Customer Reviews

Risk: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn't - and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

After having read Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions and Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies: And Other Pricing Puzzles, I was predisposed to find Gardner's Risk lacking in depth and relevance.

While the first two are written by economists for the masses and fail (in different ways) to deliver content that goes beyond "interesting" to "generalizable to the human condition", Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear is exceptionally interesting and illustrative. Gardner, a reporter not an economist, has researched his topic to depths atypical of modern texts. He provides historical and visceral examples of his topics, then extends the understanding to current happenings in the world and goes so far as to show the implications (practical and irrational) of such understanding.

Like Naked Economics, this book is powerfully educational without being dry, preachy, or esoteric. A particular sign of quality is Gardner's highly insightful treatment of the modern media and those who wield it. While I won't say I sympathize with media editors and producers, I have a greater appreciation for how they are swayed by the "current story" - zeitgeist or meme if you will - almost as much as consumers of media.

If you want to enjoy a book which may expose your own consistent (yet mistaken) views on risk, and if you're ready for the challenges posed by this newfound knowledge, you will find Gardner's book well worth the time invested in reading it.

Dan Gardner's concerned about how we handle fear. In North America, of course, a single event, the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon generated a new level of fear in the population. So unexpected and abrupt was use of commercial aircraft in a terrorist assault that an avoidance of flying was the immediate and widespread reaction. Gardner, however, wants to consider the event and the reaction in a more rational perspective. He notes at the outset of the book that the chance of dying in auto incidents is far higher than that of flying. As the statistics proved - since nearly 1600 additional auto deaths - about half of those lost at the World Trade Centre - were added to the annual total in the following year. Gardner taps into psychology and the field of risk assessment in this fascinating study of how we deal with fear. We aren't doing a very good job of it.

For millions of years animals relied on quick responses for survival. Reaction to potential danger or a possible meal left no time, nor need, for reflecting. Act fast or expire. That kind of brain is now called the limbic system, or "lizard brain". Evolution granted humans a chance to build on that foundation to produce a "thinking" part of the brain. The limbic system is still in place, however, and issuing commands we are rarely aware of. Psychologists, says Gardner, call these System One and System Two. The author, in the best journalist's style, calls these The Gut and The Head. The Gut reacts to crisis situations quickly and effectively. The Head follows along later at a more deliberate pace - if it gets any voice at all.

Gardner is eager to have us understand how these Systems work. He contends that we are carrying a reaction system founded on our ancestors' time on the African savannah. Our brains haven't adapted to the fast-paced, high technology world around us. We are reacting almost entirely with The Gut, and we are making serious mistakes as a result. Are we truly under threat from the things we claim to fear? He cites numerous cases, from the fear of "man-made" chemicals through the spectre of cancer to the possibility of our children being assaulted by strangers. Each of the topics is introduced with our given views - usually captured by polls, then carefully assessed by examining the real odds. In every case, the important things to consider almost certainly haven't been. The breast cancer campaigns have uniformly overlooked the role of age in determining the likelihood of its occurrence.

The calculations leave little doubt that we are far too often looking at threats with little consideration of their true nature. Why are we reacting so readily with The Gut instead of with The Head? In no small part, Gardner argues, media, politicians and industry play a significant part. Media, anxious to sell its products, emphasizes the violent, the extreme and the bizarre. The result, of course, is that's what captures our attention. The bombardment of such stories, often unthinkingly repeated by politicians, is a reinforcement of The Gut's reaction to this kind of information. Never seeing a rational analysis of such news, we lose any sense of proportion about what is truly important. We rarely find the opportunity to consider an issue rationally before the next one is upon us.

Gardner is not simply playing a new form of "scare" journalism. Various scholars have researched each of the topics. Their tests are well described and the analyses are carefully explained. These examples provide the book with a sound foundation, making this book something to consider carefully. As a conclusion, the author reminds us that we haven't taken into account the benefits our time enjoys when compared to even the recent past. Childhood diseases, such as diphtheria, have been removed as a threat to our families and society. We should remember that and remind ourselves to use The Head when events are trying to drive The Gut to dominate our thinking. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

At the time I write this review there are 7 reviews showing 5 stars and 2 reviews showing 1 star - nothing between.

