Diff for "ScienceOfFear"

• http://wiki.keithl.com/ScienceOfFear

The Science of Fear

Daniel Gardner . 2008 . BvtLib 152.46 GAR

• p001 Prologue: 1595

• p002 fear of flying after 9/11, anthrax-infected mail

• p003 flying FAR safer, the drive to the airport more dangerous
• p003 If hijackers crashed one flight per WEEK, the risk is 1 in 1.6 million per flight
• p003 annual car crash risk is 1 in 6000

• p003 Gerd Gigerenzer observed shift to driving for a year, costing 1595 extra lives

• p005 ch01 Prehistoric Refugee

• p008 England life expectancy at birth: 1900:46y . 1980:74y . 2003: 80y

  • United States 1930:59y 2000:78y . Canada >80y

• p008 childbirth deaths: developing world 440/100K developed world 20/100K
• p010 June 1990 Lowenstein Mather Dynamic processes in risk perception
• p010 Breast cancer highest after 80, 99% guessed lower ages (20% guessed fifties)
• p011 Chernobyl estimated extra risk 9000, American skin cancer deaths more than 10,000 per year
• p012 cars kill far more than handguns (not if suicide included)
  • 2023 Oregon guns / 134 homicides / 489 suicides / 587 crashes (20% are pedestrians and cyclists)
• p013 Aum Shinrikyo 1995 subway nerve gas, 12 deaths, obesity kills 100K/y, inadequate preventive care "hundreds of thousands"

  • KHL excessive drinking deaths 178K/year

• p015 Paul Slovic UO Daniel Kahneman 2002 Economics Nobel

• p015 System 1 fast/stereotypic Feeling, System 2 slow/logical Reason

• p016 availability heuristic

• p018 ch02 Of Two Minds

• p019 human brain size 5MYa 400cc, 2Mya 650cc, 0.5Mya 120cc, modern 1400cc
• p020 human common ancestor 100Kya
• p021 René Descartes: body and mind separate. Gilbert Ryle 1949 scorned "the ghost in the machine"
• p022 big brain big skull, women's pelvis too small
• p024 snake phobia universal inclination, even in snake-free Arctic

• p032 ch03 The Death of Homo economicus

• p032 Innocence in Danger "50,000 pedophiles on the internet" POMA

• p033 Gandhi age of death: prime with 9, average guess 50. Prime with 140, average guess guess 67 (assassinated age 78)
• p039 text: "For every problem there is a solution that is simple, clean, and wrong" wroteH. L. Mencken

  • wikiquote: there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.

• p040 Kahneman and Tversky Judgement under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases Science 27 Sep 1974

• p041 K&T "Linda description" probability ranking, 83% guessed "teller and feminist" more likely than teller or feminist

• p042 Rule of Typical Things intuitive substitution of certainty for frequent association (my words)

  • most doctors choose intuition over logic
• p045 Gilbert and Sullivan Mercado Act II: Pooh-Bah:
  • "Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative"
• p046 Earthquakes less likely immediately after a prior one. Earthquake INSURANCE sales HIGHEST after one.

  • 1700 Cascadia 8.7-9.2 Mw, 325ya 40 major over 10,000 years, average every 246 years

  • 28 earthquakes since 6000 years ago, average every 215 years, longest interval 345 years.
  • We are near 326 years now. The next BIG ONE may make the region uninhabitable for YEARS

    • We should have disaster relocation insurance

• p047 60sec: "list words _ _ _ _ _ n _" (avg. 2.9)" "list words _ _ _ _ i n g" (avg. 6.4)
  • cd /etc/dictionaries-common
  • grep '^.......$' words | wc (15459 words)
  • grep '^.....n.$' words | wc (1830 words)
  • grep '^....ing$' words | wc (1121 words)
  • students could think of 2.9 ......n. words in 60 seconds, 6.4 ....ing words in 60 seconds
• p047 students who thought of 3 risk boosting behaviors they behave in rated their chances of disease higher than students who thought of 8
  • apples and oranges - students may be misinformed on two different axes
  • 48% of US adults have some form of cardiovascular disease

