Applying Reason

“Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”

FDR’s First Inaugural Address

Franklin D. Roosevelt had campaigned against Herbert Hoover in the 1932 presidential election by saying as little as possible about what he might do if elected. Through even the closest working relationships, none of the president-elect’s most intimate associates felt they knew him well, with the exception perhaps of his wife, Eleanor. The affable, witty Roosevelt used his great personal charm to keep most people at a distance. In campaign speeches, he favored a buoyant, optimistic, gently paternal tone spiced with humor. But his first inaugural address took on an unusually solemn, religious quality. And for good reason—by 1933 the depression had reached its depth. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address outlined in broad terms how he hoped to govern and reminded Americans that the nation’s “common difficulties” concerned “only material things.”

155 selected “…scientists, artists, philosophers, technologists, and entrepreneurs who are at the center of today's intellectual, technological, and scientific landscape…” were asked for their thoughts, in the hope that they might “…teach us how to worry better, and when to stop worrying”.

It turns out that many contributors worry about the same thing the Risk: Reason and Reality blog is all about. We sometimes worry too much or too little, human risk perception doesn’t deal well with many of the complex modern risks we now face, and the risk of getting risk wrong is a risk all by itself.

As insightful as many of the responses are, however, none of the EDGE big thinkers mentions an even bigger problem, the failure of many – especially among big thinkers and policy makers -  to accept that risk perception is not the purely intellectual objective ‘rational’ process we’d like it to be. We know from decades of research that risk perception – how we worry – is a mix of facts and feelings, reason and gut reaction, intellect and instinct. We know it, but many still refuse to accept it.
       
That’s something to worry about, because getting risk wrong leads to dangers all by itself, and we will remain vulnerable to these mistakes until we let go of our naïve post-Enlightenment faith in reason and accept that risk perception is inescapably an affective system, not just a matter of rationally figuring out the facts. Only with such acceptance can we then begin to apply our rich understanding of how that system actually operates to the task of “worrying better”.