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>At minimum, pointing out irrationality doesn't necessarily help much to alleviate the fear. The only way to get over an emotional fear is to recognize that th

by Nadya 10y ago

>At minimum, pointing out irrationality doesn't necessarily help much to alleviate the fear. The only way to get over an emotional fear is to recognize that the emotional fear is at odds with reality. This is ignoring psychological fears of which there may be nothing you can do. For psychological fears I am referring to very specific phobias that may or may not be the result of a traumatic experience. People scared of clowns usually had a bad experience as a child. My uncle swapped my Barney VHS with Stephen King's IT. For a long time I was scared of clowns. But it just isn't rational for me to be scared of clowns and I eventually got over that phobia. Some people are terrified of the color yellow. There's no rhyme or reason - they just are. I'm sure there are various treatments ("exposure" seems to be a common one, similar to PTSD treatments) but some people will just have to live with their phobias playing a large and disruptive part of their lives. Being so terrified of police, terrorists, people throwing pennies off of buildings, etc. are simply things I cannot empathize with. If I was worried about every freak accident in life I'd never leave my house (but what if a meteorite struck my house? [0]) [0] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/02/130220-russia-meteorite-ann-hodges-science-space-hit/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/02/130220-russi...

jMyles 10y ago
Putting police and terrorists in the same category of threat is as irrational as fearing terrorists. There are two million people in prison in the USA. Given the state of our justice system, it's hard to say that those who are selected for this treatment is very much less random than a lottery. It's a very reasonable concern.
emn13 10y ago
You're missing the key point of my message. It's not rational to expect fear to be an unbiased estimator of risk. If you regard fear as a motivation, then it would be irrational to ignore factors other than risk. And that means that merely stating that things are not very risky is not a valid basis for concluding that it is irrational to fear them.

by Nadya 10y ago

jMyles 10y ago

Putting police and terrorists in the same category of threat is as irrational as fearing terrorists. There are two million people in prison in the USA. Given the state of our justice system, it's hard to say that those who are selected for this treatment is very much less random than a lottery. It's a very reasonable concern.

emn13 10y ago

You're missing the key point of my message. It's not rational to expect fear to be an unbiased estimator of risk. If you regard fear as a motivation, then it would be irrational to ignore factors other than risk. And that means that merely stating that things are not very risky is not a valid basis for concluding that it is irrational to fear them.