mismatch between actual threat and perceived threat

[Roedy Green <roedy@mindprod.com>]

On Fri, 8 Jun 2001 09:52:04 -0400, "Marin David Condic"
<marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> wrote or quoted :

>The proper algorithm ought to be to sort on the number of deaths per
>anum & get them in descending order. Start at the top of the list and work
>your way down.

But safety consciousness works the other way around.  The rarer a
catastrophe, the more it grabs the public imagination, say a child
strangulation, or a contaminated Tylenol pill and therefore the
greatest concern about prevention.

Ordinary things like drowning, fires, floods, earthquakes, hunger,
drug overdose, being shot, being beaten up, getting HIV, being killed
in a car crash, get less attention.

I maintain web pages about HIV and safe sex and risk factors.
http://mindprod.com/safesex.html  People write me terribly worried
about things they have done that have much less risk of harming them
than being hit by lightning.  Yet they will paralyse themselves with
fear over the remote possibility.

In terms of absolute risk people are not afraid "enough" of speed.  We
have a fear of heights, but not a fear of the corresponding speed that
you would attain from dropping from that height.

You see Bush worried about Iraq attacking the US with an ICBM, while
ignoring the ease Saddam could paralyse the Internet or attack
biologically.

In Java, you see great concern about theoretical holes in the Applet
Sandbox, but very little worry about ACCIDENTAL errors programmers
make. Security experts further ignore that the sandbox is a Maginot
line any self respecting hacker would simply bypass, attacking via the
back door of Windows instead.

Are there websites that mathematically estimate the ACTUAL risks of
all the potential disasters that people worry about?

I tend to worry most about global disasters, ones that could
potentially destroy civilisation and my beloved computers and cetacea.
So on my list of worries are global warming, environmental collapse,
nuclear war, overpopulation, biological warfare and the earth being
hit by an asteroid.

My girlfriend tends to worry most about earthquakes and tidal waves.
Major disasters of that sort are expected some time in the next
century where I live. The Azores are in for a major earthquake and
tidal wave what would wipe out the entire east coast of the US, any
time now, geologically speaking.  There is not much anyone can do to
avoid such disaster but move to high ground. Life never avoids
exploiting a niche, even when that niche is temporary.

Long ago, I decided to put most of my life effort into helping
computers evolve.  I figured that if computers could get very very
good at prediction, people would not have to wait until it was too
late before they took appropriate action to avert global catastrophes.
They would learn to act in enlightened self interest with computers
assuring them new approaches were safe.




For more detail, please look up the key words mentioned in this post in
the Java Glossary at: http://mindprod.com/gloss.html 
If you don't see what you were looking for, complain!
or send your contribution for the glossary.

--
Roedy Green, Canadian Mind Products
Custom computer programming since 1963. Ready to take on new work.