The Frontal Cortex : Terrorism and Irrational Fear

The Frontal Cortex : Terrorism and Irrational Fear: "The research is interesting of course, but your attempt to connect it to sociological phenomena is misguided. Well, not mis-guided, as the intents are good enough, but not scientific.

People are afraid of terrorism because there is an actual agency behind the acts. There really is a boogey man who if given the chance to push a button and kill 10 million Americans, would do it. He has said as much.

There is no car-accident madman who would press a button to cause 10 million deaths. And there is no such button (the image of a single universal seat-belt releasing button comes to mind, but it's laughable).

Being afraid of an event with a high casualty figure (a few buttons being pushed) over thousands, no millions of *independent* and uncoordinatable events (car crashes) makes perfect sense. The chance of all those car crashes occuring together to cause 10 million deaths is so much tinier than the probability of a single group coordinating their actions toward a single goal.

Independent events occuring together are just less likely than a series of dependent events - they only have to dependent on one casaul event. The chance of billions of cells coordinating to move to another room, is trivially small. But my dog moves around the house all the time. Should you be more afraid of that dog pooping on your yard and causing a stench more than the effects of a billion bacteria doing the same?

We are a social species after all, so sexual selection and resource competition is what we ought to be afraid of, more so than things either under our control (health-related heart attacks) or completely not under our control (predispositioned heart attacks). The intentions of competitors matter. It makes sense for humans to factor them into their fear. Fear is a good, natural, healthy thing when in balance - surely FDR would not want the whole country to go into a 'no fear' manic phase?

Why argue so much with evolution - seems our brains are highly evolved to be afraid of the things which are endangering us. Sure they swing toward hysteria at times. And to complacency at others. But being afraid of people with desires and chemicals to blow up airplanes - any airplane - doesn't seem extreme to me."