
Our Decreasing Tolerance to Risk [2013] - arcticbull
https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2013/08/our_decreasing_toler.html
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theamk
Can we have 2013 in the title?

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arcticbull
Done and done

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arcticbull
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."

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noiseman
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.

