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The Science of Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn't--and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger
From terror attacks to the war on terror, real estate bubbles to the price of oil, sexual predators to poisoned food from China, our list of fears is ever-growing. And yet, we are the safest and healthiest humans in history. Irrational fear seems to be taking over, often with tragic results. For example, in the months after 9/11, when people decided to drive instead of fly—believing they were avoiding risk—road deaths rose by more than 1,500.
In this fascinating, lucid, and thoroughly entertaining examination of how humans process risk, journalist Dan Gardner had the exclusive cooperation of Paul Slovic, the world renowned risk-science pioneer, as he reveals how our hunter gatherer brains struggle to make sense of a world utterly unlike the one that made them. Filled with illuminating real world examples, interviews with experts, and fast-paced, lean storytelling, The Science of Fear shows why it is truer than ever that the worst thing we have to fear is fear itself.
In this fascinating, lucid, and thoroughly entertaining examination of how humans process risk, journalist Dan Gardner had the exclusive cooperation of Paul Slovic, the world renowned risk-science pioneer, as he reveals how our hunter gatherer brains struggle to make sense of a world utterly unlike the one that made them. Filled with illuminating real world examples, interviews with experts, and fast-paced, lean storytelling, The Science of Fear shows why it is truer than ever that the worst thing we have to fear is fear itself.
339 pages, Hardcover
First published July 17, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 382 reviews
March 24, 2012
This book was rather dry. With the title being fear I kind of expected it to be more dramatic. Not so much.
In this book Mr. Gardner reveals to us that the stuff we are scared of, most of the time is really not what we should worry about. He points out how the news media will pick up a story and run with it because it is sensational. Fear sells. Then we will get all paranoid about it. I could have told you that.
Pesticides for example, are not all that bad, because what we ingest is not enough to harm us. They have been demonized, but without them we would all be dying from malaria. What doesn’t kill you just makes you stronger, but I think if you can at all possible to avoid pesticides, why not?
Cancer is another thing on our minds. He points out that we are living longer than we ever have, and with increased age the odds of getting cancer increases as well. Instead, we worry chemicals are causing the increased cancer. The problem is that everything is a chemical; just some are man made and most are not. Chlorine is a chemical and some people talk about removing it from the drinking water…..bad chemical…..bad! What that would do is cause widespread death from diseases such as diphtheria.
Diphtheria kills children. Which brings me to a point that was not brought up in the book, vaccination. People in this country have kind of lost their noodles over vaccinating their children. The reason for this was someone somewhere linked autism with vaccination. This has never been proven. But a whole bunch of parents have refused to vaccinate their children for fear of autism. “Hello un-vaccinated child.” Said diphtheria.
Diphtheria + child = dead
Vaccination + Child = Alive child with maybe, but not likely, autism.
Terrorism. Another thing we all fear (well, except me). The odds of getting killed in a terrorist attack in very very very small, yet we spend a shit ton of money on counter terrorism. This money would be better spent on universal health care. By not wasting the cash on anti terrorism, and covering everybody medically, the country would save so much money.
In this book Mr. Gardner reveals to us that the stuff we are scared of, most of the time is really not what we should worry about. He points out how the news media will pick up a story and run with it because it is sensational. Fear sells. Then we will get all paranoid about it. I could have told you that.
Pesticides for example, are not all that bad, because what we ingest is not enough to harm us. They have been demonized, but without them we would all be dying from malaria. What doesn’t kill you just makes you stronger, but I think if you can at all possible to avoid pesticides, why not?
Cancer is another thing on our minds. He points out that we are living longer than we ever have, and with increased age the odds of getting cancer increases as well. Instead, we worry chemicals are causing the increased cancer. The problem is that everything is a chemical; just some are man made and most are not. Chlorine is a chemical and some people talk about removing it from the drinking water…..bad chemical…..bad! What that would do is cause widespread death from diseases such as diphtheria.
Diphtheria kills children. Which brings me to a point that was not brought up in the book, vaccination. People in this country have kind of lost their noodles over vaccinating their children. The reason for this was someone somewhere linked autism with vaccination. This has never been proven. But a whole bunch of parents have refused to vaccinate their children for fear of autism. “Hello un-vaccinated child.” Said diphtheria.
Diphtheria + child = dead
Vaccination + Child = Alive child with maybe, but not likely, autism.
Terrorism. Another thing we all fear (well, except me). The odds of getting killed in a terrorist attack in very very very small, yet we spend a shit ton of money on counter terrorism. This money would be better spent on universal health care. By not wasting the cash on anti terrorism, and covering everybody medically, the country would save so much money.
February 9, 2014
Some things that our brain doesn't evaluate correctly:
Cancer
Smoking marijuana
Ebola
Traveling by plane
Insecticides
Mad cow disease
Politics
Nuclear weapons
Nuclear power
Terrorism
West Nile Virus
WMDs
Clean water
This book is well-intentioned and well-researched. Before I read the book, I knew that a lot of groups (political, product-marketing, health service related, etc.) were trying to motivate me by blasting me with "threat of the moment" scenarios in which I was left helpless, broke and disease-ridden, if alive at all. Gardiner does a valuable service by pulling the curtain back on these manipulators and putting their exhortations in perspective. Understanding what pushes our "hot buttons" is one of the steps to taking control back from the fear-mongers.
Cancer
Smoking marijuana
Ebola
Traveling by plane
Insecticides
Mad cow disease
Politics
Nuclear weapons
Nuclear power
Terrorism
West Nile Virus
WMDs
Clean water
This book is well-intentioned and well-researched. Before I read the book, I knew that a lot of groups (political, product-marketing, health service related, etc.) were trying to motivate me by blasting me with "threat of the moment" scenarios in which I was left helpless, broke and disease-ridden, if alive at all. Gardiner does a valuable service by pulling the curtain back on these manipulators and putting their exhortations in perspective. Understanding what pushes our "hot buttons" is one of the steps to taking control back from the fear-mongers.
May 20, 2015
.
Okay, I’ll own up. Deep down, and not so deep down, I’m the sort of gal who could walk up and down Oxford Street with a placard on my back saying “THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH”. My outlook is definitely pessimistic. This book on the other hand is the absolute opposite, arguing from beginning to end that we should be a whole stack less worried than we are. It therefore gave me a very bumpy ride. To say it was counter-intuitive was putting it mildly.
Dan Gardner’s basic premise is that we have two types of thinking – system one is conscious thought – The Head, and system two is unconscious thought – The Gut. “Head is our best bet for accurate results but it has its limitations. First, Head needs to be educated. We live in a world of complex information, and if Head doesn’t learn the basics of math, stats, and logic....it can make bad mistakes. Head also works very slowly.” Gut on the other had works very fast. It makes snap judgements, and usually works intuitively.
The Head THINKS. Throughout the book Gardner shows with fearsome clarity the degree to which the media, politics and organisations are Gut driven in their dealings with us, and time and time again he begs us to bring our Head, our THINKING, into the equation.
Our gut is easily swayed by that which is emotional, recent, novel, sensational and frightening - and we need to fight to bring our slow-burning , thorough and thinking Head into the ways in which we negotiate the world. It helps if we are numerate. It helps if we look for statistics. It helps if we seek out the bigger picture.
The factual patchiness and ineptitude of a lot of press releases is pretty mind-boggling, and given the time constraints that journalists work under nowadays – press releases are often the only sources they use for information. Grass roots research is seldom conducted, and press releases rule. We need to work to try and see the bigger picture, not just the emotive slant and woolly statistics so often presented in off-the-cuff newspaper articles.
Companies use our fear to sell us things, and they are not the only culprits. In 1920 H.L. Mencken wrote “the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” This doesn’t mean the politicians don’t themselves buy into the scaremongering. They do. But everything gets blown up out of all proportion as our Gut overrules our Head and runs down the road screaming– fired by fears of terrorism, nuclear attacks, gun outrages, paedophile activity, cancer, violent crime and chemical overload. Much of Dan Gardner’s task throughout this book is to counteract our fears in respect to these 21st century spectres. He doesn’t say there aren’t grounds for concern, but he does say that our fears are often grossly exaggerated. Our Gut is having a field day.
This book was good for me. The degree to which it poked me out of my blinkered pessimism was laudable. I therefore give it five stars. I think all grumpy old ladies should read this book at least once a year.
Okay, I’ll own up. Deep down, and not so deep down, I’m the sort of gal who could walk up and down Oxford Street with a placard on my back saying “THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH”. My outlook is definitely pessimistic. This book on the other hand is the absolute opposite, arguing from beginning to end that we should be a whole stack less worried than we are. It therefore gave me a very bumpy ride. To say it was counter-intuitive was putting it mildly.
