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fubarobfusco comments on Asteroids and spaceships are kinetic bombs and how to prevent catastrophe - Less Wrong Discussion
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Almost nobody wants to do terrorist attacks.
There are very few terrorist attacks, even though doing a terrorist attack is not very hard. A smart person who really wants to blow up a building, and doesn't mind death or life imprisonment, can generally do so. But very few buildings are blown up. Therefore, even though terrorist attacks are highly available thanks to news reports and fiction, almost nobody wants to do them.
For a crime to occur requires means, motive, and opportunity. We can consider these to be factors of production, or the reagents that go into making a crime happen. Which of them is the limiting reagent on the production of terrorist attacks? Not the means; guns, explosives, and other weapons aren't difficult to come by or create. Not the opportunity; we do not armor all possible terrorist targets nor track every potential terrorist. Rather, the limiting reagent on the production of terrorist attacks is motive — people's interest in doing them.
That depends on your location. There is no shortage of would-be suicide bombers in the Palestinian territories (or so I have been led to believe). There is, however, a shortage of explosives and access to targets within Israel.
Good point. I was being US-centric there.
So I suppose the question is, for what value of harm does (harm per terrorist * small number of terrorists) become so large that very harsh interventions affecting large numbers of innocents start to seem actually reasonable? (Even considering that actual terrorists are not quite like the media's image of them, I think we should probably be willing to pay a rather large cost to keep x-risk-level weapons out of the hands of the terrorists we have today, so clearly there is some line...)
See also gwern's Terrorism is not about Terror and Terrorism is not Effective.
"Passenger aircraft are kinetic bombs and how to prevent catastrophe"
To prevent catastrophe, do not install utility functions that value occupying lots of citizen attention with anxiety as the operators of your media and government.