
Use micromorts to fight terrorism - kojoru
https://blog.arty.name/2015/миллимортом-по-террору/en.html
======
viraptor
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?

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)

~~~
NhanH
Wouldn't the set being chosen just resulting in different probability profile,
and you get to pick one depending on your personal characteristics?

Ie. 2.5 micromorts is your risk if you're a French citizen, (153 + other death
from terrorism) / (7.3 billions) if you're a human, 153/2M if you're living in
Paris?

Edit: change the napkin calculation for correctnesss.

~~~
viraptor
I don't think the human one would be true, because there were many more people
dying in terrorist attacks over the last year. But otherwise yes, you could
depending on the area provide different risks - which was my point: you can
use it to compare continuous activities within some area / population group.
But absolute values for single data points just don't give you much
information.

------
douche
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.

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.

I have to conclude that the pool of such people that would be willing to
commit such acts is vanishingly small.

~~~
fouric
It is also possible that the United States' security agencies are simply
better than the vast majority of us are aware of. Or some combination of both.

~~~
richmarr
Possible, yes.

But it's a fact that we're terrible at evaluating how likely/dangerous
terrorism is. We percieve _far_ more risk than there actually is.

Terrorism is designed to play to our cognitive biases, as is the news, as is
politics. A triumvirate of douchegoblins taking advantage of our inability to
correctly assess risk.

------
icanhackit
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.

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.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort#Additional](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort#Additional)

~~~
ekianjo
These generalizations are not helpful actually. If you walk a deserted road
every day it would not matter how many miles you walk every day, you should
only get 0 micromort, which is not the same as walking just right next to a
highway.

Context is everything.

~~~
ColinDabritz
I think they are helpful. Sure, they are not especially detailed or accurate,
but the point of the 'micromort' is to give some broader context to the scale
of the risk to aid in understanding. Much like the "banana" is a radiation
unit.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose)

The Micromort is not a very precise or accurate unit, but it does a reasonable
job of communicating the broad 'order of magnitude' context. The
disproportionate emotional response undermining rational thinking is directly
countered by this frame of reference, which in turn addresses the
disproportionate impacts of terrorism.

------
methou
>> 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.

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.

[1] [http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/japanese-
twitte...](http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/japanese-twitter-
users-mock-isis-internet-meme-n291591)

[2]
[http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11462331)

~~~
grogenaut
Wait, someone still serves a website with cold fusion?

~~~
slyall
Afraid so. I used to work there. The codebase is at least 15 years old in
places. Team of 4-8 people looking after it and rolling out changes. Self-
written CMS as well.

Every now and then somebody gets the idea of rewriting it in something else.
Problem is that while it may look simple ( "I just need templates for front,
section and articles pages") there is a lot of extras (see the 4-8 people and
CMS). Note that newspaper companies don't have a lot of money these days.

I've heard they are having another go at it. For one thing it is hard to get
CF programmers these days.

~~~
grogenaut
Awesome, I never expected an actual answer. Thanks!

------
afarrell
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.

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.

~~~
danieltillett
People tend to be over concerned of risks that they feel that they have no
control over. This is why the very real risk of driving a car is considered
acceptable, but the much lower risk from something like a random pesticide in
food is seen as much worse than the risk warrants.

Someone like your wife (or husband) needs a way to feel like they are in
control. This is hard to do with terrorism hence why it is effective is
causing terror despite the absolute risks.

------
vezzy-fnord
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.

~~~
rayiner
The response to terrorism isn't about fear. It's about justice. These assholes
are trying to drag us all back to 700 AD and reestablish the Caliphate, and
they struck at a bastion of western liberalism to that end. You can't
appreciate the human reaction to that by short sightedly looking at the risk
of dying in a car accident.

~~~
woah
Unfortunately, goading western countries into wars we can't win is the basis
of their strategy. So if your attitude causes you to short-sightedly support
military action out of fear (even if you tell yourself it's anger), you're
helping the terrorists win.

~~~
joeclark77
ISIS isn't trying to goad us into war. They're _waging_ war on us, and doing
so effectively. The kind of probabilistic analysis proposed by the OP takes
terrorist attacks as if they occur randomly at some rate we have little
control over, like car accidents. That is not the case when you have an enemy
actively killing you and you have to make a decision: fight back, or signal
that you won't fight back. If the latter, the number of "micromorts" is going
to increase exponentially.