Dan Gardner’s basic premise is that we have two types of thinking – system one is conscious thought – The Head, and system two is unconscious thought – The Gut. “Head is our best bet for accurate results but it has its limitations. First, Head needs to be educated. We live in a world of complex information, and if Head doesn’t learn the basics of math, stats, and logic....it can make bad mistakes. Head also works very slowly.” Gut on the other had works very fast. It makes snap judgements, and usually works intuitively.
The Head THINKS. Throughout the book Gardner shows with fearsome clarity the degree to which the media, politics and organisations are Gut driven in their dealings with us, and time and time again he begs us to bring our Head, our THINKING, into the equation.
Our gut is easily swayed by that which is emotional, recent, novel, sensational and frightening - and we need to fight to bring our slow-burning , thorough and thinking Head into the ways in which we negotiate the world. It helps if we are numerate. It helps if we look for statistics. It helps if we seek out the bigger picture.
The factual patchiness and ineptitude of a lot of press releases is pretty mind-boggling, and given the time constraints that journalists work under nowadays – press releases are often the only sources they use for information. Grass roots research is seldom conducted, and press releases rule. We need to work to try and see the bigger picture, not just the emotive slant and woolly statistics so often presented in off-the-cuff newspaper articles.
Companies use our fear to sell us things, and they are not the only culprits. In 1920 H.L. Mencken wrote “the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” This doesn’t mean the politicians don’t themselves buy into the scaremongering. They do. But everything gets blown up out of all proportion as our Gut overrules our Head and runs down the road screaming– fired by fears of terrorism, nuclear attacks, gun outrages, paedophile activity, cancer, violent crime and chemical overload. Much of Dan Gardner’s task throughout this book is to counteract our fears in respect to these 21st century spectres. He doesn’t say there aren’t grounds for concern, but he does say that our fears are often grossly exaggerated. Our Gut is having a field day.
This book was good for me. The degree to which it poked me out of my blinkered pessimism was laudable. I therefore give it five stars. I think all grumpy old ladies should read this book at least once a year.
August 15, 2017
Um começo que dá uma mistura de Rápido e Devagar: Duas Formas de Pensar e A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age, falando sobre o viés que temos no que lembramos como mais importante ao ter medo e como estatísticas podem ser usadas para representar algo inofensivo como perigoso ou vice-versa.
Gardner dá uma boa passada pelos maiores medos dos americanos, como câncer, violência e terrorismo, mostrando como esse medo é mal direcionado e cooptado por quem quer atenção. A mensagem que mais gostei no livro foi a do medo como arma política. Como políticos usam medo para conseguir votos, com a escalada de "o mundo está uma merda" que fazem para dizer que os concorrentes são fracos e eles sabem melhor do que ninguém como resolver esse problema.
Gardner dá uma boa passada pelos maiores medos dos americanos, como câncer, violência e terrorismo, mostrando como esse medo é mal direcionado e cooptado por quem quer atenção. A mensagem que mais gostei no livro foi a do medo como arma política. Como políticos usam medo para conseguir votos, com a escalada de "o mundo está uma merda" que fazem para dizer que os concorrentes são fracos e eles sabem melhor do que ninguém como resolver esse problema.
March 8, 2014
Daniel Gardner's "The Science of Fear" is an immensely readable and fascinating examination of the culture of fear that we live in and how it consistently makes us do stupid things.
Gardner is fond of quoting FDR's famous quote, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" several times throughout the book, but he emphasizes that what FDR is referring to is not healthy fear (the kind that has helped our species to survive this long) but an "unreasoning, unjustified" fear.
This kind of fear he is referring to is the same kind of fear that made a majority of people switch from flying to driving in the months following 9/11, even though, statistically, flying is still the safest means of travel. What was the outcome? Between September 2001 and September 2002, the number of fatalities due to car accidents skyrocketed. Indeed, many more people died from car accidents in that year alone than died in 9/11, and yet very few people actually know this fact. And, in fact, most people, if asked, still think driving in their own car is safer than flying in an airplane.
Thanks to the media, the entertainment industry, politicians, and businesses who stand to profit from fear, we are constantly bombarded with all sorts of horrible things of which to be afraid, from terrorism, car-jacking, global warming, viral epidemics, baby car seats, Obamacare, etc. An entire industry has been created to manipulate the way we vote, shop, think, and behave.
Of course, according to Gardner, it's not hard to manipulate our brains through fear. Evolutionarily, our brains have not changed much since early caveman times. The way we deal with fear is the same, but the things we have to fear have changed tremendously.
Gardner separates our fear-coping mechanisms into two distinct mindsets: 1) unconscious thought, or "Gut", as he calls it, which creates snap judgments based on instinct; and 2) conscious thought, or "Head", which examines data, analyzes situations, and assesses the level of threat.
Head is what should have prevented the majority of people from being terrified of flying after 9/11. Gut, unfortunately, is what took over after seeing, repeatedly, the same image of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers. This battle between Head and Gut is a constant. Sometimes Head wins, but sometimes Gut takes over.
We live in a world governed by fear, which is ironic, according to Gardner, who claims, "there's never been a better time to be alive". Life expectancy is the highest it's ever been, birth mortality rates are the lowest they have ever been, there are more cures and better treatments for diseases than ever before, people have more and better access to education and healthcare than at anytime in history, and yet based on the evening news and what politicians keep saying, we are living in the tenth circle of Hell. You don't have to let Gut always win. It's just a matter of sifting through the bullshit and educating one's self. The first step is to read Gardner's excellent book.
Gardner is fond of quoting FDR's famous quote, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" several times throughout the book, but he emphasizes that what FDR is referring to is not healthy fear (the kind that has helped our species to survive this long) but an "unreasoning, unjustified" fear.
This kind of fear he is referring to is the same kind of fear that made a majority of people switch from flying to driving in the months following 9/11, even though, statistically, flying is still the safest means of travel. What was the outcome? Between September 2001 and September 2002, the number of fatalities due to car accidents skyrocketed. Indeed, many more people died from car accidents in that year alone than died in 9/11, and yet very few people actually know this fact. And, in fact, most people, if asked, still think driving in their own car is safer than flying in an airplane.
Thanks to the media, the entertainment industry, politicians, and businesses who stand to profit from fear, we are constantly bombarded with all sorts of horrible things of which to be afraid, from terrorism, car-jacking, global warming, viral epidemics, baby car seats, Obamacare, etc. An entire industry has been created to manipulate the way we vote, shop, think, and behave.
Of course, according to Gardner, it's not hard to manipulate our brains through fear. Evolutionarily, our brains have not changed much since early caveman times. The way we deal with fear is the same, but the things we have to fear have changed tremendously.
Gardner separates our fear-coping mechanisms into two distinct mindsets: 1) unconscious thought, or "Gut", as he calls it, which creates snap judgments based on instinct; and 2) conscious thought, or "Head", which examines data, analyzes situations, and assesses the level of threat.
Head is what should have prevented the majority of people from being terrified of flying after 9/11. Gut, unfortunately, is what took over after seeing, repeatedly, the same image of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers. This battle between Head and Gut is a constant. Sometimes Head wins, but sometimes Gut takes over.
We live in a world governed by fear, which is ironic, according to Gardner, who claims, "there's never been a better time to be alive". Life expectancy is the highest it's ever been, birth mortality rates are the lowest they have ever been, there are more cures and better treatments for diseases than ever before, people have more and better access to education and healthcare than at anytime in history, and yet based on the evening news and what politicians keep saying, we are living in the tenth circle of Hell. You don't have to let Gut always win. It's just a matter of sifting through the bullshit and educating one's self. The first step is to read Gardner's excellent book.
July 18, 2011
Imagine, for a moment, one of our early human ancestors. A first-generation Homo sapiens, exploring his world with an amazing brain that would be the envy of the animal kingdom. If they understood envy. He, and his children, and their children and grandchildren will spread across the Earth as hunter-gatherers, the first beings (so far as we know) who can look at the world and attempt to pass on what it knows and learns. Their threats were simple: survive or don't. Find food or starve. Hunt or be hunted. And those fantastic brains did such a bang-up job that their descendants are still walking around, thousands of generations later.
Now, take that Paleolithic man - swift of foot, sharp of eye, strong of hand - and drop him in the middle of modern-day Times Square. And, as his minder, give him a bored, easily distracted teenager - one who knows the world, but can't be bothered to do the work to make decisions.
