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As Bruce Schneier points out in his book Beyond Fear humans are very bad at assessing risk accurately. Ask yourself how scared are you of terrorist attacks vs.
by joshuak 13y ago
As Bruce Schneier points out in his book Beyond Fear humans are very bad at assessing risk accurately. Ask yourself how scared are you of terrorist attacks vs. heart disease.
Notice how the government is putting much more money into the terrorist attack threat then the heart disease threat?
Here are some of the reasons why people are so bad and assessing risk: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/08/five_neglects_i.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/08/five_neglects_...
(note finding the actual risk of death by heart disease vs terrorist attack is left to the reader...you might be surprised)
- icebraining 13y agoBy the way, he was Econtalk this monday: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/06/schneier_on_pow.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/06/schneier_on_pow.htm... My favorite part: "We don't say that pigs kill more people than terrorists every year."
- defuzz 13y agoAt a certain degree quantification and comparing numbers is just stupid, and Bruce is still right we suck at this, and so is he.
- larryCh 13y agoGiven this known bias politicians then have stronger incentives to try to prevent terrorist attacks (as opposed to heart attacks). It may also be the case that our perception is that politicians can have a more direct impact on terrorist attacks than on heart attacks.