Newsgroup: it.hobby.viaggi
Titolo: Articolo del New York Times

"I was visiting London last Thursday when a second wave of attacks hit 
the city, just two weeks after the traumatic events of July 7. It is 
hard to avoid feeling vulnerable to this invisible enemy who does not 
play by known or explicit rules. Of course, that is precisely the 
anxiety that terrorists seek to produce. But its opposite - complacency 
- is not an option.
The truth is that neither human beings nor modern societies are wired to 
respond rationally to terrorism. Vigilance is easy to muster immediately 
after an event, but it tends to wane quickly, as the attack vanishes 
from public discourse. We err twice, first by overreacting right after 
the disaster, while we are still in shock, and later by under-reacting, 
when the memory fades and we become relaxed.
Terrorism exploits three glitches in human nature, all related to the 
management and perception of unusual events. The first and key among 
these has been observed over the last two decades by neurobiologists and 
behavioral scientists, who have debunked a great fallacy that has marred 
Western thinking since Aristotle and most acutely since the 
Enlightenment. That is to say that as much as we think of ourselves as 
rational animals, risk avoidance is not governed by reason, cognition or 
intellect. Rather, it comes chiefly from our emotional system.
Patients with brain lesions that prevent them from registering feelings 
even when their cognitive and analytical capacities are intact are 
incapable of effectively getting out of harm's way. It is largely our 
emotional toolkit, and not what is called "reason," that governs 
self-preservation.
Second, this emotional system can be an extremely naďve statistician, 
because it was built for a primitive environment with simple dangers. 
That might work for you the next time you run into a snake or a tiger. 
But because the emotional system is impressionable and prefers shallow, 
social and anecdotal information to abstract data, it hinders our 
ability to cope with more sophisticated risks.
For example, the death of an acquaintance in a motorcycle accident would 
be more likely to deter you from riding a motorcycle than would a 
dispassionate, and undoubtedly far more representative, statistical 
analysis of motorcycles' dangers. You might avoid Central Park on the 
basis of a single comment at a cocktail party, rather than bothering to 
read the freely available crime statistics that provide a more realistic 
view of the odds that you will be victimized.
This primacy of the emotions can distort our decision-making. Travelers 
at airports irrationally tend to agree to pay more for terrorism 
insurance than they would for general insurance, which includes 
terrorism coverage. No doubt the word "terrorism" can be specific enough 
to evoke an emotional reaction, while the general insurance offer 
wouldn't awaken the travelers' anxieties in the same way.
In the modern age, the news media have the power to amplify such 
emotional distortions, particularly with their use of images that go 
directly to the emotional brain.
Consider this: Osama bin Laden continued killing Westerners after Sept. 
11, though indirectly. How? A large number of travelers chose to drive 
rather than fly, and this caused a corresponding rise in casualties from 
automobile accidents. Yet these automobile accidents were not news 
stories - they are a mere number. We have pictures of those killed by 
bombs, not those killed on the road. As Stalin supposedly said, "One 
death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic."
The third human flaw, related to the second, has to do with how we act 
on our perceptions, and what sorts of behavior we choose to reward. We 
are moved by sensational images of heroes who leap into action as 
calamity unfolds. But the long, pedestrian slog of prevention is thankless.
How can we act on our knowledge of these human flaws in order to make 
our society safer?
The audiovisual media, with their ability to push the public's emotional 
hot buttons, need to play a more responsible role. Of course it is the 
news media's job to inform the public about the risk and the incidence 
of terrorism, but they should try to do so without helping terrorists 
achieve their objective, which is to terrify.
Television images, in all their vividness and specificity, have an 
extraordinary power to do just that, and to persuade the viewer that a 
distant risk is clear and present, while a pressing but underreported 
one is nothing to worry about.
Like drug companies, the news media should study the side effects of 
their product, one of which is the distortion of the viewer's mental 
risk map. Because of the way the brain is built, images and striking 
narratives may well be necessary to get our attention. But just as it 
takes a diamond to cut a diamond, the media should find ways to use 
images and stories to bring us closer to the statistical truth."
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The New York Times
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Trovo le sue osservazioni assolutamente condivisibili.
Carla


Aggiungo che non sono solo i pubblicitari e i media a sfruttare i tre punti 
deboli umani, ma anche i politici che spesso vogliono darci l'impressione di 
fare qualcosa prendendo iniziative estemporeanee e demagogiche a seguito di 
tristi eventi per poi dimenticarsi delle loro promesse quando il clamore se 
n'è andato