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20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

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Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#921

Post by chrismcb »

moogly wrote: post #762
GhostVII wrote: post #537

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…

Whilst I think airport security is indeed just security theater, roll my eyes every time I have to take my shoes off at an airport, and I disagree with some of the claims in this article that these things work and have kept us safe, I'm not sure that's a great idea. I can only speak for myself, but I'm not a fan of cost-benefit analyses when it comes to human lives. Going down that route gives us such wonderful thing…

You MUST do cost benefit analysis. A lot of people say "well if TSA saves one life..." But at what cost? A billion dollars? A trillion? A quadrillion? You may argue that it may never cost that much, but it can if you don't do those analysis. And what about non monetary costs? How many lives are you willing to forfeit to save just one? A lot of people claimed to take to the roads after TSA was formed. Yet car travel, per mile is deadlier than air. So theoretically it cost more lives to save just that one.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#922

Post by chrismcb »

curryst wrote: post #392
dsauerbrun wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the shoes being taken off wasn't arbitrary. I thought it was because of the shoe bomber(Richard Reed)

It's arbitrary because all they do is X-ray them. X-rays can't tell you whether there are explosives in the shoe, all you can do is look for signs the shoe has been altered. I don't think that requirement would have stopped Richard Reid. Maybe someone notices that his shoes look a little odd under the X-ray, but with sports shoes coming with weird air pockets and Heelys existing, it's not that odd. It also slows down…

We would be better off, if they just left everyone alone and let people get on the plane.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#923

Post by ncmncm »

It never had a purpose when it was new, beyond making people feel like "something is being done".

To work, it has to be invasive enough that people still notice it. It has to be cheap enough that they don't, mostly. So, we will have it for as long as people feel like something, anything at all, needs to be done, no matter whether any good ever comes of it.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#924

Post by AnthonyMouse »

xyzzy21 wrote: post #875
lolwut9654 wrote: post #853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried doing more than nothing? On many occasions in the past, I’ve found that doing anything often works better than doing nothing, like the US usually advocates. Turns out that there are no perfect solutions, but there are a lot of partial solutions that in aggregate add up to the mental health the rest of the developed world has.

Doing nothing is OFTEN the best solution to problems! Politicians generally don't understand this. Average people don't understand this. But it's still true.

In particular, by the time a problem becomes prominent enough to be noticed by politicians, it has often already been solved and the ensuing legislation is nothing but a deadweight loss.

For example, before 9/11 the assumption was that hijackers would try to ransom the passengers for money, so it was better not to resist so they didn't hurt anybody. After 9/11, the assumption had to be that they were planning to crash the plane, at which point all the passengers resist and a hundred passengers can easily take on half a dozen hijackers and it's well worth the risk of one or two getting hurt in the process.

So by 9/12, another 9/11 was no longer possible. It was already solved. None of the government action that followed was actually necessary and the TSA is completely pointless.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#925

Post by dryrun »

EricE wrote: post #895
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #807

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> improve mental health I think that this is a poor target. How do you set out directly targeting mental health? What are the biggest causes of mental health issues? https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/learn/index.htm CDC lists causes such as childhood trauma, trauma from medical issues, biological factors, alcohol or drugs, and loneliness or isolation. How do you set out to tackle loneliness or isolation? How do you he…

> A tougher holistic approach needs to examine why American society just plain sucks for so many people. Ship 'em to North Korea. A little perspective will work wonders.

Or be in their shoes, and a little perspective will work wonders to show you why they feel that way?

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#926

Post by Godel_unicode »

aww_dang wrote: post #217
Godel_unicode wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem in the current situation is that there is a ton of anti-science conspiracy nuttery. If you are going to dissent, you need to do so in a way that doesn't get pattern-matched with people who are clearly being irrational.

Was it irrational to call critics of the post 9/11 world anti-American?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_truth_movement

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#927

Post by godelski »

dragonwriter wrote: post #901
godelski wrote: post #851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the Vietnam war or any of the other wars we've been involved with in the Middle East. Not to mention drug cartels in Mexico and Latin/South America. I'm not sure how anyone can argue that a population with weapons can't hold off a tyrannical government. It is the same reason Marx said that under no means should we disarm the populous. I think people often forget that a government can't just kill all it…

> It is kinda odd that this sentiment also often comes out of a country where some farmers fought off the country with the biggest navy With help from the country with the biggest army and the biggest ongoing beef with the country with the biggest navy. But, I guess, its still a little surprising, since that part gets minimized in the farmers national mythology.

Which has also been common throughout history. Same thing happened during the US civil war, Europe got involved. Of course other countries would get involved. Why would it be different this time?

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#928

Post by aww_dang »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #926
aww_dang wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it irrational to call critics of the post 9/11 world anti-American?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_truth_movement

>Putting aside the hot potato of 9/11, we can hopefully discuss the issue of Iraqi WMDs in a less inflammatory way.

https://www.corbettreport.com/911-a-conspiracy-theory/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_QFYn_G1lc

Wikipedia lends itself to exactly the kind of cringe worthy coverage I described above. Starting with the reliable source policy which has only become more partisan in recent years. All of those reliable sources were involved in uncritically promoting WMD propaganda.

Yes, there are nutters with nutty concerns. There are also nutters who wear shoes, but we don't conclude that we must go barefoot. The generalization is misleading at best and disinfo at worst.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#929

Post by Pius_IX »

aeoleonn wrote: post #641
Pius_IX wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I got to hand it to you! 'communist-aligned socio-economic elites' is the most creative code for 'the Jews' I have heard in quite a while. Oh, and you confused 'ironic' and 'coincidence' but I guess that hardly matters. Edit: Oh, the usual. Editing out all the antisemitic stuff once somebody calls you out for it. At least don't run away once someone questions your shitty beliefs.

Actually you must have started writing that right after I deleted that part about "communist-aligned socio-economic elites". I deleted it because it was imprecise-- The dialectic switches between communism and capitalism depending on A/B testing of political revolution messaging. They're both.

You don't need to be modest! I thought it was pretty precise. I especially like the part where the white man is the only one able to stand against (((them))) and fight against the pseudo-communist world government.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#930

Post by newswasboring »

angelzen wrote: post #893
newswasboring wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The target is to save lives. If the threat is still there, we need to keep the safety measures. And covid measures have always been dynamic. Safety measures have been removed or reintroduced based up on very hard statistics man. I don't know how you don't see that. edit: My first sentence was a bit garbage. The target is to save lives from covid and avoid its spread. Hospital utilization and mortality rate from the d…

TSA doesn't go around saying 'we are here to waste your time and humiliate you'. They are also saving lives. In perpetuity.

They can go around staying whatever they want. But the fact is they have never had nor will they ever have the statistical basis that covid regulations have. I can, right now, google covid and be presented with all statistics broken down by days, countries, continents etc. We can start comparing TSA and covid when TSA starts presenting their statistics.
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