Congratulations. According to Daniel Gardner, we have just constructed a fine metaphor for how the human brain works. Part of it is very old, able to make decisions in an instant based on the slimmest of clues. The other is newer, more rational and savvy, able to put together reasoned, logical arguments, but doesn't have the sheer speed and force that is prehistoric partner has. And as much as we want it to be true that the rational, modern part of our mind is in charge,the sad fact is that out inner caveman has far more influence over us than we care to admit.
Gardner begins the book with an interesting story about the most terrifying thing to happen in the last decade - the attacks of September 11th in the United States. By the time the towers fell, people around the world were watching, and anyone who didn't see it live would surely see it soon enough as it was replayed over and over again. It was truly terrifying to watch, unlike anything Americans had seen before in their country, and it scared the ever-loving hell out of people. Many people, as a result, chose to forgo air travel in favor of driving.
Now, as Superman famously told Lois Lane, flying is statistically the safest way to travel. In fact, the most dangerous part of any trip that involves flying is usually the drive to the airport. But, in those days and months after the attacks, people were scared to fly. So they drove instead. And, according to a five year study of traffic fatalities in the U. S. after 9/11 by German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer, 1,595 people died on the roads who otherwise would not have.
They were afraid, and that's understandable. But they were afraid of the wrong thing. So they died.
Gardner sets out in this book to figure out why it is that people in the healthiest, safest, most prosperous nations on Earth - in the healthiest, safest, most prosperous era of human history - live in a state of near-constant fear.
A lot of it, as the intro implies, comes down to the fact that our brains, which evolved over millions of years to be very good at judging risks that might be found on the savannah, are simply not prepared to do the same in a modern technological world. Our brains can't tell the difference between risk in fiction and reality, between something that happened to us and something we saw on the news. When it comes to risk, our brains play it very safe, which is great out in nature. Is that shadow in the bushes a tiger? Maybe, maybe not, but either way it's probably a good idea to get the hell away from it. We can't say the same thing of that guy sitting on the bus who looks like maybe he might be a Muslim.
We also tend to assume that if we've heard of something recently, then it must be more common. Again if you're out in nature and you saw a bear yesterday, there's a decent chance that the bear is still around today and you might want to be wary of that. But what if you see constant news coverage of a high-profile child abduction? It's on every show, being talked about on every blog - does that mean that the chance of your child being abducted has increased? Of course not, but your brain doesn't see it that way. Your brain thinks that your child will be taken from you the moment you look away, and all the reasoning in the world won't change its mind.
One more thing: we don't get numbers. The news tells us that the rate of certain risks is up by 10%, but they don't tell us what the original figure was. We hear about millions of starving children in Africa, but don't do anything unless we get a personal story of one. We don't understand probability at all, we can't deal with randomness, and this lack of innate numeracy (compounded by an educational culture that makes it hard to teach kids to become numerate) costs us billions. Or more, as the recent economic Clusterthing has shown, when you have people who are good with numbers deliberately exploiting this flaw in order to profit.
We think that correlation equals causation. We believe stories over facts. We think we don't have biases that we clearly possess. We assign high risk to things we don't like and low risk to things we do, regardless of how risky they actually are. And on top of all that, we know how to exploit others' fears in order to gain money and power for ourselves. It's easy to do, and it works like a charm.
Reading this book won't make you into a magically unflappable person, mainly because all of this stuff is pretty well hard-wired in our brains. Even Gardner, who should have known better, tells a story about hunting through the slums of Lagos in the middle of the night to retrieve a photo of his children from the wallet that had been stolen from him. He had plenty more, but at that moment, his brain was convinced that losing the photo meant losing his children. Irrational, yes, and it nearly got him killed, but that's just one example of what a powerful force this primitive brain is.
The good news, though, is that you can strengthen the newer, more recent brain - the lazy teenager from the initial example. By knowing how you make mistakes, how you can be fooled into fearing things that you don't need to fear, you can better understand your own reactions to events and make better decisions. You can educate yourself about the things that are actually dangerous, and stop losing sleep over the things that are not a threat. Being afraid is not your fault - it's an ingrained biological feature. Staying afraid, on the other hand, is something over which you have control. With enough will power, even you can overcome great fear.
Sorry. Nerd moment there.
Are there terrorists who want to destroy the United States? Sure. But they won't, because doing so is indescribably harder than certain politicians would have you believe. Are there creepy child molesters who want to abduct and defile your children? Yup. But the chances of that actually happening are so low that the odds of any specific child becoming such a victim are nil. Are there angry teens who want to come to their school and kill everyone they see? Of course. But when you look at the incidence of school shooting compared to how many kids go to school every day, you can see that the odds of your children being caught in a school shooting are slim to none. In fact, there are many parts of the country where your children are probably safer in school than out of it.
There are real risks in our modern world, but they're not spectacular and they're not viscerally terrifying. A car accident, a heart attack, a diabetic death - these things don't make the news. Imagine a 9/11-style attack happening every three days, 3,000 dead each time. It would be an outrage, a national disgrace, and people would be scared to their bones. But it would take just about 233 attacks to equal the number of deaths in 2001 that occurred from cardiovascular disease in the United States.
The nearly nonexistent chance of being killed by terrorists is enough to get people to submit to any number of indignities and intrusions on their persons and liberties when they travel, but the very real risk of death from a heart attack isn't enough to get people to go take a walk once in a while or stop eating junk food. So enjoy that delicious moment of irony the next time you go through the TSA molest-a-thon and get a seriously overweight screener taking liberties with your person.
The fact is that we have it damn good compared to our ancestors. We live longer, we live better, even in parts of the world that are still developing, and it looks like the future will progress that way. But we still insist on needing to be afraid, even as we have less and less to actually fear. So put down the newspaper, turn off the 24-hour news, and take some time to figure out what is actually a threat. Give that bored teenager something to do with his time and let the caveman go back to his cave.
--------------------------------------------------
"Anyone who has spent time in a Victorian cemetery knows that gratitude, not fear, should be the defining feeling of our age. And yet it is fear that defines us. We worry. We cringe. It seems the less we have to fear, the more we fear."
- Daniel Gardner, The Science of Fear
Now, take that Paleolithic man - swift of foot, sharp of eye, strong of hand - and drop him in the middle of modern-day Times Square. And, as his minder, give him a bored, easily distracted teenager - one who knows the world, but can't be bothered to do the work to make decisions.
Congratulations. According to Daniel Gardner, we have just constructed a fine metaphor for how the human brain works. Part of it is very old, able to make decisions in an instant based on the slimmest of clues. The other is newer, more rational and savvy, able to put together reasoned, logical arguments, but doesn't have the sheer speed and force that is prehistoric partner has. And as much as we want it to be true that the rational, modern part of our mind is in charge,the sad fact is that out inner caveman has far more influence over us than we care to admit.
Gardner begins the book with an interesting story about the most terrifying thing to happen in the last decade - the attacks of September 11th in the United States. By the time the towers fell, people around the world were watching, and anyone who didn't see it live would surely see it soon enough as it was replayed over and over again. It was truly terrifying to watch, unlike anything Americans had seen before in their country, and it scared the ever-loving hell out of people. Many people, as a result, chose to forgo air travel in favor of driving.
Now, as Superman famously told Lois Lane, flying is statistically the safest way to travel. In fact, the most dangerous part of any trip that involves flying is usually the drive to the airport. But, in those days and months after the attacks, people were scared to fly. So they drove instead. And, according to a five year study of traffic fatalities in the U. S. after 9/11 by German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer, 1,595 people died on the roads who otherwise would not have.
They were afraid, and that's understandable. But they were afraid of the wrong thing. So they died.
Gardner sets out in this book to figure out why it is that people in the healthiest, safest, most prosperous nations on Earth - in the healthiest, safest, most prosperous era of human history - live in a state of near-constant fear.
A lot of it, as the intro implies, comes down to the fact that our brains, which evolved over millions of years to be very good at judging risks that might be found on the savannah, are simply not prepared to do the same in a modern technological world. Our brains can't tell the difference between risk in fiction and reality, between something that happened to us and something we saw on the news. When it comes to risk, our brains play it very safe, which is great out in nature. Is that shadow in the bushes a tiger? Maybe, maybe not, but either way it's probably a good idea to get the hell away from it. We can't say the same thing of that guy sitting on the bus who looks like maybe he might be a Muslim.
