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.'"
A lot of this is not aversion to risk (Score:5, Interesting)
It's an aversion to being sued for not sufficiently managing that risk which leads to massive overreactions on the part of authorities and businesses.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it's worse than that. In order to eliminate certain risks only really drastic solutions are effective.
I don't think certain risk elimination costs will become so high we're unwilling to pay. I believe the costs will go higher and we'll keep paying.
Eventually, people will understand that to avoid risks originating from the poorest countries, the final solution is to just eradicate those countries. After all, we don't want them for their population but for their resources. Instead of killing a few and putting a government that follows our orders, eventually we'll be capable (both technologically and socially) to just exterminate everyone in a country and replace them with resource extraction machines.
And once that problem is finally over, instead of the richest country vs the poorer one it will be between cities, and then neighborhoods.
The only thing stopping the richest from protecting themselves by exterminating everyone else is the shitty quality of the robots.
Sorry, but where is the evidence? (Score:3, Interesting)
As someone who is familiar with a lot of theoretical work on decision making and the work of Tversky and Kahneman, but not with current empirical research, I am wondering where he gets his data from. By looking at a few examples you cannot establish general claims about how risk prone or averse we have become. Likewise, how does he know that risk aversity depends on the culture? Perhaps it does, but I want to see the study. And yes, there are plenty of studies in this field, it just seems that Schneier doesn't read them, or otherwise he should mention them.
So how about some empirical evidence?
Re:Sorry, but where is the evidence? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I've mentioned Tversky and Kahneman, and as it happens on my desk are currently (right now and very literally):
Bouyssou / Dubois / Prade / Pirlot (eds.): Decision Making process. Wiley 2006.
Gärdenfors /Sahlin (eds.): Decision, probability, and utility.Cambridge UP 1988.
as well as (not directly related) Amartya Sen's "Rationality and Freedom".
The older Gärdenfors volume has plenty of references to empirical research on risk taking in the contributions of Part IV ("Unrealiable psobabilities") and in chapter 11 "Prospect theory: an analysis of decision under risk" by Tversky and Kahneman. The more recent Bouyssou et. al. has even more references to empirical research.
It's not as if behavioral economics was a new field. But as I said I am mostly familiar with the theoretical research, so why are you being such an asshole?
Re:please, please (Score:3, Interesting)
Step out of your comfort zone (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree with the article. Increasingly people relinquish life experiences, if not life itself, out of fear and an unwillingness to take any risks. People who avoid trips to far away countries because of fear of a plane crash are a common occurrence. Yet I also know people who avoid excursions on weekends because they are afraid of being involved in a traffic accident. People who are afraid to visit concerts out of fear of crowds or stampedes, people who love oriental style and culture yet would never visit a country such as Morocco out of fear of kidnap or a terrorist attack.
I have to admit, I also experience this fuzzy fear of doing something new, moving out of my comfort zone, leaving the safe haven of my apartment, my town, my daily routine, every time I leave to do something out of the ordinary. I blame the worldwide media and my addiction to news. It seems like bad things happen all the time, everywhere. But it's important to put things into perspective. The world is a very big place, and 99.998% of the time people are safe and nothing happens. Of course, on those very rare occasions where something unfortunate does happen, it makes news and penetrates into our awareness, tickling our fears.
Of course, just as important as putting things into perspective, is not to be stupid and take unnecessary risks. You want to experience oriental culture? By all means, visit Morocco: Casablanca, Marrakesh, Fes. The people are very friendly and there are beautiful things to see there. But please, stay out of Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq... accepting risk does not have to encompass being reckless.
Looking back, I don't regret a single time I kicked myself in the butt, stepped out of my comfort zone, and experienced new things. Yes, I was anxious on numerous occasions, mostly at airports, nervous and afraid. It doesn't matter. In the end, it was all worth it.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a step there that you are avoiding. To exterminate everyone in a country you might need a bomb, but you might also use a genetically targeted bio weapon. Or whatever else we invent.
The problem is that the biggest risk factor is not genetic - it is Islam. I suppose in the far future it might be possible to have intelligent swarms of robot "wasps" with poisonous stings, who can look out for indications that someone is a muslim, but the problem will still be with us for many years.
You must be one of the people who pose the biggest risk to society if you actually believe that, you are one of the stupid morons who is unable to critically evaluate anything not fed to you by fox news.
Islam is a religion, nothing more nothing less. Many people go through life being helped by Islam (just like Christianity) to be better people and act in ways less dictated by self interest and more in being nicer to ones fellow man. The problem is that just like Christianity a few years back it is twisted by some very sick individuals to justify their own sick ends.
This is hardly a fault of Islam since the main tenets of that faith were written down thousands of years ago and have been unchanged since (the Koran is actually less flexible in this regard than the Bible, although it worth remembering that Islam still recognises Christ as being a prophet so they don't exactly ignore his teachings). This is the fault of the person doing the twisting and the person who believe the twisted result. Hate preachers want us all to live in an Islamic Caliphate just because that puts them in charge.
