If we were attacked by real, organized terrorists, we are screwed.

I really do not get all the celebration and back-patting, it's disturbing.

Oh and while this huge distraction was going on - no background checks for guns, the most basic bill failed.

But several senators were quick to voice their desire for no miranda rights.

Background checks are already required for almost all gun sales, including ones at gun-shows. This whole discussion is a red-herring. And what the f%!# good do you think a "database for guns" is going to do? You think the terrorists buy their guns over the counter, with legit IDs and happily register them with the authorities? You expect the terrorists to register their pressure cookers? Maybe we should have background checks for buying those?

And then what? Background checks for buying nichrome wire, because it can be used as a bridgewire in a detonator? A database of Arduinos, since they can be used as timers for bombs?

Or how about a national database of people who guy gasoline, Drano, nails, ball-bearings, lithium-ion batteries, soldering irons, solder...

Better still, let's implement a Great Firewall of America to keep people from accessing subversive content like Inspire magazine, the Unabomber manifesto, the writings of Timothy McVeigh, the Koran, Cryptome, Wikileaks, Paladin Press, Justin Bieber songs, Anarchist's cookbook, Poor Man's James Bond or the Federalist Papers...

- National Fraternal Order of Police President Chuck Canterbury, February 16, 2013

http://www.coloradofop.org/index.cfm?zone=/unionactive/view_...

PoliceOne’s Gun Policy & Law Enforcement survey was conducted between March 4 and March 13, 2013, receiving 15,595 responses from verified police professionals across all ranks and department sizes.

http://ddq74coujkv1i.cloudfront.net/p1_gunsurveysummary_2013...

Yet we all support background checks. I don't find the 90% number hard to believe at all.

So quoting that 90% number might be technically accurate for some specific question on some specific poll, but I'd question whether or not it actually reflects public sentiment on this issue, from people who actually have an informed opinion on the issue.

Plus, if we're serious about reducing gun violence, we limit handguns, not rifles. We can pat ourselves on the back and make us feel better over dead kids, but the real problem in this country with gun violence is handguns. The fact that it's all about "assault rifles" (a meaningless loaded nonsense term) shows that people are not the least bit sincere or knowledgable.

I know 3 places right now I can purchase a handgun without paperwork that are not gun shows.

Sure do love that anecdotal evidence.

I mean look at all the silencers people have to get away with murder - oh wait, they don't - because they are illegal and highly regulated.

OR, it could be because they're expensive, ineffective, don't last, and hurt accuracy. Or because most murders are not planned out in advance, in excruciating detail, by criminal masterminds (or even the crooks in episodes of Columbo). Somebody who finds out their spouse is cheating on them and decides to kill them in a fit of rage isn't going to care about a silencer.

Likewise, gang on gang crime over drug deals doesn't seem to involve a lot of stealthy, hit-man style assassination stuff. Those guys don't need silencers.

And the people who do want one and want to avoid your regulations? Well, they just build their own, no license, background check, or anything else needed.

Suppressors are dead easy to make out of household products as is, they just aren't worth more than 2 shots. Likewise, any individual sent as the imaginary "hitman" that everyone seems to believe exists, would probably be aligned with a group with enough finances to either buy legitimate suppressors, or procure them from the black market.

The only people that cannot purchase automatic weapons and restricted modifications (suppressors, grenade launchers, etc) are the poor. The legal roadblocks are overcome (perfectly legally) with money.

People just ignore the slaughter of spouses and mass murder of the destitute on the streets in favor of only focusing on shooting sprees.

The emotional rage murder would be culled by stricter gun laws, but gangs and mass shooters will just go to underground channels to get their armaments if they can't try to get them legally.

On the other hand, a regular 9mm handgun or a .223/.308 rifle with a suppressor will still be very loud: comparable to a car's engine back firing, a tire blow out, or a firecracker. That's definitely a reduction in noise compared to a regular gun shot, but while one such noise might go unnoticed, a rapid succession of such noises certainly will.

Murderers rarely use such things

A silencer is cheap and trivial to manufacture from common materials.

I think you overestimate the deterrence of an additional felony charge. "Q. What are you in for? A. Murder... and an unlicensed weapon accessory."

Remember, they got Al Capone on income tax violations.

BTW it's worth pointing out that some countries like Finland do not regulate silencers/sound suppressors on the grounds that they reduce noise pollution and benefit public health by reducing the risk of hearing damage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Finland#Related...

Also: "The data indicates that use of silenced firearms in crime is a rare occurence, and is a minor problem" ( http://wcr.sonoma.edu/v08n2/44.clark/clark.pdf )

Not at all. Real "hackers" are intimately knowledgeable regarding the systems with which they work.

And really the proper term is sound suppressor, they're far from silent.

As for popularity, I'd bet "90%" of people would support virtually anything after being subject to four months of wall to wall propaganda by the corporate media and government. It is amazing to me how erstwhile supporters of minority rights now champion the most literal majoritarianism when convenient.

And how do you see the kind of extraordinary show of force we just saw in Boston and conclude that the citizenry should be even more helpless, more disempowered? Life is a Rorschach test, I guess.

Worth a bit of Googling. Methinks you don't have a good order-of-magnitude estimate of how much money is on each side.

I'd also like to point out that the gun industry doesn't really run ads in the same way most industries do. I've never seen a single gun ad outside of a gun magazine.

This is way less about a real accomplishment, and more about what people need to feel. After the bombings, people felt vulnerable and scared. And for the police, I'm sure also embarrassed and angry. Catching this kid is the vindication they all needed emotionally. I'm just glad they didn't get overzealous and kill him, as most manhunts end.

Cops were sending around a photo of the first suspect after he died, saying that seeing it was "cathartic." Apparently another is circulating of the second captured suspect, with the caption "WE GOT HIM." It's like a locker room after winning a football game.

It's true there was danger and violence here, and the death of innocent good people. But the response today was largely about ego and fear of vulnerability. There were literally thousands of SWAT units in Watertown today, going from door to door, publicly demonstrating America's reaction to terrorist attacks. It was about sending a message to the citizens and police of Boston, as well as the rest of the country.

While he very well may be, everyone is supposed to be innocent til proved otherwise by trial and judgement. That goes for everyone. Murderers, thieves, rapists, politicians and rich dudes alike. Oh, and you and I. Hopefully.

Note also that the general public should also know better - there is in fact, no confusion. You're simply disagreeing - part of the people I criticize, in fact, then.

> Law enforcement agencies are being lambasted time and again (whether it's valid criticism or not is irrelevant), and they continue to ignore claims of how ineffectual they are. Someone needs to stand up and say "We are here for you and we support you" otherwise it stands to reason that there are dangerous undertones forming.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5544924

It's exactly what that younger gentleman demonstrated -- the police will go above and beyond for you, even to the point of actively impeding normal functions of society.

Questioning the State™? Thats a no-no.

But then again, i'm just a lowly peasant, what could i possibly know about anything?

