Check this out. It's so absurdly wrong that one can't even say exactly what's wrong with it. Roughly, he thinks that if he weren't wrong, then he'd be right, and therefore he isn't wrong.
« When Broder Attacks | Main | Slime? »
J-Pod's Fuzzy Math
29 Jan 2007 02:47 pm
Comments (33)
On any given day, at least two opinion-mongers named Podhoretz are dead wrong. Projected out over a year, that's at least 730 wrong Podhoretzs/annum (732 in a leap year).
Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?!
"Fat boys with asthma talking tough." (Gore Vidal)
Pod jr. is the archetype.
I don't think it's his math that's wrong, it's his assumptions.
How could the Islamists keep up that kind of kill rate? Only if they had WMD or a big well-armed army burning and pillaging. So if what we care about is how many people actually die, 9/11 was less of a big deal than traffic accidents.
But J-Pod may accidentally have a point...the speed at which death occurs, as well as its concentration and its seeming un-preventable-ness, tend to affect how much people get scared. Which is why people fear mad cow disease more than heart disease, and terrorists more than cars.
I, for one, am much more afraid of cars than terrorists.
Ah, the joys of Podenfreude.
"I, for one, am much more afraid of cars than terrorists."
Personally, I'm petrified by terrorists driving cars while under the influence. Islamists are not used to the effects of alcohol, so they tend to be unskilled at the finer points of drunken driving.
We must invade Detroit before it's too late.
That post by the 9/11 families group seems stupid (although they have "absolute moral authority" - to quote Maureen Dowd - so criticism of them is now and will always be inappropriate and Sam Rosenfeld should be ashamed of himself). And JPod's pointer to it seems likewise stupid.
That being said, JPod's blog post pales in stupidity to the original op-ed by David Bell, which is really the ultimate in stupidity. "Only" ~3,000 died in 9/11, so we have overreacted by invading Afghanistan and Iraq? That's the kind of inanity that one could only find in the Ivory Tower.
Hey, if it was an overreaction to launch wars killing ~3,500 after we "only" suffered ~3,000 deaths in WWII, then perhaps Bell could cast his historian's gaze upon the question of whether it was an overraction to launch wars killing ~300,000 after we "only" suffered ~2,000 death at Pearl Harbor! The funniest thing is that Bell actually notes that--and finds it absurd!
I suppose JPod's defense is that a completely inane op-ed caused him to post an inane blog post in response.
Roughly, he thinks that if he weren't wrong, then he'd be right, and therefore he isn't wrong.
That kind of reminds me of the ontological argument. Or, even more geekily, Löb's Theorem.
What is it with the Right and this kind of demented arithmetic? Remember Josh Trevino estimating the exact length of barbed wire you would need to turn all of Iraq into a concentration camp?. And before that we had self-pitying warbloggers calculating exactly how many minutes out of each hour their predecessors in the Roman legions actually fought.
To base military and foreign policy decisions on calculus' like Bell's is pointless and foolish. The salient factors are far more broad to say the least. That Podhoretz address the issue with more banality just exposes his idiocy more lucidly.
You're Lindberg once again on Goldbergh's corner.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzEyYjQzZGNhZGQ5YTI4OTQ5MTMyNjMxMjc1ZDFmNDc=
I hope people don't start getting hung up on retribution based on numbers killed. With Bush slaughtering thousand of Iraqis every month, there could be a lot of retribution in store.
To be fair, the math isn't J-Pod's; it's from the weird article/response from 9/11 families that he links to in his second post. What J-Pod says himself:
See, because 20 million didn't die on 9/11, like the Soviets suffered during World War II, we have perhaps complained a bit too much about the whole business. That is the view of David A. Bell, a professor at Johns Hopkins, who explains why the worst attack on the United States in our history was, basically, not that big a deal. You know who else is from Baltimore? Nancy Pelosi, who said the war on terror isn't a war but a situation to be "managed." You know who else was from Baltimore? This guy.
