"Bruce Schneier has written an article about how our society is becoming increasingly averse to risk as we invent ways to reduce it.
'Risk tolerance is both cultural and dependent on the environment
around us. As we have advanced technologically as a society, we have
reduced many of the risks that have been with us for millennia.
Fatal
childhood diseases are things of the past, many adult diseases are
curable, accidents are rarer and more survivable, buildings collapse
less often, death by violence has declined considerably, and so on.
All
over the world — among the wealthier of us who live in peaceful Western
countries — our lives have become safer.' This has led us to
overestimate both the level of risk from unlikely events and also our
ability to curtail it.
Thus, trillions of dollars are spent and vital
liberties are lost in misguided efforts to make us safer.
'We need to
relearn how to recognize the trade-offs that come from risk management,
especially risk from our fellow human beings.
We need to relearn how to
accept risk, and even embrace it, as essential to human progress and our
free society. The more we expect technology to protect us from people
in the same way it protects us from nature, the more we will sacrifice
the very values of our society in futile attempts to achieve this
security.'"
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