The political cost of availability bias

Posted by Marc Hodak on September 5, 2008 under Irrationality | Read the First Comment

I don’t have much to say about the Republican convention other than Palin appeared to be the clear highlight. My basic problem with them all is that they propose to protect us from threats of all sorts, and to send me the bill for their protection. I have to count on them spending my money wisely. History shows little promise of that.

I don’t know how to put the graphs up here, but consider that the likelihood of the average American dying from heart disease is about 34%. You have about a 30% chance of dying from cancer. You have an almost 30% chance of dying from any other kind of disease, and about a 6 percent chance of dying in an accident. If the U.S. suffered the equivalent of a World Trade Center attack every single year, you would have a 0.2% chance of ever dying from terrorist activity.

Then consider that our government spends about 15 times as much money fighting terrorism as it does on all other threats to our health and safety put together.

Availability bias is the human tendency to ascribe a higher probability to events that come readily to mind. Over the last 8 years, many of us may have heard about or even witnessed the death of someone from disease or accident. But every one of us have seen or heard, with incessant repetition, about 9/11. The vivid sight of the plane crashing into the Twin Towers is burned into our national consciousness. 9/11 is a highly ‘available’ data point.

Our politicians have used that consciousness to organize a Dept. of Homeland Security and invade Iraq, the costs of which are approaching $500 billion. How many lives have been saved from all that fighting, over-the-top airport security, encroachment on our civil liberties, loss of respect among our allies, etc.?

The obverse of availability is peace of mind. We’ve paid dearly for it. But what would we have gotten by channeling a half a trillion dollars to medical research instead? Personally, I would much rather live with a greatly reduced fear of cancer than whatever solace I now get from having people check in at the security desk when entering my building–one of tens of thousands in Manhattan that have never been attacked.

I don’t blame our politicians. They’re doing what they do–grab money and power based on people’s fears. The media creates the fear, which is regrettable, but they too are doing what they do to sell stories.

Ultimately I blame our schools. Our system turns out analytical morons. We are all much poorer for it.