Perception of risk 3

Not trying to ressurect a thread but readers of
thread 730-226965 (Scares - taking science out of proportion) may be interested in the following

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Risk-Scienc...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241781120&sr=1-1

which is a look at the way the brain processes "gut feeling" vs rational thoughts! It also retreads some of the "scare" material but it makes interesting reading.

Regards, HM

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary - William of Occam

 

[rbcoulter]

Sounds like it may be a very interesting book.

Of course, risk is simply severity times frequency. Politics over-emphasizes severity and de-emphasizes frequency.
How is it that we tolerate over 35,000 highway fatalities?
There might be some justification for this. A high severity low frequency event is usually very unpredictable - the margin of error is very high. Unpredictability is most feared.

 

[HamishMcTavish]

Exactly! it's the perception of risk that gets skewed by media / politics and the way our brains work.

One of the examples that the book considers is the example of the aftermath of the September 11th / twin towers - many people decided that driving must be safer than flying - and illustrates that more than a thousand more people were killed because of this perception translated into reality.

The author talks quite a bit about how the public is affected by the media focus on extreme consequences without any balanced focus on frequency - leading us "all" to believe that the next disaster is not only likely but that we will be affected.

I spend quite a bit of time at work looking at risks but i still learned a few things from this book. The info about how the brain processes information is fascinating / weird!

Regards, HM

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary - William of Occam

 

[Ussuri]

How is it that we tolerate over 35,000 highway fatalities

I think if we actually risk assessed driving the same way we do on projects then cars and driving would be very different.

I mean what would you say if I said to you I was going to put you inside a large chunk of metal weighting two tonnes, accelerate that object to 60mph, and aim it a couple of metres to the side of a similar sized object coming the other way, with only a white line to separate them?

 

[SomptingGuy]

Exactly. I try to minimise daily risk by optimising my route to and from work. I would rather use up my risk quotient on things I enjoy.

I cycle daily through one of those laybys that seems to offer a short cut past the queueing traffic. White vans steam through it (yellow sports cars stop and the drivers investigate the undergrowth for some reason). These people are simply adding risk for little reward (the van drivers, not the others).



- Steve

 

[ornerynorsk]

The over-emphasization of risk is the bane of many-o-industries! There is so @#$%^&* much fear out in the world. Darwin was a supreme idiot, we are clearly and unquestionably devolving into mindless, fearful, pathetic, incompetent, unempowered, cowering creatures. Governmental regulatory bodies, standards boards, and the like are slowly strangling the life out of us all. Yes, we need some of that, the problem lies in that they don't know when to quit. Some moronic buffoon hurts himself on a product, and you have an enormous tidal wave knee jerk reaction throughout legal and government. Dependent, of course, on how well placed that person is or connections to that person are, or how "good" of an attorney they have. Sorry folks, it's Monday and I'm still a good 2 to 3 hours from a cool, oh-so-refreshing barley soda, just had to vent a little.

 

[ScottyUK]

Darwin was a genius, but there are far too many do-gooders in the world who are intent on preventing his briiliantly observed theory from weeding out those who would otherwise remove themselves from the gene pool.


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If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!

 

[HamishMcTavish]

Star for you ScottyUK!

ornerynorsk, the book trys to educate as to WHY the world seems to be becoming such a fearful place, namely because the people in government / media / standards bodies are human too...and their perceptions of risk are moulded in a feedback loop to swamp their rational brain.

The issue of how litigious society is becoming is another post!

Regards, HM

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary - William of Occam

 

[jmw]

It is more difficult to define acceptable risk or affordable risk mitigation and that is the problem we continually confront when pressure groups induce politicians to act inappropriately. Then again, oft times risk is just an excuse (its for your own god) to legislate in such a manner as to generate more income (fines) for government.

