The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain by Daniel Gardner
This is a book that I think everyone should read. It has a lot of information I’ve seen elsewhere, about the heuristics people use in order to make decisions, but Gardener puts the information together in a comprehensive manner that makes sense.
We have a series of tools that help us decide whether or not something is important and dangerous. Is it something we can remember happening? Is it memorable? Is it human-caused (and thus deserving of vengeance?) These were great tools for hunter gatherers, but not such great tools for modern people, which is why people do non-rational things like drive their kids to school to prevent the kids from being abducted by strangers, even though the chance of the kids dying in a car accident on the way to school is far, far greater than them being abducted.
Gardener’s book is comprehensive, covering everything from shark attacks (not dangerous, but scary) radon (not scary, but dangerous) diabetes (not scary, but a killer). This is an especially good book to read coupled with THE NUMBERS GAME, both of which highlight how bad people tend to be about statistics, specifically risk-aversion.
He devotes a whole chapter to terrorism, (which kills fewer people every year than lightning strikes.) This is a particular pet peeve of mine. I grind my teeth at the useless dog-and-pony show I have to go through every time I fly. I also feel disgust at the way that the politicos trot out the martyrs of 9/11 every year to keep us afraid, (maybe so we’ll not question why we still don’t have our civil liberties back?) even though there’s no real lesson to learn here, and no good reason why we should “never forget.”
The book is very informative, so it’s a little dry near the end, but it will give you a clearer understanding of what’s dangerous and what’s not. If you’re the sort of person who has often suspected that watching the news actually makes you dumber, this book will help confirm that yes, it does, and here’s why.
