Schneier: We Need To Relearn How To Accept Risk 478
An anonymous reader writes "Bruce Schneier has written an article about how our society is becoming increasingly averse to risk as we invent ways to reduce it. 'Risk tolerance is both cultural and dependent on the environment around us. As we have advanced technologically as a society, we have reduced many of the risks that have been with us for millennia. Fatal childhood diseases are things of the past, many adult diseases are curable, accidents are rarer and more survivable, buildings collapse less often, death by violence has declined considerably, and so on. All over the world — among the wealthier of us who live in peaceful Western countries — our lives have become safer.' This has led us to overestimate both the level of risk from unlikely events and also our ability to curtail it. Thus, trillions of dollars are spent and vital liberties are lost in misguided efforts to make us safer. 'We need to relearn how to recognize the trade-offs that come from risk management, especially risk from our fellow human beings. We need to relearn how to accept risk, and even embrace it, as essential to human progress and our free society. The more we expect technology to protect us from people in the same way it protects us from nature, the more we will sacrifice the very values of our society in futile attempts to achieve this security.'"
Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
Short version (Score:5, Insightful)
Bruce is right. Even if our society managed to put enough measures in place to mitigate all but the risks associated with an asteroid impact, you surely would not want to live in that society, as the term "living" would be a loosely defined term at best. It would be a society essentially devoid of free will.
Re:Short version (Score:5, Insightful)
While you and I may not want to live in such a society there are those who would like nothing better. Many of them fancy themselves as the enforcers in such a regime, a chance to be a master instead of one of the many slaves. For people who live to control others every unjust law that makes life unbearable for the rest is yet another opportunity for them to exert their authority and feel that blissful, euphoric sense of power that is for them the ultimate drug.
Safety is an illusion (Score:0, Insightful)
It's life, no one gets out alive.
A good start (Score:5, Insightful)
Would be exterminating the lawyers.
Re:Sorry, but where is the evidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
It appears you've been asleep for the last ten years, and possibly the twenty years preceding it that laid the foundation for the severe civil liberties issues we're facing now. Your UID indicates you should be old enough to understand this, unless you've led a rather sheltered life.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I understand, the point is that we are not concentrating on the biggest risks, but on the wrong risks. The measures we have taken to "protect" flights have resulted in more deaths (due to car accidents of people avoiding flying) than the deaths caused by the original incident that triggered the "security" measures.
All in all, we should not give up our freedoms for security theater that actually increases the overall risk.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
Eventually technology will allow a single human being to not need anyone else. Whenever those event coincide, it will be the end of humanity.
Everybody needs friends of some sort. Unless you're suggesting that robots will be good enough friends by then. But if they're autonomous and free-thinking enough to make good friends, they're going to be just as much of a problem as real humans. They're also going to be harder to destroy.
Re:Sorry, but where is the evidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
3,000 lost lives have caused us to spend trillions on wars. A fraction of that invested in additional medical research would have saved far more.
A death in front of the cameras is worse more than a million deaths on a hospital bed...to a politician.
This was foreseeable (Score:4, Insightful)
Big business is risk-averse. And in America today, big business runs everything.
Schneier is right, as usual (Score:5, Insightful)
Though increasingly I start getting the impression that he's firing about a couple of "duh. You don't say..." statements. Or is it just 'cause I'm in the sec biz that it seems "duh" to me?
Why does anyone think security is in any way different from any other business? In EVERY business, every project, every goal you have, everything you do, the first 90% take 10% of the work, while the last 10% gobble up 90%. Be it 80/20 or 70/30 in yours, I won't split hairs, but that's how it is: A huge part of the project or goal is trivially implemented while a minimal part takes up the lion's share. I'd even go so far to say that in security, the ratio is 99-1.
