Ten years ago, I made the following bet with French Israeli professor Raphael Franck:
If the total number of deaths in France from riots and terrorism is less
than 500 between May 28, 2008 and May 28, 2018, Franck owes me $50. If
the total number is 500 or more, I owe him $50.
Over this period, the total number of deaths in France from terrorism was 265. (Wikipedia’s numbers come from the canonical Global Terrorism Database). I cannot find any official statistics on rioting deaths. But even the most famous riots during this period appear to have a cumulative body count of zero. I have therefore won our bet – and by a large margin.
Prof. Franck, to be fair, disputes this determination. With his permission, I’ll soon post his alternative count in his own words. The key disputes, as far as I can tell:
1. Franck counts the Germanwings Flight 9525 incident as terrorism, even though almost no informed observer concurs.
2. Franck counts almost all people killed by French police during this period as “rioters.”
Needless to say, I maintain that my victory is beyond reasonable doubt – though I do regret my failure to pre-specify an official data source and arbiter to avoid this impasse. I should have taken Tetlock even more seriously than I already do.
Still, my current track record now stands at 18 wins, 0 losses. And out of all my bets I’ve won so far, I think we learn the most from this one.
To see why, imagine that Franck and I had publicly disagreed about whether French terrorism and riots would be a “severe problem in the next decade.” Looking back, virtually everyone would agree that Franck was right and I was wrong. Every incident in France would be treated as further proof of my Pollyanna blindness to the horrors of the world.
Since we settled on a specific number, however, fair-minded spectators will now see a very different story. Franck – a vocal pessimist on these matters – wouldn’t have bet if he didn’t expect the standard number to be worse than 500 – probably markedly worse. Hence, contrary to casual observers, the pessimists were not “vindicated by events.” Far from it.
The flip side, of course, is that I would not have agreed to 500 if I didn’t expect a lower number. What actually happened stands at roughly the 80th percentile of what I expected based on long-run base rates. But statistically speaking, what occurred remains a tiny problem. Over a thousand people are murdered on Earth on a typical day. From 2008-2015 (the last available year), France’s murder rate ranged from 1.2 to 1.6 per 100,000. That comes to roughly 800 murders per year in France, about 3% of them committed by terrorists.
If ethnic Frenchmen from Breton or Normandy were responsible for a crime wave of this magnitude, would anyone outside of France even take notice? It’s hard to imagine. Would anyone in or out of France use it to justify any form of collective punishment? Again, it’s hard to imagine. But collective punishment is what terrorism-inspired immigration “reforms” around the world amount to. There are many polite ways to say, “Most terrorist attacks are perpetrated by Muslims, so let’s keep Muslims out,” but good manners don’t change the fact that countries are punishing millions for the villainy of a small minority.
As someone who’s had a public conversation with Nassim Taleb, I know that terrorism has a big right tail. But so do a great many risks that we calmly endure. Every bite of food you take could be poisoned. Every car ride you take could be your last. Every baby born could be the next Hitler. The sober response in all these cases is to exert moderate caution, not assume the worst.
Last question: Would I take the same bet again? Yes, though only with a pre-specified data source and arbiter. While things turned out worse than I expected, I also think that ISIS was a once-in-a-generation disaster. Email me for specifics if you’re interested.
READER COMMENTS
robc
May 29 2018 at 2:44pm
Your link seems to confirm that informed observers **DO** think the Germanwings crash was terrorism.
Not your normal terrorism, but still terrorism.
I think you lost the bet.
Which is good, because if you were undefeated, it means you aren’t betting enough.
Gerald
May 29 2018 at 2:58pm
Unless I have misunderstood, it seems the point of the bet was to demonstrate to Mr. Franck that terrorism in France is “a tiny problem.” The question I have is whether the nature of the problem is truly susceptible to this type of numerical measurement (i.e. number of deaths).
I recall some years ago that Israel was enduring daily Hamas rocket attacks upon its citizenry. People would be forced to flee to bunkers at any moment, children were terrified and could not attend school, and daily life was significantly disrupted. Very few people were killed, but it would seem incorrect to conclude that, as a result, the Hamas terrorism was “a tiny problem”. After all, the point of terrorism is not to rack up huge death counts, but to sow terror.
Also, to get a clearer picture of the circumstances, it would be helpful to know how many deaths would have occurred if not for the disruption of terrorist plots by law enforcement.
