I don't think it matters whether its that statistically significant. You can increase expected-value by increasing likelihood of occurrence, or increase the value of the outcome.
Take a loan shark, for example. You don't need to take a leg every time a loan is late. You just need to do it to enough of them, visibly enough, that everyone gets the message -- you can miss a payment, and maybe get away with it... but you also might get seriously fucked up.
And suddenly, no one's missing payments. Because the % chance of failure might be low, but the damage done is dramatically high (potentially infinite, if you escalate from taking legs to taking heads) -- giving you a very a high expected-value.
You only need to expel a few people from society for espousing wrong-think, to get most people to fear speaking wrong (accidentally, or intentionally). And it's perfectly rational.
Regarding terrorism, it's the same thing. You don't need to have that many terrorist events for it to be rational to defend heavily against them -- if they do enough damage (e.g. 9/11), they've made up for their rarity. The problem with defense-against-terrorism is that it's used to justify things that have nothing to do with it, or very weakly related (eg invasion of countries, elimination of security protocols, invasions of privacy, etc) and is used as a scapegoat for all sorts of nefarious activity.
The part that's irrational is not the fear of terrorists, but rather the mindless interpretation of anything that claims to help resolve that fear.
Take a loan shark, for example. You don't need to take a leg every time a loan is late. You just need to do it to enough of them, visibly enough, that everyone gets the message -- you can miss a payment, and maybe get away with it... but you also might get seriously fucked up.
And suddenly, no one's missing payments. Because the % chance of failure might be low, but the damage done is dramatically high (potentially infinite, if you escalate from taking legs to taking heads) -- giving you a very a high expected-value.
You only need to expel a few people from society for espousing wrong-think, to get most people to fear speaking wrong (accidentally, or intentionally). And it's perfectly rational.
Regarding terrorism, it's the same thing. You don't need to have that many terrorist events for it to be rational to defend heavily against them -- if they do enough damage (e.g. 9/11), they've made up for their rarity. The problem with defense-against-terrorism is that it's used to justify things that have nothing to do with it, or very weakly related (eg invasion of countries, elimination of security protocols, invasions of privacy, etc) and is used as a scapegoat for all sorts of nefarious activity.
The part that's irrational is not the fear of terrorists, but rather the mindless interpretation of anything that claims to help resolve that fear.