Thursday, August 27, 2009

formula

Dread = Uncontrollability + Unfamiliarity + Imaginability + Suffering + Scale of Destruction + Unfairness

source: The Unthinkable: who survives when disaster strikes and why by Amanda Ripley

2 comments:

David Lee Ingersoll said...

And what's the formula for hope?

Glenn Ingersoll said...

I don't know. I suspect in this context (thinking about getting caught up in a disaster)the opposite of dread would be absence-of-worry.

Driving your car is riskier than flying in a big commercial airliner, right? But driving gives you the feeling of control, it's familiar, comfortable, small scale, etc. Airliners? Not so familiar, not so comfortable, and totally beyond your control.