Matt C.
May 29 2018 at 3:01pm
Even if the Germanwings crash could be classified as terrorism, its inclusion in the best is still dubious. True, the people on the flight died in France. But it was a flight from Spain to German with no French nationals on board.
Jeff W
May 29 2018 at 3:21pm
Even if GermanAirWings were terrorism, the number of deaths would still be under 500.
Oscar
May 29 2018 at 3:30pm
Terrorism is far from the main reason to keep Muslims from immigrating to the West. Western countries would be wise to follow Israel’s model for immigration and demographics.
Name
May 29 2018 at 3:54pm
I’m curious if anyone knows the homicide rate by Muslims in France (not just terrorism)? That seems relevant to the point you’re making about the percentage of total murders.
MattW
May 29 2018 at 6:18pm
Homicide rate (or crime generally) by people of french heritage vs migrants from the middle east and africa which is most likely what Franck was using terrorism as a proxy for.
Mark Z
May 29 2018 at 7:11pm
robc,
I didn’t see terrorism mentioned in the wikipedia article. It seems the consensus is that the co-pilot’s motivations were suicidal depression and psychosis, not political or religious in any way. And killing a lot of people is not (according to most definitions) sufficient for an act to be terrorism. Additionally, 150 people died, putting the total at 415, still below 500.
In any case, I think Bryan overstates the significance of betting, as they relate to the concept of “skin in the game.” Losing $50 is nothing to Bryan. His betting is basically the equivalent of making a clear public prediction, and being willing to put his reputation on the line. And that’s great, but that’s because it encourages greater intellectual honesty, it has nothing to do material incentives given the negligible amount of money at stake.
Tom West
May 29 2018 at 11:25pm
As Bryan made clear in his post, the most important part of the bet is that it forces on to quantify a nebulous narrative.
It forces one to pre-qualify the narrative with actual numbers.
As far as the material incentives go, the loss is almost immaterial. However, it’s amazing how many people making staunch claims with absolute certainty then balk when asked to back up the claim with even small amounts of money.
I now regularly try to ask myself “how much would I be willing to publicly bet” before making claims that I would have otherwise classified as “certain”. Turns out I’m not nearly as certain as I thought.
Noah Carl
May 30 2018 at 2:51am
Taleb would say that it is incoherent to accept that terrorism deaths has a big right tail but then still make inferences from base rates
robc
May 30 2018 at 9:13am
Mark Z,
wikipedia wasnt the first link brought back by Bryan’s link, the first link I got discussed how Germanwings fits the literal definition of terrorism, even if it isn’t what we typically think of as terrorism.
And as Futurama has taught us, technically correct is the best kind of correct.
Mark Z
May 30 2018 at 12:04pm
robc,
“the first link I got discussed how Germanwings fits the literal definition of terrorism”
Well, I disagree with the link; I don’t think it does meet the literal definition of ‘terrorism’, per Merriam and Webster or dictionary.com
Tom West
May 30 2018 at 10:57pm
How ridiculously simplistic to measure the problems associated with mass immigration simply by number of deaths.
The trouble is that the hard numbers of reality often don’t cater to our instincts (no matter where those instincts lie), and betting on real metrics is a good way of putting the brakes on the irrationality we’re all prone to.
Anyone who has an open mind, when confronted with a gamble they’ve lost, should now be asking “what other assumptions have I been making that I am wrong about”.
But betting is no panacea. It’s only useful if you are seeking rationality, rather than simply trying to shore up a pre-existing belief with whatever facts one can find, while discarding anything that doesn’t fit.
So, in toto, it’s just another tool towards rationality.
Robin
May 31 2018 at 5:23am
This bet itself presumes, incorrectly I think, that there is a clear-cut definition of terrorism. Imagine that a Moroccan muslim in a European city illegally stops his car in front a train station, where it’s not allowed. The police confront him about it, at which point he drives into a group of pedestrians, injuring about a dozen, some of them seriously. Is that a terrorist attack? Precisely that happened in Amsterdam last summer, but the Dutch media and police disappeared it as an accident resulting from the diabetic driver suddenly falling faint (it was ramadan, after all), and then somehow still managing to step on the gas and shift the car into gear. Maybe that was wise of them in terms of maintaining tourism revenue, but was it a terrorist attack?
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