Posted on 09/20/2004 9:04:05 AM PDT by Area Freeper
Just what is the evidence for this alleged terrorist threat that now dominates foreign affairs and the presidential election?
The third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and New York's World Trade Center has come and gone without any terrorist attacks in the United States. No terrorists attacked the Olympics in Greece, as so many feared. And the big statistical picture of terrorism has changed little in years.
Deaths because of terrorism worldwide have increased a bit lately (especially after the school attack in Russia), but the number still remains on the order of about a thousand deaths a year, according to the State Department - a small fraction of the 15,000 or so murders each year in the United States or the 40,000 who die in car accidents.
The Bush administration and many others interpret these facts as proof that the government is winning its "war on terror" (even though Osama bin Laden still roams free and threatens from afar).
And they may be right. It's conceivable that there would have been some attacks by now if not for the government's stepped-up security at home and its vigorous anti-terrorism efforts abroad. We don't know. We do know that studies of our statistical competency show both that we systematically overestimate the probability of vivid, high-profile threats such as shark bites and terrorist bombings and that we poorly estimate the probability of less glamorous dangers such as highway fatalities.
The comparative absence of terrorism could just as easily (and I believe, more reasonably) support the very different conclusion that we have overestimated - grossly overestimated - the terrorist threat. We may be "winning" a war against terrorism simply because there are few terrorists
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
Sounds to me like he's telling anyone who will listen that it's safe to stick their heads back in the sand again.
Istanbul?
Moscow?
These left-wing losers can't even make up their minds. One day we're no safer than we were before, and the next day the terrorism threat is greatly exaggerated, if not completely nonexistent.
It's unbelievable that terrorism would be compared to traffic deaths.
"Sometimes a search that finds nothing is evidence that there is nothing."
Too bad Dan Rather didn't follow that advice.
The author of this screed is a shining example of why cousins shouldn't marry...
Terrorist warnings will be referred to as bluffs until Kerry (in their dreams) becomes president. Then, the liberals will go back to the Clinton era to push laws to save us from ourselves. Terrorism, all of a sudden, will return to an imminent danger.
Occam's Razor should give you your answer.
We have less good negative evidence that there is no Bigfoot because we have not fully searched the larger and more complex area of pine forests in Northern California. And we have no good negative evidence at all that we are alone in the cosmos because we have just started to search the vast heavens for signs of structured energy.
The war in Iraq gives a telling example of negative evidence. The coalition forces still cannot find the alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. The weapons may be there, but the negative evidence that they are not grows stronger each day as a wider search finds nothing.
The Bush administration has said, in effect, that it is better to be safe than sorry, not just with regard to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but with terrorist threats at home. The trouble is that all bureaucracies have a well-known incentive to over-rely on being safe than sorry. No one wants to risk approving a new drug or airplane design that has even a slight chance of killing someone, even if the drug can save lives or the design can greatly increase flight efficiency.
I should have added /rhetoricalquestion
I couldn't bring myself to read it. Does he mention an inordinate fear of terrorism?
We may be "winning" a war against terrorism simply because there are few terrorists
I just pray they keep getting "Fewer"
Bart can drop his guard, if he so wishes. Most of us won't.
"subtle type of formal reasoning called negative evidence" - Subtlety- the watchword of the DemParty.
Now from a statistical point of view, when is the proper point to employ "negative evidence" theory? Sometime after more than 1/2 of the evidence is presented I would think. While you still must take into account that the "evidence" may not be there, you must still agree that it may ALSO be there with negative evidence theory. This IS NOT an argument that the evidence isn't there. It's an argument for the time to stop collecting evidence.
Once again, an argument to not believe our lying eyes. You must be kidding me.....
Interns are more sophisticated than this author. Bring on the tin hats. And please ignore those buildings falling down on innocent people.
"the liberals will go back to the Clinton era to push laws to save us from ourselves. Terrorism, all of a sudden, will return to an imminent danger."
Gun bans and deleting the 2nd Amendment will be job one.
Indeed..
In the title it states that facts point to an overestimation by a frightened US..
What are these facts?
The writer never states them.
"Bart Kosko teaches probability and statistics at the University of Southern California"
Bart Kosko
"World-renowned as the leading proponent and popularizer of Fuzzy Logic"
BWAHAHAHA
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