Total Avoidance of Risk Ensures Starvation

We are constantly hearing from the mainstream media about "new" risks that we face from everything we eat and everything and everyone that we interact with. The only way to completely avoid risk is to stop eating, stop interacting with everyone and stop using everything. In other words, to completely avoid risk, one must be dead. Life is a 100% fatal venereal disease. Prolonging and enriching life require a delicate balancing act of choosing between various potentially bad tradeoffs. We can choose not to eat the Big Mac, or drive more than necessary, or avoid talking to strangers... But, if we do so we must put up with hunger, stay at home and never make new friends.

So, how should you respond to the new risks you hear about on the radio and television every day? Mostly, ignore them. New research will likely determine that coffee, eggs, coconut oil, cholesterol or whatever is bad for you today will likely be good for you in some other way tomorrow. Nearly everything that is bad has good parts to it. Hitler's trains ran on time, and he built the autobahn, the world's first interstate highway system. Without Hitler's influence on Berlin, you wouldn't be able to drive a car there today because of the tremendous gridlock. But we all know that Hitler was bad. All risks are like this. Paving your sidewalks means that you may fall down less often, but when you do, you are more likely to skin your knee or rip your clothing than if you fell on dirt.

So, what is a person to do? A rather drastic approach is to just stop watching the news. Even if you do this only for a period of time to make the adjustment, I think it's worth doing every now and again. Retrain your amygdala (the part of your brain that responds to immediate risk) by avoiding the constant barrage of negativity for a while. Read upbeat books, like "Abundance" by Peter Diamandis. Read technology news online, which is frequently upbeat. Once you have purged the fear from your system, go back and watch the news with your new found context, and you'll be able to gain a degree of optimism.

It is nearly impossible to come up with good numbers for various risks. Stranger abduction, for example, has numbers all over the place. Penn and Teller say it's not a big deal, but other numbers don't entirely agree with them. Yes, it is true that your children are more likely to be abducted by someone they know, but hard numbers are difficult to dig up in such controversial areas. Don't even get started on global warming, the numbers there are all over the map and politically charged on both sides.

What are the biggest avoidable risks? Eat rationally. Drive safely and buy a car with autonomous features as soon as you can afford to. Don't engage in activity your grandmother would have called risky. Don't do stupid things. Use common sense, and don't react to every story you hear on the media... Your risk of developing brain cancer from using a cell phone is statistically insignificant compared to the danger of driving while talking on one, which is only a bit more dangerous than driving without talking.