And with "This guy" he links to Google photos of Divine, the famous drag queen. Classy guy, J-Pod.
Obviously, if we want to measure the speed at which an Al Qaeda plot can take a given life, we can't just start the clock when the buildings start coming down. We have to measure from the moment they started preparing. (Imagine if we counted the kill rate of car crashes, as Petey does, by how long it takes a single car crash to take place and multiplying by the amount of time in the universe, instead of comparing the number of crashes to the number of hours driven, and it's immediately clear why.)
Taking that into account, AQ has killed just barely under 3000 Americans over the course of what is clearly thousands of hours of preparation, preparation that took place over the course of several years.
Even if we assume that AQ can come up with an equally deadly plan someday, in the same span of time (and let's face it: it ain't likely), we're talking about a threat that would actually take a long time to materialize, and it's that time between initiation and finality that should be the unit of measure.
If Jonah Goldberg has posted about Lindbergh over 2 times in the last three days. If he kept up that rate continuously, Matthew would hate "the Jews", "the Jews" of course, being John Podhoeretz and his dad.
Evil anti-semites walk amoung us, EVEN NOW, raping and killing and flying imaginary airplanes into imaginary buildings, concealed only by their beards!
m, and their yamakas
So David Bell is Daniel Bell's son. It's Pod Jr. versus Bell Jr.
This battle goes back to postwar NYC intellectual circles. Indeed, it's quite possible that Bell was Pod's prof or teaching assistant at Columbia in the 1950s.
That was an excellent article by Bell, and I was even wondering if it was subtly directed at not only general readers but his boss. Plenty of us have been saying the same thing for years now...don't panic and make more of it than it is. They got lucky, and we were sleeping. How many times have we ever been struck in the US by foreign terrorists?
Maybe we should try to similarly project, like American deaths and car crashes, the number of Iraqi civilian deaths coming as a direct result of our invasion. Being that number is in the tens of thousands, upwards surely of 50,000 by now, if not over 100,000, we're talking 50,000 over 46 months, which amounts to 1,000+/month. We'd have to have one 9/11 per quarter for the same 4-year period.
Of course, there should be no connection between the events of 9-11 and the invasion of Iraq, but it what it is (that is how they ultimately justified it).
Jpod. We don't often get to see reversion to the mean exemplified so clearly in public life.
Re: "They got lucky, and we were sleeping."
I agree completely. I suppose its politically incorrect to say it, but the threat from AQ has been vastly overblown ever since 9/11. Our vulnerability, due to the fact that had thousands of flying bombs constantly in the air that we made virtually no effort to secure, was a one-time thing.
Furthermore, if you look back at the AQ activities, particularly the correspondence that was uncovered between the dirty bomber and the leardership, you see how pidly and pathetic the whole operation really was, even before we invaded Afghanistan. That is why its so maddening to see the wingnuts whip up all this hysteria about advocate responses that are all out of proportion.
Liberal hawks too. Tom Friedman seems to think he's discovered a new physical law, in which our support for repressive regimes in the Middle East inevitably produces large scale terrorist attacks on us. This is all based on a single data point, involving 19 hijackers. These people are either hopelessly naive or don't really believe what they're saying.
It rivals Peretz's condemnations of dirty arabs as so barbarian that an arab 'MLK' would not be safe from assasins. (Although one imagines Peretz distinguishes between the refinement of a sniper's bullet and the way he imagines the arab MLK being killed.)
This is one of the most hilarious statements I've ever seen from the Right. There is no end to the potential mockery.
I agree completely. I suppose its politically incorrect to say it, but the threat from AQ has been vastly overblown ever since 9/11.
It's less politically incorrect than politically risky and slightly naive. The amount of people saying that the threat from terrorism is overblown has increased pretty steadily as September 11th moves farther into the past; doesn't that look an awful lot like complacency?