On the other hand, if they had simply expanded the search area block by block without lifting the stay-indoors request, then they probably would have found him quickly with less risk to Watertown residents. In any case, I agree that it's important for the governments involved to evaluate what could have been done better.

You find it really odd we don't live in a police state?

But I think it's also worth noting that the stay-indoors request was a request, as far as I know. Every notification that I received was something along the lines of people being asked to stay indoors with the doors locked, and I know people who chose to go outdoors before the request was lifted. The city shut down because people chose to honor the request out of confidence in the judgement and good intentions of the police. I personally chose to stay indoors because I thought the suspect was probably wandering around on foot in the Watertown/Cambridge area and I thought the inconvenience of staying inside for a day outweighed the risk of running into him.

Alternatively, if they had lifted the shelter-in-place order earlier, the guy would have gone out in his yard and noticed something going on in his boat sooner.

On the other other hand, it was getting dark -- the stay-indoors request was lifted an hour from sunset -- and it would have been harder to see the blood without daylight. So maybe they lifted it just in time, or should have lifted it much earlier?

And I think that was why they might have decided to allow it. Most people would NOT have felt comfortable going outside until he was caught and by letting people go out they had more eyes and a better chance of spotting him. It worked, and quickly.

I doubt the reason was 4th Amendment scruples.

I was suggesting a search of a prioritized list -- initially based on visual examination of aerial photographs -- of sheds, boats, and other simple structures in the area.

Also, no one knew how many other bombs there may have been, so public areas still posed an unknown risk.

Clearly, if you can plan not to Mirandize a suspect, then the public safety exception cannot apply in the first place, so calling for the public safety exception merely makes a mockery of the law. The concluding sentences of the FBI's explanation of the public safety exception are worth quoting in full:

"When police officers are confronted by a concern for public safety, Miranda warnings need not be provided prior to asking questions directed at neutralizing an imminent threat, and voluntary statements made in response to such narrowly tailored questions can be admitted at trial. Once the questions turn from those designed to resolve the concern for safety to questions designed solely to elicit incriminating statements, the questioning falls outside the scope of the exception and within the traditional rules of Miranda."

But let's not kid ourselves, Eric Holder and co give zero fucks about the law or our rights. Fast and Furious anyone?

The problem with this exemption, from what I understand (please correct me if wrong) is that any testimony in this questioning WOULD be admissible in court over some nonsense post 9/11 legalese in some crazy ass bill somewhere.

On the other hand, "lone wolfs" cannot be tracked by agencies, and their actions are hardly predictables.

I suppose if Mr. Stallman's home or office were to catch fire, we shouldn't paralyze the immediate area with noisy fire trucks.

The background check issue is a completely separate, legislative one. Democracy is a messy thing -- the democrats killed the bills so they could come back and fight another day.

I think your understanding of how easy it is to locate people is influenced by fiction and dramatization.

One man is tiny compared to an entire city. What can you realistically do if that man decides to hide in a covered boat in someone's yard?

The problem is that these kids were "organized" after a fashion. They were muslims, discontent, and grabbed up by some radical muslim and told that massacring random americans is the way to heaven. They're very unlikely to be the only ones that believe so.

And what choice is there but to move against whatever persons and/or organizations that radicalized their "interpretation of islam". They pointed out that the muslim prophet was a mass-murdering genocidal raider, which is correct, so it's hard to argue against this point. And of course these 2 boys chose to join their prophet's ways, as opposed to denying them. It's an ingenious way for an ideology to create terror, really. You center the ideology around a figure that's described as "perfect"(/holy/enlightened/...), but in reality that figure is a mass-murdering lying cheating bastard. Then of course the vast majority of people will choose to deny that fact (because 90% of people even in the most radicalized islamic country know perfectly well there's nothing good about massacres, and if "the prophet" committed genocide, that means he and his islam is evil), leading to a society that's workable, even if periodic sudden mass-outbursts of violence are unavoidable if you expect people to live in cognitive dissonance, with the associated risk that such an outburst wins over any government in place, destroying everything .

But any preacher can of course trivially use this to get recruits for terror acts against anyone he pleases (anyone he can realistically paint as an enemy of the ideology, which is to say anyone, if the preacher is any good). Now the vast majority of people will choose to maintain their cognitive dissonance and just add this preacher to the list of things they flat-out deny about the world, so the preacher that has just advocated genocide for 30 minutes can easily share dinner with anyone who just listened (When I first saw someone deny in his mind that a door existed to the point that he had to be restrained because he would keep "walking through it". He was hurting himself to the point that restraint + sedation was the only solution. I left that institution still firmly convinced that such people didn't exist, but after a few nights I seem to have come to terms with it).

However some people will chose to end their dissonance, usually under stress, and crucially, at this point they'll have been in the ideology for years and years, with everybody they know telling them that islam is good and great and can't be criticized. Then this "great insight" comes, that they've known about for decades too : islam works by ambushes and genocide, that's how the prophet did it, that's how muslims should do it. And at that point they will be extremely vulnerable to "suggestions" from said preacher, and of course they'll be looking to imitate what their prophet did, and they'll be looking for exactly the kind of mission that the preacher is likely to give them : ambush and kill innocents who are part of a group that "opposes" islam (and the prophet massacred muslims that he accused of allying with an enemy just the same, so no need to worry about killing a few traitor muslims).

No amount of policies can prevent psychological stress, nor by the way, would you want to do that. Stress may be the way to insanity, but it's also the way to improving yourself. Aside from that, of course you can't "end" psychological stress (though of course you can massively reduce it by providing basic needs services). But you'll never minimize it to the point the supply of terrorists dries up. And of course there's going to be points where the economy of the country is stressed, and there's an explosion in the number of candidate terrorists.

As a bonus, any society with this ideology can of course not allow "free" preachers, or any form of freedom of ideology. That would lead to mass acts of terrorism in short order (what we're about to see in Europe and America). So any society where this ideology takes root either becomes a complete monoculture or destroys the "invading" ideology, at great cost.

I bet this is how a lot of the terror ideologies work, not just islam. This seems like it's roughly the same concept as the stalinism and leninism concepts of communism (and of course the lesser ones too, with Castro, Guevara* and Chavez), or things like the Japanese ideology before WWII, and of course nazism, any such person cultus with anything less than a perfect being like Buddha or Jesus, that no rational being can really criticize any actions of (which means that Christian and Buddhist "terrorists" exist, except they do what Jesus and Buddha did, probably leading to self-sacrifice for a noble cause, because these are ideologies where people's cognitive dissonance has to deny the fact that they themselves are not as moral as their ideology). I bet this is what a "meme" virus looks like, like Hitches professed exist.

Of course negative ideologies (where the ideology is morally worse than most human minds that partake in it) like islam would be fundamentally unstable, and will destroy themselves if they don't have (realistic) enemies, or insufficient access to their enemies. But small pockets will survive even then, ready to start again, in slightly different forms. So preventing terror is the exact same thing as eradicating islam itself, problem is that of course you're never going to be able to do that without attacking individuals.

