Risk
In 2003, a Home Office report stated that 68 British children have been abducted that year by a stranger. With 11.4 million children under 16 living in the UK, that works out to a risk of one in 167,647.158 people in Britain have died from the human variation of mad cow disease yet 12,000 Britons are killed each year by flu and related complications. In the tradition of Malcolm Gladwell, Dan Gardner explores a new way of thinking about the decisions we make.We are the safest and healthiest human beings who ever lived, and yet irrational fear of the risk we face in everyday life is growing, with deadly consequences — such as the 1,595 Americans killed when they made the mistake of switching from planes to cars after September 11. In part, this irrationality is caused by those who promote fear for their own gain — including politicians, activists and the media. Culture also matters. But a more fundamental cause is human psychology. Working with risk science pioneer Paul Slovic, author Dan Gardner sets out to explain in a compulsively readable fashion just how we make our decisions and run our lives. We learn that the brain has not one but two systems for analyzing risk. One is primitive, unconscious, and intuitive. The other is conscious and rational. The two systems often agree, but occasionally they come to very different conclusions.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
8mentions
3people
2009–2016years
88% recommend13% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- For those wanting to go deeper on this subject, a very good book is Dan Gardner's "Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear".
- If interested in reading more, I highly recommend Dan Gardner's "Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear". (Also named "Science of Fear" in some markets.) It's a very good examination of risk perception and the cognitive faults we fall into.
- One I consistently recommend is "Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear" by Dan Gardner, it's a fantastic insight into how we approach risk both individually and as a society.
It can be pretty revelatory.
http://www.amazon.com/RISK-SCIENCE-POLITICS-DAN-GARDNER/dp/0...
- Risk: the science and politics of fear. By dan Gardner
I've recommended, and reviewed, it here before. Basically it is a pop-science look at how humans react and view fear. Brilliant read with lots of good referecing to scientific papers etc.
It was almost as revelatory to me as the selfish gene.
- Risk, the science of politics and fear by Dan Gardner (absolutely fantastic book, I already mentioned it on here earlier in the year).
The Game (again). I read this regularly to remind me of a few things - it's the book that originally got me fascinated in human interaction.
Nemesis (Richard Mullers theory) after a recommendation on HN.
A couple of Obama's books (seemed logical to read up on him)- dreams of my Father I especially liked.
Snowball (though still chugging through that).
In Search of Schrodinger's Cat - a book all about the evolution of quantum theory (and one that gives me my favourite quote of the year: In 1905 Einstein actually published 5 times. The fifth being his PHD dissertation; yes those three individually genius works, which shook the very foundations of physics, were published my a man called Mr Einstein. Despite the artistic license I still love it as a quote :))
- Agreed. This is an excellent book:
http://www.amazon.com/Risk-Science-Politics-Dan-Gardner/dp/1...
on the subject (I've recommended it a few times before)
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