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Gunrights
Posts:666
Senior User
Online Status:
Intergalactic Multi Phase Dementsion
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| 05/01/2007 10:12 AM |
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Denial, ignorance don’t lead to bliss
By Calvin Petersen
There is a long-running debate about the circumstances in which statistical models and actuarial science are superior to human judgment in making predictions and related decisions.
For example, one day it may be possible to enter a medical history, test results, and list of symptoms to a computer program with a very large statistical database and receive a diagnosis and treatment recommendations. However, it seems unlikely that many of us would prefer this over consulting a competent physician. We don’t want to entrust our lives to the impersonal.
Yet it is our reliance on emotion that often makes us poor predictors. Human beings, like actuaries, also evaluate risk and make decisions based on past experience. It is just that we generally rely much more on personal feelings and belief systems than statistics and scientific evidence in our decision process.
But that does not always provide a sound basis for predicting catastrophic events. Elevated anxiety typically leads to catastrophic thinking, causing an anticipation of disaster when it is improbable, and we also tend to discount or deny the possibility of dangers that are not within our personal experience or have complex causes.
Here are a few examples:
— I grew up in an unframed home in Salt Lake that would have collapsed into a pile of bricks in a moderate to severe earthquake, but I don’t recall anyone ever considering that possibility.
— I never saw a seatbelt in a car until my teens, and my parents and their six children drove everywhere unconcerned.
— When I joined a U.S. government “think tank” following graduate school in the mid-’70s, the buildings were poorly ventilated and filled with cigarette and cigar smoke. Scientific studies on the dangers of secondhand smoke were beginning to appear at that time, and I sent a summary of evidence to the Civil Service Commission with a complaint that nonsmokers were being unfairly exposed. The response I received was that there was insufficient evidence to support my claim and no action could be taken.
— Evidence of global warming has been accumulating for years, but the world remains largely unprepared, and countermeasures are only now being taken as the consequences are upon us.
— Epidemiologic studies have long demonstrated that the more readily firearms are available, the more they are misused. Yet political solutions to gun violence have become no less elusive.
— From the evidence now available, it seems likely that the 9/11 catastrophe might have been prevented had there been wider understanding of Islamic fundamentalism. Historians and social scientists familiar with sectarian, ethnic, and tribal tensions in Iraq were well aware that we were opening up a hornets’ nest that might be ungovernable in attempting liberation, but they were, of course, ignored.
There are undoubtedly a multitude of conclusions that could be drawn from such examples and the manner in which we as a society make predictive decisions, but what seems most apparent is that ignorance is not bliss and our propensity for denial is a many splendored thing.
Calvin R. Petersen, Ph.D., is a psychologist in private practice with LifeSpan Mental Health Services.
Ignorance is Bliss
I cannot let Calvin R. Peterson’s column in today’s HJ (5/1/7) go unchallenged. Many people take comfort if running with the herd. While starting out with his observation that many/most people rely far too much on emotion to make decisions, he proceeds in my opinion to commit the same error. Of course, he would argue against that but lets look at some of the conclusions he makes in several short paragraphs. 1) Obviously unaware that in order to make the claims that second hand smoke is harmful it was necessary to change the scientific protocol to achieve this. 2) Because most people only hear one side of the anthropomorphic global warming debate he seems to believe that the matter is settled. Recently, he was reported that the surface temperature of Mars has increased approx. 0.5 degrees Celsius during the last few decades which is in keeping with what has been observed on Earth. 3) By relying solely on epidemiologic studies he makes the absurd assertion that “the more firearms are available, the more the are misused.” During the last fifteen years approximately 30 million more firearms where purchased in the US. During the same time frame violent crime has been reduced to a thirty year low. Also he seems to be ignorant that where guns are controlled the most, there is a resultant increase in violent crime. This is especially true in Great Britain and Australia (both surrounded by water). Again, there is no correlation between the availability of firearms and there resultant misuse. I could write a whole book on how Medical activists misused the scientific process to support there claims. They where so encouraged at the victory that they had achieved with tobacco that they tried to apply the same template to firearms. Some went too far in comparing guns to viruses. 4) He is correct in his assertion that 9/11 could have been prevented. What he fails to realize is that what was truly lacking was political will. President Clinton believed that dealing with this issue seriously was a no win situation, so he set about ignoring it. Connections to the Iraqi involvement in the first laceName w:st="on">WorldlaceName> laceName w:st="on">TradelaceName> laceType w:st="on">CenterlaceType> bombing, the bombing of the laceName w:st="on">MurrahlaceName> laceName w:st="on">FederallaceName> laceType w:st="on">BuildinglaceType> in Oklahoma city, the bombing of flight 800, etc. were suppressed. The Clinton administration was more interested in achieving diversity within the CIA and FBI then preventing terrorism. Michael Scheurer, former head of the CIA Bin Laden unit and no fan of the Bush Admin. stated that Clinton passed on eight to ten different opportunities to capture or kill Bin Laden (something the Major Media seemed to have ignored). So who is guilty of ignorance?
Peace
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Fiery Darts
Posts:135
Senior User
Online Status:
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| 05/02/2007 6:14 AM |
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There are two types of statistics that I have seen referred to recently in terms of gun violence. One is the overall (violent) crime rate. This appears to have gone down, at least in the US. The other statistic is about killing sprees (and attempted sprees). These high-profile incidents appear to be on the rise, although Australia hasn't had one since their last big gun control push, which was spurred by a shooting massacre. Curiously, I haven't seen anything about what the rate of random killings has been over the last few decades. Conventional wisdom is that they are on the rise (which is likely, especially since there appears to be a tendency to copy earlier incidents), but relying on your memory of recent events to determine how often something happens is a common logical error. Ultimately, these shooting, while horrific, are a small fraction of the total gun violence in this country, and it doesn't do much good overall to just try to prevent them (although they are more easily stopped than single or double homicides, which are typically over before anyone can react to defend themselves).
I've also heard recently that intuition and snap decisions tend to be right more often than we would expect. Apparently our subconscious minds can analyze information and come to a decision faster and better than our conscious minds can. Of course, it's not infallible, but it is apparently better than nothing.
The point is that you can trust your gut. It's probably right. Except when it's not.
(I tried to track down the article about intuition being right, but I couldn't find it. I think it was at CNN.com, but I can't be sure. Still, we can trust that it's true because my intuition tells me that it is.)
(Edit: I still can't find the original article, but I did find out that the idea of snap decisions being more valid than previously believed is the central tenet of Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Enjoy.)
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