention/money/troops on Afghanistan.

Once it was established that AQ was responsible for 9/11 and that the Taliban were not going to give them up on our terms, a major military incursion was politically inevitable. It's a little more dicey just how inevitable a long-term occupation was: President Gore presumably doesn't have to deal with an Afghani-Hawks-By-Convenience wing of his own party, and maybe gets out quick. But Schneier doesn't make this distinction: He seems to be imagining a world in which the war never happens at all because we properly measured its risks. I happen to think he's wrong about the risk/reward tradeoff of aggressively rolling up AQ and their support networks, but I'm sure he's being Utopian if he thinks he's in anything but a tiny minority who would be against a massive military response to another 9/11-like event.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#28

Post by mikeash »

newobj wrote: post #11

Related: at the PARK this weekend, and heard all the following utterances in the span of ten minutes from some parents: "NO RUNNING!" "IT'S DANGEROUS HERE" "YOU'RE GONNA GET HURT" "NO RUNNING!" Talk about instilling fear and creating risk aversion. Sometimes you just have to let a child find out for themselves what's safe and what isn't. What you can get up and dust yourself off from and what you can't. It's hard to…

I was going out for a walk with my daughter the other day and had the following conversation with my wife:

Her: Don't let her run on the sidewalk.

Me: What? Why?

Her: She's not wearing pants, just a dress.

Me: ...OK... what exactly is the relationship between these two things?

Her: There's nothing covering her knees, she'll hurt herself if she falls on the sidewalk.

I couldn't even fathom the connection without having it spelled out for me. I, of course, completely ignored the whole conversation afterwards.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#29

Post by 001sky »

RougeFemme wrote: post #25
001sky wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting question is to turn this point on its head. The conventional wisdom (before 9/11) was it was "too risky" to fight back against hostage takers on an airplane. That bit of social engineering led to a huge force multiplier when trained pilots turned civivian aircraft into cruise missles. So, the origins of 9/11 have to do with mis-understanding the real risks we face. The opposite of ignorance is educati…

Prior to 9/11, at least in the U.S., hijackers typically "simply" wanted money or to be flown elsewhere. As long as those demands were met, there were no casualties. So it wasn't that it was "too risky" to fight back - it was that hijacking was generally not considered life-threatening. The original reactions on 9/11 were not due solely to "social engineering", but to prior experience.

So it wasn't that it was "too risky" to fight back - it was that hijacking was generally not considered life-threatening.

==What about the risk of ?

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#30

Post by mikeash »

_mvuc wrote: post #9

When you treat adults like children, and children like babies, you get exactly that. And that's why a hundred years ago 14-year olds were captaining their own ships, and today you have 40-year olds who can't do their own laundry or balance a checkbook.

I don't think there's that much of a difference between now and then, just people paying attention to different things.

I know kids who were certified to fly airplanes by themselves at 14. We don't let them captain ships anymore, but that doesn't mean there aren't any capable teenagers anymore, they just do other things.

There were plenty of useless humans around a hundred years ago as well. We don't hear about them much, because why would anyone talk about a random 40-year-old who can't balance a checkbook a century later? The capable people are the ones who get remembered. The less-capable ones don't tend to be remembered much outside their family, and within that, there are plenty of stories floating around about Aunt So-and-so who never moved out of the house, never got married, never found work, etc.

Post reply on HN