Thinking under the influence

I don't like that fear has such a hold on the public and shapes policy as much as it does, but if we could at least be afraid of the things most likely to cause us harm, that would be a good start towards getting our priorities in order.
Should you be afraid of being a victim in a mass shooting?  Of gun violence in general? Of being killed in a terrorist attack? Most recently, are most Americans anti-immigrant? What's Planned Parenthood doing with their government funding?
I'm not going to attempt to answer these questions here, although those questions all have answers, many of which are a result of extensive research.

What I would like to do is jot down a couple of things that have bothered me for several years about the cycle of hysteria that occurs whenever something sensational happens, and how the fear drowns out more pressing issues, and more probable dangers.  This is not to dismiss the aforementioned as non-issues, but hopefully to encourage a few people to think a little more critically about what they are being told to be concerned about and perhaps to put that in context so as to not be blinded to the issue as a whole.
Because one thing that we all have in common: no one thinks deeply and critically while in fear for their safety or that of their loved ones. 

Fear isn't a rational response of course, so I understand it's overly optimistic to expect people to only concern themselves with the threats that are most likely to occur.  I'm not able to, and don't expect others to ignore these events entirely. However, when we're repeatedly warned by the media, a politician, or anyone else, about the threat of ___ it might be worthwhile to put it in context with other dangers to gain a little perspective.  If we did this all the time, most likely we'd be inhaling vegetables and lining up at gyms to protect ourselves against heart disease, rather than rushing to buy guns to protect ourselves from Jihadists, and a lot of people would probably sleep a lot better.

The trap that most of us seem to fall into is to replace the question "How often does this happen?" with "How much does this affect me emotionally?".  For most of us, it's impossible to see a story about a mass shooting, a suspicious police shooting or plane crash, and not have an intense emotional response.  It's easy to think "Oh, I've heard this story before" find a related article that supports our bias, read half of it, and post it on Facebook without any analysis of the facts.  It feels like we're helping. After all, we're raising awareness of a problem, and what could be wrong with that?  And that's what hysteria looks like at the individual level in the social media age.

That sinking feeling in our gut speaks louder to us than the part of our mind that wonders "how many planes didn't crash today?" or "how many women visited Planned Parenthood for something other than an abortion?".  Thinking about these things is really upsetting and it seems like "this happens all the time".  
This tendency is called availability bias, (or the availability heuristic if you want to be all intellectual about it) and unfortunately, is the most natural approach towards decision making for most of us.  To figure out whether or not something is likely to occur takes more time, energy, and knowledge of probability than most of us have available, so instead, we  check our memory banks for instances that come to mind easily.  The media is helpful in ensuring that what immediately comes to mind are sensational, rare, and usually frightening events.

 In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman shares some insight that express my frustrations much more eloquently, and I suppose a little more credibility, being that he's a Nobel Prize winning economist and all.

 "An availability cascade is a self-sustaining chain of events, which may start from the media reports of a relatively minor event and lead up to public panic and large-scale government action. On some occasions, a media story about a risk catches the attention of a segment of the public , which becomes aroused and worried.  This emotional reaction becomes a story in itself, prompting additional coverage in the media, which in turn produces greater concern and involvement. . . other risks and other ways that resources could be applied for public good have all faded into the background."

The news cycles of the past few weeks has been especially tough to watch.  Regular citizens and politicians have reacted in similar knee jerk ways on TV and social media regarding terrorism, gun violence, abortions, immigration, and back to terrorism.  And that was just in November.  I'm not saying that these issues aren't important, but it would be easy to think that they are the biggest threats we're facing, and deserving of the most attention.

These comparatively rare occurrences are trumpeted so loudly by politicians and media outlets, that we end up with half-baked proposals to to ban groups of people from traveling to the country, or to defund an organization that provides affordable contraception as solutions to reducing the number of terror threats or abortions.  The time and money expended are certainly not in proportion to the threat they present, and my theory is that our representatives are hoping we won't realize we are far more likely to die from lack of access to healthcare than from a terrorist attack.

What especially concerns me is the thought that, less than a year from our next presidential election, the obese guy driving home with no seat belt may feel SAFE because he heard someone say that they had a plan to keep potential terrorists out of the country.  The polls suggest we don't have a well informed electorate that simply disagrees on the approaches to problems. We have a bunch of panicked people who are likely to support whomever most effectively takes that undue fear away.