Maxes wager

[Kelley]

At 08:44 AM 11/3/01 -0800, Gar Lipow wrote:
> > Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2001 09:39:00 +0000
> > From: James Heartfield <Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk>
> > Subject: Re: Maxes Wager
> >
> > The problem with this speculation is that there is no way to know about
> > the likely methods, possibilities or even motivations of groups like the
> > perpetrators of 11 September.
>
>
>You are right (skipping ahead) that my main target is the curret bombing 
>campaign. The reason this came up is that Max S. argued that a measure of 
>success of the U.S. current campaign is whether anti-U.S. attacks on a 
>9/11 scale occur again.  The main moral and practical argumenets against 
>this have been made by many people, so I did not   repeat them. But there 
>was one minor point that had been overlooked - that an attack on a 9/11 or 
>even one sixth of a 9/11 attack is unlikely due to capability. In short -- 
>I was simply showing an argumeent as invalid in its own termes, as opposed 
>to showing it wrong in a larger sense.
>
>The basis for my prediction that this is unlikely is the nature of our 
>society rather than the nature of Al-Queda.

terrorism is likely in general, because we live in a society with complex 
division of labor.

terrorist don't necessarily want to kill large numbers of ppl. killing 
large numbers of people backfires: it creates solidarity among those 
attacked, it encourages their resolve to fight back and resist the demands 
of the attackers. smart terrorists will do things to make their enemy's 
lives miserable, like mail random envelopes containing anthrax--which 
worked well after a spectacular attack like S11 to get the message across.