The texts in the 5 star reviews tend to be cerebral and reflect good understandings of what Gardner communicates. The texts in the 1 star reviews tend to be visceral and show no indication that the readers understood the point of the book. I think this says it all.

If you like to think about and understand important issues in life today you will love this book. I have read dozens of books on similar or related topics (recently including The Flaw of Averages, Fooled by Randomness, The Psychology of Decision Making, The Logic of Failure, How We Know What Isn't So, etc.) but I found Gardner's book to be the best combination of assembly of component ideas (heuristics, biases, social amplification) then interpretation of those ideas to explain recent events. I was a little frustrated by the lack of references to primary sources but this was not enough of a problem to budge me from giving a 5 star rating (and that is not just due to anchoring). :-)

If you prefer to hold to strongly rooted opinions and never think about the possible faults of those opinions then do not read this book - you will not like it.
Rob

This book mainly deals with psychology as it pertains to human reaction to tragic events. In roughly the first third of the book, the author discusses important aspects of how the human mind works under various conditions - especially scary situations. He comes up with a set of simple rules that are used throughout the book to help explain how people behave when frightened by something that they don't understand very well. But the main theme of this book, and what is most disturbing, is how these fears can be used and played upon by certain groups, e.g., politicians, the media, etc., to manipulate the public in order to fulfill some hidden agenda, e.g., winning votes, selling newspapers, acquiring funding for something, etc. A great many examples of fear-inducing events are presented, including terrorism, epidemics, cancer incidence/deaths, various disasters, etc. Fortunately, all of these are put into perspective by the author in order to illustrate how the often-resulting public fear is usually completely unnecessary. The writing style is clear, fast-paced, authoritative and quite engaging. This book can be enjoyed by anyone, especially psychology and sociology buffs but also by those concerned about how the public's fears can be so skillfully and often cruelly exploited.

This is the best book I've read in a very long time. Without repeating what other reviewers have said, what I found most impressive is just how much research and academic theory he brings into such an easy, enjoyable read. The first half of the book summarizes the key findings of 30 years of research in evolutionary psychology and sociology on how humans make decisions about risk, and what things trigger us to make bad decisions. It's fascinating, and acts as a very solid foundation from which to systematically analyze, in the second half of the book, those societal actors that are (intentionally or inadvertently) pulling the triggers -- primarily the media, politicians, corporations, bureaucrats, and NGO's. But it's not a polemic and he's not a conspiracy theorist -- quite the opposite in fact. Rather than dark manipulating forces, he sees mostly well meaning individuals trying to get a message out and doing it in the most effective way. Unfortunately for those of us who aspire to think clearly, what's most effective often rings our hard-wired risk bells and causes us to make irrational assessments of the world around us.

This book is excellent, well written and especially important at a time like this (swine flu pandemic!); the author
adresses the most common fears of our time e.g. terrorism, crime, health problems etc. and encourages the reader to calmly and critically absorb the news - which are often produced by vested interests such as commerce or politics.
An essential volume
Renate Kellhammer

This is a fantastic book with lots of insights into how perceptions and reality often have little in common. According to Mr. Gardner we can see the world through our gut or by our head. The gut is that feeling of right and wrong. The head is knowing. The head can give reason. The gut is a hunch. Mr. Gardner argues that much of what we are told and see through the media is meant as appeal to our gut. Gut involves a narrative. We can empathize with the victims of 9/11 however we cannot relate to the miniscule odds of us being victims of an attack. Miniscule. One of the many tidbits of knowledge provided into the book has to do with the number of addition automobile fatalities that are considered a result of people's fear of flying following those terrible events of 9/11; 1,595. People's guts were telling them that flying was no longer safe. They didn't listen to their heads which have been told they are more likely to be killed on the half hour drive to the airport than the twelve hour flight on the plane. Similar evidence is used to support these arguments as those made by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his books, Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness. We make sense of the world in retrospect. Historians can identify a cause and effect unlike the economist whose forecasts are as accurate as a monkey's. The answers for both men lie in statistics. Understand your risks, whether they be on the stock market or in real life, through the use of odds. What are the odds of getting hurt in school? Figure it out and then decide whether it is more dangerous to send your child to school than to leave her at home. What are the odds of a given population in Canada or the United States getting killed by terrorists or dying from diabetes as a complication of obesity? Then decide where you should put your resources. In the early 1900's, physicists discovered there were no absolute predictions in science so they came up with quantum mechanics the probability for outcomes. Why can't we do the same when making decisions about our lives?

