Panic Attract

Two columns that are completely on-the-mark in their assessment of the unnecessary pants-peeing terror hype we've seen in this country in the wake of the failed "underwear bombing," and how the drama-addicted media, as usual, are largely to blame:

"We're doing these things even though this particular plot was chosen precisely because we weren't screening for it; future al Qaeda attacks rarely look like past attacks; and the terrorist threat is far broader than attacks against airplanes.
We're doing these things even though airplane terrorism is incredibly rare, the risk is no greater today than it was in previous decades, the taxi to the airport is still more dangerous than the flight, and ten times as many Americans are killed by lightning as by terrorists...

The Underwear Bomber is precisely the sort of story we humans tend to overreact to. Our brains aren't very good at probability and risk analysis, especially when it comes to rare events. Our brains are much better at processing the simple risks we've had to deal with throughout most of our species' existence, and much poorer at evaluating the complex risks modern society forces us to face. We exaggerate spectacular rare events, and downplay familiar and common ones...

I tell people that if it's in the news, don't worry about it. The very definition of "news" is "something that hardly ever happens." It's when something isn't in the news, when it's so common that it's no longer news -- car crashes, domestic violence -- that you should start worrying."

CNN.com: "Stop the Panic on Airline Security" by Bruce Schneier/1.7.10

"Islamic extremists can't invade the United States or cripple its armed forces, can't heavily damage the nation's infrastructure or productive capacity, can't impair the nation's functioning nor undermine its government. All they're capable of -- and the Flight 253 episode shows them not terribly good at that -- are mass murder atrocities, the purpose of which is to terrify Americans into doing stupid things that sap our morale and damage ourselves.

Things like invading Iraq, resorting to using torture, abandoning the rule of law and demanding authoritarian solutions that provide a false sense of security to people quivering with media-amplified fear."

Salon: "Terrorized by the Media" by Gene Lyons/1.6.10