* Guevara is a perfect example. He's a hero of commusnism, but it is well documented he randomly killed people for fun when they can't defend themselves. And that's not all he's reputed to do either.

The point seems to be that in neither case does the "average" follower become any better or worse, but the extremists of those religions are significantly different. In every case the extremists become closer to the idealized figures from the ideology, so Christians are prone to self sacrifice, Buddhists are prone to an ascetic, isolated life, and Muslims are prone to violence if this happens.

Not sure about how it causes mono-culture. It seems to me at the beginning of the 20th century, every region on earth was a mono-culture, no matter it's ideology.

It's the Old Testament that's the terror religion, whether as practiced by Mohammed or by Moses or by the Crusaders.

And Moslems react when they think their religion is under attack just like Christians do. Have a look at some of the IRA types who were into butchering Irish Protestants. They were "defending" the Catholics in their minds.

It's not "kill the infidels to get into heaven". The religion is merely the language they use to frame the real motivation, which can be defensiveness, reaction, or even sheer prejudice.

And not all the bombers are loonies, by the way, not even the suicidal ones. If the official story so far is correct, the Boston two seem to be good planners with a healthy sense of self-preservation.

A large part of the expense was due to the successful effort to apprehend him without killing him or bystanders.

Tweets aren't precisely geolocated, so that's not really relevant.

The US has a "value of a statistical life"[1] of around $7M, and they had already killed 4 people and injured over a hundred more, so $50M seems like it would be very easily justified.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life

My point was this was one person (okay, two brothers originally) what would have happened if it was a team of people who were organized and actually secretive and didn't use twitter or live out in the open?

No, the United States Government is saying that, by using the Value of a Statistical Life that they use. So I'm telling you that (by their own terms) they can justify spending a lot of their money on catching someone who has killed several people and intends to kill more.

I do not agree that it makes sense to value US lives at $7M each and developing world lives at apparently less than $2000 each (the approximate price of saving one according to GiveWell). But that's what the link I cited says is the case here.

I'm not sure this adequately captures it, though; the bombers are said to have talked in front of their carjacking victim about planning to escape to NYC. Shouldn't we include some expected value term of the cost of shutting down NYC, in case they moved there and had to be hunted there too? Seems like the entire country/world has an interest in seeing them caught here.

These guys filled hospitals with people who had their limbs blown off. And they shot cops willy nilly. The fact that only a few people are dead is small comfort. These were some of the most dangerous people in the entire country, comparing their danger to the danger of industry or automobile transit is just silly. Those are very different problems with very different solutions.

This is why naive numbers comparisons are just stupid.

Edit: Here's another example I came up with. To date only about 120,000 people have been killed by nuclear weapons. Which is a tiny fraction of the people killed by conventional weapons, or even heart disease. By naive logic we shouldn't worry about nuclear weapons, we should worry far more about heart disease, and strategic arms limitation talks should concentrate on the far more lethal conventional weapons.

I think there's a reason the us has been relatively stable over a long period of time, and it has everything to do with civil rights that serve as another check to the power of the government. As the balance is tipped in the favor of government power over civil power, the chances for large scale loss of life and limb (civil wars, internal power grabs etc.) increases.

History provides good examples of ever powerful governments, spectacularly collapsing, and crushing way more people than are killed from individuals abusing 'lax' civil rights.

It's probably not a good idea to mix the emotional with the analytical, but when it happens, the emotional wins; we're human beings.

I hate to get moral/philosophical, but utilitarian motives, in the eyes of societal norms, usually is the loosing position. The canonical example of this is the man waiting by the railroad switch who must decide whether to divert a train to certain doom or let the train run over an individual. According to society the man must always divert the train.

The super-parent argument is that the loss of life in the immediate is shallow compared to the inevitable loss of life from the loss of liberty and rise of tyrrany in the name of security.

If people are on the train, condemning many to die for one is never the right decision. If the train is unmanned (assumed if there is no conductor to manage it) you are trying to minimize loss of life, so of course you divert the train and just lose some resources in the crash. That example just doesn't make sense.

I'm much more concerned for the living than I am for the dead.

I've been in Colombia when some government buildings were destroyed by FARC bombs. People died, each one was a tragedy, but cities weren't shut down and society didn't let itself be overcome with fear. That's not to say they accepted that violence as OK; but the response was (and continues to be, as the FARC are still sometimes active here) very different.

I don't necessarily disagree, but I look forward to RMS's anti-terrorism proposal.

But to use a metaphor, it's possible to find a bug without knowing what the patch is.

This is very different from civil safety, or defending against terrorism. RMS takes the (in my mind very reasonable) view that terrorism is not costly if it doesn't provoke an auto-immune response, and that civil liberties are more important than obliterating terrorism.

The two suspects, after settings off anti-personnel bombs in a civilian area, executed a police officer, then got into a firefight with automatic weapons, grenades, and more anti-personnel bombs.

They demonstrated the means and the lack of conscience to do a LOT of damage in an urban area. A lot more than the average day in greater Boston's automotive death toll and as such were met with a massive response to prevent that possible outcome.

What the fuck else could the police do?

This isn't 'fear of shadows', as Stallman puts it.

============================

Difference being of course, one was a deliberate attack on human life, and the other a very _very_ unfortunate accident.

Stupid comparison to make for the sake of pushing his agenda of "free software". I expected more from someone so smart.

Thanks to regulatory capture oversight is weak, and this is not an accident but an intended outcome of the political system.

Yes, because it's obviously good for business to have your plant blow sky high, destroying the entire surrounding neighborhood and killing most of your employees. If I were a plant manager, I'd make sure to put doing all that right at the top of my TODO list.

Or, maybe, just maybe, not everybody who owns/runs a business in a capitalist system is a greedy, evil, soul-sucking bastard, and maybe, just maybe, accidents happen, some of which are damn near unpredictable and unavoidable. And maybe we can't regulate our way to a society where nothing bad ever happens to anybody, ever?

You know how this is - most often poor working practice has no immediate consequence. Perhaps a critical patch is installed a few days late, and the website does not get hacked, no adverse consequences most of the time. At some point someone will run the numbers, and conclude that good safety practice isn't that necessary. That's a recipe for disaster. Most everyone here should be familiar with the Challenger explosion and the runup to it.

> maybe, just maybe, accidents happen, some of which are damn near unpredictable and unavoidable.

That's the issue of fault-tolerant design. In an ammonium nitrate plant there is a risk of explosion; they quite simply do not belong anywhere near a town.

That's a fair point in a sense, and I'm not arguing that it isn't beneficial to have some independent eyes looking at things and helping avoid bias. I would argue that it's not necessarily required to regulate that sort of thing and make it the job of government to try and prevent every possible contingency though. I think working to develop a voluntary certification process, something akin to ISO9001, where being certified would be a "badge of honor" and - eventually - all but a prerequisite to doing business, would be preferred.

