"I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to hear it."
Shark attacks are statistically rare. Lightning strikes (of a human) are statistically rare. Adrenocortical carcinoma is statistically rare. Having to explain this to the family of a victim doesn't change that fact.
In 2001, a banner year for terrorism, America lost more people to heart disease than terrorism. This should surprise no one. What's a little more surprising is the scale of the difference - not just more people, but 200 times as many people. To put it another way, if something on the scale of 9/11 happened every other day we'd still be losing more people to heart disease than to terrorism. Sure, there are criticisms to be had (e.g. we should be comparing years lost or quality of life not simply lives lost) but none of these come close to overcoming that 200 fold difference - one year lost by a 70 yo would have to translate to 200 years lost by a younger person, and those lost in 9/11 weren't especially young (average age was 40). Car accidents disproportionately kill the young, and also killed more Americans than terrorism that year. And of course those (and still other causes - many of them!) continue to kill many times more people than terrorism did in 2001 - terrorism does not.
I think comparing 9/11 to events like heart attacks and car accidents is silly.
There is a big difference between the loss of 3000 people due to a deliberate attack on your country and the loss of 300,000 people due to heart attacks.
"There is a big difference between the loss of 3000 people due to a deliberate attack on your country and the loss of 300,000 people due to heart attacks."
Since you obviously don't mean the heart attacks are worse, and we obviously don't agree, please support this rather than just asserting it. If it simplifies matters, first support that losing one person to deliberate attack is significantly worse than losing one person to illness. Then we can look at whether "significant" is significant enough.
One thing we can quickly agree on is that deterrence (or lack thereof) is more relevant in the case of an attack. But deterrence is only one kind of prevention. I don't see that the actual badness is greater in the case of the attack-caused death.
One way to measure the impact of a death from illness vs. a deliberate attack is the impact on society. Since the goal of terrorism is to destabilize a society and instill fear, the ramifications reach far beyond the individual who died. Take a look at what happened to the stock market after 9/11. The resulting fear was widespread and very disruptive. The ramifications of doing nothing when someone dies of a heart attack are minor, doing nothing when an external force kills a citizen can be far reaching.
The second reason is justice. A person dying from a heart attack is a "natural" death, nobody (except possibly the victim themselves) contributed to the death.
Using the logic of the grandparent, the world should have said "Let's ignore the Rwandan genocide because more babies die of diarrheal diseases."
How would you have reacted to 9-11? Just shrugged your shoulders and said "it's only 3000 people?" Maybe the same for Pearl Harbor? If so, you'd likely be speaking German or Japanese now.
> There is a big difference between the loss of 3000 people due to a deliberate attack on your country and the loss of 300,000 people due to heart attacks.
This is very true. We've spent over a trillion dollars combatting terrorism with little progress (and more American lives lost than in 9/11, let alone Iraqi/Afghan lives). Spending that trillion on heart attack prevention and treatment would've been far more effective at saving lives.
One assumption is that spending 1 trillion dollars over the last 13 years on heart attack prevention and treatment would have made a significant difference in the number of lives saved. How do we quantify this?
A second assumption on the other side of the argument is that spending 0 to fight terrorism would have netted 0 new casualties, anywhere. If we did nothing we would have been better off. But how do we quantify this? We can see the results of our actions, but we cannot see the results of our inactions. If we did not invade Iraq, would more or less people be alive today in that country, and what would their quality of life be? Would Afghanistan be completely ruled by extremist Muslims and be ruled under a brutal Sharia law if we had not invaded and tried to put a partly democratic and citizen based government in place? Who knows? If that did happen, would more people be suffering due to extreme oppression and sectarian violence than what our invasions has caused? How do we quantify all of these factors?
Making big sweeping statements with huge numbers that dwarf anything we're used to talking about is sensationalism. The fact of the matter is that the people making these decisions, by and large, are not doing it because they are trying to get rich or build some fiefdom. Dem or Repub, Liberal or Conservative, I think that generally speaking, most politicians and government officials are in their positions to do good. They see themselves as agents of change and sometimes have to make incredibly hard decisions in the times in which they live (not 10 years later). They are trying to give this country and others around the world their best shot at living a life of freedom and liberty. We're not always going to agree with decisions, and some are truly mistakes, but few that we look at are simply because of some crazy conspiracy agenda.
I think it's hard to argue that a trillion dollars to the NIH, CDC, preventative medicine for the poor, etc. wouldn't result in at least 3k lives saved during the period.
I also think it's impossible to rationally argue that the Iraq war did anything to reduce terrorism, given that the pretext for invasion was WMD, not terrorism, and that extremists now control large swaths of the country where they had minimal power under Hussein.
Shark attacks are statistically rare. Lightning strikes (of a human) are statistically rare. Adrenocortical carcinoma is statistically rare. Having to explain this to the family of a victim doesn't change that fact.
In 2001, a banner year for terrorism, America lost more people to heart disease than terrorism. This should surprise no one. What's a little more surprising is the scale of the difference - not just more people, but 200 times as many people. To put it another way, if something on the scale of 9/11 happened every other day we'd still be losing more people to heart disease than to terrorism. Sure, there are criticisms to be had (e.g. we should be comparing years lost or quality of life not simply lives lost) but none of these come close to overcoming that 200 fold difference - one year lost by a 70 yo would have to translate to 200 years lost by a younger person, and those lost in 9/11 weren't especially young (average age was 40). Car accidents disproportionately kill the young, and also killed more Americans than terrorism that year. And of course those (and still other causes - many of them!) continue to kill many times more people than terrorism did in 2001 - terrorism does not.