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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated

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To: unclewest who wrote (78075)	10/16/2004 2:25:32 PM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (2) of 793843

That story on the BBC "documentary" got my blood pressure up. Ludicrous. It's a good example of the "nuisance" theory of terrorism. I think the major problem in that sort of thinking is mistaking moral intent with statistically certain risk. There is a type of risk of harm which is tolerable because it is statistically inevitable. If an act is repeated often enough, eventually a harm will result simply due to the law of averages. There is no moral content to such risks, they're simply a result of living in a probabilistic world. We can act to minimize those risks through regulation, or pricing the harm to create incentives to prevent. But terrorism is not a probabilistic risk. It is a morally intentional act. The fact that a certain intentionally caused risk has a small actual risk of harm doesn't matter - the creation of the risk is morally bankrupt and intolerable. And unlike probabilistic risks, it is 100% preventable. Because we can eliminate the causative agents, and the conditions which motivate them. The people that made that documentary deny human agency. As if terrorism is a force of nature, or a result of the law of averages. False premises. Derek

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