From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Fri Jul 26 2002 - 12:48:56 MDT
See my reply to Harvey. Knowing a statistic is not always enough to be able
to do something about it.
Rafal
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-extropians@extropy.org
[mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]On Behalf Of louisnews@comcast.net
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2002 8:40 AM
To: extropians@extropy.org
Subject: RE: group based judgment
> and Rafal responded
> ### I only want to know why advanced testing should not be guided
> ### in part by statistical data,
Quite simply, statistics only work if the subject is not aware of what is
being measured. (That's why blind studies, and double blind studies are
conducted.)
In this case, any statistics we observed would not hold true in the
future because the terrorists would simply change their actions based on
our statistics.
A good case in point: Why do you think so many terrorists took flight
training? They only needed one pilot per plane. Why go through the
expense of training everyone? Specifically because pilots don't usually
get searched! As a "courtesy", pilots used to be able to walk right by
security.
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