The Science Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Should not- and Put Ourselves in Great Danger Audiobook (Free)
Summary:
From terror attacks to the War on Terror, bursting property bubbles to crystal meth epidemics, sexual predators to poisonous playthings from China, our set of fears seems to be exploding. And yet, we will be the safest and healthiest human beings in history. Irrational fear is usually running amok, and often with tragic results. In the a few months after 9/11, when people made a decision to drive rather than fly-believing they wee avoiding risk-road deaths rose by 1,595. Those lives were lost to fear.
The Science of Fear is a about The Technology Fear: So why We Fear the items WE OUGHT TO not- and Place Ourselves in Great Danger disarmingly cheerful roundtrip shuttle to the new brain science, dissecting the fears that misguide and manipulate us every day.
As award-winning journalist Daniel Gardner demonstrates, irrational fear springs from how humans miscalculate risks. Our hunter-gatherer brains evolved during the old Stone Age group and struggle to make sense of a world utterly unlike one that made them. Numbers, for example, confuse us. Our “gut” tells us that also if there aren’t “fifty thousand predators…on the web prowling for children,” as a recently available U.S. Lawyer General claimed, after that there has to be a lot. As well as if our “head” discovers that the quantity is baseless no one in fact knows the truth-there could be one hundred thousand or five-we are still more fearful simply because we heard the big number. And it is not only politicians as well as the press that visitors in fearmongering. Corporations fatten their bottom lines with dread. Interest groups broaden their influence with dread. Officials enhance their finances with fear. With an increase of info, warnings and frightening stories arriving at us each day from every direction, we are more prone than ever to needlessly get worried.
Real-world examples, interviews with specialists, and fast-paced, trim storytelling make The Technology of Dread an entertaining and enlightening tour. Ultimately, by exposing the psychology behind the many methods our “gut” reactions lead us astray and invite others to manipulate us. The Science of Fear will make you brave.
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