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Ask HN: What is the strangest part of how humans think about risk?

by qqqqquinnnnn on 2/9/22, 12:55 AM with 2 comments

There's more thinkpieces than you can count out there about why humans are incapable of interpreting risk, of the cognitive biases that inform our thinking, of the ways in which we underprepare for everything from asteroid impacts to stock market crashes.

What it comes down to is the fact that humans are emotional, intuitive creatures that like to do the kinds of things that FEEL right, even if they don't bring the best outcome.

This makes sense, except for when you run up against the fact that we, as a society, have to figure things out for the whole as well as for the parts within it.

Does some of our thinking run aground because we can think about ourselves, but have no way of thinking about the whole, or the other way around?

From where I'm sitting, seems like the naive divison of dem/repub is based on how we think about risk and what things we pay attention to losing, but I'm not sure.

All that to say - what is the weirdest thing about risk to you?

  • by edmundsauto on 2/9/22, 1:34 AM

    I'm not sure I agree with your framing around emotion - it implies a subtle judgement around using emotion versus pure rationality. However, we all have to live with deals we've made, and we know that no humans can be purely rational - so holding that up as the preferred gold standard feels off the mark.

    That said, the weirdest thing to me is that I can be aware I'm making a suboptimal decision and still want to do it. The experience of the gap between the rational and "emotional" choice is such a weird feeling!

  • by jon_north on 2/9/22, 2:27 AM

    Wrong question IMO. We're shaped by evolutionary pressures from situations that no longer pertain, so it's not surprising we are not optimized for a world that just sprang into existence.

    My question is: Why is reality (especially including at the quantum level) so damned different and counterintuitive relative to our day to day experience? Why doesn't the universe scale up uniformly so intuition is holographically legit?