The GOOD thing about security is that you can actually just do the first 99% and accept the risk for the rest, and get away with an incredible cost/benefit ratio. And you'll find that most companies actually use that strategy in their risk management and reach a security level of 95+ percent. Actually, the joke here is that most companies are, at least in my and I'd say "our" (yours too, I'd guess) definition of security standards, under-secured because of their IT-Governance and that "95% is good enough 'til everything is at 95%" rules. That's why trivial security mechanisms aren't implemented. We're already at 95 with sec. No need to throw money that way (and, believe it or not, most companies reach their "recommended" IT-Sec level easily. Simply because those 95% are SO dirt cheap, easy and painless to implement that they almost certainly ARE already in place, and if not a few pennies will do. You'll find the IT-Sec requirements usually in the "quick wins" quarter of the chart).
You see, companies already heed that advice. Mostly because they don't give a shit about customers complaining about shoddy security because, well, they'll still buy 'cause we're SO cheap. And yes, they do.
It's different with governments that won't just get a quick outcry when a security blooper happens (like a corporations would if they, say, lose every CC number of your customers). If a plane crashed anywhere into a building again, the press would have a field day. HOW could this happen? Didn't our law makers learn anything from 9/11? Did they simple ignore it and go on with their life? What do we have those useless twits for if they do not do ANYTHING? You may fill up here with statements of your choice, but one thing is certain: This administration is finished. Done. Nobody will give them credit for anything anymore. And you better forget about winning the next elections for at least half a decade. People tend to remember those things (and the other party will spend a lot of time and money reminding them of it).
So we need 100% security. Not because we really want it or need it. Not because the scenario is so dangerous to us, the people.
It's dangerous to them, and their place at the feeding trough.
Re:A lot of this is not aversion to risk (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost but not quite - when something goes wrong, a large proportion of people start looking for some way to shift the responsibility from their own actions to some other party. Not quite everyone is like this, but the number that accept responsibility for themselves is diminishing and when you see one person after another getting away with shirking their responsibility it makes it harder and harder to justify and not go down that destructive path yourself.
Need for company (Score:4, Insightful)
No. You're projecting your own ideas onto others in order to come up with an answer you like. The history of humanity is filled with those who went away from others on purpose, with motivations all over the cognitive map.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe you misspelled "religion" there.
No need to thank me.
Risk taking is always encouraged... (Score:5, Insightful)
...but failure is unacceptable.
Standard operating procedure in nearly all industries today.
Wrong focus (Score:5, Insightful)
But we do not even mitigate the biggest risk first. Arguably the biggest risk right now to us is cancer. However, in the US, the budget for cancer research is a pitiful 5 billion $/yr, which is rather small in comparison to the 79 billion $/yr for military research and testing.
Sources for budgets:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/NCI/research-funding [cancer.gov]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#By_title [wikipedia.org]
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
I mostly agree with him (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
The chances of dying are 100%. We all do it, it is just a case of when and how. As a society we are well into looking for very marginal returns - eat brocolli all your life to put off the chance of getting bowel cancer when you are 87 - and it is impossible to do valid experiments that show if measured take to mitgate one risk cause others.
I work on a large industrial site and management have voer the last few years been on a major safety push. One result of this is that they have been round and "risk assessed" all the walk ways and put barriers all over the place. The outcome is that walking from the car park to the office is now so convoluted that people just walk down the road ways. There never was any evidence that anyone was acutally injured in the areas where barriers were put up.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:2, Insightful)
This is called "I have no idea what socialism means but Fox News told me it's bad."
Socialism has flaws but making them up is just silly.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:4, Insightful)
*As interpreted by Christianity, not buy you. Your(and other's) interpretation may differ.
Which Christianity? Not all Christianity is even Saulist!
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you used the wrong word for "Any strong belief"
Stalin Russia was quite violent and evil by today's terms. He wasn't touting Religion but Communism.
Religion tends to make an easy excuse, because most religions are based on old texts that have been translated a few times over, written in people from different cultures and different views of the world, it makes it easy to justify nearly anything with these texts by saying this is fact, this is metaphor, Lets focus on these words and not from those.
When Jesus ask what was the most important commandment, he gave two.