We also tend to assume that if we've heard of something recently, then it must be more common. Again if you're out in nature and you saw a bear yesterday, there's a decent chance that the bear is still around today and you might want to be wary of that. But what if you see constant news coverage of a high-profile child abduction? It's on every show, being talked about on every blog - does that mean that the chance of your child being abducted has increased? Of course not, but your brain doesn't see it that way. Your brain thinks that your child will be taken from you the moment you look away, and all the reasoning in the world won't change its mind.
One more thing: we don't get numbers. The news tells us that the rate of certain risks is up by 10%, but they don't tell us what the original figure was. We hear about millions of starving children in Africa, but don't do anything unless we get a personal story of one. We don't understand probability at all, we can't deal with randomness, and this lack of innate numeracy (compounded by an educational culture that makes it hard to teach kids to become numerate) costs us billions. Or more, as the recent economic Clusterthing has shown, when you have people who are good with numbers deliberately exploiting this flaw in order to profit.
We think that correlation equals causation. We believe stories over facts. We think we don't have biases that we clearly possess. We assign high risk to things we don't like and low risk to things we do, regardless of how risky they actually are. And on top of all that, we know how to exploit others' fears in order to gain money and power for ourselves. It's easy to do, and it works like a charm.
Reading this book won't make you into a magically unflappable person, mainly because all of this stuff is pretty well hard-wired in our brains. Even Gardner, who should have known better, tells a story about hunting through the slums of Lagos in the middle of the night to retrieve a photo of his children from the wallet that had been stolen from him. He had plenty more, but at that moment, his brain was convinced that losing the photo meant losing his children. Irrational, yes, and it nearly got him killed, but that's just one example of what a powerful force this primitive brain is.
The good news, though, is that you can strengthen the newer, more recent brain - the lazy teenager from the initial example. By knowing how you make mistakes, how you can be fooled into fearing things that you don't need to fear, you can better understand your own reactions to events and make better decisions. You can educate yourself about the things that are actually dangerous, and stop losing sleep over the things that are not a threat. Being afraid is not your fault - it's an ingrained biological feature. Staying afraid, on the other hand, is something over which you have control. With enough will power, even you can overcome great fear.
Sorry. Nerd moment there.
Are there terrorists who want to destroy the United States? Sure. But they won't, because doing so is indescribably harder than certain politicians would have you believe. Are there creepy child molesters who want to abduct and defile your children? Yup. But the chances of that actually happening are so low that the odds of any specific child becoming such a victim are nil. Are there angry teens who want to come to their school and kill everyone they see? Of course. But when you look at the incidence of school shooting compared to how many kids go to school every day, you can see that the odds of your children being caught in a school shooting are slim to none. In fact, there are many parts of the country where your children are probably safer in school than out of it.
There are real risks in our modern world, but they're not spectacular and they're not viscerally terrifying. A car accident, a heart attack, a diabetic death - these things don't make the news. Imagine a 9/11-style attack happening every three days, 3,000 dead each time. It would be an outrage, a national disgrace, and people would be scared to their bones. But it would take just about 233 attacks to equal the number of deaths in 2001 that occurred from cardiovascular disease in the United States.
The nearly nonexistent chance of being killed by terrorists is enough to get people to submit to any number of indignities and intrusions on their persons and liberties when they travel, but the very real risk of death from a heart attack isn't enough to get people to go take a walk once in a while or stop eating junk food. So enjoy that delicious moment of irony the next time you go through the TSA molest-a-thon and get a seriously overweight screener taking liberties with your person.
The fact is that we have it damn good compared to our ancestors. We live longer, we live better, even in parts of the world that are still developing, and it looks like the future will progress that way. But we still insist on needing to be afraid, even as we have less and less to actually fear. So put down the newspaper, turn off the 24-hour news, and take some time to figure out what is actually a threat. Give that bored teenager something to do with his time and let the caveman go back to his cave.
--------------------------------------------------
"Anyone who has spent time in a Victorian cemetery knows that gratitude, not fear, should be the defining feeling of our age. And yet it is fear that defines us. We worry. We cringe. It seems the less we have to fear, the more we fear."
- Daniel Gardner, The Science of Fear
October 5, 2011
This is one of the few books that I've given 5 stars to this year and it deserves every one of them. Gardner's analysis of fear and the motivators of fear (both collective and individual) are brilliant and how these connect to ~
1. Brain
2. Media
3. The many individuals and groups with an interest in stoking fear.
His contention is that we are luckier than any generation that has ever lived, and he goes a long, long way to proving this, and yet we are more afraid than ever before. The reasons for this are many and varied. Gardner does a wonderful job of clearly enunciating these and then analyzing them.
What made this book so interesting for me is that it cuts across political and theoretical boundaries to attempt to deal with fear and apocalyptic futurism in all its formats in a non-partisan and a mostly non-ideological manner.
This is a book for anyone interested in the story behind the story we find in the rhetoric of fear. It will be eye opening or it will confirm what you've already suspected of Governments, the Media, Business, NGOs, Activists, and Advocacy Groups.
There are no conspiracy theories here, in the sense most of us now understand them, but just human nature writ about as large as the first global civilization.
You may agree with Gardner or not...but I doubt you will end the book being unaffected by it.
VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
1. Brain
2. Media
3. The many individuals and groups with an interest in stoking fear.
His contention is that we are luckier than any generation that has ever lived, and he goes a long, long way to proving this, and yet we are more afraid than ever before. The reasons for this are many and varied. Gardner does a wonderful job of clearly enunciating these and then analyzing them.
What made this book so interesting for me is that it cuts across political and theoretical boundaries to attempt to deal with fear and apocalyptic futurism in all its formats in a non-partisan and a mostly non-ideological manner.
This is a book for anyone interested in the story behind the story we find in the rhetoric of fear. It will be eye opening or it will confirm what you've already suspected of Governments, the Media, Business, NGOs, Activists, and Advocacy Groups.
There are no conspiracy theories here, in the sense most of us now understand them, but just human nature writ about as large as the first global civilization.
You may agree with Gardner or not...but I doubt you will end the book being unaffected by it.
VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
March 31, 2016
In The Science of Fear, Dan Gardner explains the human experience of fear, first presenting accounts of how we consciously and unconsciously interpret information we receive, then showing how some current social and cultural circumstances bring out the worst in our reactionary interpretive tendencies. Overall, Gardner argues, we are far more afraid than reality warrants, for reasons both psychological and sociological.
Even though the book is interesting and useful (I am certainly now more aware of cognitive pitfalls and am trying to use my awareness to improve how I interpret the world around me), the book as a whole left me irritated. It felt more like an application of concepts presented early on to different scenarios than an exploration of the nature of fear. This isn't a bad thing, per se, but I am irked at how misleading the title and subtitle are in this regard. Despite what the title says, it is light on the science. And the subtitle is the exact kind of click-bait provocation he says blows dangerous circumstances (potential or real) somewhat-insidiously out of proportion! Even in the book, Gardner uses one particular statistic over and over in a way that he decries as dishonest and fear-mongering when employed by the media and others. Perhaps he and his publisher knew that the book would sell more copies with a title that makes us believe our irrational fears are putting us in grave and unnecessary dangers, rather than choosing an honest title that lets the reader know the book is really about how much better and safer the world is today compared to any other time in human history. This on its own is an important message, and is presented well by Gardner. As a whole, the book just left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, as Gardner seems to exploit the irrationality of our fear instincts to sell books, and in doing so potentially contributes to the very problem he is trying to clarify and alleviate.
Even though the book is interesting and useful (I am certainly now more aware of cognitive pitfalls and am trying to use my awareness to improve how I interpret the world around me), the book as a whole left me irritated. It felt more like an application of concepts presented early on to different scenarios than an exploration of the nature of fear. This isn't a bad thing, per se, but I am irked at how misleading the title and subtitle are in this regard. Despite what the title says, it is light on the science. And the subtitle is the exact kind of click-bait provocation he says blows dangerous circumstances (potential or real) somewhat-insidiously out of proportion! Even in the book, Gardner uses one particular statistic over and over in a way that he decries as dishonest and fear-mongering when employed by the media and others. Perhaps he and his publisher knew that the book would sell more copies with a title that makes us believe our irrational fears are putting us in grave and unnecessary dangers, rather than choosing an honest title that lets the reader know the book is really about how much better and safer the world is today compared to any other time in human history. This on its own is an important message, and is presented well by Gardner. As a whole, the book just left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, as Gardner seems to exploit the irrationality of our fear instincts to sell books, and in doing so potentially contributes to the very problem he is trying to clarify and alleviate.