In an ammonium nitrate plant there is a risk of explosion; they quite simply do not belong anywhere near a town.

That was definitely a sub-optimal design, for sure. I'd be curious to know the history of how that setup happened, actually.

OTOH, to play devil's advocate a little bit... how often do ammonium nitrate plants explode? One could probably argue that the industry actually is very safe if you look at it over the long-run. Or not... I don't actually have those statistics. Just a point of discussion.

But maybe, just maybe, added regulation doesn't need to hurt the honest business owners, and can be used to keep those whose ethics may be a little more sketchy in check.

Nobody ever said that we will regulate our way to a perfect society. Nobody said that every business owner is a greedy, evil, soul-sucking bastard

Not overtly, but it seems implied by a lot of the verbiage you hear from people arguing for more regulation and blaming business owners for pretty much everything. (Note: I don't mean just here, now, in this very discussion. I'm generalizing based on other experiences)

But maybe, just maybe, added regulation doesn't need to hurt the honest business owners, and can be used to keep those whose ethics may be a little more sketchy in check.

I would argue that that is an awfully big maybe. Government regulation, however well-meaning, is notorious for having unintended consequences... sometimes even to the point of having an effect totally counter to the original intent.

If for example cars were allowed (mechanically and legally) to only accelerate to maximum 50mph many of those accidents would never happen, but people are not willing to loose their freedom to drive at crazy speeds but somehow they are willing to loose other freedoms for extremely rare events such as terrorism attacks just for the emotional effect it haves over them because it is an attack (and not an accident) with nothing rational backing it up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locomotive_Act#The_Locomotive_A...

The general citizen, even when armed, will often run for his life instead.

America isn't the wild west. We value our right to keep and bear arms, but not that many people actually carry weapons with them. Most gun owners keep their guns at home.

The best numbers I could find [1] indicate 8 million active concealed carry permits; so at most ~4% of the adult population has a permit to carry a gun outside the home. And most of those (anecdotally) don't do it often.

[1]: http://www.nraila.org/news-issues/articles/2012/7/new-federa...

Also, even with someone who religiously carries a gun as much as possible it would be unusual for them to carry a full-sized duty pistol and the ammunition that most cops do (stereotypically a Glock 22 w/ a 15 round magazine and 2+ additional magazines, a total of 45 or more rounds). Certainly some folks do but I'd doubt that number is even in the double digits throughout the entire US, excluding off-duty LE and people working security in some capacity. People who carry concealed tend to choose smaller, lighter guns and not quite as many total rounds, because ammunition is heavy (stereotypically a Kahr PM9 w/ an extra magazine, a total of 14 rounds, or maybe a Glock 26 w/ an extra magazine, a total of 20 rounds).

It's within the realm of possibility that there are "tens of thousands" of folks who concealed carry with that amount of ammunition, but I would be surprised if that was the case.

Also, even if it is that many, it's still a tiny fraction of the populace. Even in the most enthusiastic pro-gun states only a tiny fraction of the public carries on a regular basis.

In fact, it's pretty unavoidable and perhaps even desirable that government have access to a fine level of information which could be used for utter tyranny. So the energies spent worrying about or averting such threats had best be focused on controlling what government will actually do with the information it has.

http://www.dbms2.com/2010/04/04/privacy-liberty-continued/ on the subject is 3 years old, but I think it still holds up pretty well.

Personally, I don't think this is purely emotional elation. I live in Boston, the bombing happened down the street from me. I think it's important to point out that the disruption here should not just be measured in terms of number of dead or injured. It's the threat to the way we are used to living our life every day, and the perceived threat to the future way we will live our life.

This week, I have..

* Closed down my office because I was afraid for the safety of my employees * Heard from one of my best friends that his former colleague got killed on-duty (Sean Collier) * Listen to my friend express fear because she is planning to take a train to the waterfront for dinner * Had my mom show up out of nowhere to meet me at the airport because she heard there wasn't a way to get into the city

I didn't lose my life. My friends didn't either. I have nothing to complain about. But I want to make the point that there isn't an easy metric to put around the way life has ground to a halt here over the past week (at least none that I know of). We all experienced a type of stress that is hard to capture in numbers. And, we're happy to get our lives back to normal.

I think you're right, it is a very emotional time for many. I think he's trying to put that in a more rational perspective so that we, collectively, don't forget about the big picture.

I thought I was pretty jaded, but it turns out I have a long way to go still. After the events of this week I was worried about the hundreds of maimed victims, "Uncle Ruslan", the families of those 4 persons killed and the possible backdrop on geopolitics. But judging from Dr. Stallman's comments I should be most concerned about how the TSA might benefit from what happened.

It doesn't require the concern of all those who have no further interaction with the event. They gave money, they comforted relatives and friends, they let the police go find those responsible, and they move on. You don't linger on a unique incident with nigh impossible odds of something similar happening again that close to any of them with any similarity to this event.

They can care about pollution, chemical threats (that they can influence via money or time), and the overbearing reach of federal authority.

At this point, unless you are giving time or money to the aftermath or contributing to its investment, you are wasting your time and effort having any further thoughts on the matter. It is beyond your hands and influence then. Spend your time on things that matter.

The people of Boston should not wake up tomorrow any less secure in their wellbeing than the day before. Like Stallman said, the likelihood of dying to some asshole terrorist is so slim you can accurately discount the probability and just tell everyone "you won't die to a terrorist". The chances of you meeting one person that is incorrect for is absurdly small.

What Stallman speaks of is what you can take action about. The dinner table discussions should not be "those two brothers in Boston" that were a discontinuity of expectations but of real issues that you can change.

Because no offense, but Dr. Stallman sounds exactly like that dipshit in charge of the NRA who says that you can't change one single little thing about gun control because that would invite a slippery slope to the government disarming all law-abiding citizens.

There's no doubt that Stallman is intellectually inflexible and completely tone deaf. It's one of his primary virtues, really.

Right, because we should totally let the emotionality of a situation determine whether or not we completely overreact to the situation.

>and save your opinions for a more appropriate time.

RMS (and anyone else) is perfectly within his rights to say whatever he wants, whenever he wants. There is no "more appropriate time."

Prosecuting the marketing guys for a "hoax" device? Yeah, that was an overreaction. The actual police response response? They shut down the roadway, removed the devices, and reopened the roads. That was an entirely appropriate response. And no, that wasn't a "9/11 changed everything response" - in my occupation (acoustical consulting) we often leave equipment in the field for long-term data collection. I've heard stories going back to the 1980's about consultants going back to retrieve their equipment only to find the bomb squad had been called. As such, it's always been good practice to a) get permission/inform the property owner about what you're doing, and b) leave contact information on the equipment so someone with questions can call/email you. The ATHF marketers did neither, and I'm not surprised authorities freaked.

I'm just relieved that they haven't managed to kill any bystanders.

