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"
p015 System 1 fast/stereotypic Feeling, System 2 slow/logical Reason
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
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.
0.3 m |
2 tons |
1000/y |
1 m |
100 tons |
40/y |
3 m |
2000 tons |
2/y |
30 m |
2 Mtons |
|
60 m |
80 Mtons |
Tunguska |
3000 m |
80 Mtons |
K–Pg (Cretaceous–Paleogene) extinction event |
- 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 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
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
- 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".
- 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
- 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
- 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
p131 Doctor's office poster pushing Pravacol cholesterol-reducing statin drug, potentially lethal
p132 Moynihan and Henry 2005 Selling Sickness at Multco Central
p133 impotence medicalized to Erectile dysfunction
p155 ch08 All the Fear That's Fit to Print
p182 ch09 Crime and Perception
p218 ch10 The Chemistry of Fear
p246 ch11 Terrified of Terrorism
p289 ch12 There's Never Been a Better Time To Be Alive
p324 Bibliography
p325 Risk and Reason : safety, law, and the environment Sunstein ... PSU basement HD61 .S86 2002
- more later