News misleads. Take the following event (borrowed from Nassim Taleb). A car drives over a bridge, and the bridge collapses. What does the news media focus on? The car. The person in the car. Where he came from. Where he planned to go. How he experienced the crash (if he survived). But that is all irrelevant. Whats relevant? The structural stability of the bridge. Thats the underlying risk that has been lurking, and could lurk in other bridges. But the car is flashy, its dramatic, its a person (non-abstract), and its news thats cheap to produce. News leads us to walk around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads. So terrorism is over-rated. Chronic stress is under-rated. The collapse of Lehman Brothers is overrated. Fiscal irresponsibility is under-rated. Astronauts are over-rated. Nurses are under-rated. We are not rational enough to be exposed to the press.
Posted on: Sun, 15 Dec 2013 19:42:19 +0000
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