The "stay home" suggestion (it wasn't mandatory, folks I know in Boston/Boston-area who had reason to be out had no problems being out) probably helped a lot here.

shut Boston down for days

I have no idea what you're talking about. Bolyston St on Monday after the bombing was shut down, but that was pretty much going to happen anyway because of the giant marathon that was happening there. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were normal days. Because of the events that occurred late Thursday night/Friday morning, most of Boston was shut down for much of Friday, but normal operations started up around 6pm (before the manhunt was over). Given that the suspects were engaging in gun fights and had a propensity for using explosives, asking folks to stay in for 12 hours (we're not talking martial law here) is not an undue burden.

Even after it was obvious that the Mooninite devices were harmless, they persisted in the charade with all the melodrama they could muster. I'm sure they wanted the devices removed, it would have been a potent embarrassment for them. As for asking permission and leaving contact information, yeah, bad form on their part, but still no reason for hamming it up the way they did.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Bolyston St on Monday after the bombing was shut down, but that was pretty much going to happen anyway because of the giant marathon that was happening there. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were normal days. Because of the events that occurred late Thursday night/Friday morning, most of Boston was shut down for much of Friday, but normal operations started up around 6pm (before the manhunt was over). Given that the suspects were engaging in gun fights and had a propensity for using explosives, asking folks to stay in for 12 hours (we're not talking martial law here) is not an undue burden.

Fair enough, I'm far from Boston. The news coverage has been getting a lot of mileage out of the "lockdown" as they call it. I did hear one interview of a person being held at gunpoint for some time who was merely trying to return home.

Depends; you'll probably not want to share this point with strangers. Since we've been repeatedly traumatized as a nation over the fears of 'terrorism' by war-hawks and sensationalist media outlets, many Americans expect a similar level of emotional reactionism from their compatriots. And when they don't get it from you, they turn on you quickly. I don't think it's healthy, but I guess it's understandable from all the mental abuse we've received as a nation since 9/11.

RMS is out there on a lot of things, and he's very blunt with his opinions, but his emotional detachment does serve him well sometimes. The first step of healing from that mental disease we have now is step back a bit and realize the problem. We are addicted to fear.

Here's the list and mitigation strategies if any: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm

1 - Heart disease: don't eat foodstuffs that are known to increase the probability of heart disease, get plenty of cardio.

2 - Cancer: avoid all known carcinogens, refined sugars, etc. stay out of the sun (made easy by being in a Hazmat suit all the time)

3 - Chronic lower respiratory diseases: avoid exposure to transmission vectors, hazmat suit solves this.

4 - Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): Similar to 1

5 - Accidents (unintentional injuries): Don't participate in risky movements or behaviors, wear a helmet at all times, keep a comprehensive first aid kit on your person with all modern emergency responder equipment. Follow the buddy rule, but don't stay too close, stay away from high probability of injury transport methods.

6 - Alzheimer's disease: no known mitigation strategy

7 - Diabetes: mostly diet, see #1 and 4

8 - Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: no known strategy, but don't eat foods that might challenge your kidneys

9 - Influenza and Pneumonia: Hazmat suit, solved

10 - Intentional self-harm (suicide): don't do this, solved

and then way down the list...

NNN - Death by terrorism with a probability so low that even during an active terrorist attack RMSs conjecture is to just keep on keeping on with your normal day-to-day routine.

This seems to hinge on the assumption that we should value our lives infinitely. This isn't particularly logical, however, given the fact that most people do dangerous things. If you are like most people, you probably want to maximize your total happiness over the course of your life, regardless of how long it is. Would you rather be miserable and live to be 80, or live happily until 50?

So if the cost of mitigating such an event happening results in a lower expected net happiness than the cost of of the event happening (including all future happiness) multiplied by the probability of it happening, it would make logical sense to not attempt to mitigate it.

"Every death or injury is a sad thing, but the fact is that many happen every day, and we should not let these few upset us disproportionally more than the others. Let's make an effort not to get bent out of shape about them, so that we can resist when people try to cite them as an excuse for tyranny."

You're picking out his statement of proportionality as some sort of logical flaw in his argument, but you're completely missing the main point.

A reasonable statement would have been, "Let's not let these deaths be cited as an excuse for tyranny." But what he said was more along the lines of, "Let's not be very upset about these deaths, because then they will be used as an excuse for tyranny." Why should we let the government's supposed tendency towards tyranny influence our emotional reactions to the deaths of friends and colleagues? Instead, let's react however is natural to these deaths, and at the same time ensure that we don't stand for fear-mongering and security theater.

"Our response to deaths should scale exactly proportionally to the number? I shouldn't let the death of a friend upset me disproportionally more than the death of a stranger?"

You're misrepresenting what he said. He never compared the death of a stranger to the death of a loved one. What he said is that it's silly to raise the tragedy the those who lost their lives in Boston to those who lost their lives in Texas this week. All premature death is a tragedy, but I didn't know anyone personally in Boston or Texas. So why should the deaths of those in Boston be more prolific to me than those that died in Texas?

You said,

"But what he said was more along the lines of, 'Let's not be very upset about these deaths, because then they will be used as an excuse for tyranny.'"

What he actually said was,

"Every death or injury is a sad thing, but the fact is that many happen every day, and we should not let these few upset us disproportionally more than the others. Let's make an effort not to get bent out of shape about them, so that we can resist when people try to cite them as an excuse for tyranny."

You can't change the words he used to misrepresent his argument because you didn't appreciate his bluntness. I'll admit, RMS is a very emotionally detached person, but that doesn't allow the opportunity to bend his words so that it makes it easier for you to shame him.

I disagree with you, but I think you're being thoughtful about it.

This is the problem I have with RMS.

Some deaths are more meaningful. Some events are more important.

If a man has a gun pointed at your face, do you ignore it because your singular death won't reach the number of yearly deaths for cancer or car accidents? By RMSs absurdly detached logic, you ignore the gun in your face.

Intention is everything in this issue. A pair of men running around blowing up people and emptying entire magazines in busy neighborhoods trying to murder their pursuers is so qualitatively different from any other quantitatively comparable event where people are killed and hurt without similar intention as to be virtually incomparable. RMS is admonishing us for not comparing the raw body counts.

He would have us walk ignore the gunman with the gun to our head while wearing a hazmat suit and SPF90 sunblock because quantitatively the flu and cancer result in a higher body count than just little old me and I shouldn't be so selfish and not walk around with those protections or I might add to the tally for those kinds of deaths.

Once you start just adding up bodies and comparing the tallies, you've lost the narrative.

I don't think prolific is the word you mean, but I'll assume you meant "meaningful" or "emotional." No one is telling you how much you should care about Boston versus Texas. The point is that for those of us who are personally affected by the Boston incident, we resent being told that we should care more about the Texas incident, because it is natural that we would be more upset about the incident that personally affected us.

You can't change the words he used to misrepresent his argument because you didn't appreciate his bluntness.

