28 November 2008

Risks

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened. --Mark Twain
Whether we are inclined to take risks or avoid them, we're likely to assess them wrongly. And when a risk has been quantified (a 1 in 500 chance of something, say) we really can't imagine what it means.

Being wired for the risks that faced our ancestors, our brains haven't got inbuilt mechanisms to deal with today's uncertainties, says this article.

The bottom line is that worrying about risks causes stress, which causes more harm than any of the risks themselves. Reassuring, isn't it?

(picture from here)

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