Read
May 29, 2011Great book. Makes you realize that we fear things with a negligable risk and do not worry about things we rationally should. it also exlains why that happens and what to do about it.
October 15, 2011
This is a good book, all-in all it was interesting and lucid although not all chapters had me sitting at the edge of my seat. Half-way through the book I was intent on giving it 3 stars, but the chapter on terrorism and the conclusion made me change my mind to 4.
This book is about risk and fear. Or rather, it is about how fear makes us perceive risk. The one thing is miss is the lack of discussion of real and possibly imminent risk. Real risk is only used as comparison. The psychology of risk perception is quite interesting. Humans are not particularly rational beings and what we feel about something (the Gut - our unconscious) is instantaneous and our thoughts(the Head - our conscious mind) is a slow, cumbersome process. We are like stories and emotions and these have a lot more to say about how we make decisions than rationally going over statistics. Sure, Head can intervene with the Gut decision, but the prerequisite is that it wants to.
Maybe this is why I rarely watch television news. The stories of the latest local crisis, let's say swine flu, wash over you and it's easy to be misled by the death toll in red. Half the population in Norway could get sick and thousands could die. Get vaccinated! This fear mongering certainly fed the purses of the drug companies. This is what media does - it plays on our emotions with stories. Cancer, for example. Most of the stories cited in the media are of children or young adults, but the true face of cancer is old. 91% of those who die are older than 60. That's not the picture I had in my mind exactly.
After the basic psychology of risk perception and fear has been laid bare the book covers things people are especially afraid of - cancer, crime and terrorism. The book concludes with the fact that we are the most long-lived, healthy, wealthy generation of humans that have ever lived and that nothing short of Armageddon could change this.
This book is about risk and fear. Or rather, it is about how fear makes us perceive risk. The one thing is miss is the lack of discussion of real and possibly imminent risk. Real risk is only used as comparison. The psychology of risk perception is quite interesting. Humans are not particularly rational beings and what we feel about something (the Gut - our unconscious) is instantaneous and our thoughts(the Head - our conscious mind) is a slow, cumbersome process. We are like stories and emotions and these have a lot more to say about how we make decisions than rationally going over statistics. Sure, Head can intervene with the Gut decision, but the prerequisite is that it wants to.
Maybe this is why I rarely watch television news. The stories of the latest local crisis, let's say swine flu, wash over you and it's easy to be misled by the death toll in red. Half the population in Norway could get sick and thousands could die. Get vaccinated! This fear mongering certainly fed the purses of the drug companies. This is what media does - it plays on our emotions with stories. Cancer, for example. Most of the stories cited in the media are of children or young adults, but the true face of cancer is old. 91% of those who die are older than 60. That's not the picture I had in my mind exactly.
After the basic psychology of risk perception and fear has been laid bare the book covers things people are especially afraid of - cancer, crime and terrorism. The book concludes with the fact that we are the most long-lived, healthy, wealthy generation of humans that have ever lived and that nothing short of Armageddon could change this.
June 15, 2012
One of two books I recommend to anyone and everyone, but especially to young high school students and college students. Fear can make us adopt bad policies, waste money, and even do harm to very good people, companies or institutions. it's one of the best times in the world to be human, but you wouldn't know it from the press...and there's a reason for that. Read this to be the proper, skeptical and informed person you need to be and live in a democracy.
January 26, 2024
“We are the healthiest, wealthiest, and longest-lived people in history. And we are increasingly afraid. This is one of the great paradoxes of our time.”
― Daniel Gardner
Despite it's title, the book is less about the hard science and more about statistics. Modern civilization is plagued by the epidemic of fear even though we live in an environment far removed from our ancestors.
Our brains process fear mostly through emotion and the subconscious mind and our ability to retain memories of the gruesome and dangerous makes it particularly easy for us to be manipulated and jump to the worst conclusions.
We like to think the media has an agenda to drive the masses paranoid. Usually, the worst crimes and most unlikely events make for the best story. Breaking news means sales and coverage. The media influences the public and the public's attention influences the media in a feedback loop. All this 'bad news' is blown out of proportion by our emotional brain.
The book may be dry but the author does considerably well to take these fears, sit with them and explain that although we have reasons to be concerned about, it is not as bad as we feared.
― Daniel Gardner
Despite it's title, the book is less about the hard science and more about statistics. Modern civilization is plagued by the epidemic of fear even though we live in an environment far removed from our ancestors.
Our brains process fear mostly through emotion and the subconscious mind and our ability to retain memories of the gruesome and dangerous makes it particularly easy for us to be manipulated and jump to the worst conclusions.
We like to think the media has an agenda to drive the masses paranoid. Usually, the worst crimes and most unlikely events make for the best story. Breaking news means sales and coverage. The media influences the public and the public's attention influences the media in a feedback loop. All this 'bad news' is blown out of proportion by our emotional brain.
The book may be dry but the author does considerably well to take these fears, sit with them and explain that although we have reasons to be concerned about, it is not as bad as we feared.
October 6, 2015
Subtitle: Why We Fear Things We Shouldn't - and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger. Lame subtitle, good book.
The starting point for this book is an observation: after 9/11, the number of people flying dropped, and stayed lower for about a year. However, during that time, people didn't stop traveling entirely, they just were more likely to take a car than a plane. For long trips, though, a plane is a much safer way to travel than a car. Sure enough, road deaths in America soared in the year after 9/11. Do the math, even taking into account the chance of a terrorist attack on a plane flight, and almost 1600 more people died than would have if people had continued to fly at the same rate as before 9/11.
To put that in perspective, that is 6 times as many people as were on board the doomed flights of 9/11 (most of the people killed then were obviously not traveling at all). It's about half as many people as were killed by the 9/11 attacks directly. Basically, our cockeyed response to 9/11 added another 1600 deaths to the death toll, as a free gift to Al Qaeda.
Except, of course, neither Al Qaeda nor almost anyone else even noticed this, because no terror was involved. It's not like you have to kill more than 1600 people to create terror; the anthrax attacks or the Washington, D.C. sniper killings did their share with far fewer deaths. It's that what we fear, and what's actually likely to get us, aren't especially well correlated. Why not? This is what Daniel Gardner examines in this book.
The short answer is that fear comes from a particular part of the brain, which isn't much concerned with rational thought, and that part of the brain is still operating on some rules of thumb which were developed for the Pleistocene. Rules like:
1) if you see somebody die from something, that's a common risk
2) if you hear about somebody dying from something, but don't see it, it's less common
3) if you don't hear about somebody dying from something, it's not a common risk at all
Gardner lists a bunch of these (with names like the Example Rule, the Anchoring Rule, the Rule of Typical Things), and I won't try to describe them all. Suffice to say, they're rules of thumb which work reasonably well when the only people you see are in your hunter-gatherer group, and the only other news you hear is about what happened in your group (or nearby ones) prior to your birth. Now, this part of the brain, the one responsible for telling you when to be afraid, is hearing (and seeing) tales of violent death brought to them from around the world, precisely because they are odd, with pictures and sometimes even video. We don't hear about car crashes in New York City. We do hear about terrorist attacks. We don't hear about kids dying of ordinary causes, like influenza (unless there's a flu scare on). We do hear about kids snatched away by strangers and tortured to death. We don't hear about old people dying of cancer. We do hear about young people dying of cancer.
One of many intriguing deconstructions by Gardner is the fear surrounding violence, especially shootings, at schools. In one case, in 2006 in Asbury Park, New Jersey, a shooting near (a block away) a middle school caused city officials to close five public schools for two days. This despite the fact that the shooting was not in the school, and study after study has shown that in every part of the U.S. in every decade it was studied, children are at greater risk of violence when outside of school than when in school. Thus, a panicked (and political) response to fear-mongering is to throw the city's children into more dangerous surroundings. I have to admit that I could only read this book in small doses, lest annoyance at the (very familiar sounding) poor judgment described within make me too agitated to concentrate.
How do you keep all of the news media's highly non-representative storytelling from biasing our fear, to make us obsess over things we shouldn't and ignore things we should look out for? In one sense, we cannot. Extensive research has demonstrated that no amount of reading statistics or hearing reassurances from experts will convince the fear-generating part of our brain to calm down. It does what it does, and its rules are not based on statistics or text or epidemiological study; they are based on what it sees and hears.
What we can do, then, is choose not to feed this part of the brain a diet of news about far-flung disasters, picked by news organizations precisely because they are exotic and attention-grabbing. Can we convince most people to do this, to treat what news goes into their brain with as much care as they should treat what food goes into their stomach?