~~~
woah
No, goading us into war really is their strategy, whether it fits with your
worldview or not[1]. They currently rule over lands whose governments we
destroyed, using weapons that we brought there and gave to the "good guys".
They are well aware of this, and it is what they want.

[1] [https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/abu-bakr-naji-
the...](https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/abu-bakr-naji-the-
management-of-savagery-the-most-critical-stage-through-which-the-umma-will-
pass.pdf)

~~~
kevinskii
Of _course_ it's their strategy. That doesn't automatically mean that by
obliging them the French would be "helping them win."

------
idibidiart
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.

What could we do to identify such people and help change the course of human
history?

------
nsxwolf
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.

Admonitions to shrug your shoulders at terrorism because car accidents kill
more people always ring hollow with me.

~~~
grandalf
What is terrorism? If two sides are fighting each other and one side has smart
bombs and drones and the other side doesn't, clearly the choice for the weaker
side is to give up or to find tactics that work to break its enemy's will.

The word terrorism is a propaganda word intended to make the audience pass
moral judgment on the act and ignore the larger issue of why the conflict
exists in the first place.

I too find acts of violence upsetting, but it's dangerous to buy into the
propaganda around the word terrorism, since it's used to justify abandoning
diplomacy and dehumanizing the enemy.

~~~
pugio
Terrorism is psychological warfare aimed at a civilian population. It could be
an expression of frustration; an act by one who doesn't care, or cares
exclusively and consumingly. And it is horrific, disgusting, and morally
reprehensible.

The word is not merely propaganda, it is a word whose extremity exactly
conveys the revulsion and moral judgement of the speaker. As with any label,
you run the risk of superficiality and preoccupation with simplified
narratives, but "terrorism" is NOT just propaganda, and it deliberately
conveys more than "acts of violence". (A clinical term with its own problems
of distancing audiences from the immediate reality.)

I wrote this because your last sentence seemed to imply something that I've
noticed crop up in these kinds of discussions: the (typically Western)
assumption that there is legitimacy to both sides of any conflict, and that,
recognizing this, a diplomatic solution can be achieved. I've yet to see
concrete evidence that this is the case. Short of deprogramming, how do you
reason with a group of people brainwashed to be fundamentally unreasonable?

~~~
awakeasleep
Was it terrorism when the US dropped the nukes on Japan?

Psychological warfare aimed at a civilian population, right? Even if you agree
that it was, you have to admit that is not how the history books are writte,
because we don't use the propagana term "terrorist" to describe our own
actions.

~~~
grandalf
Exactly. The drones flying over Pakistan and Afghanistan are intended to make
the populations of the border regions worry constantly about being fired upon.
It's what terrorism looks like when you have an essentially unlimited budget
and don't have to resort to crude munitions like IEDs or suicide bombers.

------
haomself
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.

~~~
NhanH
Everyday passing by is a sample day that you can use to estimate the risks.
Even if you argue that terrorism is a relatively new risk in the past few
decades and start your sampling from September 2001, we still have more than a
decade of sample days to estimate the risk. That's a _huge_ sample.

There might not be enough sample to know how many people would be harmed
during a terrorist attack. But there is definitely enough information to
estimate the risk of an attack itself.

~~~
jndsn402
Actuary here. I don't have the math at my fingertips, but to confidently
estimate the risk of any occurrence you need a significant sample of the
event, not just a significant amount of exposure.

So for instance, if you are estimating the mortality rate of a 25 year old and
the rate for an 85 year old you would be equally confident in each estimate if
your data sample contained an equal amount of deaths for each, not an equal
amount of life-years.

So while we have many days of exposure to terrorism risk, we do not have many
occurrences and therefore do not have a confident estimate of the rate of
major terror attacks.

~~~
jacquesm
Definitely not an actuary here so forgive my ignorance: Isn't the fact that
'we do not have many occurrences' by itself enough to establish a lower bound?

~~~
hawkice
You mean upper bound -- being a more likely killer than heart attacks is a
statistical impossibility. Same for car accidents. Same for iron deficiency,
Trypanosomiasis, and a bunch of other things.