Love God, and Love your Neighbor. I choose to take that as the important parts, but others don't because they dislike their neighbor, and will focus on other parts where it was OK to strike people down.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
So far it has worked in Germany, Japan,
Those countries weren't exactly starving in the streets when they tried to take over the world.
Germany, of course, was one of the most powerful countries in the world before WWI and wanted to use the war to consolidate the continent. That's the actions of a superpower, not a desperate street scrapper.
Japan before WWII had been building and modernizing for decades. They were an ally in WWI. They had fought some minor wars in the region earlier, defeating Russia for instance. Again, not a country with some existential threat.
Countries that are powerful can also be dangerous, it's just a matter of attitude. Germany post-WWII has been decidedly anti-war, not due to them having food and energy, but because they were thoroughly humiliated when the world found out about what was going on in concentration camps. I mean really humiliated on every level.
Progress is being made in China, India, and Brazil.
So do you think that China is less aggressive militarily today, with their growing wealth and industrialization and national pride, than 20-30 years ago? I mean there's a lot of tension between China and Japan, and in the seas around China in general. You don't perceive that as a growing trend as they get wealthier and more powerful?
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
Another way of looking at it is that religions typically either demand certain behaviors or prohibit certain behaviors. For Jews, the basics are more-or-less the 10 Commandments. For Christians, the basics are laid out in Matthew 22:36-40, to love thy neighbor and love God. For Muslims, the basics are the 5 Pillars, which are:
1. A declaration that Allah is the one true god, and Mohammed is his prophet.
2. Praying 5 times a day.
3. Fasting during Ramadan.
4. Give a percentage of your income to the poor.
5. Try to get to Mecca at least once in your life.
The vast majority of Muslims kinda sorta do that, although many fudge the praying 5 times a day part when it's inconvenient, and many never make it to Mecca. The idea, very popular in some Christian circles, that all Muslims are some sort of barbarian horde that would destroy everything good in the world if given a chance, just doesn't match up with reality.
Likewise, the idea, very popular in some Muslim circles, that all Christians are some sort of decadant horde that would destroy everything good in the world if given a chance, also fails to match up with reality. For some reason, blanket statements about the worldviews of a billion people just doesn't capture the nuances of human thought and behavior.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:nanny-state government ruining our kids (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure how that's the fault of a "nanny state government" rather than overprotective parents. Mind you, I agree that - on the whole - kids today are overly sheltered. (Ugh, as someone not even 30 it pains me to write 'kids today.') But as someone who works with middle and high school students, I also don't think the problem is as bad as it is made out to be. It's usually one parent out of ten or twenty who are truly the obnoxious ones. They're just loud enough, and insistent enough, to paint ALL parents as whiney and over-protective, and thus all youth as sheltered.
But there are still kids running through parks and cities, spending money on candy, and going to play at the skate park. You may just not be hanging out with them.
PS - I'm from a major city in the US, which shapes my view. It sounds like, from some of your language, that you're not from the US. I'd be curious how/if things differ elsewhere, but can only speak from my experience.
risk takers (Score:4, Insightful)
Douglas Adams got it much closer. It was being sheltered and safe that led to the krikkit wars.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just any strong belief, after all, I don't think there are too many people who are extremely violent because really orchids are the best kind of flower. I think the proper word is ideology. The kind of violence you are referring to requires a strong set of beliefs that reinforce each other and it requires an enemy ideology (or ideologies). The violence is justified by fear and/or hatred of the enemy.
It doesn't matter whether the enemy is libertarianism, collectivism, capitalism, Islam, religion, athieism, liberalism, progressives, conservatism, environmentalism, industrialism, or people with different colored skin. Some people will try to marshal fear and hatred to enhance their own power, and intentionally or not, it will spawn violence. These people will routinely used cherry-picked facts or quotes to justify their position, sometimes ignoring the obvious message to focus on minutae that can justify their current activities. They may do it consciously to manipulate others or unconsciously to justify their behaviour, but tiny little facts that match their ideology will be found to be more important than the massive important ones that contradict it.