Probably not; most of us aren't doing too well at putting good food into our stomach, either. But, Gardner does provide a good analysis of the many economic incentives that lead news corporations (and pharmaceutical corporations and many others) to market to your fears, and how that can easily spill into stoking your fears so they will be easier to market to. Likewise, while we cannot probably keep society from being blown one way and then the other by fear-based marketing and politics, each person has a choice about whether to let it affect themselves, personally.
To avoid bad food, don't let it into your kitchen, and don't eat in a restaurant that's filled with junk, even if it does also have a salad on the menu. To avoid junk data, turn off the TV, pick news sources that are more text than pictures (so that your brain can do a better job of evaluating the data before it biases your emotions), and most of all take responsibility for critically evaluating how you feel, especially regarding risk. Also, read this book, so you can better recognize when you're being manipulated.
To help the rest of society do a wiser job of coping with, and thinking about, risk? Uh, um...I dunno. And that IS something worth worrying about.
The starting point for this book is an observation: after 9/11, the number of people flying dropped, and stayed lower for about a year. However, during that time, people didn't stop traveling entirely, they just were more likely to take a car than a plane. For long trips, though, a plane is a much safer way to travel than a car. Sure enough, road deaths in America soared in the year after 9/11. Do the math, even taking into account the chance of a terrorist attack on a plane flight, and almost 1600 more people died than would have if people had continued to fly at the same rate as before 9/11.
To put that in perspective, that is 6 times as many people as were on board the doomed flights of 9/11 (most of the people killed then were obviously not traveling at all). It's about half as many people as were killed by the 9/11 attacks directly. Basically, our cockeyed response to 9/11 added another 1600 deaths to the death toll, as a free gift to Al Qaeda.
Except, of course, neither Al Qaeda nor almost anyone else even noticed this, because no terror was involved. It's not like you have to kill more than 1600 people to create terror; the anthrax attacks or the Washington, D.C. sniper killings did their share with far fewer deaths. It's that what we fear, and what's actually likely to get us, aren't especially well correlated. Why not? This is what Daniel Gardner examines in this book.
The short answer is that fear comes from a particular part of the brain, which isn't much concerned with rational thought, and that part of the brain is still operating on some rules of thumb which were developed for the Pleistocene. Rules like:
1) if you see somebody die from something, that's a common risk
2) if you hear about somebody dying from something, but don't see it, it's less common
3) if you don't hear about somebody dying from something, it's not a common risk at all
Gardner lists a bunch of these (with names like the Example Rule, the Anchoring Rule, the Rule of Typical Things), and I won't try to describe them all. Suffice to say, they're rules of thumb which work reasonably well when the only people you see are in your hunter-gatherer group, and the only other news you hear is about what happened in your group (or nearby ones) prior to your birth. Now, this part of the brain, the one responsible for telling you when to be afraid, is hearing (and seeing) tales of violent death brought to them from around the world, precisely because they are odd, with pictures and sometimes even video. We don't hear about car crashes in New York City. We do hear about terrorist attacks. We don't hear about kids dying of ordinary causes, like influenza (unless there's a flu scare on). We do hear about kids snatched away by strangers and tortured to death. We don't hear about old people dying of cancer. We do hear about young people dying of cancer.
One of many intriguing deconstructions by Gardner is the fear surrounding violence, especially shootings, at schools. In one case, in 2006 in Asbury Park, New Jersey, a shooting near (a block away) a middle school caused city officials to close five public schools for two days. This despite the fact that the shooting was not in the school, and study after study has shown that in every part of the U.S. in every decade it was studied, children are at greater risk of violence when outside of school than when in school. Thus, a panicked (and political) response to fear-mongering is to throw the city's children into more dangerous surroundings. I have to admit that I could only read this book in small doses, lest annoyance at the (very familiar sounding) poor judgment described within make me too agitated to concentrate.
How do you keep all of the news media's highly non-representative storytelling from biasing our fear, to make us obsess over things we shouldn't and ignore things we should look out for? In one sense, we cannot. Extensive research has demonstrated that no amount of reading statistics or hearing reassurances from experts will convince the fear-generating part of our brain to calm down. It does what it does, and its rules are not based on statistics or text or epidemiological study; they are based on what it sees and hears.
What we can do, then, is choose not to feed this part of the brain a diet of news about far-flung disasters, picked by news organizations precisely because they are exotic and attention-grabbing. Can we convince most people to do this, to treat what news goes into their brain with as much care as they should treat what food goes into their stomach?
Probably not; most of us aren't doing too well at putting good food into our stomach, either. But, Gardner does provide a good analysis of the many economic incentives that lead news corporations (and pharmaceutical corporations and many others) to market to your fears, and how that can easily spill into stoking your fears so they will be easier to market to. Likewise, while we cannot probably keep society from being blown one way and then the other by fear-based marketing and politics, each person has a choice about whether to let it affect themselves, personally.
To avoid bad food, don't let it into your kitchen, and don't eat in a restaurant that's filled with junk, even if it does also have a salad on the menu. To avoid junk data, turn off the TV, pick news sources that are more text than pictures (so that your brain can do a better job of evaluating the data before it biases your emotions), and most of all take responsibility for critically evaluating how you feel, especially regarding risk. Also, read this book, so you can better recognize when you're being manipulated.
To help the rest of society do a wiser job of coping with, and thinking about, risk? Uh, um...I dunno. And that IS something worth worrying about.
July 20, 2011
This book has three main researchers at its heart: Paul Slovic, Amos Tversky, and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. The three men have both done work on the two-system brain and it is this idea that Daniel Gardner uses to explain and link all the topics in this book. It is a fascinating explanation of how we think and make decisions. There is an excellent description (chapter 2 Of Two Minds) of why our brains still function as our ancient ancestors brains did, even though our society has developed at a much quicker pace. By bringing this idea to the fore, Gardner asks us to both appreciate what our two-system brain is good for but also to investigate how that same brain can lead us astray in today's society.
In chapter 3 (The Death of Homo Economicus), Gardner takes three "heuristics and biases" that we use and gives them simpler names: the "Anchoring Rule", the "Rule of Typical Things", and the "Example Rule". He refers to those rules throughout the book to help us understand how our two-system brain can accidentally or deliberately be led astray. Those errors in assessment can lead us into a spiral of ever-increasing fear and continued poor decisions.
In my mind, perhaps the most sinister part of this that Gardner almost glosses over is that when we are railroaded by system one, we are often unaware of it. When we then look back at our decisions using system two, we use that reasoning brain to justify the decision that we made previously. (For an entire book on that phenomenon, read Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts.)
All in all, I found this book to be very readable and informative. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about how our minds function in relation to the world around us.
In chapter 3 (The Death of Homo Economicus), Gardner takes three "heuristics and biases" that we use and gives them simpler names: the "Anchoring Rule", the "Rule of Typical Things", and the "Example Rule". He refers to those rules throughout the book to help us understand how our two-system brain can accidentally or deliberately be led astray. Those errors in assessment can lead us into a spiral of ever-increasing fear and continued poor decisions.
In my mind, perhaps the most sinister part of this that Gardner almost glosses over is that when we are railroaded by system one, we are often unaware of it. When we then look back at our decisions using system two, we use that reasoning brain to justify the decision that we made previously. (For an entire book on that phenomenon, read Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts.)
All in all, I found this book to be very readable and informative. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about how our minds function in relation to the world around us.
April 2, 2010
“So why is it that so many of the safest humans in history are scared of their own shadows?”
That’s the question posed by this fantastic tract which looks at why modern man – despite having advantages which his ancestors could never dream of – is beset by so much fear. It explores how that fear is exploited and exaggerated by the media, governments and corporations – so that we are constantly told of new things to worry about, new dangers ahead and new reasons to panic.
Gardner deals with violent crime (which has actually been falling for decades, if not centuries; disease (most of the real killers – with the exception of cancer – are actually downplayed while attention focuses on the latest deadly bug du jour); car accidents (although there are substantial deaths, asthma and diabetes both kill more); chemicals in the air (I did not know that DDT actually had lots of positive qualities); and terrorism (a talking point for the last decade, but one which few people in the world will ever find themselves directly impacted by). The chapter on the terrorism is particularly good. It show how after the dreadful attacks on 9/11, the rhetoric used by George W. Bush actually increased the feeling of terror while playing straight into Osama Bin-Laden’s hands. To quote: “In 1933, it was in Franklin Roosevelt’s political interests to tell Americans the greatest danger was fear itself. Seventy years later, it was in George W. Bush’s political interest to do the opposite.”
