Scaring Us Senseless Critical Essay

Exclusively available on Available only on IvyPanda® Made by Human No AI

Nassim Nicholas Taleb article, Scaring Us Senseless reflects how humans have failed to use relevant statistics to perceive danger. Instead, people react to emotions and perceptions, which lead to immediate overreacting and later under reacting. Shock and fading memory control these reactions. He acknowledges that people cannot respond rationally to instances of terrorism.

Therefore, terrorism relies on human weaknesses in controlling perceptions about strange phenomena. First, Taleb notes that neurobiologists and behavioral scientists have observed that risk avoidance does not depend on reason, cognition, and intellect of humans. Instead, risk avoidance depends on emotional systems of humans. As a result, terrorists have exploited this human frailty.

Second, Taleb shows that emotional reactions do not account for statistics. This could be due to complexity of terrorism in a complex environment. Emotional systems serve humans in simple environments with simple dangers. The vulnerable nature of the emotional system makes it tolerable to shallow, social, and anecdotal information rather than abstract data.

This inhibits humans’ abilities to cope with highly complex dangers that exist in the modern environment. Emotions dominate humans’ reasoning abilities.

This hinders one’s abilities to make rational decisions. For instance, people would tend to spend much on terrorism insurance than on general insurance. Taleb observes that the use of the word ‘terrorism’ evokes emotional reactions in people and creates anxieties. This may distort one’s ability to make decisions on abstract data.

Third, Taleb notes that people choose to reward behaviors and act on perceptions differently. This may depend on sensational nature of a given behavior. For instance, one may perceive and reward heroism acts of people who leap into action in unusual events, but ignore those who advocate for prevention.

According to Taleb, an act of prevention is an abstract concept while an act of heroism is in simple narratives that human can easily grasp.

Context influences how one reacts to unusual events. For instance, Taleb observes that humans’ emotional systems react to concrete and proximate events. Moreover, the reaction depends on anecdotal information that may influence how fast one reacts and forgets the risk.

Media have ethical responsibilities when reporting unusual events like terrorism. Taleb notes that media can strengthen emotional distortion. They can use images to affect the brain by magnifying images that appeal to the emotional brain. In this context, the audiovisual media should not present emotionally sensitive information to the public.

Instead, they should practice responsible reporting by reporting risks and cases of terrorism, but without facilitating the core objective of terrorism, which is to terrify people. Vivid and specific images of televisions can evoke such emotions in people and persuade the public against potential distance terrorism attacks. Hence, it is imperative for the media to understand effects of their reporting on the public emotional systems.

Specifically, the media must analyze how their products distort viewers’ mental abilities to reason. Images and strong narratives may grab one’s attention and affect functionality of the brain. Therefore, the new media have the responsibility of using their images to support abstract facts based on the statistical truth.

The article demonstrates that humans do not use statistical facts to react to dangers of terrorism. Instead, such reactions depend on emotional systems and perceptions. In addition, a given context may also influence how one reacts to danger.

In all these, the new media may use their images and narrative contexts to influence decision-making abilities of people. Hence, the media should report responsibly by using images to present statistical facts about dangers.

More related papers Related Essay Examples
Cite This paper
You're welcome to use this sample in your assignment. Be sure to cite it correctly

Reference

IvyPanda. (2019, July 5). Scaring Us Senseless. https://ivypanda.com/essays/scaring-us-senseless/

Work Cited

"Scaring Us Senseless." IvyPanda, 5 July 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/scaring-us-senseless/.

References

IvyPanda. (2019) 'Scaring Us Senseless'. 5 July.

References

IvyPanda. 2019. "Scaring Us Senseless." July 5, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/scaring-us-senseless/.

1. IvyPanda. "Scaring Us Senseless." July 5, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/scaring-us-senseless/.


Bibliography


IvyPanda. "Scaring Us Senseless." July 5, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/scaring-us-senseless/.

If, for any reason, you believe that this content should not be published on our website, please request its removal.
Updated:
This academic paper example has been carefully picked, checked and refined by our editorial team.
No AI was involved: only quilified experts contributed.
You are free to use it for the following purposes:
  • To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
  • As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
  • As a template for you assignment
Privacy Settings

IvyPanda uses cookies and similar technologies to enhance your experience, enabling functionalities such as:

  • Basic site functions
  • Ensuring secure, safe transactions
  • Secure account login
  • Remembering account, browser, and regional preferences
  • Remembering privacy and security settings
  • Analyzing site traffic and usage
  • Personalized search, content, and recommendations
  • Displaying relevant, targeted ads on and off IvyPanda

Please refer to IvyPanda's Cookies Policy and Privacy Policy for detailed information.

Required Cookies & Technologies
Always active

Certain technologies we use are essential for critical functions such as security and site integrity, account authentication, security and privacy preferences, internal site usage and maintenance data, and ensuring the site operates correctly for browsing and transactions.

Site Customization

Cookies and similar technologies are used to enhance your experience by:

  • Remembering general and regional preferences
  • Personalizing content, search, recommendations, and offers

Some functions, such as personalized recommendations, account preferences, or localization, may not work correctly without these technologies. For more details, please refer to IvyPanda's Cookies Policy.

Personalized Advertising

To enable personalized advertising (such as interest-based ads), we may share your data with our marketing and advertising partners using cookies and other technologies. These partners may have their own information collected about you. Turning off the personalized advertising setting won't stop you from seeing IvyPanda ads, but it may make the ads you see less relevant or more repetitive.

Personalized advertising may be considered a "sale" or "sharing" of the information under California and other state privacy laws, and you may have the right to opt out. Turning off personalized advertising allows you to exercise your right to opt out. Learn more in IvyPanda's Cookies Policy and Privacy Policy.

1 / 1