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You're Eight Times More Likely to Be Killed by a Police Officer Than a Terrorist

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Re: You're Eight Times More Likely to Be Killed by a Police Officer Than a Terrorist

#11

Post by a3voices »

Zigurd wrote: post #8
a3voices wrote: post #5

This is ignoring black swan events. There is no chance that police officers will kill 10 million people tomorrow, but there is a non-zero chance that terrorists will.

No, there isn't such a chance. The only WMDs with the ability to kill tens of thousands are nukes. Terrorists only have nukes on TV, the kind with big countdown displays on them. It's the difference between a black swan and the fantasy of a black swan. The is no real-world hypothesis of how such a black swan happens. That's why black powder bombs are the highest technology terrorists actually use, because it is the m…

It is possible terrorists could gain access to nukes. You don't know this for sure.

Re: You're Eight Times More Likely to Be Killed by a Police Officer Than a Terrorist

#13

Post by a3voices »

nkrisc wrote: post #10
a3voices wrote: post #5

This is ignoring black swan events. There is no chance that police officers will kill 10 million people tomorrow, but there is a non-zero chance that terrorists will.

What on earth would make you say there is no (zero) chance police officers will kill 10 million people tomorrow? There is most certainly a chance. It is likely a very, very small chance, but it is still a non-zero chance.

It's a zero chance unless those police officers are also terrorists. Like I said in another comment, there is a zero chance it would happen from routine police activity.

Re: You're Eight Times More Likely to Be Killed by a Police Officer Than a Terrorist

#14

Post by [deleted] »

nkrisc wrote: post #10
a3voices wrote: post #5

This is ignoring black swan events. There is no chance that police officers will kill 10 million people tomorrow, but there is a non-zero chance that terrorists will.

What on earth would make you say there is no (zero) chance police officers will kill 10 million people tomorrow? There is most certainly a chance. It is likely a very, very small chance, but it is still a non-zero chance.

[deleted]

Re: You're Eight Times More Likely to Be Killed by a Police Officer Than a Terrorist

#15

Post by nkrisc »

a3voices wrote: post #13
nkrisc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What on earth would make you say there is no (zero) chance police officers will kill 10 million people tomorrow? There is most certainly a chance. It is likely a very, very small chance, but it is still a non-zero chance.

It's a zero chance unless those police officers are also terrorists. Like I said in another comment, there is a zero chance it would happen from routine police activity.

Now you're just playing semantics. There is still some chance it could happen during routine police activity, if that's the game you want to play.

Re: You're Eight Times More Likely to Be Killed by a Police Officer Than a Terrorist

#17

Post by jegutman »

a3voices wrote: post #5

This is ignoring black swan events. There is no chance that police officers will kill 10 million people tomorrow, but there is a non-zero chance that terrorists will.

That's completely silly. Yes tail events are important to consider. But major terrorist attack are already events on part of the tail.

All of the successful attacks around the world in the last 15 years probably could have been far more deadly if the terrorists only goal was death count. That's probably not what they're optimizing for, this is framing everything from the victim's point of view. Terrorists can be awful, but they still have motivations and are somewhat rational actors.

I'd be happy to change my view with evidence otherwise, but terrorists are still somewhat "rational actors" with goals that seem horribly irrational to most people. Killing 10 million people in a terrorist attack probably wouldn't serve their long-term goal (even terrorists worry about PR) and would be an incredibly difficult / expensive undertaking.

Re: You're Eight Times More Likely to Be Killed by a Police Officer Than a Terrorist

#18

Post by backlava »

a3voices wrote: post #5

This is ignoring black swan events. There is no chance that police officers will kill 10 million people tomorrow, but there is a non-zero chance that terrorists will.

It also ignores that the probability can change over time. Past frequency is not always a good predictor for future probability.

Re: You're Eight Times More Likely to Be Killed by a Police Officer Than a Terrorist

#19

Post by [deleted] »

cryoshon wrote: post #2

A frank discussion of where our national priorities are versus where they should be would include the data point in the article. We spend trillions killing Muslims across the ocean for the privilege of "safety" at home, where we are killed by the police in greater frequency than the Muslims ever did.

[deleted]

Re: You're Eight Times More Likely to Be Killed by a Police Officer Than a Terrorist

#20

Post by exelius »

chrisBob wrote: post #3

The problem is the people are going to look at this the wrong way. Its not that you should be scared of police; its that you shouldn't be scared of terrorists.

This is exactly it.

9/11 was an extraordinary terrorist event: it killed more people than the previous decade of terrorist attacks worldwide. An attack on the scale of 9/11 is simply impossible in the current security climate.

And "ordinary" terrorist attacks are simply too isolated to ever be a realistic threat to any one person. Even in Israel, where terror attacks are commonplace, the number of civilian deaths is very small relative to the population. Or to put it differently, more people died on 9/11 than have died from terrorism in the entire history of the modern state of Israel.

You're more likely to win the lottery while being struck by lightning than you are to be killed by a terrorist.

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