Fear factors
Among of the best and worst features of the internet is that it allows us to come together to find like-minded individuals. This ultimately leads to hobbyists of every stripe finding a place to meet and to pursue their passions—or for pathological obsessives to feed their neuroses.
The internet, along with the media and communications environment it has created, has distorted and amplified the best and worst of us, but due to our inherent bias toward the negative, it is the worst that we pay the most attention to. And the most obvious worsts are in the emotional realms of fear and anger.
There has been a lot of smart research and writing about the things we collectively fear as a society: about how we are prone (or biased) to misperceiving and misjudging risks. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow (2011) comes immediately to mind. A more recent contribution comes to us from Judith Curry in a recent blog post:
No matter how strongly we feel about our perceptions of risk, we often get risk wrong. People worry about some things more than the evidence warrants (e.g. nuclear radiation, genetically modified food), and less about other threats than the evidence warrants (e.g., obesity, using mobile phones while driving). This gap in risk perception produces social policies that protect us more from what we are afraid of than from what actually threatens us the most. Understanding the psychology of risk perception is important for rationally managing the risks that arise when our subjective risk perception system gets things dangerously wrong.
She goes on to list ten categories with which we often weigh risks, and along which we are prone to judging risks wrong. Since she is a (formerly academic) scientist, she provides references to sources for her observations in the post. Curry’s main line of expertise is climate science, and most of the post weighs climate change and its popular perception—but that issue isn’t my main point here.
Climate change aside, how much of our collective discourse these days is fueled by misplaced fear and anger? To what extent are we spending too much of our time and attention worried about things that will simply work themselves out? How is this distorting our public debate and, thus, public policy? And how many real dangers are we ignoring as a result?
I can’t recall, for instance, the last time I’ve heard talk of public policy proposals for dealing with obesity. Or, for that matter, for stopping drivers from interacting with touch screens, whether cell phones or screens built into the car dashboard. Is it because the latter two lack simple-sounding public policy solutions? Or are they just too personal, too far into the lives of voters such that no one wants government to impose solutions?
Anyway. Some possible fodder for weekend discussion. It’s a bit impromptu since I decided to set aside the originally scheduled post for today due to…reasons. Hopefully the lack of editing isn’t too grave. But I’m sure it’ll soon be a parent.
Happy Sunday!
Today would be my dad's 88 birthday if he had survived and made it that far. His family hisotoy says no..his dad died in his 50's though from liver failure as an extreme alcoholic...his mom died in her mid 70's from cancer, his two brothers died within a year of his death, one from long term cancer, one from heart issues...my dad got a heart transplant 7 years before his death. It was a congenital heart issue, which one of my sisters has, but, it is under control and she is fine. Though she had several stent operations and heart attacks, it has been a while since anything happened.
What happened to my dad is that he was on blood thinners. They diagnosed, about a year too late that he had contracted a rare cancer that only transplant patients get. To do the chemo to treat him, they had to take him off the blood thinner, when they did he got a blood clot and instantly died.
I miss him a lot and I am still angry that the Dr missed this , when he kept complaining about the symptoms which they misdiagnosed. He was living in FL, and only a spouse can suggest malpractice...and his live in SO for years and he weren't married..mainly because they were devout Catholics, and didn't want an annulled marriage and what might happen to their previous children from that action, both were divorced...
As to your piece Marque: I rarely get angry and it never lasts. What I am afraid of mostly these days is getting another serious illness, dying too young or before I finish what I want to do, financial security ( the kind the government can't help with)...and being able to retire and not live on cat food..lol..I am also afraid I will die before I have one glorious love....sigh
My connection to politics is mostly intellectual, with a few social issues that matter to me (female equality, abortion, the death penalty, guns for the major ones) but I have never experienced or think that any politician or the government can fix any of these the way I would prefer. Hasn't happened yet, and I have felt the same for most of my life. And with the current people in charge here in OH, and in Congress, it is even less likely.
So ,while I believe a lot of people are angry and fearful online, I don't think I really am. I just like "meeting" new people, and talking about stuff with them...lol..especially if they are on the intellectual side. And funny, and can banter and do puns, even bad ones. lol..and flirty guys are fun too...lol
So, I guess it is more a social thing for me, ( one of the reasons I love this place and The Bulwark), not a political one.
I admit I don't understand some of the more common fears in the online political worlds...especailly the fear that the world ( or the US ) is going to die. Guess I am too much an optimist.
Anyway, if anyone sees this, thanks for reading.
Placido Domingo, everyone.
The weekend's Wall Street Journal has obituaries of two remarkable Holocaust survivors. "Jack Terry" was the only Jewish survivor found when the American army liberated the Flossenburg concentration camp:
https://www.dw.com/en/former-nazi-concentration-camp-prisoner-jack-terry-dies-at-92/a-63645183
"Tom Karen's" family escaped Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s, and he became a famously quirky industrial designer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Karen
Also, the larger-than-life founder of 84 Lumber died on his 100th birthday:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_A._Hardy_III
The world is still full of amazing people, so let's keep an eye out for them ;-).