Risk literacy: Gerd Gigerenzer at TEDxZurich

you I assume all of you can read and write we have the fortune to be literate we Internet users blog chat and surf and the next ruse is just a click away but knowing how to read and write isn't enough in our high-tech society what we also need is risk literacy without it we chepa ties our health and money and as we will see without it our emotions can be easily manipulated and remote-controlled in fact they already are in this talk I'd like to invite you into the world of risk beginning with a very humble hazard getting soaked a TV newscaster in the u.s. once announced the weather this way the probability that it will rain on Saturday is 50% the probability that it will rain on Sunday is also 50% therefore he concluded chances that it will rain on the weekend or 100% most of us smile at dark but do you know what it means if divisor report announces a 30% chance of rain tomorrow 30% of what I live in Berlin most Berliners think it will rain tomorrow in 30% of the time that is 7 to 8 hours other think it will rain tomorrow in 30% of the region that is most likely not where they live most New Yorkers think both are nonsense it means that it will rain on 30% of the days for which this prediction has been made that is most likely there will be no rain at all tomorrow how come this confusion part of the problem is for our experts who have never learned to explain probabilities to the public here who cannot spell out - what class changes of rain prefer time region days what meteorologists want to say is that it will rain on 30% of the days for which the prediction has been made but people left on their own they invent a class that makes sense to them and more imaginative Minds can even think of others a women in New York said I know what a 30% chance means three meteorologists think it rains and seven not there is a simple remedy to this confusion always ask percentage of what getting soaked is a minor risk but do we understand risk better when something really important is at stake besides tea and scones and the Queen Great Britain has some less comfortable traditions one of them is the contraceptive pill scare since the 1960's women are alarmed every couple of years by reports that the pill causes thrombosis that is potentially life-threatening blood clots in the legs or lung in the most famous scare the UK Committee on safety of medicines and the press issued a warning that women who take the third-generation pill increased the risk of a thrombosis twofold that is by 100 percent 100 percent how much more certain can you be many distressed women start taking the pill which led to unwanted pregnancies and abortions just how much is hundred percent the studies on which the warning ball space showed that out of every seven thousand women who took the previous-generation pill one-hitter imposes which increased to among those who took the third-generation pearl that is the absolute risk increase was only one in seven thousand but that can be phrased in the frightening hundred percent if the media would have reported the absolute risk then very few women would have panicked and stopped taking the pill most likely nobody would have even cared this single scare led to an estimated 13,000 abortions additional abortions in England and Wales and many teenage pregnancies the problem here is not better pills but more risk savvy young women and men it shouldn't be so difficult to explain to a teenager the difference between a relative risk 100% scary and an absolute risk 1 in 7,000 so there is a simple rule that helps here to stop these scares namely always ask for the absolute risk the fact or the use of relative risks and similar strategies to mislead the public is quite common in screening brochures in medical advertisement in the meat channel the miss use of information and misleading the public should be at the agenda of every governmental ethics committee it is not you may think that risk literacy is already taught in every high school medical school law school etc no this principle aren't taught but there is a solution to that as I hinted we could easily change this by teaching some simple principles that are easy to learn most of us remember exactly where we were on September 11 2001 and fuels us if any have forgotten the images of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center government's reacted with better technology such as full-body scanners with more bureaucracy such as homeland security and with further limitations of our individual freedom everything seems to be said after the 9/11 Commission report but the only measure the report did not pay attention to was risk savvy citizens let's turn the clock back to December 2001 imagine you live in New York you want to travel to Washington would you fly or drive we know that many Americans stopped flying after 9/11 did they stay home or did it jump in the car I looked into the transportation statistics and what you find is that for 12 months the number of miles driven on the roads increased substantially and particularly there where long distance drive driving has been done and in these twelve months an estimated 1600 Americans lost their lives on the road by driving rather than flying every one of the 1600 people could be still alive there was no single passenger death in the next year and the following years at US commercial flights terrorists strike twice the first strike is a physical assault but it's followed by a second strike which uses our brains our fear and if anything like 9/11 should happen again we should not let terrorists after second strike what is the brain psychology the terrorists exploit it appears to be a simple unconscious rule if many people die at one point in time react with fear and avoid the situation note the fear is not about dying per se if an evil number or more people die distributed you over the year as in car accidents or cigarette smoking it's very difficult to make us afraid what we seem to fear is to die suddenly together with lots of others we dread the rare nuclear power plant accident but not the continuous death toll caused by pollution from coal power plants we threaded this fine flu pandemic that never occurred but few of us are concerned about being among the ten thousands every year who die from the regular flu let's come back to my question assume you live in New York you want to travel to Washington you have only one goal which is arrive a life question how many miles would you have to drive by car until the risk of dying is the same as in a non-stop flight I've asked this question to many audiences and the answers are all over the place 1,000 mile 10,000 miles three times around the world the best answer is 12 miles yes only 12 that is if your car arrives safely at the airport the most dangerous part of your trip is probably already behind here are people hopeless when it comes to risk some of my colleagues think that we are predictably irrational victims of our cognitive illusions and in dire need to be nudged to behave properly from birth to death collect the experts close the doors and then tell the public what I should do this is not my vision people aren't born stupid we can teach every child to become risk literate if we only start to change the way we teach it's time for a change at the Max Planck Institute for human development we design tools with which even 4th graders can solve so called Bayesian problems that stumped most adults and most doctors and lawyers including and we can even do more schools could teach a new generation to become risk savvy to deal intelligently with the risk and it changes that critically affect their lives and we could do even more spectacular things think about one of the most frightening health threats cancer billions have been spent on screening and cancer drugs mostly with a few exceptions with limited success but about half of all cancers are due to behavior - smoking - a couch potato lifestyle lack of physical activity obesity alcohol abuse we could prevent these cancers but there's no point telling a 15 year old to stop smoking because he wouldn't listen habits are formed early and we need to start already before puberty and we should not moralize we should make young people competent so that it can make independent and informed decision whether we like these or not here is my bet if we would spend half of the amount that goes into cancer research on making young people risk literate we would save more lives from cancer than by spending the same amount on the next generation of cancer drugs and the skills young people learn there would not only make them more healthy in Channel but they would empower them to take control over their lives rather than being remote-controlled by digital media greedy banks or manipulative advertisement and we could do that think about who would have thought a few hundred years ago that so many people on earth can learn how to read and write today many find it equally implausible that people could become risk literate I'm one of the few who think otherwise and encourage you to do the same everyone can learn to deal with risk and uncertainty everyone who dares to know

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 125,221

Keywords: Uncertainty, Awareness, Psychology, ted talks, TEDx, ted talk, ted, English, Assessment, Switzerland, ted x, tedx, Judgement, tedx talk, Risk, tedx talks, Science, TEDxZurich, 2013, Zurich

Id: g4op2WNc1e4

Length: 16min 14sec (974 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 09 2013