While I like the idea in general, the result is a bit arbitrary. Why is it "153 people of 67 million French citizens have died in attacks on Friday"? Why not out of 508.2M people in EU? Or out of 2M people living in Paris?<p>Unless you calculate the micromorts for comparison between countries, limiting the area in such way doesn't make much sense. It's a single event -vs- activities which can be practiced for long amount of time. (someone with better statistics vocabulary can probably explain it nicely)
To be perfectly honest, I'm a little amazed that in the past fourteen years, there have been so very few terrorist attacks on US soil.<p>Any group of suicidal, minimally-trained jackasses with a couple thousand dollars, access to Craigslist or an Uncle Henry's, and the ability to go to a WalMart, could obtain enough weaponry and ammunition to stage a significant attack on the scale of what happened in Paris this week.<p>I have to conclude that the pool of such people that would be willing to commit such acts is vanishingly small.
Interesting. While skimming over the Wiki for micromorts it's reported [1] that Ecstasy has a rating of 0.5 micromorts per tablet. Which I kind of already suspected, given how widely it's consumed versus the rarely occurring yet widely reported deaths that result from its use.<p>For perspective you get 1 micromort from traveling 17 miles (27 km) by foot. I've walked 8.91 miles (14.34 km) today, which comparatively would be as dangerous as taking an ecstasy pill...well probably not as it would scale differently. I wouldn't be surprised if simply attending a dance-party/rave would have a micromort rating of ~0.5, regardless of substances ingested.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort#Additional" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort#Additional</a>
>> After all the goal of shootings and explosions is not to physically destroy citizens, it is to scare them. So when people are not afraid, terrorists do not reach their goals. And if you succumb to fear, terrorists win.<p>Reminds me of Japanese people's reaction to the ISIS threat, they mocked them on twitter with memes[1]. Also they denied request of religious food for exchange students[2]. Any religion is not superior than others, so there will be legal or philosophical standings for them to be treated special.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/japanese-twitter-users-mock-isis-internet-meme-n291591" rel="nofollow">http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/japanese-twitte...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11462331" rel="nofollow">http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...</a>
As the husband of someone who is afraid of these sorts of things, I can tell you that this line of argument would be entirely ineffective. What would be effective? I don't know and I wish I did.<p>I suspect that I'm just unusually unfazed by things and fundamentally lack the ability to understand the perspective of people for whom bombings like this cause fear. This makes me sad.
Black swan events being unanticipated, it is futile to worry about them. It's commonly retorted that terrorist attacks should be interpreted as unique because of their intent. Yet no one actually fears the intent, only the end result (death, destruction, injury). Intent is relevant to drafting a response, but not to the public fear. Intent without resources or sophistication is also not meaningful. It is further stated that they are special because they're attacks on the social order. Yet this is a truism, because they only have such an effect if people permit themselves to make it so. More mundanely perceived events like business cycles or crime rates (many small events rather than one large event like a terrorist attack) have the same capacity for social ruin, but are not as feared even as they are significantly more protracted. It's all inexcusable bias.
The other day I read that someone has been purchasing bomb grade uranium from a source (or a chain of people) who have been traced back to a Russian General in charge of a nuclear weapons facility. I think I might have heard about it first via HN, but not entirely sure now. Anyway, it terrifies me to remember that there are people in the world who have known nothing of life's bright side and who were most likely psychologically damaged as kids living in the constant war zone of the middle east. Those who rise above it are usually brilliant people regardless of occupation and those who succumb to the darkness are the ones I worry about... They could feel a darkness so vast and so abysmal that the idea of stabbing the beast where it hurts (killing the civilians of nations that are partly responsible for what happened to them) is the only relief they have in a life where they've gotten no relief; only absolute terror and infinite trauma.<p>What could we do to identify such people and help change the course of human history?
I don't think I'm going to die in a terrorist attack, and yet, I'm outraged and offended by acts of terrorism. I want them prevented and I want terrorists thwarted and destroyed. I don't think most people's opposition to terrorism and will to defeat it comes from a personal fear of becoming a victim.<p>Admonitions to shrug your shoulders at terrorism because car accidents kill more people always ring hollow with me.
The risk of riding a motocycle can be estimated from a large sample. The risk of a terror attack in Paris can not. Friday's attach is 2.5 micromorts, but how do you know there is not another larger scale attach in the works? That is what worries, scares most people, until these attack become normal and people get used to it, like those live in Jerusalem.
By the reasoning of the article, we should just shrug off murders because people are far more likely to die in a car accident. That is of course ridiculous. Terrorism is an attack on the social order. That precious stability that makes progress and liberal society possible.
This is stupid, Black Swan event can't be dealt with classic probabilities. Terrorism doesn't follow a normal distribution, more like a Dirac distribution.<p>The simple averaging you used, I can use it to, but I am not only French, I am also living in Paris. Last year there have been 39 deaths from car accidents, 101 from homicides, and more than 147 from terrorist relative death an counting every few months in Paris.<p>I can also look at my age, and that I go to concert often then my micromort explode to the roof now.<p>You seems like the old ladys in the Terry Gilliam film Brazil.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4KFNhxibec" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4KFNhxibec</a>
The problem is terrorism isn’t like car accidents. In another thread somebody commented that more people die on the roads in a single day then died in the terrorist attacks in France. Sure. But the volatility in car accident statistics is tiny while the possible volatility in terrorist attacks is huge. One well executed attack could kill hundreds of thousands or possibly millions if nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons are used. Car accidents are a bell curve, while terrorism is the long tail. And while I’m not really afraid of a terrorist attack, underestimating or dismissing a large group of people trying to actively kill you is naive.
Schneier called micromort a "great concept" (<a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/11/micromorts_1.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/11/micromorts_1....</a>).<p>"There's a related term, microlife, for things that reduce your lifespan. A microlife is 30 minutes off your life expectancy. So smoking two cigarettes has a cost of one microlife."
Doesn't this, if effective, encourage terrorists to up their game as well till enough micromorts register on our radars?
Terrorists can skew things: they have raised the chance of death in an attack when you are participating in things they don't approve of (death to all the party goers.) This must be seen as an attack on society, rather than individuals.
These are great! Can't believe that I didn't know about them before - I've been looking for simple metrics that compare the impact of things on mortality.<p>It's interesting that running one marathon per year is almost equivalent to being murdered in England.
For the longest time, there has been Kashmir-related terrorism all over India, sponsored by Pakistan (which received "aid" in the form of money and arms from the US for decades prior to 9/11).<p>So, yes, terrorism is indeed very, very bad.
Any terrorist attack in France will almost certainly happen in the center of one of the major cities, most likely Paris. So if you live in the center of Paris your micromort should be much higher, and if you live in a small village it will be much smaller.
Also the micromort calculation quoted in the article is for being killed in a single terrorist attack in which 153 people die. If you think there are likely to be several such attacks over the next few years then that increases the micromort value higher.
Ok then! Why aren't we terrified about obesity, which is the leading cause of death in the United States, killing over 300,000 people a year. (See <a href="https://www.wvdhhr.org/bph/oehp/obesity/mortality.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.wvdhhr.org/bph/oehp/obesity/mortality.htm</a>)
That's cute, but it is already widely known that there is way less chance to die from Terrorism than anything else. And it is a common misunderstanding that Terrorism's goal is to generate Terror. It is not. It is a form of political action with political goals, and it has about nothing to do with how fearful you are in your daily life.