Monday, November 02, 2015

The nature of speculation


Many people are speculating about what caused the crash of a Russian passenger jet in the Sinai over the weekend. Clearly there needs to be some kind of scientific investigation into the incident before any concrete conclusions can be reached, but if people are going to speculate about anything then an apparently random and terrible loss of life on this scale is almost certainly the kind of thing they're going to speculate about.

Much like the downing of the Malaysian airlines flight over the Ukraine before it, this event has raised the ever present spectre of war and terrorism. It has to be asked what's more likely? A modern jet liner with an experienced crew disintegrating in mid-air for no apparent reason or a bomb / missile causing catastrophic disintegration. For no other reason than statistics and socio-political geography, my money is on the latter at the moment; we shall see.

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