The extent to which the thought of terrorism freaks us out

How much is our conception of risk warped by the thought of "terrorism?" Consider that there was a study conducted prior to 9/11 in which people were willing to pay more for insurance to protect them from terrorism than from any cause of death:

A further example highlights how making the description of an event very specific can induce people to see it as much more risky. In an investigation of the effects of wording on people's intentions to buy insurance for air travel, researchers found that that people were willing to pay more for a policy that would insure them against "terrorist acts" as opposed to death from "all possible causes." And yet, as must be obvious to the reader, death from terrorist acts is only one of many ways that could lead to death on an airplane. However, because this scenario was made explicit, it became more salient to people thereby increasing their perception of the risk as measured by their willingness to pay an insurance premium.
[Citing to Johnson, E. J., Hershey, J., Meszaros, J., & Kunreuther, H. (1993). Framing, probability distortions, and insurance decisions. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 7, 35-51.] This study was briefly discussed by Daniel Kahneman while discussing his new book, Thinking, Fast and Slow: In his book, Kahneman suggests that things that are vivid in our minds often have far too much influence over us, compared to equal or greater dangers that are not as vivid. For example, you are far more likely to die of colon cancer as a result of not getting a colonoscopy than to die from an act of terrorism. Yet our national budget priorities are massively skewed to try to achieve zero-tolerance regarding terrorism, which is an impossibility despite the rhetoric of virtually every politician who opens his or her mouth on the topic. It seems that we need to work much harder to make non-vivid dangerous activities more vivid, so that we can rationally prioritize. And certainly, we need to resist the urge to decide budget priorities regarding vivid activities in isolation from all other budgetary needs. I write this assuming, perhaps naively, that the bottom line, the thing for which we are ultimately striving, is the general welfare, including the prevention of needless deaths. To the extent that this is true, when setting public policy we need to work much harder to recognize that a death is a death, regardless of the cause.

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2 x the difference between humans and chimpanzees

Neil deGrasse Tyson points out that the human genome overlaps 99% with the genome of chimpanzees. We're only 1% different, but consider how much we can do that chimps cannot do. Consider de Grasse Tyson's suggestion: Cognitive Scientist Andy Clark has also recognized the biological similarity between chimpanzees and humans, and asked how we accomplish so much more with such a meager difference. He suggests that our trick is that we have become proficient at off-loading and making use of information out into the environment. He argues that "self" extends beyond skin and skull.

[W]e create and maintain a variety of special external structures (symbolic and social-institutional). These external structures function so as to complement our individual cognitive profiles and to diffuse human reason across wider and wider social and physical networks whose collective computations exhibit their own special dynamics and properties.

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Attempt to scientifically document vaginal orgasms

Dr. Lissa Rankin, who writes at "Owning Pink," discusses scientific attempts to scientifically document vaginal orgasms. Back in medical school, she was taught that there is nothing in the vagina that could account for vaginal orgasms (as contrasted with clitoral orgasms). Does the "G-spot" really exist. That's where her story begins. Here's some information from Lissa Rankin's About Page:

I am an OB/GYN physician, author of two (soon to be three) books, a professional artist, a blogger, an online entrepreneur, and a mother, but I am more than what I do- and so are you. I started this website in April, 2009 because I was frustrated with the limited way most people, especially doctors, define health. After leaving my traditional medical practice in 2007 because I was disillusioned by the broken, outdated patriarchal model of medicine, I realized that you can quit your job, but you can't quit your calling, and I felt truly called to help people heal, connect, and thrive.
Rankin focuses on far more than the body itself in her quest to promote health. For example, in this post, she offers the lesson she has learned regarding "How Do You Find Love?" Rankin recently appeared at TED, suggesting that the body is "a mirror of how we live our lives."

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Extremely long odds say that you should not exist.

For me to exist, my mother and father had to meet each other, which is a rather unlikely thing to have occurred in the scheme of things. Even assuming that they met, they would also need to mate at just the right time, and then the right sperm (out of hundreds of millions in each ejaculation) had to fertilize the right egg (or which there were many thousands of candidate eggs).  But the same thing had to happen to each of their parents, and their parents, and so on. How many sets of parents did this need to happen to? Quite a few--consider my earlier post, "Ancestors Along the highway." Before all of those parents came onto the scene, the right non-human ancestors had to meet and mate, and before them . . . [skipping way back] the right sponges had to have offspring, and the fungi before them. Had any of these organisms been eaten as prey prior to having offspring, I wouldn't be here.  If any of them had succumbed to disease prior to having offspring, I wouldn't be here.  If any of them had broken a leg or gotten lost in the forest, they might not have gotten around to mating on that critically important date and time (from my perspective).   The adventures of Marty McFly ("Back to the Future") barely scrape the surface. The seemingly impossible hurdles faced by each of us are addressed by a well-constructed website, "What are the Odds," which stirs quite a bit of eye-popping mathematics into the description. Wait until you get to the bottom of the page to read about the trillion-sided dice. Actually, "What are the Odds" overstates the odds that you or I would exist, because there's far more to being "you" than your biological substrate. If you were raised in a war-torn region rather than a suburban American school, you would be a very different version of you. And ask yourself whether you would be you even if a few of your closest, most influential friends or acquaintances weren't around to influence you. Or what if you hadn't happened to read some of the ideas that most influenced you, or if even one or two of those important character-building events that defined you (joyous or tragic or in between) hadn't occurred? Thus, it's almost impossible that you should be here reading this post. Then again, you are here, because all of the antecedent events necessary to make you actually did occur. I don't know what lesson one is supposed to draw from this idea that it is essentially impossible that you should be here.  Perhaps it's merely an excuse for a healthy dose of humility.  It also seems to me that working through this thought experiment is good for one's mental health, at least once in a while.  I consider it an existential vitamin that I should take periodically.

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The case for less-is-more democracy

I have long been fascinated by the herd instinct of human animals. What could be more obvious than the fact that we mimic each other for all kinds of reasons, even for reasons that seem absurd to outsiders. Further, we follow each others’ lead even while we chant that we are “individuals.” In reality, many of us panic at the idea that differences among the citizens. How dare some citizens question even some of America’s war efforts! That is “unpatriotic.” How dare some Americans encourage multi-culturalism! Gay marriage? Forget it. And don’t ever forget that the United States is the world’s greatest country—let us all say that in unison! For many of us, everybody has a categorical moral duty to fall in line on all matters relating to God and country. Perhaps I find the topic of the human herding so compelling because of my own personal instinct to aversion to joining groups. For reasons I don’t understand, I instinctively rebel against many efforts to convince me to go along with “everybody else.” I’ve been this way ever since I can remember. Going along with the crowd is not something that gives me joy and comfort. Rather, it makes me feel wary and out of control. If people at my workplace were to announce that next Wednesday will be “Blue Shirt Day,” I’ll go out of my way to not wear blue. I perplex those who root for the home town sports teams and I don’t join political parties. I commonly hesitate to join in most displays of patriotism, including America’s warmongering. This is not to say I’m immune to such impulses, but it is fair to say that where many other Americans revel in community bonding, I tend to fight inner battles while questioning the need. Instead of joining in, I tend to question. [More . . . ]

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