Political Crossfire Forums

[The Russian]

I just spent a little while reading a VERY good article in the NYT about how we have serious problems with estimating risk, and that we have evolutionary left-overs that threaten modern risk perception where consequences are greater if not global.

Read: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1562978-1,00.html

My perception is that these risks become even greater when a nation is democratic, or even a republic, because of the collectivist mind in which statistically cooler heads do not prevail, because of simple statistics of educated vs. uneducated, and over-thinkers vs. reactionists.

I'll clip a few nice paragraphs for you guys, but not even i can summarize the whole thing:

Quote: It would be a lot easier to enjoy your life if there weren't so many things trying to kill you every day. The problems start even before you're fully awake. There's the fall out of bed that kills 600 Americans each year. There's the early-morning heart attack, which is 40% more common than those that strike later in the day. There's the fatal plunge down the stairs, the bite of sausage that gets lodged in your throat, the tumble on the slippery sidewalk as you leave the house, the high-speed automotive pinball game that is your daily commute. Other dangers stalk you all day long. Will a cabbie's brakes fail when you're in the crosswalk? Will you have a violent reaction to bad food? And what about the risks you carry with you all your life?



Quote: We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones. Six Muslims traveling from a religious conference were thrown off a plane last week in Minneapolis, Minn., even as unscreened cargo continues to stream into ports on both coasts. Shoppers still look askance at a bag of spinach for fear of E. coli bacteria while filling their carts with fat-sodden French fries and salt-crusted nachos. We put filters on faucets, install air ionizers in our homes and lather ourselves with antibacterial soap. "We used to measure contaminants down to the parts per million," says Dan McGinn, a former Capitol Hill staff member and now a private risk consultant. "Now it's parts per billion."

Quote: To probe the risk-assessment mechanisms of the human mind, Joseph LeDoux, a professor of neuroscience at New York University and the author of The Emotional Brain, studies fear pathways in laboratory animals. He explains that the jumpiest part of the brain--of mouse and man--is the amygdala, a primitive, almond-shaped clump of tissue that sits just above the brainstem. When you spot potential danger--a stick in the grass that may be a snake, a shadow around a corner that could be a mugger--it's the amygdala that reacts the most dramatically, triggering the fight-or-flight reaction that pumps adrenaline and other hormones into your bloodstream.

It's not until a fraction of a second later that the higher regions of the brain get the signal and begin to sort out whether the danger is real. But that fraction of a second causes us to experience the fear far more vividly than we do the rational response--an advantage that doesn't disappear with time. The brain is wired in such a way that nerve signals travel more readily from the amygdala to the upper regions than from the upper regions back down. Setting off your internal alarm is quite easy, but shutting it down takes some doing.

and the list goes on and on... incredibly enlightening article.

I worry greatly that our perceived risks about global movements, governments, and environment are often wrong... and history can point to a lot of mistakes on all these grounds... except the danger has never been as global as it is now, with nuclear weapons, world-splitting alliances, and how we ignore the more visible and measurable effects of pollution of modern day. What are 3,000 lives and two buildings, if the east and west coasts are under water? ... and other things of that nature. Other times I find myself worried that some military officer transporting a nuclear warhead falls asleep at the wheel and rams into a jet-fuel tanker, and all I can think about is that this is highly un-probable, but have problems coping with such thoughts creeping into daily judgements on the course of action I take when reacting to things like stories in the media or news articles.

What would you think if there realy were stories like "drunk driver hauling nuclear warheads barely misses a jet-fuel tanker" next to "global temperatures estimated at breaking point between the next ice-age." ... just which of these is more laced with paranoia than probability?

please discuss.

[bob.appleyard]

It is extremely difficult to distinguish between unlikely events and fantastically unlikely events, and there is most likely a survival advantage in being over-cautious.

There is a tendency for spectacular things which are amazingly improbable (such as a nuclear accident or a terrorist attack) to receive much more attention and worry than more common (if still pretty unlikely) occurrences, such as being involved in a traffic accident.

So you get people who are afraid of flying, but have you ever met anyone who's too scared to cross the road?

[The Russian]

bob.appleyard wrote: It is extremely difficult to distinguish between unlikely events and fantastically unlikely events, and there is most likely a survival advantage in being over-cautious.

There is a tendency for spectacular things which are amazingly improbable (such as a nuclear accident or a terrorist attack) to receive much more attention and worry than more common (if still pretty unlikely) occurrences, such as being involved in a traffic accident.

So you get people who are afraid of flying, but have you ever met anyone who's too scared to cross the road?

If you read further through, that article actualy presents you with very supportive evidence:

Quote: We similarly misjudge risk if we feel we have some control over it, even if it's an illusory sense. The decision to drive instead of fly is the most commonly cited example, probably because it's such a good one. Behind the wheel, we're in charge; in the passenger seat of a crowded airline, we might as well be cargo. So white-knuckle flyers routinely choose the car, heedless of the fact that at most a few hundred people die in U.S. commercial airline crashes in a year, compared with 44,000 killed in motor-vehicle wrecks. The most white-knuckle time of all was post--Sept. 11, when even confident flyers took to the roads. Not surprisingly, from October through December 2001 there were 1,000 more highway fatalities than in the same period the year before, in part because there were simply more cars around. "It was called the '9/11 effect.' It produced a third again as many fatalities as the terrorist attacks," says David Ropeik, an independent risk consultant and a former professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.

[sLiPpY]

:think: I think it's simpler than that.

Such as the inability to perceive a bump, that might flail one off a Segway.

[The Russian]

sLiPpY wrote: :think: I think it's simpler than that.

Such as the inability to perceive a bump, that might flail one off a Segway.

I'm talking about risks you can forsee, and even understand the probability of, but derail true perception based on reactionist thought. ie: terrorist act vs. drowning in a tub.

[sLiPpY]

The Russian wrote: sLiPpY wrote: :think: I think it's simpler than that.

Such as the inability to perceive a bump, that might flail one off a Segway.

I'm talking about risks you can forsee, and even understand the probability of, but derail true perception based on reactionist thought. ie: terrorist act vs. drowning in a tub.

I see where you're going...and have a little story to illustrate.

Back in the day, there was this beautiful island in the pacific near Australia. When westerner's came ashore they noticed a rock, that was being used as a doorstop by the indigenous people.

A few moments later they realized that rock was phosphate, and boy did they find plenty of it.

Within a year, the westerner's were busy digging for their phosphate and the people of the island began to rejoice in the ease of their new lifestyle.

Fifty years later, the golf course if brown. What had been palm trees are now giant twigs. The bird that the island at one time relied upon as a food staple is now extinct.

In the center of this island, is an unbelievable crater, with nothing but lime stone left...excepting two years worth of phospate still worth escavating. That hole, is the size of 80 percent of the islands land mass.

It's been theorized that it no longer rains on the island because the heat created by the limestone, pushes the rain clouds away.

Presently there are 10,000 natives still living on the island, and when offered another island to settle by the Austrailian government they refused...in that they didn't want to give up their sovereignty.

How will it all end? I don't know...and how they didn't realize that destroying their own ecosystem and changing their traditional way of life would lead to all that?

I propose that the rest of the world is in the same boat, as that Island.

We just haven't all come to realize it yet. :wink:

[The Russian]

the article is long, I wonder if anyone actualy read it :think: ... high quality stuff, IMO :tu: