eCommerce: It's the reason for the season
Eric Bohlman says:
Parental anxiety may contribute to this. One of the effects of the mass media has been to make the world *scary* out of all proportion to the actual level of *danger*.
That is so true that I just wanted to quote it so it would have been said twice on the list. It applies to SO many things. Parenting, government, targets for defence, choice of conveyance, diet, and on and on.
There is another side to it as well: The REAL dangers tend to be ignored. Automotive accidents, depression/suicide and fear of persicution due to sexual preference issues among teens, loss of freedoms in the name of national security, disease caused by the unbelievable methods used to lower the cost of food production, and on and on.
The saddist thing about the human species is the disconnection between the emotional / re-active sections of the brain and the tiny part that handles raw statistics, math and reason. RAH once said that humans who can't do at least calculas are at best animals. I've always like the quote about the lottery being a tax on people who are bad at math.
"How we know what isn't" A good book on critical thinking
Interested: