"Risk" by Dan Gardner

A good analysis of how we, as a society, perceive risk, and how we should perceive it and deal with it. We worry amount relatively small risks, but become blase about much bigger ones, due to various biases – the Von Rorkoff effect, optimism bias, hindsight bias, etc – and errors of logic.

Our initial reaction to a given situation is based on gut instinct – our hard-wiring; if (and it is a big “if”) our logical mind then kicks in to modify our reaction, it is normally only partially successful, with the result that most reactions are gut-based rather than logic-based

A genuinely absorbing read – I read it at one sitting – and full of ideas to mull over