The Speculist

Here, here.

I fear that the "disruptive change" you refer to has, mostly, taken place in the perceptual space of those of us who have been fortunate enough to have not been directly subject to (or secondarily exposed to) socially- or politically- motivated violence in recent history. (In this context "recent history" may be defined as either the past century or so, extending back to the post-(U.S.) Civil War labor violence and range wars, or the past three decades, since the activities of the SDS, Black Panther Party, and others in the late 1960s and early 1970's.)

Karl has raised a number of valid observations, particularly with regard to the relative threats posed by items formerly regarded as 'innocuous' that are either significantly larger in scale ("trash bags"), more mobile (cars and trucks, for example), or both.

Again, I think the best line of inquiry for this forum might be, "What do we do about it?"

- El Jefe

For the sake of discussion lets consider the number of deaths from terrorism since 9/11 in the US. Tens of thousands? There was about 3000 in the trade centers.
Compare that to the hundreds of billions in spending.

Spending on terrorism is extremely high on a per-death basis.

Consider now the dollars spent to bring a promising new medication to market. What about the number of people that might be saved by it.

That is why I feel we are overreacting to terrorism. You have to balance the cost and the return. People will die, the goal is to minimize the numbers by funding the areas with the greatest returns.

Once your past the direct costs there's still indirect issues as well.

For example terrorism is so rare that the rate of false positives is huge. That is no small problem trying to screen the general population when your terrorist rate is perhaps one in a million. Think about what you need for an accuracy rate. How often will those false positives be put in jail? for how long?

In the end the approach currently in use is to try and harden every soft target in the country. A determined attacker needs to find only one soft spot. That approach simply isn't viable, our economy will collapse before we can pay to harden against every possible method of attack. Perhaps it might be more efficient to get the textbooks in certain countries to stop teaching that the united states is the enemy to schoolchildren. That seems like something that might have a diplomatic solution to reduce our risk over time.

The officials at Boston overreacted. They're trying to convince their constituents that the money they've spent in the last few years was well invested. Doing that by presenting a handful of electronic signs as potential bombs doesn't improve their credibility.

parry, i fully agree to your views. moreover, consider the fact that terrorism not only has a memetic aspect, but in the light of your analysis of consts is _all_ memetical in nature. the trauma is established, and only by a single attack, if grand in scale. now people are scared by a number of blinking leds, as if terrorists would make bombs anything like that eye-catching. a pair of geeky artists are arrested. an intelligent men like phil suggests making examples of them. this is what the terrorists aimed to achieve, and they succeeded fully. as an example of how you can defend against that kind of memetic attack, look at great britain: they have a history of dealing with terrorism, and they knew quite well how to cope with the subway attacks, even though they did not get everything right. sure, those were smaller in scope - but scope does not matter as long as you are scared.

So if I wanted to organize an advertising campaign where I put posters on every square inch of every "public" building in a major city, I would just find some lackeys with free time and a lot of tape? I can't use the pavillion at my local park without paying the township for the right to do so. How does Cartoon Network (or anyone) think they have the right to put their junk anywhere they want? The reason we have township/city/state bureaucracy is to safeguard the public order. (and to tax the hell out of us in the interest of self-preservation, but that's inviting another type of rant)

Figure out the cost to deploy all the agents in this fiasco, and assign a 'punitive damages' settlement payable to the city (on behalf of the public good) and fine Cartoon Network. They'll write it off as a slightly higher advertising cost of business and the whole thing can drop. (for all the other good points made in this thread)

Jefe,

That is the question, precisely. And based on the other comments, it looks like there's more agreement on what should not be done than what should be.

Parry & eisendorn,

Not sure where I gave the impression that I favor any particular level of expenditure on terrorism. I would tend to agree that it should be a reasonable amount that factors in the level of risk involved, potential loss of life, etc. But having said that, I think it's a tad simplistic to factor the amount of money spent against the 3,000 lives lost. We also need to look at how many lives would have been lost over the past few years had different amounts been spent and different actions been taken.

These aren't easy calculations to make, but I think going into it either assuming that "terrorism isn't that big a deal" or that "the world is about to end" will only mislead us. Certainly, the enemy has demonstrated no lack of will to continue to carry out ambitious, highly destructive attacks. If the billions spent have in any way prevented such individuals from acquiring and deploying nuclear weapons (to name the most extreme possibility), then it seems like a much better deal.

The concern that such money could be spent in other, more productive areas is legitimate and exactly the discussion that needs to be ongoing. As for the concern that spending on terrorism is going to bring our economy down...well let's not swap one hysterical overreaction for another, shall we? :-)

Speaking of which, as the publisher of L2si, I tend to agree that a climate of fear is exactly the opposite of what we need. But I don't think that eliminating fear by dismissing a legitimate risk is any wiser than living in constant fear of an overstated or nonexistent risk.

as if terrorists would make bombs anything like that eye-catching

As with my points about 9/11, above, as soon as we start stating glibly and with confidence exactly what terrorists will and will not do, we're in trouble. The 9/11 Commission concluded that our greatest failure leading up to those attacks was a "failure of imagination." This doesn't mean that we need to be jumping at our own shadows, and I tend to agree that the British model a broadly effective way of dealing with the issue, but the excuse that we just couldn't imagine the danger is going to sound particularly hollow in the face of any subsequent attacks.

A few flat lite brights ?

I guess there is the case that Cartoon network should have coordinated with the city officials.

But no current laws were broken. There was no threat. When questioned they admitted it was an advertising stunt.

It is not illegal to do something bonehead that gets misinterpreted.

In terms of better use of money, terrorism is only a few thousand deaths. There are 13 million preventable deaths every year.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr32/en/
24% of disease from environmental causes.

More efficient management of economies and research. A few tens of millions per year could accelerate the development of molecular manufacturing.

Get better explosives sensors and detection so that enforcement can be more effective and get results.

article that makes it clear that intent to cause fear is tough to prove. Especially since it did not cause fear in 9 other cities.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6389989,00.html

The network will probably pay the $500,000 in costs. They got a bargain with millions in global publicity.

Terrorist attacks are intended to cause fear, and in this regard the attacks of 9/11 worked wonderfully. We are scared. We’re so scared that we can’t take hair gel in our carry-on luggage. Now, we seem willing to parse the first amendment to endlessly expand the definitions of “fire” and “theater” until we start arresting anyone who yells anything anywhere.

Personally, I love the little LED guys. I’m hoping I can find one on E-Bay. I also love living in a country that breeds this kind of creativity. Legal? Illegal? I don’t know. Hand them a reasonable fine if they broke the law. Hopefully it will encourage them to sell the cute little buggers on E-Bay!

A free society is inherently dangerous. If we let people do and say things with minimal interference from the state, there is a chance that the things they do and say may cause fear or actual harm. We must accept this or we stop being a free society. The willingness to compromise one’s principles, and radically alter one’s behavior out of fear has a name – it’s cowardice.

I’m glad I found this site. You’re a sharp bunch of guys.