Our Decreasing Tolerance to Risk [2013]

schneier.com

11 pointsarcticbull4 comments

Can we have 2013 in the title?

Done and done

This is an old article but it seems really apropos of what all is happening with the corona virus:

"We're bad at accurately assessing risk; we tend to exaggerate spectacular, strange, and rare events, and downplay ordinary, familiar, and common ones."

That’s not my takeaway from the article. Schneier was mostly talking about how the war on terror has been a waste of money, because human actors will always find a way to circumvent whatever security measures you come up with.

It seems to me that the money spent on combating the new Coronavirus will lead to better understanding of what measures work against pandemics and will improve humanity’s ability to contain and to stop pandemics in future. Sure, it can be argued that the current Coronavirus is not very lethal (against young people), but whatever new technologies and defensive measure we develop from this pandemic will likely be useful in future pandemics, which may well be deadlier.

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