I've been meaning to write about a recent story in Time on risk perception -- in particular, on how badly we suck at it.
The basic theme is familiar by now:
We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones.
And the culprit is also well-identified: a nervous system that evolved in radically different circumstances. Thanks to a jumpy little clump of tissue called the amygdala, nestled right above the brain stem, humans are finely tuned to short-term dangers. Snakes in the grass, glowering faces -- these things stimulate the amygdala and prompt a fight-or-flight squirt of hormones. That's how we survived on the savanna.