Public Understanding and Risk in Social Activities
In the real world, many government agencies, e.g. Health and Safety Executive, are fundamentally risk-averse in their mandate. This often means that they demand (with the power of legal enforcement) that risks be minimized, even at the cost of losing the utility of the risky activity. It is important to consider the opportunity cost when mitigating a risk; the cost of not taking the risky action. Writing laws focused on the risk without the balance of the utility may misrepresent society's goals. The public understanding of risk, which influences political decisions, is an area which has recently been recognised as deserving focus. David Spiegelhalter is the Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University; a role he describes as "outreach".
A vaccine to protect children against the three common diseases measles, mumps and rubella was developed and recommended for all children in several countries including the UK. However, a controversy arose around allegations that it caused autism. This alleged causal link was thoroughly disproved, and the doctor who made the claims was expelled from the General Medical Council. Even years after the claims were disproved, some parents wanted to avert the risk of causing autism in their own children. They chose to spend significant amounts of their own money on alternatives from private doctors. These alternatives carried their own risks which were not balanced fairly; most often that the children were not properly immunised against the more common diseases of measles, mumps and rubella.
Mobile phones may carry some small health risk. While most people would accept that unproven risk to gain the benefit of improved communication, others remain so risk averse that they do not. (The COSMOS cohort study continues to study the actual risks of mobile phones.)
Risk aversion theory can be applied to many aspects of life and its challenges, for example:
- Bribery and corruption - whether the risk of being implicated or caught outweighs the potential personal or professional rewards
- Drugs - whether the risk of having a bad trip outweighs the benefits of possible transformative one; whether the risk of defying social bans is worth the experience of alteration. See "Harm reduction".
- Sex - judgement whether an experience that goes against social convention, ethical mores or common health prescriptions is worth the risk.
- Extreme sports - weighing the risk of physical injury or death against the adrenaline rush and bragging rights.
- Play by children in playgrounds or beyond the reach of their parents.
Read more about this topic: Risk Aversion
Famous quotes containing the words public, risk, social and/or activities:
“Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Kemmerick: He’s dead. He’s dead.
Katczinsky: Why did you risk your life bringing him in?
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—Maxwell Anderson (1888–1959)
“It is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius in the world, was no man’s work but came by wide social labor, when a thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)