Before Prosecuting, Investigate the Government

Re:Before Prosecuting, Investigate the Government by joshuak on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @08:09AM (#5867628)

As Bruce Schneier points out in his book Beyond Fear humans are very bad at assessing risk accurately. Ask yourself how scared are you of terrorist attacks vs. heart disease.

Notice how the government is putting much more money into the terrorist attack threat then the heart disease threat?

Here are some of the reasons why people are so bad and assessing risk: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/08/five_neglects_...

(note finding the actual risk of death by heart disease vs terrorist attack is left to the reader...you might be surprised)

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Re:Before Prosecuting, Investigate the Government by icebraining on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @08:17AM (#5867657)

By the way, he was Econtalk this monday: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/06/schneier_on_pow.htm...

My favorite part: "We don't say that pigs kill more people than terrorists every year."

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Re:Before Prosecuting, Investigate the Government by larryCh on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @09:01AM (#5867822)

Given this known bias politicians then have stronger incentives to try to prevent terrorist attacks (as opposed to heart attacks).

It may also be the case that our perception is that politicians can have a more direct impact on terrorist attacks than on heart attacks.

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Re:Before Prosecuting, Investigate the Government by defuzz on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @08:50AM (#5867772)

At a certain degree quantification and comparing numbers is just stupid, and Bruce is still right we suck at this, and so is he.

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