Comments on: Intelligence and Thuggery

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Sun, 27 May 2007 21:08:26 +0000

Not long ago a government minister in some country, maybe Mexico, made a flashy example of having a miniature homing transmitter or RFID chip implanted in his arm as a deterrent to kidnapping. Of course it was no such thing. What it did instead was to make it likely that anyone who kidnapped him would cut off his arm. (I think Bruce Scheier made this point.)

Another example of this kind of bad thinking is automobile door locks, which have made more effective without adequate consideration of how car thieves might change their behavior in response. Now that it’s more difficult to break into cars, some thieves who might otherwise jimmy the lock resort instead to carjacking, with its attendant high risk of death or injury for the victims.

The general error in these cases is overconfidence on the part of the system designer. Everyone is overconfident to some degree — it’s human nature. But very intelligent, educated people seem on average to be more overconfident than other people are.

By: Elliot

Elliot — Mon, 21 May 2007 20:44:40 +0000

Suppose you were told there is one million dollars in cash on the dining room table of a specific average American house. You will be given five minutes to get it. If you get it within five minutes, you can keep it. You can bring only the tools you can carry. You have 24 hours to prepare.

Think about it. This is how secure the average American house is.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Mon, 21 May 2007 20:08:32 +0000

I guess the LBJ example makes it clear that this phenomenon isn’t limited to intellectuals…certainly no one could have ever called LBJ an intellectual…although it is probably more prevalent among them.

Wasn’t it Heinlein who said “Even smart sons of bitches are dumb off their home ground”…or something like that?

By: Shannon Love

Shannon Love — Mon, 21 May 2007 19:54:03 +0000

People have an innate bias that if they themselves cannot or will not do something then someone else can’t or won’t either.

It is very amusing to see how easily expensive physical security setups designed by the middle-aged can be defeated by the leaping and crawling powers of teenage males. Likewise, many people have been burgled because it never occurred to them that someone could slip through a bathroom window or a transom. More, darkly, many people are shocked when they first encounter the lengths that drug addicts will go in pursuit of their addiction.

I think many intellectuals want to believe that others who present threats share the same basic cultural or moralistic axioms because only then can the intellectuals hope to manipulate them.

By: veryretired

veryretired — Mon, 21 May 2007 17:21:32 +0000

Shannon has written several times about the need for intellectuals to believe that their skills are the key to solving all problems, and the concommitent need to play down the usefullness of force, as it negates all their subtleties and nuances.

I have long thought that the perfect example of the situation you are describing was LBJ’s conduct of the Vietnam War. He essentially ran the war in the same way he ran, very successfully btw, the Senate when he was majority leader. A little of the “Johnson method” was perks for the loyal, penalties for those who wouldn’t go with the program, drinks and rough humor for the “inner circle”, cold, threatening phone calls and unpleasant committee assignments for those too foolish to go along.

Carrots and sticks. When he tried the same on a larger scale on the N Viets, they didn’t play, and he was completely flummoxed.