And risky because, should another terrorist attack happen, the fact that liberals have more and more been denying the existence of a terrorist threat would give conservatives a discomfortingly large boost. Democrats would, for a long long time, be the party of idiotic complacency who are too naive to protect America. If anything is an existential threat to American democracy, it's not terrorism, it's the party that protects democracy and human rights being permanently painted as the party unable to defend against it. Democrats have a big, big opportunity at the moment, what with Americans actually trusting them on national security issues. It'd be foolish to blow that on the gamble that terrorism is not a serious problem, even if the odds look good.
(Also, isn't the whole "9/11 was a fluke" argument a little myopic? September 11th was not the only major terrorist attack on a Western democracy.)
cg, that's wrong in a number of ways, mainly because you're accepting the framing established by Bush and the neoconservatives to enact long-desired policies not connected to the events of September 11.
There was no reason to raise a huge panic in this nation after 9-11 - one could argue a strong people would never have done such a thing, especially since that's what terrorism feeds off - the mission of terrorism is to affect political change by the installation of fear in the target population.
Of course, this doesn't mean that we wouldn't take the events of 9-11 seriously, or our defense into the future, but we stand tall and say we will not be deterred or forced to change by a wayward cast of criminals.
Those of us who were saying Bush was blowing up the events of 9-11 were also saying that we should be spending the money being spent on Iraq by shoring up our security here at home - port security, airline security, etc. - i.e. fixing the real problems, not exaggerating minor ones unrelated to 9-11 and conjuring up bogus justifications about "taking the fight to the enemy so we don't fight them here". That was always back-asswards stupid and absurd and it still is.
Also, you want calm and resolute leadership in the face of terror, not what we got which was managed hysterics and propaganda. Sure there was a chance for further attacks, but preparing for them here at home was the way to go, not continually pushing that we would almost be assured to be attacked again, must go to war around the world to stop it, and that we should suspend civil liberties and expand the power of the executive.
What we get now is the absurd arguments that because we haven't been struck again somehow Bush has done a great job. That's just cheap theater, because if he and his supporters hadn't overblown the continuing threat in the first place, this wouldn't be considered such a success, especially when focusing on the very limited improvements made to actual national security in terms of ports, likely entry points for terrorists and weapons, 9-11 recommendations, etc.
If there's another attack, you should be able to show how much you'd done here at home to protect against it, rather than talking about how one more attack may signal the end of Americand democracy as we know it (Franks). That kind of talk is just plain cowardly...we've gone through our revolutionary war and struggle for change over these two centuries and we surrender all of that because of 2 spectacular terrorist attacks that kill less than 10,000? Please, we are not that cowardly, but we have cowardly leaders who are trying to install their own fear and cowardliness in the people. I'm sick of hearing that crap and will always speak out against it.
Osama bin Laden is not a threat to Western democracy or human rights. Only we are ourselves if we are too cowardly to face threat and challenge standing up and in a resolute manner consistent with our values and sense of honor. In other words, INTEGRITY.
By the way, even though I love the show 24, the whole notion that a series of bus bombs would signal the suspension of civil rights and institution of martial law rule by the executive is laughable on its face to any hardened people.
Maybe the lesson is that we're getting soft, but I don't think we're that soft, but our elites and leaders surely seem to be.
Oh, that so reminds me of Wolfgang Pauli:
"That's not right.
It's not even wrong."
cg, that's wrong in a number of ways, mainly because you're accepting the framing established by Bush and the neoconservatives to enact long-desired policies not connected to the events of September 11.
No, I'm not. I agree with most of what you said: I do think terrorism can be combated without resorting to anything the Bush administration has done.
