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Yes, and that's the GPs point; that paralysing fear outweighs the logic of the situation. Indeed, I'd suggest your own comment about being able to mitigate a ca

by ErrantX 14y ago

Yes, and that's the GPs point; that paralysing fear outweighs the logic of the situation. Indeed, I'd suggest your own comment about being able to mitigate a car accident is a prime example of our difficulty with assessing the probability of risk (you may have more control of the situation; but that does not reduce the probability of you being killed by a car). Many many things could kill us suddenly and without warning (even heart failure!). We are disproportionately scared of some things (eg flight) because they "seem" scary, and are blasé to actually risky things because they seem familiar. And excellent book on this is "Risk; the science andpolitics of fear" which uses case studies and real data to examine this phenomenon.

anigbrowl 14y ago
If you think that, I didn't explain myself very well. What I'm suggesting is that people are (moderately) well aware of the relative probabilities, but fear a predictable lack of control. This is entirely rational; you can be scared of something without necessarily expecting it to happen. so to take the driving example, it's very possible that you could be hit without warning, but you can also conceive of many situations in which you do have some warning and can swerve to avoid danger or suchlike. People may even underestimate the risk by being overconfident in their ability to react, but the fact is that if you drive a lot then after a while you'll have experienced a variety of close calls or even been in some minor accidents, and you can weigh the risk of many different driving situations. On the other hand, most people have no flying experience as pilots. So if you're a passenger in a plane and it becomes apparent that the plane is going to crash, there's nothing you can do about it. No matter how remote the risk of your plane crashing, if it does fall out of the sky then you are almost certainly fucked and there's nothing you can do to improve your chances. I know that if I fly somewhere the journey to and from the airport on the ground is statistically much more risky than the journey through the air, as I will be in much greater proximity to many other vehicles on the ground, my vehicle will have to go through numerous complex maneuvers and so on, and if freeway travel is involved an accident has a much higher likelihood of being fatal due to the speed involved. But if I had to be in a crash, I'd far rather be it be in a car than a plane; I've been in/at the scene of car crashes before and they strike me as rather more survivable. So I'm not more scared of flying than driving, but I am more scared of a plane crash than a car crash.
- ErrantX 14y ago
  Plenty of people survive plane accidents; in fact if you are involved in a plane accident in the US you have a greater than 90% chance of surviving. Which highlights the point; it is fear that drives your viewpoint (that car accidents are preferable plane crashes) rather than statistics :) EDIT: I don't have my copy of Risk to hand, but from memory the numbers work out something like.. probability of being in an air crash and it killing you is 1 in several million. Probability of being in a car crash and it killing you is 1 in several thousand (or ten thousands, can't remember). Either way - an order of magnitude more risky :)
  - chii 14y ago
    I m not sure people can so freely control their emotional responses - their prefrontal cortex might tell them such and such an event is pretty rare and low risk, but their lizard brain will pretty much override that. Unless you have disciplined training, i doubt you can truly get rid of that irrational fear of certain things.
  - anigbrowl 14y ago
    Well, I mentioned the specific example of passenger airliner falling out of the sky because the odds of survival on that are so law, as opposed to takeoff/landing accidents (like the one in Bali the other day) where the odds of surviving are much higher. Also, I am perfectly aware of the disparity in the odds. you don't need to explain that to me.

by ErrantX 14y ago

anigbrowl 14y ago

If you think that, I didn't explain myself very well. What I'm suggesting is that people are (moderately) well aware of the relative probabilities, but fear a predictable lack of control. This is entirely rational; you can be scared of something without necessarily expecting it to happen. so to take the driving example, it's very possible that you could be hit without warning, but you can also conceive of many situations in which you do have some warning and can swerve to avoid danger or suchlike. People may even underestimate the risk by being overconfident in their ability to react, but the fact is that if you drive a lot then after a while you'll have experienced a variety of close calls or even been in some minor accidents, and you can weigh the risk of many different driving situations. On the other hand, most people have no flying experience as pilots. So if you're a passenger in a plane and it becomes apparent that the plane is going to crash, there's nothing you can do about it. No matter how remote the risk of your plane crashing, if it does fall out of the sky then you are almost certainly fucked and there's nothing you can do to improve your chances. I know that if I fly somewhere the journey to and from the airport on the ground is statistically much more risky than the journey through the air, as I will be in much greater proximity to many other vehicles on the ground, my vehicle will have to go through numerous complex maneuvers and so on, and if freeway travel is involved an accident has a much higher likelihood of being fatal due to the speed involved. But if I had to be in a crash, I'd far rather be it be in a car than a plane; I've been in/at the scene of car crashes before and they strike me as rather more survivable. So I'm not more scared of flying than driving, but I am more scared of a plane crash than a car crash.

ErrantX 14y ago
Plenty of people survive plane accidents; in fact if you are involved in a plane accident in the US you have a greater than 90% chance of surviving. Which highlights the point; it is fear that drives your viewpoint (that car accidents are preferable plane crashes) rather than statistics :) EDIT: I don't have my copy of Risk to hand, but from memory the numbers work out something like.. probability of being in an air crash and it killing you is 1 in several million. Probability of being in a car crash and it killing you is 1 in several thousand (or ten thousands, can't remember). Either way - an order of magnitude more risky :)
- chii 14y ago
  I m not sure people can so freely control their emotional responses - their prefrontal cortex might tell them such and such an event is pretty rare and low risk, but their lizard brain will pretty much override that. Unless you have disciplined training, i doubt you can truly get rid of that irrational fear of certain things.
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  Well, I mentioned the specific example of passenger airliner falling out of the sky because the odds of survival on that are so law, as opposed to takeoff/landing accidents (like the one in Bali the other day) where the odds of surviving are much higher. Also, I am perfectly aware of the disparity in the odds. you don't need to explain that to me.