Risk
The thwarted terrorist plot in Britian is going to fan the flames of hysteria: how much more intrusive and painful can airport security become? We'll soon find out. But this article in Reason tells us that terrorism, as awful as it is, is actually a very remote danger, at least for us as individuals. The article calculates the odds of dying from such quotidian things as driving a car, crossing the street, or being struck by lightning, and then compares them to the odds of dying in a terrorist event. "What about your chances of dying in an airplane crash? A one-year risk of one in 400,000 and one in 5,000 lifetime risk. What about walking across the street? A one-year risk of one in 48,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 625. Drowning? A one-year risk of one in 88,000 and a one in 1100 lifetime risk. In a fire? About the same risk as drowning. Murder? A one-year risk of one in 16,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 210. What about falling? Essentially the same as being murdered. And the proverbial being struck by lightning? A one-year risk of one in 6.2 million and a lifetime risk of one in 80,000. And what is the risk that you will die of a catastrophic asteroid strike? In 1994, astronomers calculated that the chance was one in 20,000. However, as they've gathered more data on the orbits of near earth objects, the lifetime risk has been reduced to one in 200,000 or more." Meanwhile, "if terrorists hijacked and crashed one of America's 18,000 commercial flights per week that your chance of being on the crashed plane would be one in 135,000." This reminds me of a aspect of human decision-making called the conjunctive fallacy. When human beings evaluate risk, if the risk scenario is more vivid to them, they instinctively consider it more likely. So, for instance, if you tell someone that they have a chance of dying in a car accident, he will mentally assign it some [low] probability. But if you tell someone that he has a chance of dying because his left front tire will blow out on the freeway and the car will roll three times before bursting into flames, he will assign it a much higher probability. Clearly the first situation (dying in a car accident in general) is more likely than the second (dying in a very specific accident), but the average person will consider the second more likely simply because it is more vivid in his mind. This is one reason that people fear terrorism so much. They have a very clear picture of being on a highjacked plane or being trapped in the London Subway. They don't have a clear picture of slipping in the shower and breaking their neck.
posted by The Judge @ 8/11/2006 07:52:00 AM
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I felt the same way about some local hysteria here in Boston regarding the recent Big Dig closure. (For those who don't follow that news, some 3-ton concrete panels fell from the ceiling in one tunnel and crushed a woman to death in her car. This resulted in closing many tunnels, accomponied by general panic and political posturing.)
A concrete panel falling from the ceiling is very graphic. But what are the odds of dying? How many thousnads of people have driven through those tunnels since they opened? Yet now that the tunnel is closed, traffic has been moved to surface streets, which pose a much higher risk.
To be fair (in this case, and in terrorism cases), if nothing had been done and the same thing happened again, there would be hell to pay. So I don't know if we can fault the decision makers for giving in to fear sometimes.
I think there's an additional element here not found in many of the Judge's examples though. If you break your neck in the shower, die in a car crash or if the earth is hit by an asteroid those are all accidental happenings. The soapy residue, the icy street, and the asteroid belt do not cheer your death or gain a measure of strength from it.
Yet successful terroist attacks do bring joy to terrorists, sustain their current members, and allow them to more easily recruit future members. One may argue, and perhaps validly so, that the restrictions of our ability to easily board planes and carry on whatever we want have a larger impact than an occasional downed aircraft. However, I think the conjuctive fallacy applies here as well. The generic knowlege that you've caused a majority of your enemy some inconvenicence just doesn't quite have the same dramatic appeal as the vivid image of an airliner going down in a big fireball even if it only affected a minute fraction of your total enemy.
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