Yesterday, an American Airline flight when off the the end of a runway in Jamaica and nearly into the ocean:
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/91-hurt-as-American-Airline-plane-crash-lands-and-breaks-into-two/558216/
The plane broke in two and ninety-one people were hurt. News reports were quick to point out that it was a miracle that no one was killed and that no one was in critical condition. But this was no miracle. This was simple the hard work on pilots, and applied sicence. Passive retrain systems and a safely designed Boeing 737 are what saved al those people.
Just once in my life I would like a newscaster to report that people were saved by sicnece and years of research designing safer planes and operating rules! Why do we credit god with the work of us humans?
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Fear
Often I see a new story on TV which goes "After the break, we will tell you what might be in your own refrigerator that could kill you today!" One would think if this is a real hazard, they would do us a favor and save us before we go for a snack break!
New programs and political parties know the effectiveness of fear. Comparisons with the Holocaust are common.. If we believe these people, hazards exist everywhere and we are lucky to survive each day. The effect is comical, except even when the stories are preposterous, a significant number of people believe them. It seems in many people, there is a great fear just below the surface, and some mechanism that is willing to trust whatever a talking head or web page says.
Science is just starting to understand fear. Recent work suggests we can reprogram ourselves to reduce fear and anxiety: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5hrBeZrHUCEKsvg4DF4gBm2N9MFgQ.
The technique is to relive the memory of what you are afraid of. After about 10 minutes, you try to overcome the anxiety of the memory and resave it in a new form. Memories are plastic and with effort can be changed. Psychologists have used this in the form of "extinction training" for years, but know we understand better how it works.
I encourage you to be skeptical about new information. When you hear the next gloom and doom sayer, ask these questions:
1. Do they use the word "might", as in "We might be heading for disaster!". Well, I "might" become king of the world too, but it is doubtful! What are the odds of the event they are hawking even happening? One example is childhood abduction. Many people fear being killed by a shark, which has about a 1 in 4000000 chance of happening to them. They same people have a backyard swimming pool, and the odds of drowning are about 1 in 1000! http://surftherenow.com/2008/05/13/shark-attack-risk-of-death/ You are 30000 times more likely to die by suicide than from a shark attack. Yet cable TV has lots and lots of shows about shark attacks and few about suicide.
2. Who says so? Is this a politician speaking or someone with a background in science? Are they an expert on this field or is this a psychologist telling us about physics?
3. What evidence do they show? If they are going to call a person a communist, do they even understand what communism means? If you can ask them direct simple questions, you can often prove they have no idea what they are talking about. Do they even allow people to take questions? If not, this raises a red flag. Do they use a straw man argument like "Some people think we should encourage sex with minors!". Ask "who"? Ask them to name a few. Are these people even real? Using "straw men" is an attempt to plant a false memory, which the speaker can then easily knock down. Even if one freak exists it hardly means there is a trend.
New programs and political parties know the effectiveness of fear. Comparisons with the Holocaust are common.. If we believe these people, hazards exist everywhere and we are lucky to survive each day. The effect is comical, except even when the stories are preposterous, a significant number of people believe them. It seems in many people, there is a great fear just below the surface, and some mechanism that is willing to trust whatever a talking head or web page says.
Science is just starting to understand fear. Recent work suggests we can reprogram ourselves to reduce fear and anxiety: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5hrBeZrHUCEKsvg4DF4gBm2N9MFgQ.
The technique is to relive the memory of what you are afraid of. After about 10 minutes, you try to overcome the anxiety of the memory and resave it in a new form. Memories are plastic and with effort can be changed. Psychologists have used this in the form of "extinction training" for years, but know we understand better how it works.
I encourage you to be skeptical about new information. When you hear the next gloom and doom sayer, ask these questions:
1. Do they use the word "might", as in "We might be heading for disaster!". Well, I "might" become king of the world too, but it is doubtful! What are the odds of the event they are hawking even happening? One example is childhood abduction. Many people fear being killed by a shark, which has about a 1 in 4000000 chance of happening to them. They same people have a backyard swimming pool, and the odds of drowning are about 1 in 1000! http://surftherenow.com/2008/05/13/shark-attack-risk-of-death/ You are 30000 times more likely to die by suicide than from a shark attack. Yet cable TV has lots and lots of shows about shark attacks and few about suicide.
2. Who says so? Is this a politician speaking or someone with a background in science? Are they an expert on this field or is this a psychologist telling us about physics?
3. What evidence do they show? If they are going to call a person a communist, do they even understand what communism means? If you can ask them direct simple questions, you can often prove they have no idea what they are talking about. Do they even allow people to take questions? If not, this raises a red flag. Do they use a straw man argument like "Some people think we should encourage sex with minors!". Ask "who"? Ask them to name a few. Are these people even real? Using "straw men" is an attempt to plant a false memory, which the speaker can then easily knock down. Even if one freak exists it hardly means there is a trend.
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