Security is not what you think it is

2011 shapes up to be quite an interesting year: The – still ongoing – revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East make for a furious first act, followed by a short comic interlude by German ex-defense minister, ex-PhD Guttenberg. Then the large quake in Japan, the tsunami, and now…this.

This leads me to the following observation. Security, as some clever people have remarked, is not an objective state, but simply a statement about risk – of the probability of something breaking down. “Security” just means that the probability of badness happening is low enough that you can live with the consequences of the badness. But the chance of failure will never drop to zero – in any system. Thus, talking about the “absolute safety” of any system is not a technical statement, but an ideological fallacy. This fallacy is mostly based on the assumption that one can cover all angles of a project (and that means all angles, with some kind of godlike vision and understanding), that everyone involved will always do a perfect job because no one will be tired, angry, stupid, proud, distracted, distraught or greedy - ever. In short: The project will be executed by perfect men. Regrettably, one of them is in a chained up in a basement in Johannesburg (for obvious reasons), while the other refuses to speak to people until he has counted all grains of sand on a certain beach in Mexico (also for obvious reasons).

In most circumstances, perceiving a risk which is "close enough to zero" as "equal to zero" can be quite useful, even necessary. This shift enables us to leave the house, to cross streets, buy groceries, ride bikes without worrying too much, even if the risk of badness happening are far from zero. But if the consequences of badness happening approach some kind of absoluteness themselves (this country is closed to humans until further notice) it is time to have a hard look at the fallacy of "close to zero equals zero" - and those who try to sell it to us.