Go for it. We need more lunkheads.
Go for it. We need more lunkheads.
Statistics studies the difficulty of deciding on the basis of incomplete information--"What do we know, and how surely do we know it?"If your information is incomplete--and yours is, and mine is--then there is some chance that you will be wrong, whatever decision you make. That means you can decide that scrutinizing the 4th and subsequent ambulances for bombs is cruel or you can decide it is lifesaving--but you can be wrong either way.
If you understand that assassins are at work who recruit children to carry bombs into crowds and kill as many people as possible, and if you understand that the Palistinians define themselves as supporting that, then you conclude that they have arranged things so that the decisions of the Israelis will be based on reduced trust. The assassins consider any loss of Palistinian life due to that reduced trust to be at worst "collateral damage"--and perhaps even a propaganda victory.
This would be quite impossible to pull off if democracies were fully sane--but as it is, democracies are swayed by journalists who claim to be objective truthtellers--yet live to report bad news. This makes democracies prone to paranoid delusions.
Delusions such as the conceit that Rodney King was an innocent bystander set upon by cops intent on abusing him because of his color. And that the Israelis intend to conquer the middle east.