Tuesday, December 05, 2006

The .3 Doctrine   [Jonah Goldberg]

In response to yesterday's post about that earth-killing asteroid:

    Hi Mr. Goldberg,

I've heard an interesting definition of risk attributed to a Learned
Hand ruling: risk is the probability of a bad thing happening
multiplied by the severity of the harm if it happens.

Going by this definition, a seemingly small .3% chance of a
world-destroying asteroid striking are certainly not good enough to
justify doing nothing.  This kind of calculation also came up around
the publication a few months ago of Ron Suskind's book, The One
Percent Doctrine.  The book knocked VP Cheney for saying that even
a 1% chance of terrorists getting nuclear weapons merits serious US
action to stop them.  But multiplying the 1% by the severity of a
nuclear terrorist attack in an American city makes Cheney's
statement quite reasonable.  Not how it played in much of the
press, though.
 

12/05 09:49 AMShare