The book is statistic and number heavy so can look daunting, but Gardner’s prose style is smooth and dryly witty. There are phrases in this text which will make you smile, just as there are arguments which will astound you and make you question the world around you and how – and your own sense of fear – fits into it.
That’s the question posed by this fantastic tract which looks at why modern man – despite having advantages which his ancestors could never dream of – is beset by so much fear. It explores how that fear is exploited and exaggerated by the media, governments and corporations – so that we are constantly told of new things to worry about, new dangers ahead and new reasons to panic.
Gardner deals with violent crime (which has actually been falling for decades, if not centuries; disease (most of the real killers – with the exception of cancer – are actually downplayed while attention focuses on the latest deadly bug du jour); car accidents (although there are substantial deaths, asthma and diabetes both kill more); chemicals in the air (I did not know that DDT actually had lots of positive qualities); and terrorism (a talking point for the last decade, but one which few people in the world will ever find themselves directly impacted by). The chapter on the terrorism is particularly good. It show how after the dreadful attacks on 9/11, the rhetoric used by George W. Bush actually increased the feeling of terror while playing straight into Osama Bin-Laden’s hands. To quote: “In 1933, it was in Franklin Roosevelt’s political interests to tell Americans the greatest danger was fear itself. Seventy years later, it was in George W. Bush’s political interest to do the opposite.”
The book is statistic and number heavy so can look daunting, but Gardner’s prose style is smooth and dryly witty. There are phrases in this text which will make you smile, just as there are arguments which will astound you and make you question the world around you and how – and your own sense of fear – fits into it.
December 8, 2010
This book is all about putting a realistic twist on all the big risks everyone thinks the world holds - zillions of people terrified of terrorism and the like. The only problem for me is that I'm already a numerate sceptic who explains to others that the risk of, oh, their kids being abducted by paedophiles or similar, is vanishingly small and takes all use of statistics in news stories with a huge pinch of salt. So I wasn't sure how much I was going to get out of it.
The good news is that it's a good read and did tell me plenty of things I didn't know. Which just gives me more ammunition for playing the numerate sceptic role in future. Hah, fun.
The bad news? Well, the book covers the phenomenon of "confirmation bias" where you tend to take away from a story only the bits that backup what you already think and disregard the rest. So I think I've probably done that even with this book... how do you counter that? The author mainly wants to play down people's fears of what they consider to be big dangers but doesn't really get into what the biggest risks we face in our comfortable first world lives are. We obviously all make bad decisions about them preferring to fixate on removing some minor environmental hazard before taking exercise.
The point to take away is that we're fortunate to be about the healthiest, safest and longest lived humans who have ever walked the planet which is nice to have confirmed. (And don't believe any interpretation of statistics you hear in the news. Hmmm, the author's a journalist...)
The good news is that it's a good read and did tell me plenty of things I didn't know. Which just gives me more ammunition for playing the numerate sceptic role in future. Hah, fun.
The bad news? Well, the book covers the phenomenon of "confirmation bias" where you tend to take away from a story only the bits that backup what you already think and disregard the rest. So I think I've probably done that even with this book... how do you counter that? The author mainly wants to play down people's fears of what they consider to be big dangers but doesn't really get into what the biggest risks we face in our comfortable first world lives are. We obviously all make bad decisions about them preferring to fixate on removing some minor environmental hazard before taking exercise.
The point to take away is that we're fortunate to be about the healthiest, safest and longest lived humans who have ever walked the planet which is nice to have confirmed. (And don't believe any interpretation of statistics you hear in the news. Hmmm, the author's a journalist...)
October 9, 2016
قبل قراءتي لهذا الكتاب، كنت احسب ان خوف الناس من أمور لا وجود لها واستهانتهم بمخاطر محدقة من حولهم يرجع برمته الى انتشار الجهل و العلوم الزائفة بين الناس. لم أكن اعرف ابدا ان الخوف و سوء تقدير المخاطر يرجع بجزء كبير منه لتطور الانسان و كيفية تشكيل عقله عبر العصور.
.. و في الحقيقة منظومتين التفكير كان صاحب السبق فيهم دانيال كانمان و تفرسكي في كتابهم التفكير السريع التفكير البطيء
.. و في الحقيقة منظومتين التفكير كان صاحب السبق فيهم دانيال كانمان و تفرسكي في كتابهم التفكير السريع التفكير البطيء
April 1, 2019
Hands down, this is one of the most valuable books I’ve ever read. It should be required reading in high school and college. It pairs nicely with the works of Kahneman, Tversky, Tetlock, Thaler, Sunstein, Ariely, Gigerenzer, and Taleb. This book is indispensable when it comes to understanding reality and human nature. I can’t recommend it enough.
June 8, 2015
Great use of statistics to show how we do not use rational thought to make decisions. While it is entertaining, his use of the phrase "my inner caveman" annoyed me.
October 25, 2016
Very interesting, made me really think about the way we process information...
September 18, 2021
how psychology, politics, media influences affect how humans measure fear and risk. Content isnt too bad, specially the psychology part, which can be the natural sequel of reading Daniel Kahneman. How the Gut overrides our Head when we evaluate Cancer, Marijuana (which I dont exactly agree, which might prove my biases), Ebola, flight travel, insecticides, Mad Cow Disease, Nuclear Weapons, politics, “war on drugs,” West Nile Virus, clean water, politics sway of media, terrorism, and the age of longer lifespans due to historic threats wiped out yet we have grown accustomed to not recogizing these benefits and measure the world as unsafer than ever… but then again, this was written in pre-COVID America, and the risks in the West arent exactly the same as in Israel where terrorism is real nor in third world countries where healthcare isnt absolute. Good amount of statistics, references to papers, and also some dull chapters (which again, proves book’s point that people anchor better the emotional facets than the logical 😅).
January 23, 2022
Required reading for anyone who is anxious in general or anyone who wants to understand the current state of the world. Still relevant even after 14 years. Actually more relevant now than ever, in many ways. Excellent book.
April 3, 2022
Occasionally interesting book, but it was often way too long-winded, repetitive and too reliant on unreliable pop-psychology of the 2000's. Too bad, because the topic is extremely interesting and important.
February 28, 2018
Ta książka powinna być lekturą obowiązkową na koniec edukacji podstawowej. Autor na licznych praktycznych i bardzo aktualnych przykładach omawia zjawisko powszechnej manipulacji informacjami, ukierunkowane na tworzenie kultury strachu. Książka uczy krytycznego myślenia i zwraca uwagę na pułapki, jakie zastawia na nas nasz własny umysł. Szczerze warta polecenia.
December 19, 2020
Nadugo i naširoko. Knjiga bi trebala biti max 140 stranica.
April 15, 2009
This is the sort of the book that is nice and easy to read – nothing that requires too much of thinking to comprehend – and yet so immensely useful and informative that I’d rate it as required reading for all of us. Everyone needs to read this book or something like it. It reminded me of Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling Upon Happiness. It contains the same kind of tidbits of information and insight that can be very useful in helping us get a better grasp of what is happening to us and what is going on around us. Actually, Gardner quotes Gilbert a lot.
I remember when I lived in San Diego a little girl named Danielle van Dam – I can’t believe I still remember her name – was kidnapped and murdered. I think there were also a few other cases like that in other parts of the country around the same time. It was quite amazing to me to watch all the people living in the safe and posh and clean suburbs of San Diego acting like there was a murderous pedophile lurking behind every tree of their neighborhood. I reasoned – in bad taste, I admit – with one fearful parent that his daughter was more likely to die in a car crash. Forget about car crashes. I learned in this book that children are far more likely to drown in a swimming pool than get killed by a pedophile.
The book starts by citing the often quoted and taken-as-truth assertion that “at any given time there are 50,000 pedophiles on the internet” as an example of irrational paranoia created by the media. People seem to be happy to accept this statistics. No one bothers to ask where this 50,000 number came from (a number this nice and round is definitely pulled out of thin air). How can anyone tell if an internet user is a pedophile? And what does “on the internet” exactly mean? Maybe these supposed 50,000 pedophiles are just checking their stock quotes. Why people are willing to accept such absurdities is an interesting question that Gardner attempts to answer based on human psychology.
And then he gets into an assortment of other really interesting subjects. Human psychology is not the only culprit. There are corporations that have learned that the surest way to profit is stirring fear. And it’s not just the evil and greedy corporations. Scientists, health officials, law enforcement agencies, activists of all sorts, nonprofit and charity organizations, and all sorts of other well-intentioned people do the same to push their agenda. And of course, politicians are masters of fear-mongering. Anyone remember the 10,000 (another nice and round number) Al-Qaeda operatives in the U.S. after September 11? The best chapter of the book was “Terrified of Terrorism” in which Gardner really went into the details of how and why the risk of terrorism was so much overblown.
