Soaring, Cryptography and Nuclear Weapons

Ari wrote:
On Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:14:35 -0700 (PDT), Hellman wrote:

What could soaring possibly have in common with nuclear weapons? To
find out, read my new article "Soaring, Cryptography and Nuclear
Weapons" at

http://www.nuclearrisk.org/soaring_article.php

"On an annual basis, that makes relying on nuclear weapons a 99% safe
maneuver. As with 99.9% safe maneuvers in soaring, that is not as safe
as it sounds and is no cause for complacency. If we continue to rely on
a strategy with a one percent failure rate per year, that adds up to
about 10% in a decade and almost certain destruction within my
grandchildren's lifetimes."

Your math is off, risk is not cumulative.

I don't think he meant "adds up" literally - if he did he wouldn't have
added the "about" qualifier. The multiplicative value of the safe maneuver
ensemble (0.99**10) happens to yield a risk of about 10%. The examples
elsewhere in his article indicates he understands the proper math. It's not
like he doesn't have the education. ;-)

The issue isn't, IMHO, the math, but rather several other points:

0) The redundant identification of a risk already known while speaking
little of a viable solution. Or even whether a solution can be found
because the underlying problem(s) disallow and viable solution.

1) Invention of arbitrary risk percentages over arbitrarily selected
periods.

2) The attempt to apply an objective measure (statistics) to singular
subjective human actions. In this realm, statistics appears about as
relevant a tool as a hammer is to painting.