The change of wording wasn't relevant to my point, I was simply trying to summarize his view. Insert "let's make an effort not to get... as an excuse for tyranny" (his actual quote) for the paraphrased quote that I used, and the point still stands: the government's supposed tendency towards tyranny should cause us to resist tyranny, not to temper our emotional reactions to the deaths of community members.

Look, if you know someone that was killed or injured, then it obviously affects you more personally than it would other people, and there's nothing in RMS's statement that says otherwise. And if you were effected, you obviously weren't the intended audience (he was replying to a message to stay inside during Boston's pseudo-curfew). However, if your only connection to the event is your geographical proximity, then that does not grant you some sort of higher-level of emotional standing that the rest of us could not make. Every death of an innocent person is a sad, tragic thing; we don't need to be in Boston to understand that.

"The change of wording wasn't relevant to my point, I was simply trying to summarize his view. Insert "let's make an effort not to get... as an excuse for tyranny" (his actual quote) for the paraphrased quote that I used, and the point still stands: the government's supposed tendency towards tyranny should cause us to resist tyranny, not to temper our emotional reactions to the deaths of community members."

No, you're still taking what he said out of context. And your summarization of this comments is not correct. He did not say "temper", that's your word. He said "[...]let these few upset us disproportionally more than the others." Keyword is 'disproportionally'.

I'm, statistically speaking, more likely to die in a car accident than a terrorist attack. I could die in a car accident tomorrow. My family would be very sad and traumatized. However, I doubt they would stop using cars to get around. In fact, I'd bet they would take a car to the hospital to come get my body. With the Boston attack though, the authorities said everyone should stay inside in the entire city, because of the violence that happened in a few public places. That's the disproportionality that RMS was trying to point out in his statement.

In that you took that he was said you should 'temper' your emotions is no fault of Stallman. You're attempting to parse out an argument that just isn't there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility

It is the latter than our country wants, or at least our politicians say we want.

Well shit guys we should have got big balls Stallman out there to apprehend the suspect who was known to be homicidal, heavily armed, and possibly wearing an explosive device.

100 people die in cars everyday. That's such an irrelevant statement I still don't fully understand the point. 100 people die in cars everyday so unless a murderer's body count breaches national aggregate auto fatality statistics we shouldn't worry about it? Stallman appears to be confusing "the appropriate resource allocation to the threat of terrorism in general" with "the appropriate resource allocation to an actual active known terrorist".

(I had something more pithy to write but I think this captures the essence better)

Also really looking forward to the knee-jerk anti 2nd ammendment lobby using another tragedy as a prop.

I'm not sure if they searched empty homes, but if they did, then they probably believed it to be exigent circumstances.

Still, in economic cost, it was a creditable effort, not on the level of 9/11 but not bad, for two presumed amateurs to shut down Boston for a day.

When you do that, you're giving these guys a lot of power.

Imagine if London had shut down every time there were IRA attackers on the loose.

One comes to expect an extremist point of view from RMS, but I find myself mostly agreeing. What the victims experienced is heartbreaking, and we should honor them by catching the bad guys, and also finding ways to make ourselves more resilient.

There seems to be an inability on the part of some people, apparently Richard Stallman included, to realize that active intent to harm human beings is not in the same ballpark as passive intent to harm human beings. They're not even playing the same sport. A fertilizer plant has a chance of harming someone in an accident, and while it is definitely wrong if those concerns go unheeded, there is not even a remote comparison to the actions of demonstrated sociopathic behavior to harm, kill, and decapitate eight-year-olds watching a marathon. There just isn't. A man waking up one morning and saying, "gee, I'm going to drop explosive devices in the middle of a fucking crowd in Boston" isn't even in the same universe as "our unstable manufacturing process exploded after an accident".

Let's say, for a moment, that Stallman is in effect proven right about the danger of the chemical plant, and that the chemical plant owners, say, willfully traded employee safety for money. That's wrong. However, inability to be appalled by and react accordingly to a human being intentionally killing and maiming fellow human beings using explosive devices on the streets of a populated city during a marathon, demonstrating full intent to kill and complete disregard for the free agency of children as young as 8, and blowing people's limbs off on purpose, is the mark of a sociopath.

You concern me if you present an argument to me along these lines, that we should "care more" about the fertilizer plant or auto accidents on the interstates in a day or ... whatever. I'm more and more convinced lately that the people in my life who have arguments with me like this, including Richard Stallman, are sociopaths, and I'm sorry. I'm going to make active strides to remove these people from my life, and so should you; the complete disregard of basic social empathy, the understanding of why normal human beings consider the Boston bombings a life-changing event but the chemical plant marginally less so, indicates to me a conscience that is capable of thinking unspeakable things. What else can a conscience like that justify?

Some people can manage being a sociopath long-term, and I think we can all name some examples in the tech industry. It's arguable a bit of sociopath can be a valuable tool for career and business building. I don't think being sociopathic is a death sentence, but it should give you pause when dealing with them, that their conscience leads to hypothetical discussions like this rather than "it's just business" types of transactions in the working world.

None of this commentary considers the media or law enforcement response to the Boston events, which Stallman does discuss, and I do not present an opinion on that point (I do have one, but it clouds the issue). Only the point I've discussed above.

EDIT: I've edited through to adjust a point I mistakenly attributed to Stallman which he really didn't say, but is the logical conclusion. I misread one key sentence in the e-mail that I responded to, and should have paid better attention, and I'm sorry. Thank you for bringing it to my attention; my point still stands in the edited form above, and if you've quoted the prior version, I'd appreciate a second chance at making my point. I'm not going to respond individually to those of you who have quoted the prior version, since it would waste column inches, and I hope you notice my edit and act accordingly.

That is an argument that's not supported by the text.

The point that Stallman is making, as I see it, is to be concerned about overspending (and sacrificing freedoms) on rare salient threats, while neglecting more commonplace but more dangerous sources of danger like chemical plants and car accidents.

As a matter of public policy I could not agree more with Stallman here. For more information on this line of argument I'd recommend reading Bruce Schneier, who makes the point passionately and with authority.

My edit specifically applies to the head of your comment.

People who kill others intentionally are going to be treated differently than those who ignore basic safety precaution, as a matter of justice. But we must still pay attention to the magnitude of tragedy when it comes to allocating money to reduce probability of death incidents.

That mean, if car accidents kill more than terrorists each year, there should be more money on accident prevention.

Couldn't agree less with the remainder, because you are comparing car accidents and terrorism, which I specifically said is impossible to do; there is no comparison remotely possible between automotive accidents and terrorism.

You just can't apply numbers to being human. It doesn't work, it will never work, it's really disappointing to see people try, and I notice engineers try to do it more than most people I spend time with.

You seem to be claiming an axiom that we should make reality conform to our irrational emotions more than our attempts at rational analysis -- I think what you're hearing from other engineers is that they've experienced the same conflict and have decided that it's the emotion, rather than the rationality, that ought to leave when deciding how to act.

