[extropy-chat] Panicmongering (was Psychology of investments ininfrastructure)

[Russell Wallace]

On 6/26/06, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> I do, but the weakness I see in this position is that statistics are based
> on what has come before, and the situations I envision are future.


*nods* The weakness in discussing future scenarios is that when us smart,
technically knowledgable people try to predict the future based on said
technical knowledge, we do worse than random chance; so if we're going to
make plans based on such predictions, we'd be better off to flip a coin.
Better still, we can fall back on empirical data from the past and present;
so I will stand by my claim that the best way to weigh the danger terrorism
will present in the future is to compare the number of people terrorists
have actually killed, with the number of deaths from other causes such as
accidents, infectious disease and old age; and then we find it is a very
long way down the list of things we should worry about.
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