We in the west though have similar people who try and twist christianity or democracy or patriotism towards their own ends: We have people who own arms companies who love it when we invade other nations as they sell more guns. We have people who own oil companies who love it when invading a country and installing a friendly government opens up a new market. We have politicians who carp on about something happening overseas and whipping up a furor amongst the public to distract from them humping their PA or giving their chums a tax break (ok, this might be an exaggeration but I certainly do not believe that many of our politicians act in our own best interest, they act in theirs).
The problem is not the idea of patriotism, democracy, christianity or islam. The problem is when we blindly follow interpretations of these ideas spouted by people with a hidden agenda. The only solution to this is that we question more of the information that it is given to us and think more about motives of the people trying to encourage our views in a particular direction.
(Just for the record, I think there is about as much chance of any western country becoming a caliphate as their is of world peace breaking out tomorrow. I am also a thoroughly decided atheist who has read about a few religions but decided that ultimately they are all the creations of man, not god so I would simply refuse to follow any religious laws that were imposed on me that I did not agree with morally anyway.)
Re:nanny-state government ruining our kids (Score:4, Interesting)
...
These days if that happened, the parents would be yelled at for allowing their kid to go out unsupervised, yelled at for allowing their kid to run so fast though car parks and sports ovals and things with such a high risk of being hurt in the process and quite possibly yelled at for allowing their kids to spend their money with no controls on what they are buying.
...
Or perhaps parents today just perceive they would be yelled at for allowing this because they read that some parents in New Jersey was once talked to by CPS years ago. The "Nanny-State" is more of a chilling effect than a real phenomenon. Better communication means that even if an activity has only a .0001% chance of causing injury, we've heard of a child that was injured by it.
There's a family in our neighborhood that practices that kind of "Free Range" childcare, AFAIK no-one has actually yelled at them, and their children haven't had any more injuries than any others.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:4, Interesting)
However, if we didn't have security measures, or some 'whistle-blower' leaked all of them, do you think that the people who don't like us wouldn't have continued to blow up or hijack plane after plane...
I believe the only worthwhile and moral safety measure that has been added since 9/11 is that cockpit doors are now reinforced; that's pretty much it. Everything else they've done violates people's fundamental liberties, and since I'm someone who cares far more about freedom than safety, I'd rather go without such security theater (the TSA is garbage and most likely doesn't do anything).
The Empathy Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Two problems, actually. One is that we are dealing, not with a fear of risk, but a phobia towards it: the terms are related, to be sure, but the latter is taken to an irrational degree. If we don't want to spend our lives in padded rooms, then we must be willing to forego the mantra of "Never Again."
But the other problem comes in when the current political fashion of empathy-based arguments comes into play. We are asked to empathize with people who have been traumatized, in the moment of their trauma. Anyone would say "Never Again" in those circumstances: that's a large part of what it means to suffer trauma, and the very definition of empathy demands it from those practicing it. But the recently-traumatized are not known for their rational decision-making abilities. There's a reason we tell people to wait a year, or even longer, before making big decisions. There's a reason we devote whole branches of psychology to studying the effects of trauma. PTSD is no longer one monolithic thing, but a whole spectrum of defined conditions.
This, I think, is where the current phobias come from: a well-meaning but sorely misguided attempt to make decisions by empathizing with people who are in no condition to make those decisions. Pathos has its limits, and we have arrived at the current state by ignoring those limits. Certainly empathy has its place when it comes to the healing process, but when the time comes to make big decisions, we need to step back and look at things more rationally, even when rational thought means accepting the status quo.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:2, Interesting)
I did worship that god as a child. I grew up in an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist household. I grew up knowing that humanity was unworthy of existing and that if I prayed hard enough, perhaps god would rain fire from the sky and purge humanity from the world. I also grew up in a house where my father very intentionally placed himself in a position where he would be able to do that very thing, to put his finger on the nuclear launch button within the USAF:SAC.
Part of the reason many "Christians" are "Good" while they worship an unquestionably evil god is that their faith demands obedience and submission, and the demand for horror and destruction from the christian power structure isn't as common as it once was. This is not universal, and the trend is rapidly reversing. The selection pressure on variants within the memetic parasite population of religions are not constant. It only takes one particularly viral mutation to turn the whole thing into a potential catastrophe.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:2, Interesting)
To answer your second question, today they do not think about killing people, they think of getting you out of the way by extort, defame, threaten, whatever is necessary to get you out of the way to more profits. In short, it is the old thing of getting more profits and get rid of obstacles (you, me, another banker, etc).
The point of my comment is that greed has no limits by itself, and currently the only limit is the fact that they are outnumbered and therefore can not impose their greed with impunity over the majority (they would end up jailed or lynched).
But, what if arises a technology that removes this limitation (robotic armies?) and allow the super rich to impose their will on the majority without third party help? in a short time they would be killing (remember, greed has no limits) anyone who was hindering their profits, because there would be nothing to stop them.