We Need to Be Better than this (Part 8 of 8)

his is the 8th and final installment of my 8 part series on Daniel Gardner's book, the Science of Fear.

Over the past two weeks, I've posted on a lot of different aspects of Daniel Gardner's book The Science of Fear.  I really encourage you to go out and buy the book.  It's a great read.

In the first installment, I talked about the focus of the book -- and how Gardner feels that we live at the savest time in the history of our planet and yet, we still live in fear.

In the second installment, I discussed the basic tenents from the book centered around how we thing -- particularly when it comes to our two different mental processes, head and gut.

In part three, I noted how the power of crowds, particularly confirmation bias and group polarization, can increase our fears.

In part four, I noted how the media, corporations, and politicians help to create, and prey on our fears.

In part five, I provided a recent example of how a trade organization, and the media, collaborated on some numbers to create a "fearful" story out of something that actually could have been a pretty positive story.

In part six, we discussed how pit bulls have become a part of a larger theme when it comes to media coverage.

In part seven, I discussed how making decisions based on our gut, instead of using our head, can often make us less safe because we don't properly evaluate risks.

And we, as a society, need to be better than this.

It is crucial for us to begin to make better decisions and be better at evaluating risks. We need to be smart enough to force our head to do its job and help us to evaluate information, instead of leaving gut to do all the work. We need to approach statistics with skepticism, and think about the statistics that are quoted to us by the media to figure out what the real numbers are -- and not just be swayed by statistics without denomenators and empty percent changes.

We need to use our head to be sure we are not easily swayed by twisted numbers, misleading language, emotional images and unreasonable conclusions.

When we go onto the internet, we need to look at arguments on both sides of a situation -- and not use confirmation bias to just find information that supports our own views. We also need to be sure our groups and organizations allow for open dialogue and dissenting viewpoints so we don't allow for group polarization -- or as I like to call it, group think.  And we should be very wary of groups that do not allow dissenting opinions.

I hope you enjoyed this series and found it valuable.

Comments

[Juile]

Really great series, Brent. I'm really looking forward to reading the book!

[KC KS Kills Dogs]

Brent this series was EXCELLENT!! I believe you deserve a writer's award for this one.

Thank you, thank you for all your hard work and sharing this with your readers.

I am definitely going to add this book to my library!!

[EmilyS]

fantastic series Brent... I wonder if you could "package" it as an article for a journal or something...

[Brent Toellner]

Thanks all. Emily, I've thought about what that would look like. I for sure want to have it in written form so I can get it up on the KCDA website. It's really long though -- and will take me a fair amount of editing to get it into a more reader-friendly format. Going to see if I can make that happen though at some point - -and what type of publication might be open to it.

[Jennifer]

Thank you, Brent--I enjoyed reading your series. I have also found that the books "Culture of Fear" and "Prisoners of Hate" are excellent reads for this sort of subject. Neither of them mention dogs at all, but the principles discussed in the books can be easily applied to the situation facing certain dog breeds and their owners.