131–140 of 176 posts
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It should be factored in. But at the same time, screaming about the badness makes that worse . Refuse to be terrorized.
Telling people how they should feel about other peoples' deaths is generally not going to get you anywhere. People feel what they feel.
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I think comparing 9/11 to events like heart attacks and car accidents is silly. There is a big difference between the loss of 3000 people due to a deliberate attack on your country and the loss of 300,000 people due to heart attacks.
"There is a big difference between the loss of 3000 people due to a deliberate attack on your country and the loss of 300,000 people due to heart attacks." Since you obviously don't mean the heart attacks are worse, and we obviously don't agree, please support this rather than just asserting it. If it simplifies matters, first support that losing one person to deliberate attack is significantly worse than losing one…
The second reason is justice. A person dying from a heart attack is a "natural" death, nobody (except possibly the victim themselves) contributed to the death.
Using the logic of the grandparent, the world should have said "Let's ignore the Rwandan genocide because more babies die of diarrheal diseases."
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Telling people how they should feel about other peoples' deaths is generally not going to get you anywhere. People feel what they feel.
OK, but making irrational policy based on how people feel leads to bad policy. Let people feel what they feel. But don't make long-term policy based on peoples' emotional reactions to events.
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Castle Bravo [1], [2] was a 15Mt yield set off on Bikini Atoll, notable because it was predicted to be 6Mt but was almost 2.5x that. Considering how much of the Bikini Atoll is left ([3], with pin on the location of detonation) and that the command centre for Castle was on the Atoll, I'd say that Arkansas is ok. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Castle [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo [3] http…
I think the problem is that people can't live there anymore.
Bikini Atoll was also worse than this hypothetical Arkansas scenario in two ways:
1) The soil there is potassium poor, causing local plants to more readily take in radioactive cesium.
2) It was also hit by 22 additional bombs.
I wouldn't have thought how trumped up and ludicrous this all was. I was born in 1984, so I really started becoming aware in the bubble that existed after the wall fell and before 9/11. Sure, I read 1984 and Farenhiet 451 but the seemed like commentary about the future, what could become. Apparently they were just as relevant when they were written. Constant war with the "enemy". The threat of attack at any time. Con…
Just today Russia launched three new nuclear submarines, capable of deploying ballistic missiles: http://www.janes.com/article/41339/russia-lays-keels-for-thr...
Unfortunately since journalists rely so heavily on controlled leaks and targeted propaganda it just doesn't make headlines, but these events are hardly secret.
I suspect we have a 50% chance of a nuclear weapon incident in the next 5 years. North Korea is run by a guy whose view of the world has almost no basis in reality. Pakistan-India, who knows what could happen. The US is pushing hard against Russia but I suspect both parties remain sane (though the point of the article is accidents.)
Get to Mars fast.
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> Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to hear it. Seriously? There ought to be something analogously to Godwin’s law to declare discussions lost after this class of arguments. To answer in kind: "I'd like to ask how you would explain the proportionality of the…
> Emotional arguments quickly become ridiculous if you leave out the greater effects to society and the relative danger of the threat. No, but numerical arguments quickly become ridiculous when you ignore the fact that the emotional reaction of the nation to 3,000 Americans killed in a terrorist act is itself a physically cognizable phenomenon that must be given due weight in the analysis.
"Today America mourns. Today we were attacked. Today terrorists tried to destroy our way of life. They tried to rob us of our sense of security, our liberty, our democracy. And yet today we stand united! We will not let them take away our values our freedom! We will find and persecute those that are responsible. But we will not fall for the cycle of hate and violence the terrorists have laid in front of us."
This path would have been harder to defend against those crying for revenge. But it could have used the same patriotism and stubbornness that was used for war mongering in the alternative world we live in. And in hindsight we see how bad the results of that fear and violence politics were for America and for the world.
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> Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to hear it. We've lost more people in the Iraq/Afghan wars than were lost in 9/11, for little progress - Iraq's splitting into pieces and much occupied by folks hardcore enough that Al Qaeda goes "hang on, you're making us…
It's easy to be wise but I'm pretty sure no-one could have predicted the rise of ISIS. Saddam Hussein was a tyrannous dictator that ruled for too long.
> What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?
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"There is a big difference between the loss of 3000 people due to a deliberate attack on your country and the loss of 300,000 people due to heart attacks." Since you obviously don't mean the heart attacks are worse, and we obviously don't agree, please support this rather than just asserting it. If it simplifies matters, first support that losing one person to deliberate attack is significantly worse than losing one…
One way to measure the impact of a death from illness vs. a deliberate attack is the impact on society. Since the goal of terrorism is to destabilize a society and instill fear, the ramifications reach far beyond the individual who died. Take a look at what happened to the stock market after 9/11. The resulting fear was widespread and very disruptive. The ramifications of doing nothing when someone dies of a heart at…
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I think comparing 9/11 to events like heart attacks and car accidents is silly. There is a big difference between the loss of 3000 people due to a deliberate attack on your country and the loss of 300,000 people due to heart attacks.
> There is a big difference between the loss of 3000 people due to a deliberate attack on your country and the loss of 300,000 people due to heart attacks. This is very true. We've spent over a trillion dollars combatting terrorism with little progress (and more American lives lost than in 9/11, let alone Iraqi/Afghan lives). Spending that trillion on heart attack prevention and treatment would've been far more effec…
One assumption is that spending 1 trillion dollars over the last 13 years on heart attack prevention and treatment would have made a significant difference in the number of lives saved. How do we quantify this?
A second assumption on the other side of the argument is that spending 0 to fight terrorism would have netted 0 new casualties, anywhere. If we did nothing we would have been better off. But how do we quantify this? We can see the results of our actions, but we cannot see the results of our inactions. If we did not invade Iraq, would more or less people be alive today in that country, and what would their quality of life be? Would Afghanistan be completely ruled by extremist Muslims and be ruled under a brutal Sharia law if we had not invaded and tried to put a partly democratic and citizen based government in place? Who knows? If that did happen, would more people be suffering due to extreme oppression and sectarian violence than what our invasions has caused? How do we quantify all of these factors?
Making big sweeping statements with huge numbers that dwarf anything we're used to talking about is sensationalism. The fact of the matter is that the people making these decisions, by and large, are not doing it because they are trying to get rich or build some fiefdom. Dem or Repub, Liberal or Conservative, I think that generally speaking, most politicians and government officials are in their positions to do good. They see themselves as agents of change and sometimes have to make incredibly hard decisions in the times in which they live (not 10 years later). They are trying to give this country and others around the world their best shot at living a life of freedom and liberty. We're not always going to agree with decisions, and some are truly mistakes, but few that we look at are simply because of some crazy conspiracy agenda.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Castle Bravo [1], [2] was a 15Mt yield set off on Bikini Atoll, notable because it was predicted to be 6Mt but was almost 2.5x that. Considering how much of the Bikini Atoll is left ([3], with pin on the location of detonation) and that the command centre for Castle was on the Atoll, I'd say that Arkansas is ok. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Castle [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo [3] http…
I think the problem is that people can't live there anymore.