Shooting at Virginia Tech

[framed]

I saw this article today by Bruce Schneir about rare risks and overreactions. His basic message is that humans aren't really wired well to put rare and novel risks into perspective. In his words: Novelty plus dread equals overreaction in humans.

All the coverage on this topic, and debate around cause and effect, and what we should have done, or should do going forward, or who's fault it was is really symptomatic of that. Once an event gets to a certain level of rarity, it usually isn't anyones fault.

So, when faced with a very available and highly vivid event like 9/11 or the Virginia Tech shootings, we overreact. And when faced with all the salient related events, we assume causality. We pass the Patriot Act. We think if we give guns out to students, or maybe make it harder for students to get guns, we'll have solved the problem. We don't let our children go to playgrounds unsupervised. We stay out of the ocean because we read about a shark attack somewhere.

It's our brains again. We need to "do something," even if that something doesn't make sense; even if it is ineffective. And we need to do something directly related to the details of the actual event. So instead of implementing effective, but more general, security measures to reduce the risk of terrorism, we ban box cutters on airplanes. And we look back on the Virginia Tech massacre with 20-20 hindsight and recriminate ourselves about the things we should have done.

I'm not saying its wrong to question the medical staff, the folks who committed Cho for a short while, the administration, etc.. But at some point you have to accept that such a random, low probability event is not predictable, and to an extent such events are not stoppable without expending far more resources than its worth to contain whats essentially the chaos of life.

 

[mamab]

That's an interesting premise, but I'm not sure I agree with it. Yes, some things are just a part of the "chaos of life." But I think that people with depression and/or mental illness aren't taken seriously enough, and there were definite warning signs that either were overlooked, or ignored. I think this instance could have been avoided.

 

[framed]

Any attack can be avoided if you know in advance where its coming from. The point is without the benefit of hindsight its extremely difficult to predict all possible avenues of danger, and effectively prevent them. Let alone doing so at a cost that society can manage.