Risks, Fear and Bruce Schneier

I am not a person who easily subscribes to mailing lists or newsletters. I feel that just revisiting sites I like every now and then is more than enough to stay on top of things.

However, I do make an exception for Bruce Schneier. This man has such terrific insights into the world we live in, and presents our follies regarding security and risks so nicely (integrated into the latest news every month), that I read his newsletter religiously.

Americans seem obsessed with foiling plots a la "24", and I recommend you read his "Movie-plot contest", where readers are invited to send in their most exotic (fictional) terrorist attacks.
It is classic, hilarious, and illustrates beautifully that protecting against them makes no sense (or in Bruce Schneier's words "is a bad trade off").

In his latest newsletter, he has printed a draft of his latest essay "The Psychology of Security", an essay that describes why our fears often are so irrational, and not well-prepared for our modern world:

"[He] relates an incident when he and his wife lived in an apartment and a large window blew in during a storm. He was standing right beside it at the time and heard the whistling of the wind just before the window blew. He was lucky -- a foot to the side and he would have been dead -- but the sound has never left him:

But ever since that June storm, a new fear has entered the
mix for me: the sound of wind whistling through a window. I
know now that our window blew in because it had been
installed improperly.... I am entirely convinced that the
window we have now is installed correctly, and I trust our
superintendent when he says that it is designed to withstand
hurricane-force winds. In the five years since that June, we
have weathered dozens of storms that produced gusts
comparable to the one that blew it in, and the window has
performed flawlessly.

I know all these facts -- and yet when the wind kicks up, and
I hear that whistling sound, I can feel my adrenaline levels
rise.... Part of my brain -- the part that feels most _me_-
like, the part that has opinions about the world and decides
how to act on those opinions in a rational way -- knows that
the windows are safe.... But another part of my brain wants
to barricade myself in the bathroom all over again.[7]

There's a good reason evolution has wired our brains this way. If you're a higher-order primate living in the jungle and you're attacked by a lion, it makes sense that you develop a lifelong fear of lions, or at least fear lions more than another animal you haven't personally been attacked by. From a risk/reward perspective, it's a good trade-off for the brain to make, and -- if you think about it -- it's really no different than your body developing antibodies against, say, chicken pox based on a single exposure. In both cases, your body is saying: "This happened once, and therefore it's likely to happen again. And when it does, I'll be ready." In a world where the threats are limited -- where there are only a few diseases and predators that happen to affect the small patch of earth occupied by your particular tribe -- it works.

Unfortunately, the brain's fear system doesn't scale the same way the body's immune system does. While the body can develop antibodies for hundreds of diseases, and those antibodies can float around in the bloodstream waiting for a second attack by the same disease, it's harder for the brain to deal with a multitude of lifelong fears."

Check out the full essay at http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0702a.html

Now if only every American would read his newsletter...