> but the reality is that terrorism is real

Many things are real. Lightning strikes. Car accidents. Meteorites to the head. Tsunamis. Smoking. Fat.

Dying because of a terrorist attack is way, way, way, way down on the list of stuff you are likely to die from, so the only rational thing to do is to worry about the stuff ABOVE it on the list. Like driving. Or eating right. Or not smoking. Get your priorities right.

A single successful attack causes Billions of dollars in losses. Look at load factors after September 11th. Planes were empty for months.

so you wouldn't worry about lightning storms in your sleep, but if you are out in the field during one you'll probably take some precautions? maybe get out from under the tallest tree? You probably wouldn't completely ignore it.

Lightning precautions are based on the testable realities of physics. There is no relation between that and the voodoo pseudo-security that is the TSA and public 'security' in general.

This is true, it is hard to prove if what the TSA does is actually preventing terrorist attacks. Just because it is not proven does not mean it is not working.

i am not defending TSA. Just pointing out the psychology of people who feel that their lives are in possible danger.

I don't know what sort of maths you're arguing for here, but your argument doesn't make any sense to me at all.

If we assume there are about 100,000 flights per day worldwide (a quick Google suggests this is a reasonable round-figure estimate) then there are 36.5 million flights per year. If there is 1 actual attack attempt per year, then your chance that a flight you are on is a target is only 1 in 36,500,000 or so. Then, of course, many such attacks apparently do not succeed if your one-per-year rate is accurate, and even a successful attack may not kill you, so your real odds of dying due to a terrorist attack on an aircraft are going to be lower.

Even someone who flies a few times per year probably has lifetime odds of dying due to such an attack of 1 in 1,000,000. In other words, you're more likely to be hit by an asteroid, drowned in a tsunami, blown up by a firework, or fatally attacked by a dog. Of course, you are also 50x more likely to die in a non-terrorism-related air accident, and 200x more likely still to die in a motor accident. (See, for example, http://www.livescience.com/3780-odds-dying.html)

The one I find most amusing is when the advocates of the virtual strip search machines trot out the line about how statistically only a handful of people per year are likely to get cancer as a result of those machines who wouldn't otherwise have done so, while conveniently overlooking the fact that the odds of being killed in the hypothetical air-related terrorist attack they are "protecting" us from are even lower.

Basically, the reality is that terrorism is real but the threat it poses is insignificant compared to numerous much greater risks that we don't rewrite our lives for. The extra danger created directly by the "improved security" is probably at least as bad. The extra danger created indirectly, for example because more people choose to drive than to fly, is very much greater than the original threat.

The problem with your logic is that the statistics you give are based on there being security. Without it, you have no idea how high the number of successful attacks on planes would be.

The chance of dying in a auto accident is still really low. Should we start allowing drinking and driving, no air bags, no speed limits etc. because those laws are annoying to you?

I, like everyone else would appreciate less restrictive security, but some level of security has to be present on aircraft. Without it, there would be far more incidents. Especially non terrorist activities like people bringing guns on board for hijackings etc. Security at airports is effective against a wide range of attacks, not just organized terrorism.

(I used 2000's number of flights to estimate today's. 20M)

You are doing what lawyers call "assuming facts not in evidence".

In particular, you are assuming that without the current procedures, actual security for air travel would in fact be lower. Moreover, you are assuming that if actual security for air travel were lower, the result would be an overall increase in losses due to terrorist attack. Neither of those things is necessarily true.

Firstly, the whole point of the criticism here is that there is no evidence whatsoever that the kind of security theatre we put up with (or avoid by not flying) today does improve actual security.

Secondly, why would you assume that a terrorist with the resources to conduct a successful attack and the willingness to do so would be deterred just because airport security prevented them getting onto a plane? Why wouldn't they just attack another target instead: a railway station, a shopping centre, a nightclub, the queue for security at the airport? If you prevent them from killing 300 people by attacking an aircraft, but they kill 300 people by blowing themselves up in a crowded nightclub instead, you haven't saved any lives, you've just moved the problem.

Your car analogy fails, by the way, for the simple reason that thousands of people die in road traffic accidents every year in my country, and laws prohibiting drinking and driving have been shown beyond any reasonable doubt to reduce that casualty rate. (Air bags and speed limits are more controversial, because the evidence that they are a net win is not so conclusive, but that's a topic for another day.)

You seem like a reasonable person, so I think you just missed the key point of the article: the security theater does not increase security.

So, you can clearly do the math, and still choose to be irrationally afraid. That's... interesting.

"Rather be safe than sorry" is not a very useful statement. Any time you step out of the house you're taking some sort of risk. Each person has their own tradeoff between reducing risk and living life, but except for a very few people (who are universally considered to be mentally ill), nobody sets that tradeoff at zero risk and zero life. To imply that you would want to take any measure to make travel safer no matter how small the risk already is makes no sense. If you are that sensitive to risk, you shouldn't be traveling at all.

You got downvoted because you did the statistical equivalent of begging the question. Assuming that you are going to be attacked and killed by terrorists, the odds of you dying via terrorist attack are 100%. P(A|A) = 1. (I know you didn't go to this extreme, but you did the same basic thing.) This is not an interesting result.