when the safety lobby proved that passivity would save more risked-lives in the long run than reactivity, passivity became universal policy. women are told that their best chance of surviving a rape attack is to submit; citizens in general are told that their best chance of surviving a robbery is to submit; transport passengers are told that their best chance of surviving a hijacking is to submit; and so on. and sure enough, fewer of the lives risked by these kinds of attacks are lost when a policy of submission and passivity is followed.
but are more lives risked in more attacks of this kind than would be risked if the policy were more reactive? the safety lobby hasn't been asked to measure or prove anything on that topic. many of us (probably including richard smith here) were inspired by stories like robert heinlein's Beyond This Horizon, where the universal policy was reaction, and noone committed or even planned any kind of attack on anybody or anything without taking into account an armed populance, which ordinarily was therefore a very polite populance. certainly 9/11 changed the rules for transport passengers. nowadays and for some years to come, anybody acting even a little bit odd on a commercial air trip is going to get tackled by their otherwise-peace-loving fellow passengers. the new rules trade a more certain death for those who are attacked, in exchange for fewer attacks overall. how we insist on living has a lot to do with how we're willing to die, and vice versa. i hope this explains why i tolerate very high false-positive rates in my spam filtering. i won't have my world held hostage. as james taylor said, ain't nothing gonna change until somebody somewhere decides to stand up and fight. -- Paul Vixie _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
