Posted by Kathryn Hunt on April 22, 2008, 1:39 pm, in reply to "Imagined Comparisons: a Review of Kluge"
99.241.131.55
In reading Dan Gardner's book Risk, just after reading Kluge and catching a bit of Marq de Villiers's talk on his book Dangerous World, I'm starting to see connections. Gardner and Marcus both draw on some of the same studies, and both of them seem to have the basic message that we are stone age brains wandering around in a high-tech world. Gardner's lovely metaphor for it is a caveman falling asleep by the fire one night, and waking up lying on the pavement in the middle of Times Square. That's our brains - the ones that have to process the likelihood of a given thing happening to us, when we see it on TV from halfway around the world.
I'll have to read de Villiers's book, before I can make any solid comparisons, but the fraction of his talk that I did catch was about what would happen if a half-kilometre chunk of space rock were to crash into the Atlantic. Just that illustration alone reminded me of Gardner's, and Marcus's, warnings against alarmism. Gardner specifically addresses the risks we face every day without even thinking about them, like getting behind the wheel of a car, in contrast to the unlikely stuff that we're presented with to be afraid of (that we'll be the victim of a bombing, or that we'll get terminal cancer, or that a chunk of space rock will obliterate the Eastern Seaboard.)
In fact, reading all three of these books along with Patricia Pearson's lovely subjective account of being the victim of irrational fear, would give you a great sense, I think, of an ongoing conversation about the failings of our brains in the face of our world. I'd totally recommend reading them in conjunction with each other.
My personal example? All my friends think I'm crazy for rock climbing as a hobby. But don't bat an eye that I take a bicycle to work. Which is more likely to kill or injure me? Guess. Which is a more rare activity? Well.
| 233 |
|
Message Thread:
|
