I think the analogous comparison would involve replacing terrorist attack deaths per year by the number of different people travelling by plane per year. So we would have to assume, in the last 51.5 years, only:
9.63 k different people travelled by plane in a random single calendar year.
At most 44.6 k different people travelled by plane in a single calendar year.
I don’t really understand what you’re getting at here? Would you be able to spell it out more clearly?
(Or if someone else understands and I’m just missing it, feel free to jump in!)
Sorry for the lack of clarity. Basically, I was trying to point out that the structure of the data we had on people travelling by plane in 1900 (only in 1903) is different from that we have on terrorist attack deaths now. Then I described hypothetical data on travelling by plane with a similar structure to that we have on terrorist attack deaths now.
One could argue no people having travelled by plane until 1900 is analogous to no people having been killed in terrorist attacks, which would set an even lower prior probability of human extinction due to a terrorist attack (I would just be extrapolating based on e.g. 50 or so 0s, respecting 50 or so years of no terrorist attack deaths), whereas apparently 45 % of people in the US travelled by plane in 2015.
However, in the absence of data on people travelling by plane, it would make sense to use other reference class instead of extrapolating based on a bunch of 0s. Once one used an appropriate reference class, it is possible lots of people travelling now by plane does not seem so surprising. In addition, one may be falling prey to hindsight bias to some extent. Maybe so many people travelling by plane (e.g. instead of having more remote work) was not that likely ex ante.
I don’t really understand what you’re getting at here? Would you be able to spell it out more clearly?
(Or if someone else understands and I’m just missing it, feel free to jump in!)
Sorry for the lack of clarity. Basically, I was trying to point out that the structure of the data we had on people travelling by plane in 1900 (only in 1903) is different from that we have on terrorist attack deaths now. Then I described hypothetical data on travelling by plane with a similar structure to that we have on terrorist attack deaths now.
One could argue no people having travelled by plane until 1900 is analogous to no people having been killed in terrorist attacks, which would set an even lower prior probability of human extinction due to a terrorist attack (I would just be extrapolating based on e.g. 50 or so 0s, respecting 50 or so years of no terrorist attack deaths), whereas apparently 45 % of people in the US travelled by plane in 2015.
However, in the absence of data on people travelling by plane, it would make sense to use other reference class instead of extrapolating based on a bunch of 0s. Once one used an appropriate reference class, it is possible lots of people travelling now by plane does not seem so surprising. In addition, one may be falling prey to hindsight bias to some extent. Maybe so many people travelling by plane (e.g. instead of having more remote work) was not that likely ex ante.