My point, though, was that the American people can only be convinced that Democrats are not "soft" on terror if Democrats treat terrorism as an extremely grave issue, not as something unserious and overhyped. If the case had been made, the people could have been convinced that we didn't need a war in Iraq or Guantanamo Bay or any of those things to fight terrorism. But this case could not have included the argument that September 11th wasn't a big deal--were any politician to say that publicly, the people would freak out and the Republicans would have a field day.
matt,
First of all he assumes a constant rate of death over the "time of the event". This is bizarre, but I won't address it here. Second he discards the circumstances of the event, which define and limit its destructive scope. How many planes would have to crash into how many building before we got to 11 million people? About 3700, assuming a each single plane manages to kill as many people as the 4 hijacked planes did together.
Wow that's pretty freaking amazing. Are there even 3700 757 class planes in America? Considering the hijacked "fleet" consisted of 2 767 and 2 757 Boeing class planes, lets just look at US deliveries of this size of Boeing plane and higher to get a sense of number.
According to Boeing it's delivered 730 757s, 429 767's, and 208 777's, throughout the entire history of these planes product lines. So that's 1367 total planes in existence in America right now that could be used in potential destructive events. Sure sure there are some airbuses, but won't count those.
So assuming we could even find 1367 targets, and we could get all those planes up in the air at the same time, and the US military would be unable to shoot/incapacitate any of them, we are still only less 1/3 of the way to John's 11 million person projection. Clearly if you want to kill millions of American's 9-11 is not the way to do it.
cg, I don't understand the point you're arguing, especially since noone has said 9-11 isn't a big deal, just that it's not as big a deal as it was made out to be as concerns the overall terrorist threat. Obviously you take the terrorism threat seriously, but you do so with action and follow that up with rhetoric. You're basically arguing against a straw man.
"Our vulnerability, due to the fact that had thousands of flying bombs constantly in the air that we made virtually no effort to secure, was a one-time thing."
I interpreted this as meaning that terrorism is not a serious threat; is the proper interpretation that airplane terrorism is not a serious threat? This seems to be what you're saying, at least, when you say that September 11th is "not as big a deal as it was made out to be as concerns the overall terrorist threat."
By my arithmetic the number in question is over 15 million, which means Mr. Sumner's 'more than 11 million' is correct but also 'fuzzy'. Is that what Matt had in mind?
I'm surprised that I seem to be the first commenter to have done the arithmetic.
I agree with Bell's main conclusion, but I'm skeptical of some of his included points, which he fails to support. For example:
'So why has there been such an overreaction? Unfortunately, the commentators who detect one have generally explained it in a tired, predictably ideological way: calling the United States a uniquely paranoid aggressor that always overreacts to provocation.'
For an example he cites a book by 'political scientist John Mueller', but doesn't provide a single direct quote. More than one example is called for to establish that such an extreme view has been so 'generally' expressed.
Mr. Sumner responds:
'What number would have satisfied Mr. Bell. I mean, how many needed to die on 9/11, in all the previous attacks, and in future attacks by Islamofascists for America to no longer be a "paranoid aggressor?"'
But Bell obviously disagrees with the view of his 'commentators', using words like 'unfortunately', 'tired', and 'ideological'.
Sumner than attributes to Bell such opinions as 'America should never use overwhelming force, no matter how many lives it ultimately saves', and 'America had not yet suffered enough when it used nuclear weapons to end Japan’s resistance'. Bell's piece actually says nothing about these matters.
These strawman attacks seem more significant to me than the 'fuzzy math'.
Just to take it to the quantum limit of inanity...
Nelson Rockerfeller died while having sex. He was alive one Planck time, and dead the next. If we assume that sex kills one person per Planck time, all of humanity will be dead in well under a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second. STOP SEX NOW!
Sorry if I sounded like Carl Sagan with a lisp there.
Comments closed February 12, 2007.
| 
Heads in the Sand
A nasty car crash can kill four people in one second. Taking Mr. Podhoretz's scenario one step further, if car crashes killed 4 people here during every second of the year, more than 126 million would be killed.
Personally, I think we ought to invade Detroit before it's too late.
Posted by Petey | January 29, 2007 2:58 PM