Read this book. It can give you peace of mind.
I remember when I lived in San Diego a little girl named Danielle van Dam – I can’t believe I still remember her name – was kidnapped and murdered. I think there were also a few other cases like that in other parts of the country around the same time. It was quite amazing to me to watch all the people living in the safe and posh and clean suburbs of San Diego acting like there was a murderous pedophile lurking behind every tree of their neighborhood. I reasoned – in bad taste, I admit – with one fearful parent that his daughter was more likely to die in a car crash. Forget about car crashes. I learned in this book that children are far more likely to drown in a swimming pool than get killed by a pedophile.
The book starts by citing the often quoted and taken-as-truth assertion that “at any given time there are 50,000 pedophiles on the internet” as an example of irrational paranoia created by the media. People seem to be happy to accept this statistics. No one bothers to ask where this 50,000 number came from (a number this nice and round is definitely pulled out of thin air). How can anyone tell if an internet user is a pedophile? And what does “on the internet” exactly mean? Maybe these supposed 50,000 pedophiles are just checking their stock quotes. Why people are willing to accept such absurdities is an interesting question that Gardner attempts to answer based on human psychology.
And then he gets into an assortment of other really interesting subjects. Human psychology is not the only culprit. There are corporations that have learned that the surest way to profit is stirring fear. And it’s not just the evil and greedy corporations. Scientists, health officials, law enforcement agencies, activists of all sorts, nonprofit and charity organizations, and all sorts of other well-intentioned people do the same to push their agenda. And of course, politicians are masters of fear-mongering. Anyone remember the 10,000 (another nice and round number) Al-Qaeda operatives in the U.S. after September 11? The best chapter of the book was “Terrified of Terrorism” in which Gardner really went into the details of how and why the risk of terrorism was so much overblown.
Read this book. It can give you peace of mind.
February 23, 2009
Gardner takes a look at the psychology of fear and why we are more fearful today than ever, even though we live in perhaps the safest time in all human history. Introduces reasons that are hard wired into us via evolution and therefore served us well previously, but tend to misinterpret things in the modern world, resulting in erroneous assumptions especially regarding risk.
The central point concerns the two means by which we perceive risk and react accordingly - Gut reaction and head reaction. Head is the logic, gut the emotion and the emotional side of us tends to act quickly on feelings. These can be modified by head but only if there is data to ponder and assess and this takes a long time. If there is no data the modification may not happen at all.
Examples include psychological factors such as example theory - when we see a lot of coverage of a terrible event/illness it assumes a hiogh profile and we therefore credit it too much weight and figure it is much more common that it is. Even if we have the data, head will only modify this reaction so much. There are other examples of the way we think including a gut reaction to Good/Bad - assumption for example that "chemicals = Bad"
I imagine there will be those who think we should try to mitigate all risk but Gardner explains why this is impossible and the danger of swapping one perceived risk (e.g. flying after 9/11) with another, actually greater risk (driving instead). There is some left leaning comment as well on the war against terrorism that may be controversial although makes sense in the context of the book.
Well worth reading, written in a very approachable way.
The central point concerns the two means by which we perceive risk and react accordingly - Gut reaction and head reaction. Head is the logic, gut the emotion and the emotional side of us tends to act quickly on feelings. These can be modified by head but only if there is data to ponder and assess and this takes a long time. If there is no data the modification may not happen at all.
Examples include psychological factors such as example theory - when we see a lot of coverage of a terrible event/illness it assumes a hiogh profile and we therefore credit it too much weight and figure it is much more common that it is. Even if we have the data, head will only modify this reaction so much. There are other examples of the way we think including a gut reaction to Good/Bad - assumption for example that "chemicals = Bad"
I imagine there will be those who think we should try to mitigate all risk but Gardner explains why this is impossible and the danger of swapping one perceived risk (e.g. flying after 9/11) with another, actually greater risk (driving instead). There is some left leaning comment as well on the war against terrorism that may be controversial although makes sense in the context of the book.
Well worth reading, written in a very approachable way.
May 10, 2009
This book starts out well - describing the psychology of how people evaluate risk, and how come we are often so bad at it. One great example from the September 11 attacks. If there had been a single attack of similar magnitude every month for a year, then a person's risk of dying in an attack would be 1 in 7,750. In one year, a person has a 1 in 6,498 chance of dying in a car accident. So our billions of dollars spent on anti-terrorism measures would have been better spent trying to find ways to make cars safer, even with attack occurring every month. The first half of the book does a very good job describing how and why we are so poor in evaluating the risk and therefore spend inordinate amounts of energy protecting against low probability risks while at the same time doing very little to protect against high probability ones.
The second half of the book moved from the science of fear to how media, government, and companies use fear to achieve their own ends. At first this seemed out of place, but it does a very good job of illustrating how people who understand the principles from the first half can use that knowledge to advance their own agendas. It was fascinating to see how the government used fear to justify the unjustifiable.
My main complaint is that the book is rather repetitive. It could have probably been half as long and still contained all of the relevant information.
The second half of the book moved from the science of fear to how media, government, and companies use fear to achieve their own ends. At first this seemed out of place, but it does a very good job of illustrating how people who understand the principles from the first half can use that knowledge to advance their own agendas. It was fascinating to see how the government used fear to justify the unjustifiable.
My main complaint is that the book is rather repetitive. It could have probably been half as long and still contained all of the relevant information.
November 21, 2018
Rất đáng đọc. Logic cuốn sách của cuốn sách là như thế này: đầu tiên chỉ rõ ra con người có 2 kiểu suy nghĩ là dùng lý trí (cái đầu) và trực giác (cái bụng), sau đó chỉ tiếp ra cách thức mà con người dùng 2 "cái đầu" và "cái bụng" đưa ra quyết định, tiếp đến là chỉ ra những sai lầm mà con người hay mắc phải khi bị trực giác chi phối, và cuối cùng phân tích cụ thể vào từng loại nguy cơ mà con người hiện đại phải đối phó. Quyển này làm mình nhớ đến cuốn Reason to stay alive, mà trong đó tác giả cũng chia sẻ một ý kiến khá tương đồng, đó là con người hiện tại hay bị các công ty lớn, các tập đoàn, chính trị gia hay chính phủ, thông qua truyền thông, để "bán" những nguy cơ, những nỗi sợ hãi ko có thật cho chúng ta để làm lợi cho họ. Đọc để hiểu ra rằng cách thức bạn dùng trực giác và lý trí như thế nào, để biết cách mà truyền thông tiêm nhiễm những nguy cơ vào đầu chúng ta, từ đó để hiểu ra chúng ta, con người hiện đại, dù có rất nhiều những thứ phải đương đầu, nhưng chúng ta đang là thời đại thịnh vượng nhất trong lịch sử loài người: Tuổi thọ trung bình cao, lương thực đầy đủ, tỉ lệ tử vong thấp. Và chúng ta nên tận hưởng cuộc sống một chút, thay vì quá lo lắng vì những nguy cơ có thể xảy đến
January 14, 2010
After years of trying to figure out why I think news reporting is bullshit, and advertising is bullshit, and politicians are full of bullshit, I finally have some reference material to actively back up my instincts. This book confirms something that I think we all sense, but don't have the context to express. Life should not be such a scary thing, but there are a whole lot of people with a whole lot of vested interest in convincing us otherwise.
Only two problems with the book. First, his use of 'Gut' and 'Head' throughout the book was overly-simplistic, especially in the context of a book that goes into great detail about socio-psychological behavior. Second, I heart the apocalypse and this book is far too optimistic for my tastes. Zombies and wastelands and population-thinning is usually my cup of tea and Gardner insists on telling us how slim the possibilities of that are. I mean, that's great and everything. You know, my kid will live longer and be healthier and be wealthier than any generation before his, which is all well and good. But I want to shotgun the undead, dammit.
Only two problems with the book. First, his use of 'Gut' and 'Head' throughout the book was overly-simplistic, especially in the context of a book that goes into great detail about socio-psychological behavior. Second, I heart the apocalypse and this book is far too optimistic for my tastes. Zombies and wastelands and population-thinning is usually my cup of tea and Gardner insists on telling us how slim the possibilities of that are. I mean, that's great and everything. You know, my kid will live longer and be healthier and be wealthier than any generation before his, which is all well and good. But I want to shotgun the undead, dammit.
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