Re:Short version (Score:5, Insightful)
So things would have been less dystopian without the bailouts? I can't really imagine that..
I'd have liked to have found out. Rewarding criminality only gets you more criminality. The banks could have been put into receivership and wound down and sold off in a controlled manner, preserving jobs and transitioning to new management. Shareholders and bondholders would have taken a haircut. But that would have meant the end of those banks as we knew them and their chief management would have been out of work and out of favor. Can't have that when you have powerful friends in government, eh?
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
Germany was badly bankrupted by the Allies after WW I and experienced hyperinflation that is pretty much the textbook example of what hyperinflation looks like. It's not hard to find images of people buying bread with wheelbarrows full of currency.
And then there's the merry-go-round of governments that took place in the 20s into the 1930s that allowed a failed artist from Austria to seize power.
To describe post-WW I Germany as a "powerful country" is grossly inaccurate.
Germany has largely been anti-war not because of the holocaust but because of the high price paid in Germany over two wars. The US largely imposed a famine on the German population through 1946-1947 through restrictions on food imports and food aid.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
I for one am critical of Christianity because your own holy book describes a vile and evil god who inflicts uncountable horrors on mankind, and you dare to bow before his monstrosity and give praise to his sins. Your god is personally responsible for genocide, murder, arguably rape and countless other crimes against humanity. And that is not even counting the crimes committed on his command by his prophets, praised by the leaders of his faith or by his followers in his name.
Of course I am also critical of ALL religion because it is nothing more than a memetic parasite that infests and corrupts the human mind and subverts free will through the use of brain washing and mental degradation. And in some cases, these religions pose an existential threat to the long term survival of humanity.
Humans are bad at small numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is, for the western world, risk is largely eliminated. Plague, famine, pestilence, and war - all are pretty nonexistent in the civilized world.
We evolved to deal with immediate, natural risk.
I'd suspect that the human brain is rather good at this in the aggregate - witness, for example, the breadth of 'home remedies' or natural herbs etc that have been determined to actually have some sort of core chemical that (surprising to scientists) actually DOES have a beneficial effect.
So now we're reduced to worry, more than risk-management.
Rather than facing starvation, we worry that we're eating too much.
Rather than facing working day and night to barely survive, we worry that we're too sedentary.
Rather than face the constant risk of agonizing death from the billions of germs trying to kill us like Typhus and Diptheria, we worry that there *might* be a vanishingly small cumulative risk of cancer from the additives that make our food safe from spoilage, mold, etc.
Rather than facing the imminent pillage, rape, or murder by a neighbor village that's decided we have something they want, we worry that there might be some crazy zealot somewhere who might harbor some resentment vaguely against our society.
Seriously, I suspect that worry is endemic to the human creature. If we don't have actual things to be concerned about, we invent / inflate them to fill that psychological space.
Oh, and Cracked has a wonderful article on this: http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-reasons-news-looks-worse-than-it-really-is/ [cracked.com]
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
> Having googled the guy, it sounds like he at least had notions of making life better for other people.
> He didn't hate the whole of humanity, he hated industrialisation.
Well you could say the same about Bin Laden, couldn't you? All you really need to do is warp around your idea of "a better life" a little bit. Afterall, "better" is itself a value judgement. Ted said "life is better without technology because it means more jobs" (or something to that effect, and probably more nuanced).
Bin Laden's "better life" was.... "Living the life God intended for us". If you believe in his God and that his God wants a world run the way he espoused, then it makes sense too.
Similarly men like Nelson Rockafeller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Drug_Laws [wikipedia.org] thought that the "better life" was one where nobody was addicted to drugs.
Personally, I tend to think its the desire to judge other people's life and make it better for them, with their cooperation or without that is the problem. The old adage "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" rings pretty true. Good intentions of one sort or another have justified more atrocities than I have time to mention.