~~~
jacquesm
Hm, no I really meant 'lower bound', as in 'we have seen x events in y days to
date, so there can't be fewer than that'. And then you'd have to adjust that
as more evidence rolls in.

~~~
hawkice
Not an unreasonable conclusion, but let's say there is a true
(hidden/unknowable) rate of deaths X. You'd expect, not knowing the
statistical distribution, maybe half the time the measurement (adding deaths
from events) it'll be less and half the time it'd be more, just like any other
random variable measurement. So it isn't a lower bound, just a fantastic guess
that's bound to be pretty close. How close will it be? Well, the sample size
is pretty low, so honestly it could be quite wrong. This is what the mega-
parent was saying.

edit: you can get a lower bound, from a statistical perspective, the same way,
where you go out a couple standard deviations to make up for small sample
size, e.g. terrorism is more dangerous than being hit by two meteors at the
same time, but if you wanted to make the case terrorism is more dangerous than
something strange like water overdose that's probably true but not a lower-
bound level statistical certainty.

~~~
jacquesm
A I see (or at least, I think I see), it's just another bell curve and this is
the center line of that curve?

~~~
hawkice
It's a single data point on the curve, so probably close to average, but yeah,
that's the notion.

~~~
jacquesm
Thank you for the explanation!

------
gesman
You have a point, but I'd suggest to replace "fight" with "be ok with".

~~~
saulrh
Given the way terrorism works ([http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-
toxoplasma-of-rage/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-
rage/)), "being OK with it" translates pretty directly into denying it a
chance to reproduce and thereby killing it.

~~~
derefr
Right; you _fight_ "terrorism" by _being okay with_ "terorrists."

~~~
saulrh
Yes, because they can't hurt you in absolute terms (as pointed out by the OP)
and if you fight back you just _make them stronger_.

------
rayiner
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.

~~~
Confusion
No, by the reasoning of the article you should not respond to murder by
starting to fear being murdered, as the odds of being murdered are quite
small.

------
hokkos
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.

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.

I can also look at my age, and that I go to concert often then my micromort
explode to the roof now.

You seems like the old ladys in the Terry Gilliam film Brazil.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4KFNhxibec](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4KFNhxibec)

------
poof131
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.

------
ooOOoo
Schneier called micromort a "great concept"
([https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/11/micromorts_1....](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/11/micromorts_1.html)).

"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."

------
arithma
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.

------
guelo
The risk of being shot in a mass shooting in the US is way higher but
everybody seems blasé about it.

~~~
flubert
Hmm. 9/319e6 = 0.028 micromorts

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umpqua_Community_College_shoot...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umpqua_Community_College_shooting#Fatalities)

[https://www.google.com/#q=population+of+the+united+states](https://www.google.com/#q=population+of+the+united+states)

------
ap22213
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.

It's interesting that running one marathon per year is almost equivalent to
being murdered in England.

------
hackaflocka
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).

So, yes, terrorism is indeed very, very bad.

------
gtirloni
Some types of death do have a stronger emotional effect on us.

Perspective is everything. Good approach :)

------
yakult
When I see 'micromorts', my first thought is that it's an euphemism for
assassination, possibly with drones.

~~~
joeclark77
I was thinking some kind of __mortar __but ultra-portable. Perhaps an iPhone
attachment of some kind?

------
vcdimension
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.

~~~
tedks
This assumes there is some incentive for terrorists to attack big cities. It
could be strategically valuable for terrorists to just randomly attack tiny
villages, where the response time for emergency services equipped to deal with
heavily-armed moderately-trained militants is long enough for them to wipe
basically the whole place out, and after which they can strike fear into any
village and cause the governments to spend a ton turning all of them into
fortresses.

------
DHJSH
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
[https://www.wvdhhr.org/bph/oehp/obesity/mortality.htm](https://www.wvdhhr.org/bph/oehp/obesity/mortality.htm))

~~~
themodelplumber
We _are_ terrified about obesity. The weight loss market in the U.S. is at
roughly $60 billion.

But I wonder how long a single person can remain terrified about anything, or
is indeed terrified by e.g. terrorism.

~~~
aianus
> We _are_ terrified about obesity. The weight loss market in the U.S. is at
> roughly $60 billion.

That's:

a) an order of magnitude less than U.S. defense spending b) not funded by
taxpayers

~~~
DHJSH
People really didn't like my Obesity comment! The number one killer has a
"personal responsibility" component and the techno-libertarians here object.
Go figure... We live in an upside-down world where good is bad and right is
wrong.

------
ekianjo
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.

~~~
epistasis
FYI, beginning a dismissal with "that's cute" kind makes it seem like you
don't have a strong point and are resorting to name calling.

~~~
ekianjo
I actually explained my point. Read my full comment.