• p054 Canary Island tsunami hazard

  • most collapses multistage events (hours to days), recurrence rate less than 100,000 years
  • Ward and Day 2001 model
    • 15-60 minutes for 50 to 100 meter waves hitting Africa
    • 3-6 hours for 15 to 20 meter waves hitting South Africa and Newfoundland
    • Spain and England shielded by La Palma, 5-7 meter waves
    • 9 hours to Florida for 20 to 25 meter waves
  • 2006 and later models suggest smaller waves, 10 meters in Africa and Europe, 3 meters in the western hemiphere
• p054 Benjamin Franklin: "Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in none other."
• p055 less than 20 years ago (book published in 2008, hence after 1988) ... rare journalists who knew of the internet's existence ...
  • There was already an ARPANET connection in UC Berkeley's Evans Hall in 1973, when I took classes there
  • Summer jobs at Tektronix since 1971; nearby teams were involved with ARPANET tests in 1973
• p055 most 2008 popular internet sites (besides Google) did not exist in 1998
  • keithl.com and kl-ic.com registered in 2001, rain.net (my prior home internet connection) registered in 1994

• p057 The Day After Tomorrow 2004 disaster film ludicrous, but led to some climate awareness

• p059 ch04 The Emotional Brain

• p061 30 cm meteorite explodes like 2 tons of dynamite, about 1000 per year.

• p061 K–Pg sized Doomsday rock 1/100My

• p063 Spaceguard 1990s; by 2008 spotted 90% of 1.6km or larger

• p064 Paul Slovic Decision Research

• p065 Nuclear power risks: laypeople say #1 of 90, experts say #20 of 30

• p067 Habituation

• p070 Robert Zaljonc Ali Alhakami

• p070 people see risk and benefit as opposites, seesaw effect, example nuclear power
• p071 slower decisions "head", instant decisions "gut" more reflexive seesaw effect
• p072 lethality of cancer over-estimated, more media attention, diabetes and asthma ignored and underestimated
• p072 "nuclear" triggers the same intense fear, whether weapons or power or waste repository
• p078 indoor radon kills 41,000 people per year in the US and EU, nobody else to blame, hence ignored,
  • unlike nuclear waste, with much smaller effects but somebody else to blame

  • Active soil depressurizatoion

• p082 probability blind 1 in 10 million risk - 1/3 of population still worries

  • KL: motorcycle death rate 3 in 10 million miles

  • KL: 200M adults with BMI>25: 500,000 deaths per year -> 7 in 10 million risk per day

• p083 PSU GE145.M37 1996 Howard Margolis d2009 Dealing With Risk

  • public demands mitigation of some tiny risks regardless of cost

• p086 2004 Indian ocean tsunami killed 230,000 . Experts said unlikely, but create a warning system anyway, because the cost is modest.

• p087 ch05 A Story About Numbers

• p094 Herbert York chose 1MT warhead size for Atlas because it was a "particularly round number".

• p096 Regression to the mean unusual results typically followed by average results

• p099 Ellen Peters: more numerate people less likely to make bad gut decisions

  • book 513.019 P4815i 2020 Innumeracy in the wild 2020 @ Multco Hillsdale

• p101 breast implant panic, invalid lawsuits bankrupted Dow Corning

• p102 ch06 The Herd Senses Danger

• p102 UCB Institute of Personality Assessment and Research

• p103 15 out of 50 ignored what they saw and followed (fake) consensus

• p103 Solomon_Aschconformity experiments 35% conformed to actor incorrect answer

• p105 "today's fully independent thinker will have to have a thorough knowledge of biology, physics, medicine, chemistry, geology, and statistics"
  • nonsense. An independent thinker can say "It don't care", "I don't know", or "I will find out".

• p107 John Weingart Waste is a Terrible Thing to Mind

• p110 3 number test, guess rule. People find a simple rule that works when the actual rule is different.
  • the problem is not sticking to an overspecific rule, but that there are can be an infinite number of possible rules
• p112 MRI test showed activity in a different part of brain for disconfirming information

• p113 group polarization

• p119 alcohol a beloved drug, kills far more people than all illicit drugs combined

  • np310 2004 Alcohol death toll 85K/y, all illicit drugs 17K/y

• p121 "white male effect", Paul Slovic discovered 70% agreed with women and minorities, 30% (wealthier, better educated, politically conservative) underestimated risks

• p121 Dan Kahan four world views: individualist, egalitarian, hierarchist, communitarian

• p123 people cherry-pick information to match their cultural predispositions

• p125 ch07 Fear Inc.

