

Isaac Asimov on Security Theatre. - bdhe
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/10/isaac_asimov_on.html

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Francon
I thought the point of "terrorism" is to inflict change on behaviors and
confidence of a population? Changing someone's way of life impacts their
confidence which seems to be the end goal of terrorism. It stands to reason
that in order to make it an ineffective tactic, change as little as possible
within the population and do not react.

~~~
dlikhten
TBH I have been thinking about this since 9/11. I doubt it was that
philosophical. They wanted to show that they could attack us. And they did.
They had ZERO, no tech, no highly trained snipers and marines, very little
funding (compare al-qaida's funding with the US Government's). It is us who
did it all. We "refuse to be terrorized" but instead we give up liberties like
they are tumors that we will gladly shed to increase our perceived chances of
survival.

~~~
slowpoke
>We "refuse to be terrorized" but instead we give up liberties like they are
tumors that we will gladly shed to increase our perceived chances of survival.

I don't know if it is appropriate here on HackerNews, but there's this one
Philosoraptor (an image meme) which just perfectly sums this up in a single
sentence:

    
    
      "If terrorists hate us for our freedom, does this mean
       they're starting to like us?"
    

<http://i.imgur.com/XbmFg.jpg>

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dlikhten
Forget terrorism. This is EXACTLY the same as God and Elevators. Think about
it. Lets start easy:

I see people every day come into an elevator and press the door close button
like it is the only way to get air. Nobody realizes that the button does
nothing. Furthermore many do, but they do it any ways on the off chance that
it saves them an extra millisecond here or there of waiting. It never gives
any benefit. However "may as well do it just in case it works". Trivial to
disprove but still.

God: People worship. Why? Do we know god does exist? no we don't. In fact all
signs point to got not existing. Why worship though? On the off chance that
god does exist and we won't go to hell. It does not matter that there is no
god, people will still worship.

Both examples are ways for people to feel better about something they can't
control and makes them feel that they can.

Now the TSA is exactly the same. It makes no difference, or it does, all signs
point to the TSA being complete horsecrap, but people want it just in case
there is a possibility they can prevent an act of terrorism and save 10 people
at the price of insane expenses, time expenses, people unalbe to travel,
personal rights violated, etc.

~~~
timwiseman
After spending an entire semester in a course on the philosophy of religion
and revieing things like the Scopes Monkey Trial during law school, I see
arguments both for an against the existence of God.

I think there is no proof either way. I personally believe in God and am in
fact Christian, but that is a personal choice based on faith and I have great
respect for people who have chosen other faiths or who believe that there is
no God.

This however is different. It can be shown that certain security measures
actually are quite useful (sturdy, locked cockpit doors separating pilots and
passengers for instance.) It can be shown that others are completely
ineffective at their stated goals and seek only to avoid "donothingism" and
fall into security theater

~~~
brlewis
For purposes of keeping the discussion on topic, can we just assume dlikhten's
comment is specifically about people whose belief in God is based on Pascal's
wager, and not about believers in general?

~~~
dlikhten
Its a shame people down-voted this. This is exactly what I meant. I care not
about existence vs non-existence but the way people treat it.

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pavel_lishin
I love Asimov's stories, but it always pains me at how wrong his guesses were
in regards to what would be easy and what would be difficult when it came to
robotics.

~~~
jxcole
Since no one has successfully made a robot worthy of an Asimov story, I would
say that no one knows what is easy vs hard when it comes to robotics. We can
make guesses but in the end until someone has a working copy, we won't know
which parts of the development process were the most painful.

~~~
lsc
Asimov thought that it'd be easier to make general-purpose human-like robots
than to automate our machines one at a time using specialized automation
hardware/software.

In this, he has been proven wrong, as nearly all machines of industry are
slowly becoming more and more automated, using hardware and software
specialized to that particular machine.

As far as I can tell, AI is turning out like Philosophy. Back in the day, all
science was philosophy. As a particular field of philosophy became advanced
enough that we can actually do things with it, we broke it out into a science,
like, say, physics.

The same is happening with AI. It used to be that natural language and image
recognition were AI. Now that we actually have that technology working to the
point where it can do useful things, it's no longer considered AI.

Both philosophy and AI, I think, are catchall buckets for "We want to study
these things, but we don't understand these things well enough to properly
define them."

I mean, it's a useful catchall, especially at first, but I think that breaking
down a poorly defined field into many smaller but specifically defined fields
is a natural part of scientific progress.

My guess is that we will reach the capability to build something that looks
like asimov-style robots, but by that point we won't see any of the
technologies involved as "AI"

