Depends on your definition of terrorism. Here's mine: an act of terrorism is an attack designed to elicit a reaction massively disproportionate to the damage directly caused, typically perpetrated by a non-state actor. This is why terrorists target planes, because plane crashes generate tremendous news coverage.
By contrast, if a person found an unnoticeable way to sabotage all cars in a city, making them slightly more likely to crash, and didn't seek credit, this would not be terrorism even if the act killed very many people.
You might say that our tolerance for the danger of driving is logically inconsistent with our expectations of perfect air travel safety. Is that irrationality a learned or innate one? Probably a mix, but certainly at least partially innate, similar to the human tendencies to value immediate rewards much higher than future rewards, or the loss aversion bias.
> Here's mine: an act of terrorism is an attack designed to elicit a reaction massively disproportionate to the damage directly caused
I see where you're coming from, but I feel it's too subjective. The massively disproportionate action is not under the control of the terrorizer, but rather the publicist. The media really controls who we consider to be "terrorists", rather than any empirical metric.
If we have counter-terrorist groups who just go after terrorists, shouldn't we define who terrorists are? We start using words like "cyber-terrorists", and now we're all included. I just find no value in the semantic classification of boogie men except for expansion of our police state.
By contrast, if a person found an unnoticeable way to sabotage all cars in a city, making them slightly more likely to crash, and didn't seek credit, this would not be terrorism even if the act killed very many people.
You might say that our tolerance for the danger of driving is logically inconsistent with our expectations of perfect air travel safety. Is that irrationality a learned or innate one? Probably a mix, but certainly at least partially innate, similar to the human tendencies to value immediate rewards much higher than future rewards, or the loss aversion bias.