Hello everyone
If it’s summer where you are, I hope the weather is good. And if you’ve been holidaying, I hope you’ve had a relaxing time.
This month I want to talk about risk. Human beings are terrible at identifying, assessing, and managing risk. For a fiction writer, this human shortcoming is a great source of material.
And just so there’s no misunderstanding—I’m a human and I’m terrible with risk.
Risk
Part of the reason human beings are so bad at handling risk is that, as a notion, it’s pretty nebulous. Risk is a term that gets thrown around without a high degree of specificity. Everything we do has a risk—from crossing the road to skydiving—and it’s hard to separate the trivial from the consequential.
In straightforward terms, something is a risk if there is a possibility of incurring loss or harm. However, when we assess risks, we tend to think about two aspects:
- Firstly, we consider the chances of a bad thing actually happening.
- Secondly, we assess the consequences if that bad thing occurs.
These two aspects tend to be tangled together. So, if someone thinks there is an infinitesimally small chance of something happening—even if the consequences may be dire—then they will typically ignore the risk. By equal measure, if the consequences are trivial—even if the risk is nearly certain—then there will be little perception of risk.
However, as humans we are fallible, and in making assessments we often get things wrong. If we underestimate the risk of a matter with significant consequences, we could be putting ourselves (or others) at a much higher risk of harm. This is where people’s reaction to Covid-19 and the global pandemic is interesting.
Living with Risk
I am not a medical expert and you should never take medical advice from someone who makes up stuff for a living. In talking about Covid-19, I’m only interested in people’s attitudes and reactions.
I am sure we are all aware of:
- People who seem to have no concern about Covid-19. You will see crowds of these people gathering in tight spaces.
- People who are terrified about catching the disease. Generally you will not see these people because they are sheltering to stay safe.
Between these extremes, many people are worried and are taking precautions.
In every case, people are making decisions for themselves based on their attitude to risk. Some people are making decisions that might appear reasonable, however, there is no empirical scale to measure whether someone has been too cautious or too lax with their risk.
Whatever choice anyone has made about risk, it is probably wrong. It may be too cautious or reckless, but almost certainly wrong.
The consequences of being insufficiently cautious about Covid-19 may be more consequential—more people may die. As a result, many people are being over-cautious…and this makes sense. However, there is no way to know whether someone who feels they have been over-cautious has, in reality, not been cautious enough.
For the Novelist
While people may bristle at the notion that they personally may be terrible at assessing risk, unfortunately, we all are. And we’re even worse at assessing how the risks we take might impact other people.
However, for novelists, this failure is reassuring. It means that we can always find a plausible situation where people will make bad decisions, usually highly consequential bad decisions which will drive the action forward.
Until September
I hope you and yours stay safe. Listen to advice from the experts, not novelists 😁
I’ll be back in September.
All the best
Simon