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Originally Posted by smooth
balderdash,
actually, what you need to do is differentiate between probability and plausability. Stompy doens't have a problem discerning the two.
Plausibility is whether something can happen. Stompy said he realized that it could happen.
Probability is whether something will happen, or how often it might occur in a given number of instances in a population.
Stompy claims that these incidents are not very likely to occur, not that it is unable to occur, but that we should be worried about threats and incidents that are more likely (far more likely, in fact) than these in terms of our safety.
What is he mistaken about?
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Gosh, I really had no idea what the difference was between probability and plausibility. Thanks for clearing that up.
Are you really so pedantic?
I think you are looking back at Stompy's posts with rose-tinted glasses.
Yes, I happen to have chosen his use of the term "highly improbable" as an example of how Stompy dismissed this as an issue, and yes, I suppose that opened me up to the fairly silly critique you made above.
However...
Stompy was clearly ridiculing anyone who took this seriously. Yes, he/she said it could happen, but he also made it quite clear that he/she thought it had about an equal chance of success as me shooting a 747 pilot in the eye with a BB gun. From the ground. He/She refused to even consider that such an attack was a serious concern.
SOB's post contains a nice set of excerpts. Please read that again to refresh your memory. Even better, read all of Stompy's posts for the full sense of tone.
In case you missed it, my point has very little to do with the difference between plausibility and probability. It has to do with Stompy's dismissive attitude toward something that turned out to be a legitimate concern.
Thanks.
Edit: one more note: Stompy's problem was not whether he/she was right or wrong. It was about tone. I happen to agree with the point that people should focus on attacks that are more likely to occur, but Stompy could have made it in a far less dismissive tone.
Here is how I would have done it:
Yes, I suppose you could blind a pilot with a laser beam from the ground, but it seems to me like that would be far too difficult to pull off. Plus, unless you can treat the windows in some way to block the laser beams, I don't seem much you can do to defend against it. I think we would be better served to focus on attacks that are more easily carried out and that we can do something to prevent.