Sunday 21 June 2009

"Risk" by Dan Gardner

A good analysis of how we, as a society, perceive risk, and how we should perceive it and deal with it. We worry amount relatively small risks, but become blase about much bigger ones, due to various biases - the Von Rorkoff effect, optimism bias, hindsight bias, etc - and errors of logic.

Our initial reaction to a given situation is based on gut instinct - our hard-wiring; if (and it is a big "if") our logical mind then kicks in to modify our reaction, it is normally only partially successful, with the result that most reactions are gut-based rather than logic-based

A genuinely absorbing read - I read it at one sitting - and full of ideas to mull over

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