Expressing concern for childrens' safety activates the "child-in-danger = I'd-better-do-something" reflex that evolution's built into us. Therefore, politician

Expressing concern for childrens' safety activates the "child-in-danger = I'd-better-do-something" reflex that evolution's built into us. Therefore, politicians, marketers, and other "spin" people who want to build support for a certain agenda will say "We need to do this to protect your children." Because it works -- it convinces people emotionally, if their reasoning capability is poorly developed or not engaged. Most people are statistically illiterate; they don't understand probability. And our intuitions about this sort of thing were evolved when news spread by word-of-mouth; they do very poorly in an age where everybody hears about very rare events thanks to worldwide radio, TV and Internet coverage. Bruce Schneier has a very insightful essay on this topic [1]. [1] http://www.schneier.com/essay-401.html http://www.schneier.com/essay-401.html