Thinking about risky behaviors

JOA · Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 1904

I have been riding a recently purchased motorcycle these past few weeks. Mostly on weekend mornings, and most recently to the National Gallery of Art, with my sweetie riding pillon. I don't intend to use the thing to commute. I'm well aware that motorcyling involves risk—even with training, fancy helmets, and expensive clothing. So I've been thinking about risks, especially socially responsible risks.

I really don't know how to compare motorcycling with high fat diets, or couch potato lifestyles. I'm inclined to doubt that there will ever be anything for Big Macs that will be comparable to helmet laws. I'm also inclined to think that any even-handed treatment of risky behaviors would preclude all private aviation—not that I expect there will ever be regulation of private behavior would ever extend to those groups who have the kind of money that allows for flying airplanes.

So I'm a bit stuck on how to think about all this. Mind you, I'm not inclined to respond well to hectoring comments of the holier-than-thou variety. But there might be a clue to how to think about risk from a recent NYT article about how triathletes disproportionately die while swimming.

Now that I'm near 60, my own experience with (short course) triathlons is now 10 years gone. Like most runners, I swim just well enough to not drown. So it's not too surprising to read that those very, very few triathletes who die while competing disproportionately die while swimming.

But back to risk:

MikeWalters · Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 1231 Location: Cincinnati OH

This is not intended as hectoring, but as a lead for further thought about risk. Some years ago, there was a wonderful book written by John Paulos called Innumeracy (a play on the word illiteracy). http://tinyurl.com/2udbth

One of the themes of the book related to how humans tend to both underestimate and overestimate risk. The linked article discusses the concept in the context of risk for medical treatment, but the concept applies equally well to JOA's motorcycle riding and my nasty smoking habit.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=200816

JOA · Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 1904

Mike:

It will be no surprise to you that where writing is concerned, I am very much concerned, even obsessed, with style. The one writer I will confess as an influence is Stephen Jay Gould. As it happens, Gould wrote an essay about cancer and statistics. It's one that has some considerable bearing on innumerancy.

http://www.cancerguide.org/median_not_msg.html

David Traver · Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 02:53 am Post subject:

Risk analysis depends a great deal upon who we think we are and where "here" is.

For example, there are those who operate mundane creatures of some intelligence living in a mundane world that has some degree of predictable cause and effect. For them this Wikkipedia piece provides some nice recipes for risk assessment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_management

Young adults are often described as seeing themselves as indestructible in a world they can easily manage. Many of them never take any time to consider risk at all. The thought never enters their heads. Many survive this phase and seek other approaches to risk assessment. Some do not. You and I are not in that class. We have long ago passed though that phase and amazingly, we survived. I suppose it is worth noting that most folks hum along quite happily not considering the immense risks they encounter on a daily basis. They are teenagers at heart.

Others perceive themselves living in a non-mundane world under the authority of an omniscient and omnipotent Divinity. For them the topic of risk assessment is irrelevant (or at least it should be.) Free will is an utter illusion and all outcomes are known, but not to them. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omniscience But see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam (regarding the tension between free will and predestination.)

In contrast, a Buddhist, absent the presence of Divinity, would recommend that all action leads to immense suffering on a quite cosmic scale except for those actions mindfully performed within the Dharma. Thus, in Buddhism risk analysis becomes somewhat binary. For those who still wander aimlessly in a dream of ignorance the risk is absolute for even the most mundane activities. Uninformed and unaware, the unenlightened lack the capacity to see true consequences on a cosmic scale. For such persons any risk analysis is unreliably optimistic due to habitual errors in assessment of cause and effect. Conversely, the risk involved in any undertaking is nearly zero for those who have achieved enlightenment. They do no harm and they suffer no consequences. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism

There are those who see that death begins at conception. They are happy to point out that nobody gets out of here alive. Like the Buddhist they see life suffering and always dying. However, unlike the Buddha, they intuitively grasp that any attempts to assess or mitigate risks are futile, if not hilarious. For them risk assessment and mitigation can never be more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic or arguing over blankets at Auschwitz. Do what you will and go where you wish -- course corrections are absolutely trivial. The yawning grave awaits, no worries mate. But see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning

Perhaps the fuddle that you find yourself in regarding the assessment of risk has deeper existential roots. Only after answering questions of "who am I" and "where am I" can a person begin to assess how much risk there is in riding a motorcycle or not getting an annual physical exam. Your motorcycle may point to a deeper need for meaning. Or like Freud's cigar, it might mean nothing at all.

David Traver · Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 11:02 pm Post subject:

There seems to be scientific support for the notion that free will is an option that might not exist:

Knightly · Joined: 20 Aug 2008 Posts: 3

The discussion on risk analysis is interesting. I recently read a book by Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at MIT, called "Predictably Irrational." In that book Ariely describes experiments he conducted to try to determine why people making everyday decisions often make irrational choices, sometimes predictably so. He determined and even quantified in some of those experiments how the average person did a poor job at factoring in risk.

An interesting part for me is helping clients factor in risk in Social Security claims. Decisions like whether to accept an ALJ's offer of an amended onset, or whether to appeal a partially favorable decision involve risks. A real understanding of the actual risks involved might require the attorney to know about the client's financial situation, healthcare needs, etc., to determine the likely impact of an adverse outcome Explaining possible risks and outcomes in an understandable way is not always easy, especially to a client with a mental impairment.