Fear and Risk Perception: The Danger You Can't See.
Fear and risk perception decide where you run when something frightens you. This chapter starts with drivers who avoided planes after 2001. Then it follows the author through Hurricane Irma in September 2017. He left an island on a private jet for twenty dollars and fifty euros. Next, he drove twenty-eight hours to Atlanta after more than forty-eight hours awake. Finally, you price your feared risk and the risk of your current choice.
How fear and risk perception pushed people onto the roads.
Chapter 1: The safer road
9 11 driving deaths: Where fear really moved people.
The 9 11 driving deaths were extra road deaths among Americans who drove instead of flying after 11 September 2001. Gerd Gigerenzer estimated about 1,500 of them in 2006. So fear did not make those people safer; it moved them toward a danger they could not see.
Probability neglect: Why vivid fears ignore the odds.
Probability neglect is the name Cass Sunstein gave to ignoring how likely a risk is once strong emotions take over. He described it in the Yale Law Journal in 2002. So when your picture of failure is vivid enough, the odds stop mattering to you.
Panic decisions under pressure: The Irma escape.
Panic decisions under pressure often start with fear that comes from other people, not the danger itself. During Hurricane Irma, the author's fear arrived through about a hundred messages from his family. Then a stranger turned twenty dollars and fifty euros into a private jet seat.
Putting fear and risk perception on paper tonight.
Hidden risks of the safe choice: The 28-hour drive.
The hidden risks of the safe choice are the dangers nobody measures because they feel quiet. After escaping Irma, the author drove twenty-eight hours to Atlanta. Because he had been awake over forty-eight hours, that drive carried a risk nobody priced.
When fear is rational: Ask this question first.
Knowing when fear is rational matters, because this chapter does not say fear is always wrong. If you had been on Barbuda as Irma hit, running was right. So the real mistake is pricing only one of the two dangers.
Compare risk of quitting vs staying: Two numbers.
To compare risk of quitting vs staying, write both risks side by side on paper. First, name the failure you picture and a closure figure. Then name what you are doing instead and find one published number for that risk.
Count vs rate statistics: Five traps to avoid.
Count vs rate statistics is the third of five traps that can make your two risk numbers misleading. The others are using someone else's number, mismatched periods, trusting headlines, and treating a blank as zero. Each one has a simple fix.
