Bruce Schneier On Perceived and Real Risks

prostoalex writes "Encryption guru Bruce Schneier takes a look at perceived and actual risks with some insightful commentary on how warped the public perception of risks may be: '...we worry more about anthrax (with an annual death toll of roughly zero) than influenza (with an annual death toll of a quarter-million to a half-million people). Influenza is a natural accident, anthrax is an intentional action, and the smallest action captures our attention in a way that the largest accident doesn't. If two airplanes had been hit by lightning and crashed into a New York skyscraper, few of us would be able to name the date on which it happened.'"

Comments

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Without consulting google, on what date did the Indian ocean tsunami hit?

!918 Flu Epidemic

[Mercedes308]

Plus it's amazing how many people have no idea about the 1918 Flu epidemic that killed between 50 - 100 million yet the only significant event that caused a heavy death toll that we often remember of the period was the Great War.

Re:Nice soundbyte there...

[despisethesun]

Really? Without looking it up on the internet, tell me the exact day the Hindenberg crashed. Same with the Titanic. The Eschede train disaster. If 9/11 were caused by lightning it would certainly have been a memorable event and wound up on about a hundred Discovery Channel specials, but the exact date of it would likely have been forgotten, and there wouldn't be the huge politicisation of the event that there was. Nobody would be telling you to "remember 9/11". It would just be some crazy shit that happened, of interest mostly to airplane and disaster buffs and an excuse for people afraid of flying to stay on the ground.

MOD PARENT UP

[brunes69]

The Tsunami led to way more deaths than the WTC attacks did. Yet it received far to little press and nowhere near enough aid.

I don't know about that...

[rewt66]

Looking at what Schneier is saying, what humans are really doing is paying less attention to non-intelligent threats, even though they are more deadly. That does not sound like a successful survival strategy to me.

Perhaps it is about intentionality

[Infonaut]

When people fly two planes into the WTC, and their fellow travellers express the intent to conduct further attacks, the human intention behind it is pretty clear. Accidents happen, of course, but generally people aren't *trying* to get into car accidents. The idea that people are out there dreaming up further schemes involving mass destruction is what freaks people out. Sure, the odds are still absurdly low that you or I are going to get whacked by terrorists, but human beings are deliberately trying to create the destruction. I think it feels much more personal when you realize that human beings are behind these events, rather than random chance or nature.

Re:Perhaps it is about intentionality

[SQL Error]

This is exactly right.

Humans naturally and correctly respond more strongly to intentional attacks than to accidents.

Accidents will happen, and at any given point they may be more statistically threatening than whatever deliberate attacks may be going on. But accidents are relatively constant, and societies work to minimise them. Intentional attacks, on the other hand, tend to have people working to maximise the effects.

There are people right now who would bomb every airplane in the world if they had the ability to do so. There is no possibility of an accident happening on any similar scale.

The guy on the street who knows nothing of statistical analysis is right, and Bruce Schneier is wrong.

Re:Nice soundbyte there...

[Breakfast Pants]

I'm sure 5 years after the hindenberg crashed a hell of a lot of people could tell you when it happened.