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title: ""Assessing the danger posed by the coronavirus is extraordinarily…"
date: 2020-02-14
source: facebook
type: Archer T. Ships shared a link.
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# "Assessing the danger posed by the coronavirus is extraordinarily…

*February 14, 2020 · Facebook*

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[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/world/asia/coronavirus-risk-interpreter.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/world/asia/coronavirus-risk-interpreter.html){target="_blank"}
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\"Assessing the danger posed by the coronavirus is extraordinarily difficult; even scientists are unsure. But our brains act as if they have an easier way: They translate gut emotional reactions into what we believe are reasoned conclusions, even if hard data tells us otherwise.\
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"The world in our heads is not a precise replica of reality," Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, wrote in a 2011 book. "Our expectations about the frequency of events are distorted by the prevalence and emotional intensity of the messages to which we are exposed."\
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In extreme cases, this can lead to a "crowding-out effect," Dr. Bostrom said, as our emotional impulses overwhelm our cognitive faculties. The coronavirus hits a number of those triggers, often quite hard.\
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Threats that feel out of control, like a runaway disease outbreak, prompt a similar response, leading people to seek ways to reimpose control, for instance by hoarding supplies.\
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Risks that we take on voluntarily, or that at least feel voluntary, are often seen as less dangerous than they really are. One study found that people will raise their threshold for the amount of danger they are willing to take on by a factor of one thousand if they see the risk as voluntary.\
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If that number sounds high, consider that driving, a danger most take on voluntarily, kills over 40,000 Americans every year. But terrorism, a threat imposed on us, kills fewer than 100."\"\
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[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/world/asia/coronavirus-risk-interpreter.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/world/asia/coronavirus-risk-interpreter.html){target="_blank"}
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