I really enjoyed this book. It not only stripped away the illusions of how we see events and people but also helped me to understand how we think and how I can better get a more realistic picture of what is actually going on. It was one of those books that I could not put down and which I keep within easy reaching distance in my living room for moments of 'I just have to read that part one more time'.

Why is there so much fear in society these days? In an age when the advances of technology are such that we should be driving safer, eating healthier and living longer and more secure, why is there a growing angst that life isn't quite right? Dan Gardner, in this informative and lively little study, examines why post-modern humans have become so bound up in their fears as to become ineffective risk takers. Fewer people, it would seem, have the ability to discern and make intelligent choices between bad and good risks. As a journalist who is exposed to many different social patterns, Gardner argues that in many instances the human race has virtually strained at a gnat only to swallow a camel. In other words, we have become satisfied with tidbits of information because we are too lazy to clarify the bigger picture. By reacting with our gut rather than responding with our head, many of us have adopted social positions that are either outright incorrect or dangerously suspicious. Gardner takes dead aim at how politicians, scientists, medical doctors, corporate leaders and the media use statistics to manipulate situations to their advantage. The never-ending public wars on crime, drugs, terrorism and illiteracy are just some examples of how numbers can be invented and distorted to win popular support. We, the people, are the ones who are so gullible and Gardner shows us why. Those looking to win our approval and support have the psychological weapons to control our reactions simply by having us focus on the easy example, get us to assume that there is good versus bad in the scenario, and roll out the fabricated statistics to cinch the deal. Because we do not think for ourselves, we become consumed by mass hysteria, leading to making terrible decisions about how we use limited resources. Take, for example, the American war on terrorism. Many of us would now see that the amount western nations spend defending our borders against terrorist incursions is wildly disproportionate to the incidents of terrorism reported on a daily basis. Like in any scare, our minds have become susceptible to a worst-case scenario even if it hasn't happened yet. The WMDs had to have been somewhere in Iraq because Saddam used them in the past and might have been ready to re-deploy them. Ergo, the US has the so-called legitimate grounds for a massive invasion of that country that is seen as a perceived threat to world security. The problem works in reverse as well: instead of creating the danger, certain social and economic groups would want us to ignore it. As the corporate world, through the media and wide-scale advertising, feed the public on many new buying opportunities, financial bubbles often occur, especially in the real estate market. In a consumer-driven society, fewer people are trained to allay our fears with misleading information as to where the markets are going. "Risk" is one of those books that every intelligent human should read if only to remind themselves how vulnerable society is to manipulation of information. With all that misinformation out there, one has to wonder how ready we really are to handle real crisis when they strike, whether they be of the epidemic, earthquake, monetary, or military variety.

I was pretty happy with this book. Most books (and movies for that matter) have great titles and promise much but end up falling (very) short of delivering any real value to the reader. That the effort was there only in the marketing of the book.

This book delivers. Most of the other comments below give you an idea of what it's about so I won't go into that but instead I will say that I was able to use the information immediately. It opened my eyes a little more and showed me some truths (via statistics) which created a slight but permanent shift in the way I see the world and think about actual risks.

That's pretty much what I want out of any non-fiction book. To have my eyes opened a 'little' more each time. Unfortunately those types of books are not easy to find. I can spend hours browsing the books here on Amazon and find nothing that I feel will be worth the money and more importantly the time invested in reading it.

The only thing more I would have wanted from this book was perhaps a table at the end listing the top 100 risks and their percentages.

Other than that ... fantastic.