Human beings are terrible at judging risk. Either the sky is falling, or it isn’t falling at all. We have a difficult time handling the case where the sky is sort of creeping downwards gradually. It may happen unevenly in places or threaten to accelerate at a moment’s notice, but unless one of those chunks falls on our heads we default to thinking there’s no downward movement at all. Since risk assessments guide actions, the consequence is a tendency to over- or under-react to things.

The worst case of all, though, is when we’re told the sky is falling, nothing lands on our heads, and thus we conclude the sky is rigid. [Read more…]