• p125 Security Essen 250Ksf 40V visitors

• p126 Bulletproof Jaguar sedan

• p127 home alarm system radio ad "breakins are on the rise" . police say breakins declining

• p127 Negative affect

• p129 Purell scary ads Welcome to the world of Howard Hughes

  • Mysophobia, fear of germs

• p129 Personal Air Purifier

• p131 Doctor's office poster pushing Pravacol cholesterol-reducing statin drug, potentially lethal

• p132 Moynihan and Henry 2005 Selling Sickness at Multco Central

• p132 medical condition branding

• p133 impotence medicalized to Erectile dysfunction

• p135 Several ads for cholesterol-lowering drugs appeared to suggest non-pharmacological approaches were almost futile
• p136 Paul Slovic: Tobacco companies understood affect 20 years before cognitive psychologists

• p137 Kahneman Tversky 1974

• p138 neuromarketing "attach subjects to MRIs" /uh/ maybe EEG

• p142 Not less but MORE informed influenced by fear-driven political advertising
• p143 "Nobody heard what you said ... powerful emotional pictures drown out the sound"
• p144 Canadian "Low Income Cutoff" (people who aren't rich) conflated with "child hunger"
• p145 Food Research Action Council 1991 claim 1 of 8 children had gone hungry sometime in the past year.

  • morphed into Dan Rather "American children in danger of starving ... one of eight is going hungry tonight"

• p146 more cancer because of more and older people; the death rate and incidence is falling

• p146 almost all skin cancer deaths are rare melanoma

• p147 very little evidence that sunscreen protects against melanoma

• p147 American Cancer Society ads paid for by Neutrogena, uncredited

• p148 Dick Pound claimed 1/3 of National Hockey League players used illegal performance-enhancing drugs. source? "... just invented it ... call me a liar"

• p149 public relations companies create "news releases" that TV stations ran as their own reporting. Free content, free advertising

• p150 CSPI "over 11,000 cases of school foodborne illness 1990-2004"

  • compare to CDC's 76 million US cases per year. 11000/14 = 768 cases per year, out of 50 million students, 0.00157% chance per student
• p152 activists replace "likely" with "certain"

• p155 ch08 All the Fear That's Fit to Print

• p157 Breast cancer in magazines: 84% under 50 and 50% under 40 . Actually, 16% under 50 and 3.6% under 40
• p157 most likely cancer age survey: 56% say age doesn't matter, 21% highest in 50s. 0.7% for actual "80 and older"
• p159 Spectacular deaths widely reported, falls and poisonings ignored
• p163 Denominator bias: X people killed ... but population size absent, no way to measure risk
• p164 birth control patch "twice the risk" ... from 3/10000 to 6/10000

  • in 2015, maternity risk 22/10000

• p165 US newspaper readership 70% in 1972, 33% in 2006
• p167 four criteria for restless leg, 3% actual prevalence, one symptom only in news articles

  • GSK ropinirole relief 73% , placebo 57%

  • only one article quantified side effects
• p169 Conflict and novelty is news, 3/4 of news is "new"

• p169 8571 smokers die per BBC news about smoking, one ) mad cow death merited three BBC stories

• p170 1994 bestseller The Hot Zone describes monkeys shipped to Virginia with Ebola variant not lethal to Humans

• p170 1995 outbreak in Zaire massive coverage, 255 dead
• p170 1998 civil war in Congo and central Africa killed millions, almost no coverage
• p173 average male lifespan reached 80 years. Toronto Star: "The bad news is these booming ranks of elderly Canadians could crash our health system"
• p179 a few shark attacks became top network news item in early September 2011
• p180 shark stories vanished after 9/11

• p182 ch09 Crime and Perception

• p185 NISMART 1999: 797,500 people under 18 went missing for any reason: mostly runaways, 200,000 "family abductions;" mostly noncustodial parent keeping child too long.

• p186 stereotypical kidnappings 115 nationwide, 90 under age 14 (0.00016%)

• p188 June 2002 abduction of 14yo Elisabeth Smart

  • Bill O'Reilly declares "a summer of hell for America's kids"
• p190 crime as an Egyptian pyramid. 10.2M property crimes. Only the 12% small top (1.4M) is violent crime. 417K robberies. 94K rapes, 17K murders (by far the highest rate in the Western world)
• p191 average American three times more likely to die in a car crash than a murder
• p192 compared to seniors, 55-64yo violence victims 5 times more likely, 16-19yo 22 times more likely
• p193 TV murders 1400 times actual rates, mostly young men killing other young men
• p194 20% estimate violent crime anywhere near accurate, 1/3 estimate 6x actual rates
• p196 tragic death stories increase perceived risk estimates for different deaths
• p202 Willie Horton story used against Michael Dukakis first by Al Gore, then by Roger Ailes for George Bush
• p203 Clinton grew prison populations beyond Russia's, "regretted" two weeks before leaving office