If you disagree, I think that all you can say is that your personal opinion is that life is aesthetically more pleasing when you stop attempting rationality. I think you should try to recognize that this is just an opinion you have, and not some objective truth that everyone else is failing to acknowledge.

If what RMS says is true (and I admit that I have no way to verify that) and that fertilizer plant is responsible for more deaths than the terrorist attack, then it is a more pressing problem. How can you possibly argue that point (unless dead people as such do not worry you and it is just anger or fear that justifies the actions - but then, who's the sociopath?)

Terrorism is hardly the most pressing problem faced by the US. Due to irrational fears we willingly spend insane amounts of money and have our civil liberties curtailed... To protect us from something that statistically hardly kills more people than lightening.

This is all RMS is trying to point out.

Nobody is saying that these terrorists should not be prosecuted, just that should put this all into perspective.

A rational person interested in the well being of the people would tackle issues like lack of healthcare, edudation, obesity, heart disease, unjust wars, poverty, civil liberties, privacy, etc, etc, just to name a few issues, before tackling terrorism.

An irrational person is driven by fear and anger and thus typically acts against his/her own best interest.

To paraphrase his letter -- your actions should not change based on the events these past few days. Decisions should be made off of data and actual potential to harm, not on what happens to be scary at the time.

Are you seriously tabling the notion that "gee, hundreds of Americans will die in car accidents today, oh well" is even in the same universe as "gee, I think I should drop a bomb in the middle of a crowd"?

The difference here is as wide as the ocean, it is anything but academic.

And this is why some arguments cannot be taken seriously. No one is saying that car accidents, heart disease, and cancer shouldn't be Big Deals, but to say that being idle in these matters is tantamount to mass murder is how you get people to stop taking you seriously.

A society must ensure that crime doesn't pay (because the reason crime is committed in the first place is obviously because it does pay, not necessarily in money, but it does pay). Arrest and punishment is essential for that purpose.

I get that a motivated attacker is a more alarming threat, but that is because we didn't evolve with chemical plants and car accidents.

If you just want to reduce your alarm and comfort you friends. Then focus on dealing with whatever alarms you. But by my standards that's not caring.

'Be appalled by' is cheap and easy. 'react accordingly' is, I'm sorry but that's probably not what you're doing. There are so many people in the world who have demonstrated full intent to kill that if you reacted accordingly you'd become Batman.

If this is just about what we say upsets us as we go about our daily lives, then we can agree to disagree and there's no reason to think worse of each other.

They may care very much about life, see two events one with many deaths, one with few, and a everyone inexplicably spending all of their money fixing the few and seemingly ignoring the obvious cheap fixes for the many.

So because they care (and not because they don't) they reach for their superhero capes and go try to help.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you're saying that adhering to some arbitrary societal standard of behavior in the face of tragedy is more important than, you know, saving lives.

The reason why you think that they are sociopaths is because you are conflating both of them.

Their point is precisely that they shouldn't be conflated. Your point seems to be that not conflating them is what characterises them as sociopaths.

I have some thoughts on the response level, both in the media and law enforcement, but I cannot draw a salient conclusion just yet. The media is an easier target than law enforcement in that regard. I think it's better if I leave that discussion to others like Schneier. My issue is the subtext and, on more than one instance, direct suggestion in Stallman's writing, comparing the two incidents in any way.

RMS, like any intelligent sentient being is capable of thinking complex thoughts and making good points.

But I rail against his thoughtlessness. His constant...sociopathy...it's why he's ineffective in getting his views across, why he treats people like automatons (well documented) and why he's plain and simply put, "not a good person".

I never put it in these terms before, I just always felt "skeeved out" by his writings. Logically, he makes lots of sense, but personally he's as connectable as the sidewalk in front of my house. Sociopathy is the perfect term.

Anybody who can sit in Boston the last week, have a cop murdered in cold blood near his office by two men on an active terror event that just murdered and maimed dozens of people a few days before, and upon the conclusion of that event shit out this garbage before the close of the same day is a person so far removed from empathy, from society and from humanity as to be a sociopath.

I've never gone through such a wild swing of elation, joy and exhaustion, then disappointment, sadness and anger in such a short period of time as today. This isn't the kind of frustrating conspiracy nuttery that's so exasperating written by people so lost in their private world as to have lost touch with reality, this is written by a person fully cognizant of their writing and what he's saying, the time in which he's saying it and the tone in which he's saying it.

it should give you pause when dealing with them, that their conscience leads to hypothetical discussions like this.

I'm going to make active strides to remove these people from my life

Amen, and my first step is to leave this thread after this an never return. My next step is to flag any posts here about RMS. Next is to boycott any events where RMS is to be the speaker and actively lobby events who are thinking about hosting him to rethink that decision based on this writing as well as his piss poor treatment of other human beings in the past.

This is inexcusable, this is madness.

Is it the loss of life? There was tragic loss of life in both instances.

Is it the presence of a human instigator? Or maybe the presence of evil? Are terrorists somehow a greater threat than fertilizer explosions because they are supposed to be rational, sentient actors? Are they representative of all that is wrong with humanity? Why are they more threatening than any of the myriad dangers lurking around every corner in this world? I genuinely want to know.

Maybe the very fact that these types of terrorist attacks are so infrequent is what scares us the most. They are met with such a media circus that it's very hard for us not to react in a visceral way.

Or perhaps the scariest part about them is that it represents a breakdown in what we consider decent. The more normal the terrorist or mass-shooter ends up being the more scared we tend to be. By all accounts, these kids were popular, intelligent, handsome young men. And yet within a very short span of time they were radicalized and capable of committing these attacks. That scares us to our core, even though its frequency is so small it should be considered mathematically insignificant.

We desperately want our terrorists to be caricatures of every evil villain we've ever seen. That makes it easier to deal with. Of course they would blow people up, they're evil! The truth is, these types of events, although caused by humans, are no more explainable than tornadoes, lightning strikes, hurricanes, earthquakes, or any other natural disaster we have no control over. Fertilizer plant explosions, on the other hand, we feel like we can prevent, and so they are not accompanied by emotion, fear, and vengeance. But trying to prevent the radicalization of every single youth on the planet is no different than trying to hold a tsunami at bay with a bucket.

RMS is not being a sociopath, he's analyzing an emotional situation in an unemotional way. It doesn't mean he's dangerous, or an asshole, or incapable of relating to other human beings. It means he's logical and not prone to lapses in judgement due to heightened emotional responses.

Why exactly is that hard to understand?

RMS is not being a sociopath, he's analyzing an emotional situation in an unemotional way.

He's bringing forth a dispassionate, disturbingly cold analysis of an event that should be emotional by any psychological norm before the day has even closed out. It's so outside of social norms as to only be classifiable as an emotional disconnect so extreme it has to be the result of a severe psychological disturbance.

For two reasons:

1) Because it's totally irrelevant. A life is a life. Your life isn't worth more (or less) just because you were killed intentionally (or accidentally). All else being equal, would you rather prevent 100 accidental deaths or 10 intentional murders? Anyone with a shred of morality would save the 100. This isn't "cold analysis". It's prioritizing basic human decency over knee-jerk emotional reactions to sensational events.