Ultimately, the failure to define acceptable risk is the cause of excessive over-legislation which imposes a huge financial burden on manufacturing - and under-legislation that leads to high mortality and morbidity rates in other areas of our lives.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[ornerynorsk]

Sorry Hamish, I actually did catch your original intent on directing our attention toward the book. Monday, you know. Got a little off track.

 

[HamishMcTavish]

no worries!

some mondays i can't string two words together until a reasonable amount of caffeine is in my bloodstream...



No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary - William of Occam

 

[ajack1]

Despite knowing there is virtually no “risk” of actually winning I still check my lottery numbers every week and am somehow disappointed that I have not won.

So I can be incredibly stupid all on my own, without any help from the government or the media, would this book help me understand why?

 

[SomptingGuy]

(UK) Lottery numbers...

I've been not playing since the start. On average my returns are 2x the average player.

- Steve

 

[cranky108]

It is a fact that most humans can and do make decisions without any facts what so ever. It's all emotion.
Some prople can and do make decisions without all the facts.
Fewer people can't make decisions until they have all the facts.
And still some people can't make decisions reguardless of all the facts.

So it seems most people make decisions based on how much control they have, and how they feel. And because of positive reinforcment they believe they are great.

So what's the risk, I'm driving.

 

[HamishMcTavish]

ajack1 - short answer - yes the book discusses quite a bit about how the brain ignores / accentuates the negatives about what it doesn't want to hear and about the different ways we can be biased.

cranky108 - that's kind of how i felt before i read the book but there were a few surprises in there...e.g. the author discusses how psychologists have shown that we can be asked two unrelated questions, the answer to the first (a high or a low number) WILL influence the answer to the second despite the fact that they are unrelated. Apparently this is exploited by marketing and advertising people in a big way.

They have an example where shoppers were shown a sign saying something like you could only buy 12 cans of soup under a particular offer, shoppers regularly bought 4-6 cans...without the sign they bought 1-2. Ok not a brilliant example but there were others talking about sort of subliminal influences!

Cheers, HM

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary - William of Occam

 

[Neubaten]

I'm all about rational evaluation of chance, outcomings, risks, dangers and benefits.

But I can't but observe that many suppossedly "rational" evaluation of future risks is based on arbitrary weighing of factors. I have seen this amongst my engineer colleagues, at my company and at the newspapers.

Rational people makes a model to try to predict a future event, calling all the factors involved, and when they have all of them sorted out they think the model is consistent, but I have observed that commonly they make a subsequent mistake: They assign arbitrary importance to any of those factors, or they discard the importance of others.

It is oftenly overlooked how sensitive their model is to the different factors affecting it. And, commonly, they assign this sensitivity based on emotions, previous isolated experiences or just pure intuition.

So, what I mean is that frecuently rational people introduces emotional randomness by not weighing factors properly.

 

[ornerynorsk]

People unwittingly and inappropriately try to use the data gained from past experiences to apply toward a solution to a new problem/challenge/conflict/goal that is not relevant to the new problem. This is the way we fool ourselves into believing that we are making an informed decision or mitigating risk. And the emotion !!! I would venture a guess that emotion plays more than a 50% role in all decision making, on a generalized basis. Just ask any stock trader! I would have to hope that in the engineering trades we are considerably less than 50%.

 

[cranky108]

Sounds like an intersting read, but I don't do Lbs (I don't even know how make the symbal on my computer).
I guess Amazon also has the book on there US site, so I'll have to look.

Less than 50% emotion for engineers? What an uncareing bunch.
I guess numbers don't lie.

 

[ornerynorsk]

Oh yes Cranky, we can certainly bore you with the dry dull facts! Heartless, cold, and rigid (so I've been told by several females in my life) At the end of the day, it is likely that someone higher up (read as non-engineer) will certainly decide the direction based on their emotional state at the time.

 

[cranky108]

LOL, Been there, done that.

Consiter not all engineering is science. There is a great deal of art involved, and they can't take that away.

And still life is but a joke.