(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Most of us know it for sure: the fear. Not the real fear where we stand on the edge of a ravine and where the earth is sliding beneath us – where the last moment has come and where we see death directly in the eyes. No – the fear most of us know is probably the speculative fear. The fear we create on the basis of information, feelings, speculation, sensations and the kind of very marketable cases. From the pool of elements we create a fear. The most telling example of our time is probably the fear of terror. Despite the fact that there is an extremely low probability of being hit by a terrorist attack, it is nevertheless an incident many fear. Although the numbers speak their clear language: Combine the death tolls from all terrorist attacks that have occurred in Western Europe since the year 2000 and move this figure to Denmark or Norway. What is most dangerous then? Terror or traffic? The answer is – and this even though traffic accidents have raged down – that traffic has taken five times as many lives on Danish or Norwegian soil as all Western European terrorist attacks since the year 2000. Yet we are getting into daily means of transport without fearing them a tad. You could say that this is quite logical, because we have to go ahead, so we just have to get in the car and then push any fear away. But it's not that simple. That is why the couple, Steffen Andersen and Hans Jørgen Nielsen, economist and journalist respectively, have set out to find out why we are so scared. And why we are especially scared of things that have no reason to fear.
Abdominal feeling rather than rationality
Andersen and Nielsen are thoroughly and systematically engaged in their round trip in the cobwebs of fear. Among other things, they come up with how the media logic creates the foundation for stories that are rooted in speculative fears. They expect many statistics to be misleading because the denominator is missing. So you see an increase in murders, traffic accidents, pedophilia cases and other grim, but forget to put the figure in relief of the circumstances. Is there, for example, the same population growth (which is often the case) during the same period? In that case, the curve is likely to be increasing, but the risk is actually decreasing. Or, with the author's wacky language, "Counters without a denominator can seduce in the most arduous way."
The fear most of us know is probably the speculative fear.
The couple also clarifies how our brains play us a plaster. How we are often inclined to let ourselves be guided by rather irrational considerations. For example, we can become so overloaded with information that instead of reasoning we resort to gut feelings. We simplify to make the complex and clear just manageable.
Furthermore, the human brain often wants to put in systems and patterns that do not really exist, but which we base on assumptions and conjectures created by what we observe and hear. The author gives the example of stepping into a warehouse. The warehouse is filled to the brim with goods, so we can only see the first rows, but occasioned by what we see (and possibly past experience with similar warehouses), our brain makes the assumption that the other rows probably contain roughly similar goods as is to be found on the first rows. This may also be the case, but the opposite may well be the case. We are thus inclined to generalize and create systems, which is also evident in our position on the speculative fears, and here it can become somewhat more serious than how we relate to a warehouse. This may, for example, apply to our calculation of whether nuclear power is justifiable or whether we should use all means to fight terrorism which, statistically speaking, is a vanishingly small problem compared to many other problems.
Rhetorical tricks
Along the way farligt The authors illustrate seven to eight rules of memory that can help us navigate more skeptically in a world where speculative fears lie. It says so that we should have an eye for "attention slots", ie whether someone is looking for our voice, money or support. We must be particularly skeptical about new studies, as they often show little of each. And finally, we may have a natural distrust of the people who paint the fuck on the wall and use the words "it can happen".
Much of the fear stems from the media's logic and the audience's way of absorbing this logic.
The book is easy to read and the content in many ways extremely educationally disseminated. Although the authors no doubt draw on a variety of sources and different types of documentation, this in no way interferes with the reading. Here are no source references or footnotes. On the other hand, there is a blue dot every time you scroll through the back of the book and find more information and sources. It works well. An educational and rhetorical approach is also that the authors often make use of putting the many figures and statistics into a context that almost seems personally intimidating. Thus, they often tell us what a number will look like if we transfer it to the reader's circle of friends. How many years will it take on average before a friend of the reader dies in a war (the answer is that the friend dies as a 200-year-old) or is murdered (as a 1000-year-old). This rhetorical grip enhances understanding, but may also be slightly tiring at length. Overall, the length of the work is a problem. The subject is interesting, but it could be dealt with in half as much space, which would increase the intensity without compromising the depth of the work. Right now, there are quite a few anecdotal sections as well as filler languages one could easily exclude. However, this does not change the fact that the work has great relevance in our deeply mediated time, for there is no doubt that much of the speculative fear emanates from the media's logics and the audience's way of recording these logics. It can be a book like farligt hopefully help change.