• p204 Jessica's Law 25 years for 18yo sex with 15yo girlfriend

• p208 prison overcrowding, $37/hr overtime for prison guards, some earn >100K/y

• p210 2003-3, for every killing in school, 75 killings away from school
• p210 52M schoolkids 1997-8, 0.00006% chance of being murdered
  • ridiculous digits 1 in 1529412 ... which of course seems MUCH larger than 1 in 1.5 million
• p211 NBC/WSJ poll 71% said that a school shooting in their community was likely or very likely
• p212 FDR 1933 unreasoning terror, author writes "unreasoning terror"
• p214 1/3 of children never go out alone. Almost half stare at screens for 3 hours or more. Raised like "battery chickens". Raises questions (in 2008) about the adults they will become
• p216 Western Europe homicide rates lowest in eight centuries.

• p216 Lawrence Keeley War before Civilization 1996 CMill 355.009

• p216 The Harmless People about the Kung San; actual homicide rate 20 to 80 times major industrial nations

• p218 ch10 The Chemistry of Fear

• p221 Rachel Carson 1907-1964 (breast cancer) Silent Spring 1962

• p222 Carson 1962: "Today more American school children die of cancer than any other disease"
  • because almost all killer childhood diseases were eliminated by vaccination, sanitation, and antibiotics
• p223 Carson referenced arsenic-bearing insecticide in tobacco as a cause of cancer - not smoking itself.
• p225 1979 Geneva more cancer than industrial Birmingham
• p225 American Cancer Society: only 2% of all cancers caused by man-made and natural environmental pollutants

• p225 Bruce Ames synthetic chemicals much less than 1% of cancers

• p226 Drinking too much water unbalances sodium and potassium levels, inducing siezures, coma, perhaps death
  • kidneys can process one liter per hour
• p229 gasoline binds to a protein in lab rat kidneys, causing cancer; humans don't make that protein

  • Aaron B. Wildavsky 1995 But Is It TRUE?

• p234 "epidemic of cancer" ... heart disease kills far fewer people, cancer also kills fewer people but relatively more today. Cancer is a disease of aging.

• p235 Canadian childhood cancer relative risk increased 25% between 1970 and 1985, plateaued after

• p236 168 cases per million, 1% of all cases. DEATH RATE has dropped from 70 per million to 30 per million
  • American and British statistics almost identical
• p237 screening programs find many more cancers, apparent incidence soars, but many cancers are static, no symptoms or progession
• p238 Bruce Ames: Not including smoking and aging, there is no increase in cancer.
• p240 1996 NAS: more than a million naturally occuring chemicals in the blood supply
• p241 1943 1.3M sprayed with DDT in liberated Naples, ending a winter epidemic of typhus (spread by mites, fleas, and ticks).
• p242 DDT fights malaria in Africa, risky, but less risky than insect-borne disease.

• p243 Daniel Krewski half of Canadian public agreed that a risk-free world is possible.

• p246 ch11 Terrified of Terrorism

• p247 9/11 and Gut Example Rule: This will probably happen again

• p247 2001 anthrax attacks 22 infected 11 seriously, 5 died

• p248 If the purpose of terrorism is to terrify, the terrorists had succeeded.

• p250 Wall Street Bombing 1920 Sep 16, 38 dead, 400 injured

  • author Gardner attributes to anarchists, the bombing was never solved

• p250 Risks from Worldwide Terrorism:... Bogen Jones 2005

• p251 American lifetime terrorism risk tiny, de minimis

• p258 Gilmore Commission (not "committee") "Building a nuclear device capable of producing mass destruction presents Herculean challenges ..."

  • Saddam Hussein spent over $10B and failed
• p259 After 9/11, Dow recovered in 40 days

• p259 William Dobson "... how little the world has changed."

• p263 shifted blame to Saddam Hussein and Iraq

• p267 2004 reminders of death or 9/11 increased support for the president
• p267 Scare people, then offer to protect them

• p269 John E. Mueller 2006 Overblown "For the (FBI) bureau's director, absence of evidence apparently is evidence of existence."

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• p289 ch12 There's Never Been a Better Time To Be Alive

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• p324 Bibliography

• p325 Risk and Reason : safety, law, and the environment Sunstein ... PSU basement HD61 .S86 2002

• more later