2) Because it's inconsistent. If what you really care about is the intent to kill, then you'll focus on run-of-the-mill murders just as much as you focus on sensational bombings. But you don't. So when I try to imagine why you and millions of others care so disproportionately much about the events in Boston, I must eliminate the false reason that "it's because they're intentional." What's left is that you are simply drawn to exciting, sensational, unique events. I can't blame you for that. It's only human. What I can blame you for is having the gall to claim you have the moral high ground. The audacity to condemn people who think rationally about saving lives. It's disgusting to read.

> He's bringing forth a dispassionate, disturbingly cold analysis of an event that should be emotional by any psychological norm before the day has even closed out. It's so outside of social norms as to only be classifiable as an emotional disconnect so extreme it has to be the result of a severe psychological disturbance.

Yes, and 300 years ago it was likely "outside of social norms" to mourn the death of a slave. You're arguing as if behavior being socially normal makes it morally justifiable. That has never been true in the history of the world, and it isn't true today. And one's conformance (or lack thereof) to arbitrary societal norms is certainly not a reflection of psychological disturbance.

You are, quite literally, advocating a herd mentality. Gross.

Is it because I made the same point without emotion, and he's just a little more wrapped up in it? (Not being snarky, genuinely curious.)

For how many people are the above statements both true?

Now, what is more rational to be concerned about?

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm

The detailed statistical list of things to be worried about and in what order.

Any policy overly informed by an animalistic emotional driver instead of proceeding from some sort of logical principal can't be taken seriously.

I've noticed Easterners often can't deal with life at an easy pace while remaining comfortable with the minuscule nature of their existence and thus have trouble living relaxed lives.

Every incident like this illustrates it. If a cartel bombed a motor-home in New Mexico or something there'd be none of this brouhaha because Southwesterners live with open horizons under a sea of stars and can take a step back and don't need to feel validated by trying to rouse the whole country to a frenzy.

Plus it would be far removed from the self-centered self-important East Coast rush where the obvious route to increased salience seems to be requiring a different outfit for everything.

Please stop clutching fear and start reaching towards increased animacy.

So, you're worried more about a few dead people rather than all those people you never heard of dying in hospitals, in motor accidents, and other cause of death? They are someone's aunts, uncles, sons, daughters, friends, lovers, etc.

Maybe we should connect our emotion to the logic rather than the other way around.

Too many engineering types try to apply logic and data analysis to the human experience and it just doesn't make sense. You can't meaningfully talk about death in numbers unless you are counting deaths.

And by then you've lost the point.

The question is how to calculate those costs.

rather than being insulting and getting personal, I'll direct you to this part of the thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5579814

No, that's not what he said. He said more people were killed in the "Texas explosion" he hasn't mentioned anything about the cause other than maybe imply that it was not related to terrorism. He also hasn't maligned the plant owners, but rather suggested that technology might be employed to prevent it from occurring in the same manner again, and that the resources we spend on terrorism and the freedom we've sacrificed might be better spent in other ways.

I don't really see the distinction here. Active intent vs. passive intent to harm others that means that you known that the actions you are taking will hurt, maim, or kill others and that, one way or another, you are OK with that. To say that passive acceptance of one's actions as leading to the ruining and death of others is not as bad as actively going on and committing murder is silly, either way you are justifying your actions and you had the same end result.

> Let's say, for a moment, that Stallman is right, and that the chemical plant owners willfully traded employee safety for money. That's wrong. However, inability to realize that a human being intentionally killing and maiming fellow human beings using explosive devices on the streets of a populated city during a marathon, demonstrating full intent to kill and complete disregard for the free agency of children as young as 8, and blowing people's limbs off on purpose, is the mark of a sociopath.

If you willingly traded employee safety for sake of profit and knew that doing so could reasonably hurt or kill others, you have demonstrated an intent to kill and demonstrated complete disregard for the free agency of people. That the tactics differ between someone dropping a bomb in a crowd vs. someone abusing their business and employees doesn't change the reality that both are doing something evil and destructive to society.

> You concern me if you present an argument to me along these lines, that we should "care more" about the chemical plant or auto accidents on the interstates in a day or ... whatever.

The point is that there are common issues in our society that cause greater loss of life and damage compared to less frequent events like bombing a crowd or a mass shooting. That doesn't mean that a bombing isn't bad or that it is less important. However, these kinds of events receive much more attention and coverage compared to those common dangers.

> I'm more and more convinced lately that the people in my life who have arguments with me like this, including Richard Stallman, are sociopaths, and I'm sorry. I'm going to make active strides to remove these people from my life, and so should you; the complete disregard of basic social empathy, the understanding of why normal human beings consider the Boston bombings a life-changing event but the chemical plant marginally less so, indicates to me a conscience that is capable of thinking unspeakable things.

For some, the chemical plant incident is more of a life-changing event than the Boston bombings. We should have empathy to see this and consider that hearing alternative points of view may provide a richer perspective about how these events affect our lives and the lives of others. If you reject anyone who doesn't agree with you about how important the Boston bombing is, you are saying that you are not interested in empathy in the first place because you are placing your experience and sharing of that experience as more important than others.

The guy who goes to deliberately kill a bunch of people by bombing is probably very much not a sociopath, because a sociopath is someone who sees other people as expendable.

That matches the psychology of someone who doesn't give a shit. Which is your corporate CEO who didn't give a damn about the risks of the chemical plant.

A terrorist bomber may very well care deeply. He might be motivated by hatred. He may be motivated by vengeance. He may think his victims really have it coming to them. He may in fact be the exact opposite of a sociopath.

Other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5579687

I agree that we don't know yet if that was the aim here. I also would agree that the level of terrorist attacks the west is subject to are too small to make us change any policy at all in the way the terrorists wish.

He is sincere. He is mostly right. (He's predicted quite a lot of the modern computing ecology). He is extreme.

His one post will generate many posts from polarised commenters, sometimes those threads will devolve into bitter angry flames.

Everyone already knows this.

Yet it still happens.

It's amazing. God Tier.

this is not a bad thing.

-- Benjamin Franklin

It's not every day that people have their legs blown off while enjoying a public social event.

There's an expectation of danger while driving a car. There is no expectation of danger while spectating at the Boston Marathon.

It's not complicated.

You are in the presence of many other human beings. You are always in a present state of danger around everyone, ever. It is naive to think you can predict the actions of others.

I'm not saying be paranoid, I'm saying treat people like people and not faces in a crowd. You don't know their intentions with rare exception to those you actually know.

There also is no expectation of getting struck by lightning while spectating at the Boston Marathon, yet that is much more likely to happen than getting hit by a terrorist's bomb.

Unless you're trying to say that the odds of being struct by lightning while spectating the Boston Marathon, on a clear sunny day, is high.